The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2020

40 JULY-AUGUST 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of integrating deception and manipulation into its strategic thought. During the Korean War, it accused the United States of conducting “germ warfare” in North Korea and northeast China. (The campaign was decisively debunked when historians gained access to Soviet copies of the communications among North Korea, China and Russia after the end of the Cold War.) In this century, the Chinese concept of Three Warfares—psychological warfare, media warfare and lawfare—frame Beijing’s strategic use of disinformation. Although China and Russia, over the years, worked from different templates, the NYT ’s Wong, Rosenberg and Barnes reported that China has now “adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls, such as creating fake social media accounts to push messages to sympathetic Americans, who in turn unwittingly help spread them.” According to Senator Angus King (I-Maine), the goal is “spreading division.” The Way Ahead Disinformation about COVID-19 is today’s challenge, but every future administration will also face disinformation. In the past, many thought of U.S. public diplomacy as an instrument of soft power. It now must counter what the National Endowment for Democracy labels “sharp power” that “pierces, penetrates or perforates the political and information environments in the targeted countries.” The surge of malign disinformation suggests PD needs to be recharged, and it must join whole-of-government policy deliberations at the highest level. Cyber operations and ideas. Every government department, organization and social media company is now intensely focused on cyber security, defending (or attacking) networks, channels of transmission and data. What is popularly called “hacking” is a form of espionage, extracting intelligence—from war plans and financial data to confidential emails—or manipulating percep- tions of such data. Still, this is only one side of what’s going on. The other side is the ideas that flow on the networks, whether digital or through social connections. Ideas embrace logic, argu- ment, theory, beliefs, judgment, interpretation, premises, norms and values. It is ideas that make the case for other nations to partner with the United States to address global issues like ter- rorism or climate change; the benefits of trade and development; security of the sea lanes; and many others. Public diplomacy’s traditional media and exchange programs must, then, continue, even expand. They advance understanding of the United States, its government and society, and American ideas. Few individuals have the specialized education bridging both the cyber operations and the ideas realms. This means that a comprehensive response to disinformation requires the collabo- ration of cyber experts and those who know foreign—especially Chinese and Russian—societies, cultures, languages, foreign policy and strategic concepts. Foreign Service officers at the Global Engagement Center model this kind of collaboration, and when they again are posted overseas, embassy country teams gain from their firsthand experience combating disinformation. The need for speed. Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Information Lieutenant General Loretta Reynolds emphasizes: “In the win/loss analysis of the Information Age, what matters is not the big that eat the small; it’s the fast that eat the slow.” Public diplomacy is well aware of the insight that “lies sprint while the truth walks.” On the pandemic, the Bureau of Global Public Affairs is giving embassies and consulates more and faster guidance to allow them to recognize and respond to disinformation, without having to pre-clear every tweet or statement withWashington. An informational “enterprise.” Enterprise thinking is “the practice of considering the entire enterprise in decision-making, not just a given group or department,” according to Adam McClellan in “The Art of Enterprise Thinking. ” Many depart- ments and agencies—State, Defense, Homeland Security and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, among them—have roles to play in the coming information contests. And the government’s instru- ments of informational power are also divided by function—pub- lic affairs, public diplomacy, international broadcasting and the armed forces’ operations in the information environment. State’s Global Engagement Center has a statutory mandate to “lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Govern- ment to recognize, understand, expose and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” Four regional threat teams (for China/North Korea, Russia, Iran, and Counterterrorism) are complemented by twomore teams for analytics and research and for digital outreach. The GEC’s active programof grants and cooperative agreements supports local inde- pendent media, gathers examples of disinformation and propa- ganda, analyzes foreign information warfare and provides support. From the time of Sun Tzu, China has had its own history of integrating deception and manipulation into its strategic thought.