A recent article intimated that the United States has taken a step back from addressing foreign influence and interference in cyberspace, raising the question if the United States and by extension the West has limited its capabilities to identify and counter such threats. The author cites the dismissal of senior officials and organizations that have led the effort over the past decade or so such as the recent dismissal of the head of the National Security Agency, the closing

of the Department of State’s Center for Countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, and the shutdown of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Foreign Influence Task Force, as examples.  The implication for the author is clear: the United States has drastically reduced its ability to fight key cognitive attacks targeting audiences via disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda, creating a void for the West, and suggesting that as a result, it will risk being victimized by the efforts of adversaries that have already been observed using these information-enabled attacks to target the global public.

The fight against disinformation took prominence after the 2016 U.S. presidential election when hostile governments like Russia leveraged the popularity and reach of social media platforms to push narratives, and sow discontent with certain stories in order to divide U.S. citizens when it came to voting.  Since that time, every subsequent election has occurred with these concerns on the forefront.  A declassified U.S. intelligence assessment on the 2020 elections found that the usual suspects attempted to influence the elections via misinformation/disinformation, though it concluded that they were largely unsuccessful, or at least, didn’t achieve any meaningful result despite their efforts, attributing this to a variety of factors including government attentiveness, technical controls, and more public awareness. However, the assessment didn’t drill down as to which of these were more effective, or quantify the successes of each factor, which could have provided some sense as to what was the most successful in mitigating the misinformation/disinformation threat during this period.

Nevertheless, the article argues that this “dismantling” of the United States misinformation/disinformation apparatus creates opportunities for adversaries in the space, ostensibly weakening the U.S. and Western interests in the process though it did not specifically show any examples that correlate this belief.  There is very limited evidence to show that these moves have hurt the United States, or have furthered adversary success in influencing them to act or vote a specific way.  For example, for all of the worry about Russia interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, the assessment found that their activities did not work.  The U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that Russia’s “influence operations [were] aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party supporting former President Trump.”  Yet clearly this did not succeed with Biden garnering the most votes cast for a U.S. presidential candidate in history. For such an important election, and for a misinformation/disinformation influence campaign said to be directed by Putin himself, to say such a result was a letdown would be an understatement.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge is the removal or restriction of misinformation may be in defining what it is.  While disinformation can be identified as the purposeful creation and dissemination of incorrect information to influence cognitive thought toward a specific conclusion, misinformation may not have that intent at all and likely has some connection to an actual truth.  Information that is not contextualized, and could be disputed, may not be false as incomplete or rooted in opinion.  And ultimately how an individual receives that type of information, processes it, and ultimately decides to move forward with it or not.

Social media platforms have become the digital town square where people debate, argue, and fight over topics such as politics, foreign policy, social issues, as well as other areas like sports and entertainment. And like it or not, people rely on these platforms to receive their news.  A recent Oxford study found that social media has surpassed traditional news outlets like television as the primary source for their news, which is especially true in the United States where more people turned to social media as their go-to source over news websites for the first time.  Like it or not, social media not only provides the news, but it allows people to debate with others about news they consume in real time, unlike print or other forms of mainstream media.  What’s more, this has not deterred political parties from using it to promote their agendas.  According to Statista, approximately USD 10 billion was spent in political advertising in 2024 with as much as 17.5% of the country’s digital ad spend dedicated to social media. So despite, reservations there does not appear to be any appetite for not using the space as a promotion space.

Some argue that this has only made it easier to further divide people, particularly as the United States is in a politically charged period, but it also has helped raise awareness, made people critically think about issues they might not have had before, allowing them an avenue to be informed, and express their thoughts. In other words, they promote democratic principles of discourse.  Allowing these platforms to identify and remove content restricts those very principles. There is no fundamental difference between the content and discussions occurring on social media than there were before its creation and usage. The mechanism of its delivery is faster and more immediate, but people were thinking and expressing the same types of things prior. Can words be used for good and bad purposes? Of course.  But it has always been that way.  

When looking at the various U.S. government entities that had some mission related to countering or addressing the misinformation/disinformation/influence threat, if all had been robustly successful and coordinated in their missions, social media would be limited to the vision set forth by the administration in power.  These efforts may start off noble and altruistic in purpose, they invariably would become perverted over time, which happens when the government starts to overreach, and starts to enter the waters of true authoritarianism.  Because the worst thing that a democratic government could do is to unwittingly turn into the very thing it has pledged never to become.