Disinformation may be one of Russia and China’s greatest weapons

The United States has just completed its second Summit on Democracy. A warning from the State Department reinforces the reality that democracy is under threat globally and that public distrust is one reason for the threat. This distrust has various components, including concern about economic and political stability, but it is also driven and amplified by autocratic governments’ use of malign influence as a weapon against democracy.

Russia, in particular, uses disinformation and malign influence as part of its offensive national security strategy. In 2013, Russia’s military chief of general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, emphasized its importance in an essay he wrote, “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” The government of the Soviet Union used what they called active measures — the strategy for the spreading of disinformation — for decades against the United States and the West. 

Russia’s use of malign influence has not dissipated. In its 2023 Annual Threat Assessment, the U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that, “Efforts by Russia, China and other countries to promote authoritarianism and spread disinformation is helping fuel a larger competition between democratic and authoritarian forms of government.” Regarding Russia’s use of disinformation, the assessment states, “Russia presents one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the United States because it uses its intelligence services, proxies and wide-ranging influence tools to try to divide Western alliances and increase its sway around the world.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a primary example of the implementation of the country’s strategy of using disinformation and malign influence as a weapon against Ukraine and its allies, including the U.S. Shortly after the war began, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government began to spread false rumors that Ukraine, working with the U.S., had labs that were developing biological weapons. The Chinese government amplified these false claims. U.S. government officials refuted these false accusations, but they still spread internationally. As recently as their March 2023 summit in Moscow, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping continued to spread the rumor that the U.S. was conducting biological activity. 

The use of propaganda about Ukraine and America’s alleged biological weapons activities is part of Russia’s active-measures campaign to gain support for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which leads U.S. government efforts to counter international disinformation, wrote in its report, “The Kremlin’s Never-Ending Attempt to Spread Disinformation about Biological Weapons,” that the Russian government has established a “parliamentary commission on the investigation of U.S. biological laboratories in Ukraine … [that is] a key Kremlin platform for spreading disinformation,” adding that commission allegations “have become increasingly sensational and have drifted into the realm of science fiction.”

Unfortunately, Russia’s disinformation efforts are not confined to alleged biological weapons activity. Putin has developed a comprehensive strategy to justify his attack on Ukraine. Another Global Engagement Center report, “Disinformation Roulette: The Kremlin’s Year of Lies to Justify an Unjustifiable War,” describes five tropes Putin uses to justify his war: “1) Russia was encircled by NATO before the February 2022 invasion; 2) Ukraine is committing genocide in the Donbas; 3) the Ukrainian government needs ‘denazification and demilitarization’; 4) restoration of traditional values requires ‘desatanization’ of Ukraine; and 5) Russia must fight in Ukraine to defend its sovereignty against the West.”

The Russian disinformation/malign influence attempts in Ukraine — and more broadly — are a national security threat. In a 2021 Foreign Affairs article, “A World Without Trust,” Stanford University scholar Jacquelyn Schneider wrote, “In trying to analogize the cyber threat to the world of physical warfare, policymakers missed the far more insidious danger that cyber operations pose: how they erode the trust people place in markets, governments, and even national power.”

While it may be difficult to measure the direct impact of a malign foreign influence campaign, it is clear that the spreading of false information and rumors by state and nonstate actors do have an effect. A Washington Post editorial points out that polls taken in Germany, regarding whether the U.S. and Ukraine were involved with the production of biological weapons, indicate that this disinformation has traction. The pollsters expressed concern that “anti-democratic actors use disinformation campaigns not only to convince, but also to sow doubt among the population.”

China also uses disinformation as part of its national security strategy. Much like Russia, it uses malign foreign influence to further its national security goals and political interests. David Salvo, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Democracy, points out that “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s assessment demonstrates that China has almost certainly been learning from Russia’s playbook to interfere in democracies beyond its borders.” 

Russian disinformation attacks on Ukraine are part of its effort to win the war. But it is also integral to a larger strategy to undermine democracy and trust in the West. That China is stepping up its disinformation efforts, and working with Russia, should heighten our concern over the weaponization of information. This is a line of attack against the U.S. and its interests in Ukraine and globally. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked during a recent committee hearing on democracy, “How can democratic nations, like our own, better respond to autocrats like Putin and Xi who have been meeting and marshaling their forces across the globe?” 

One important way to respond to Menendez’s call to action is to support U.S. government programs and efforts by the Intelligence Community, State Department and other U.S. government agencies that combat efforts by autocrats to undermine democracy. They play an essential role in defending democracy by combatting what the Washington Post refers to as the “venom” of disinformation and malign foreign influence.

William Danvers, a former deputy secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has been an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School and worked on national security issues for the Clinton and Obama administrations.