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
July 2024
Bribes and Lies: Foreign Interference in Europe in 2024
2024 is a year of critical elections around the world. This holds especially true in Europe, where, in June alone, the European Parliament elections, British snap elections, and surprise French parliamentary elections all took place in quick success [...]
American Democracy in the Crosshairs: Russian, Iranian, and Chinese State Messaging on the Attempted Trump Assassination
Introduction In the days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a torrent of false and misleading information about the attack flooded social media. While the majority of these claims see [...]
Business as Unusual: Europe’s Next Leadership and the Challenges Ahead
Bucking the precedent of long and arduous bargaining processes over the EU’s top institutional jobs, national leaders found consensus on nominees for the bloc’s three most prized positions unusually fast. Equally unusual will be the barrage of chall [...]
The NATO Washington Summit and Disinformation
This article is part of a series of short texts on issues that challenge the alliance as it celebrates its 75th anniversary. Citizens of NATO member states face an increasing onslaught of manipulated information, a challenge made more complex—and mo [...]
June 2024
Debate Night: Trust in US Elections and the Peaceful Transition of Power
The US presidential debate provided insights into the candidates’ messaging around election integrity, with former President Trump revealing a shift in his messaging toward a broader audience. Meanwhile, President Biden’s performance led to question [...]
EU Elections 2024: The Unclear Impact of the Shift to the Right
The impact of the European Parliament’s rightward shift will depend on the extent to which the far right can unify as well as on the willingness of the center to engage with parties to their right. The 2024 European parliamentary elections were long [...]
May 2024
The Russian Propaganda Nesting Doll: How RT is Layered into the Digital Information Environment
Executive Summary Over the past year, ASD at GMF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) have collaborated to develop the Information Laundromat, an open-source tool to uncover content and metadata simila [...]
Five Questions for the US Senate Intelligence Hearing on Foreign Threats to the 2024 Election
Despite a lower profile in the national debate, the tools, tactics, motivations, and actors associated with foreign interference in US elections have evolved significantly since Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” 2016 operation. The Cybersecurity an [...]
A Spate of Scandals: Europe’s Response to Foreign Interference
Often criticized for their lack of mettle in combatting foreign interference, European institutions have shown signs of increased combativeness in recent weeks. A whole bevy of cash-for-influence, election interference, and espionage cases have been [...]
April 2024
Building Resilience Against Election Influence Operations: Preparing for the European Elections in 2024 and Beyond
Executive Summary In 2024, nearly half of the world’s population is heading to the polls. One of the biggest of these contests is the 2024 European Parliament elections from June 6–9, in which 366 million voters in the union’s 27 member states wil [...]
If at First You Don’t Succeed (at Repressing Dissent) Try, Try Again
With democratic decline on display around the world, Georgia should be on our mind. Policy Recommendations The US and EU governments should insist that the Georgian government invite the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Co [...]
March 2024
Could Satellite Broadband Combat the Digital Silk Road?
At the inaugural Belt and Road Forum in 2017, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) leader, Xi Jinping, made a pitch to the global south: the PRC could help develop partnering countries by building “big data, cloud computing, and smart cities” infr [...]