ASD contributes long and short form research products and analysis to inform and engage our audience on a range of issues related to malign foreign interference. In addition, we develop policy recommendations and strategies to close vulnerabilities and safeguard institutions from authoritarian threats.
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November 2025
Borrowed “Voces”: How a Mexican Journalism Club Became a Mouthpiece for Russia and Cuba
Ten months after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Club de Periodistas de México (The Club of Journalists of Mexico) bestowed awards upon three journalists from RT, a Russian state-owned media outlet, for their international coverage [...]
September 2025
Rising and Falling Tides: How Russia Has Benefited from Cuts to US Government-Funded Media in Moldova
Moldovans return to the polls on Sunday to vote for their parliamentary representatives in an election whose outcome could determine whether the country continues its path towards EU membership or pivots back toward closer relations with Moscow. Giv [...]
In Denouncing Regulation, Conservatives Put Freedom of Speech Online at Greater Risk
Social-media platforms have long drawn American conservatives' ire for the former's content-moderation policies. During the first Trump and Biden administrations, much ado was made about the platforms purportedly overzealously moderating and silenci [...]
August 2025
What Just Happened? Dismantling the Intelligence Community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently announced that the functions of the intelligence community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) would be reduced and absorbed into other parts of the U.S. intelligence community. In doing [...]
Shifting the Blame: How Russia is Preparing for a Peace-Negotiations Stalemate
Though Russian news media celebrated an "upcoming victory" after the US-Russian summit in Anchorage, Alaska, state-backed media and Russian officials laid the informational groundwork to shift blame to Ukraine and Europe if negotiations stall, go in [...]
Putin “Still Calling the Shots” After Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting, David Salvo Writes
As details of the US administration’s position became clearer following the August 15 summit in Alaska, it became evident that—as feared—the face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the advantage. Put [...]
Cross-Border Communication: How Russian State Media Sends Mixed Signals on Trump’s Border Policies in English and Spanish
Since his first day returning to office, US President Donald Trump has pushed forward on campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the southern US border. Trump’s tough stance on immigration has been contentious among America [...]
July 2025
Who’s Reusing Russian State Media’s Images?
Introduction Threat actors increasingly operate across national boundaries, but information-operation detection rarely extends beyond single-language analysis, leaving blind spots in multilingual and visual domains. This focus on textual narratives [...]
Countering FIMI Also Requires Addressing Corruption
The EU has made great strides in recent years to combat foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), but these efforts have too often neglected the acronym’s second “I”. This is regrettable, given that, over that same period, several fo [...]
June 2025
Caught in the Spider’s Web: Military Bloggers Revealed Gaps in Russia’s Military and Information Defense
Ukraine’s recent “Spider’s Web” operation surprised the Kremlin and sent shockwaves from targeted military airfields to destinations far away from the frontline. Even though the final number of destroyed and damaged military planes decreased by half [...]
Catch Me If EU Can: How RT and Sputnik Evade EU Content Bans
That Russian state media outlets have developed varied ways to circumvent EU sanctions to continue reaching audiences in Europe is well documented. The methods often include the use of mirror sites, or identical copies of Russian state media website [...]
Taming the Rising Lion: Alignment of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese Narratives on the Israel-Iran Conflict
Dubbing it “Operation Rising Lion”, Israel has launched widespread airstrikes across Iran, hitting key nuclear facilities and killing several military commanders and intensifying decades of hostilities between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Given Iran’s long- [...]