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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All Posts
June 2025
Thinning the ICE: Russian and Chinese Messaging on the Los Angeles Protests
Since the protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles began last weekend, false and misleading information about the demonstrations and the Trump administration’s crackdown have proliferated online. Though partisan actors have driven many of the [...]
Europe’s Moment of Truth: A Democracy Shield for Today and Tomorrow
Executive Summary Democracy in Europe is under growing pressure. Authoritarian regimes like Russia and the People’s Republic of China are conducting increasingly sophisticated foreign interference campaigns that blend information manipulation, cyb [...]
May 2025
New Proxy, Same as the Old Proxy: Key Sites of Russia’s Covert Influence in Poland
Poland was one of the first countries to take steps to curb Russian propaganda in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Days after the invasion, Poland’s broadcasting regulator banned five Russian outlets—including RT and Sputnik—on c [...]
April 2025
Washington Silences Its Own Voice
The US Agency for Global Media’s closing aids authoritarian interference. Two days after the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Soviet television broadcast a 20-second report acknowledging that a minor “accident” had occ [...]
Italy Remains on Russia’s Radar
In March, Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes credited as a source of inspiration behind the Kremlin, spoke to the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. He predicted an interesting development in Italian politics: Prime Ministe [...]
Venezuela Through the Sino-Russian Media Playbook
Russia and China’s information operations in Venezuela have been extensively discussed and documented. Their media strategy has involved forming partnerships with ideologically aligned national and regional outlets such as TeleSUR, promoting revisio [...]
March 2025
The Invisible Battlefield
The EU must make information warfare a core defense priority. With high-level summits, new initiatives, and massive spending commitments dominating headlines, the EU appears poised for a collective Zeitenwende in defense. Its exact contours remain u [...]
Searching for Geopolitical Direction: The Sources Russian and Romanian Speakers Encountered on Search Engines Prior to Moldova’s 2024 Votes
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova has oscillated between East and West, or between closer ties with Russia or the EU. Last fall, the country faced this existential question once again. Moldovans went to the polls to selec [...]
Bribes and Backdoors: Huawei’s Lobbying Scandal Shakes the EU
On March 13, 2025, police raided more than 20 addresses across Europe and sealed two offices in the European Parliament amid suspicions of bribery by Chinese technology giant Huawei. According to media reports, Huawei is suspected of using "items in [...]
Stranger Than Fiction: Europe’s Unfinished Journey Towards Meeting the World Where it Is
The EU has made progress in bolstering its approach to geopolitics in accordance with a world that is increasingly adversarial and hostile to the EU's founding principles, but Brussels must still "move the needle more decisively" on security, defens [...]
Media Vassalage: How Venezuela’s TeleSUR Acts as Russia and China’s Information-Laundering Front
After a contested July presidential election in which Nicolás Maduro claimed victory with 51% of the vote—amid allegations of irregularities, limited oversight, and too few international observers—Venezuela was thrown into turmoil. The Carter Center [...]
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference, or what the EU now calls FIMI (foreign information manipulation and interference), has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, ASD has identified cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and [...]