The Trump administration is revving up an effort to counter foreign state propaganda and disinformation, including from Russia, after a months-long funding lag and criticism from lawmakers.
The State Department announced Monday that it would be receiving $40 million from the Pentagon to fund the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an Obama-era interagency organization launched in 2016 to counter terrorist messaging. Congress has since expanded its mandate to include countering disinformation from foreign states like Russia and China.
One source told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that a significant chunk of the $40 million announced Monday would be used to push back on Russian disinformation in particular. A State Department official said the exact figure was classified, but that “we are focused on countering Russian disinformation and propaganda.”
The enhanced counter-disinformation effort comes ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, which top intelligence officials view as a “potential target for Russian influence operations.” NSA director Adm. Mike Rogers told lawmakers Tuesday that he does not believe the U.S. response to Russian meddling has deterred the Kremlin. “They haven’t paid a price at least that’s sufficient to get them to change their behavior,” he said.
A State Department official said the GEC’s domestic mandate is limited, but that “the GEC’s work to counter disinformation and propaganda abroad supports efforts to counter foreign influence in elections and democratic institutions abroad.”
Some of the funding announced Monday will be used for the Information Access Fund, under which the GEC will award grants to civil society groups, media providers, and nongovernmental organizations in support of their counter-propaganda work. The fund will amount to a total of $5 million in fiscal year 2018, State said.
“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight,” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Steve Goldstein said in a statement Monday. “It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive.”
State also said the GEC will initiate a series of projects developed with the Pentagon to counter propaganda and disinformation. Senators Rob Portman and Chris Murphy linked the Pentagon’s information activities with those of the State Department in the 2018 defense spending bill, pushing the two to coordinate and share agendas. In the 2017 defense bill, Portman and Murphy authorized State to request up to $60 million annually from the Pentagon for GEC efforts in fiscal years 2017 and 2018.
But the State Department was slow to request those funds, drawing criticism from lawmakers. “Countering foreign propaganda should be a top priority, and it is very concerning that progress on combating this problem is being delayed because the State Department isn’t tapping into these resources,” Portman said in August.
A variety of factors have been reported to be behind the funding issue.
“Operations have been stymied by the [State] Department’s hiring freeze and unnecessarily long delays by its senior leadership in transferring authorized funds to the office,” Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations committee said in a January report. One GEC official, apparently frustrated with the repeated delays, told committee staff, “every week we spend on process is a week the Russians are spending on operations.’’
In an August report, Politico also suggested that a desire not to anger the Kremlin could be part of the funding delay. Russia waged a campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election using cyber operations, targeted leaks, paid social media users (or professional “trolls”), and state-funded propaganda, according to a U.S. intelligence community assessment released last January. President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about Russian election interference.
A State Department official told TWS on Wednesday that the Pentagon has not yet transmitted the $40 million.
“The Department of Defense advises the State Department that the transfer can be initiated after DoD’s [fiscal year] 2018 appropriations bill is passed and a 15-day congressional notification period has elapsed,” the official said.
The administration requested $20 million for the GEC’s program countering state-sponsored disinformation in its 2019 budget proposal.
