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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July 2020
Defend Democracy the Australian Way
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 23, 2020. With mounting evidence that Russia regularly interferes in British democracy while the U.K. government “actively avoids” investigating, the country needs a proven pl [...]
Looking Back to Go Forward: Strategic Mismanagement of Platform Technologies and the Race for the Future
Introduction One morning in 2016, staffers from the National Security Council and the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer boarded a black van outside the West Wing. They were on a field trip to the State Department led by U.S. CTO Megan Sm [...]
Masks Off: Chinese Coronavirus Assistance in Europe
ASD Research Assistant Etienne Soula and GMF Asia researchers Franziska Luettge, Melissa Ladner, and Manisha Reuter find that from March to April 2020, the Chinese Communist Party and large Chinese companies made at least 70 prominent donations to [...]
June 2020
Competitive Strategies for Democracy in the Age of AI
Introduction In a 1972 paper for the United States Air Force Project at RAND, the late Andrew Marshall defined what he called a more “efficient, effective U.S. competitive role.”A.W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework fo [...]
5G Tech Factsheet for Policymakers
ASD Emerging Technologies Fellow Lindsay Gorman, Harvard's Hugo Yen, and Virginia Tech's David Simpson provide a brief overview of 5G technology and related policy considerations for Harvard Belfer Center's Technology Factsheet Series. Introducti [...]
Gutting USAGM Hurts Our Ability to Compete with China and Other Authoritarian Regimes
The Trump administration has rhetorically embraced great power competition with the Chinese Communist Party, but last week it took a big step in the wrong direction by gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) in what is being called the “Wed [...]
A Note on Coming Updates to the Authoritarian Interference Tracker
The Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Authoritarian Interference Tracker maps and catalogs over 400 instances of Russian state-sponsored efforts to undermine democracy in over 40 countries. The Tracker documents five tools authoritarian regimes use [...]
Q&A with David Levine: What Can We Learn from the June 2 Primaries?
On Tuesday, June 2, 2020, eight states and the District of Columbia held primary elections—the largest number of states to hold elections since the coronavirus pandemic necessitated changes to some states’ planned primaries and voting procedures. In [...]
May 2020
Strong Yet Brittle: The Risks of Digital Authoritarianism
Introduction Authoritarian governments increasingly adopt technology-centric national strategies and methods of internal governance. They control their societies through digital censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, and use these same tools to [...]
Paris Call Community for Countering Election Interference: What Democracies Can Learn from the Government of Canada
In November 2019, ASD partnered with Microsoft to launch the Community for Countering Election Interference, a multi-stakeholder forum dedicated both to raising global awareness of the threat cyberattacks pose to elections and other democratic insti [...]
20 for 20: 20 Ways to Protect the 2020 Presidential Election
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the Bipartisan Policy Center's Director of the Election Project Matthew Weil identify 20 ways states could further protect the 2020 presidential election with additional funding. Introduction At t [...]
Triad of Disinformation: How Russia, Iran, & China Ally in a Messaging War against America
When Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian began tweeting about the origins of the coronavirus in March, it marked a significant turning point in China’s social media disinformation operations. While China has long deployed widespread ce [...]