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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Threat Actors
All Posts
July 2019
Will Greece’s New Government Resist Authoritarian Influence or Court It?
On July 7, Greeks voted in national elections to replace Alexis Tsipras and his ruling left-wing Syriza party with Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing New Democracy. Mitsotakis’ party platform promises to re-energize the Greek economy and attract new in [...]
Will new leadership re-energize the EU’s fight against foreign authoritarian interference?
The European Parliament has just confirmed Ursula von der Leyen as the President of the European Commission. Over the coming five years, she will be joined by a new team of EU leaders made up of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affai [...]
Advanced Persistent Manipulators, Part Three: Social Media Kill Chain
Clint Watts is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terro [...]
Defending Elections: Federal Funding Needs for State Election Security
On July 18th, 2019, ASD Deputy Director David Salvo and Head of External Affairs Rachael Dean Wilson released this report together with the Brennan Center for Justice, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, and the [...]
Caught Red Handed: Russian Financing Scheme in Italy Highlights Europe’s Vulnerabilities
In February 2019, two Italian investigative journalists made an explosive revelation: Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right party La Lega and Italian interior minister, had sought financing from the Kremlin to the tune of millions of euros. That c [...]
June 2019
Online Harms White Paper: Open Consultation Submission to the U.K. Parliament
The following is an introduction to the submission by ASD Intern Amber Frankland In April 2019, the United Kingdom’s Home Office published its Online Harms White Paper, which proposed a regulatory framework designed to address the prevalence of “il [...]
The ASD European Policy Blueprint For Countering Authoritarian Interference in Democracies
Executive Summary In recent years, European democracy has been shaken by internal and external events. European nations and institutions are confronting numerous challenges like migration, nationalist extremism, and discontent with the political s [...]
EU Election Postmortem: Lessons Learned for Both Sides of the Atlantic
On June 14, the European Commission released a report assessing the efficacy of the Action Plan against Disinformation and Elections Package in the context of the 2019 European Parliamentary elections. The report underscores Europe’s shifting postur [...]
Questions Lawmakers Should Ask at the June 19th Hearing on Kleptocracy
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to discuss ways to combat kleptocracy through financial reforms such as beneficial ownership and money laundering. Beneficial ownership is particularly important because kleptocrats an [...]
What Congress Got Right and What it Overlooked at Last Week’s Deepfakes Hearing
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held its first hearing devoted to the national security implications of artificial intelligence in the information space last week. “For more than five centuries, authors have used variations of t [...]
Questions Lawmakers Should Ask at the June 20th Hearing on Beneficial Ownership
Today, the Senate Banking Committee will hear outside perspectives on the collection of beneficial ownership information. This hearing is well-timed, as momentum is building in both the House and the Senate to outlaw anonymous shell companies. For e [...]