Abstract
The U.S. intelligence community (IC) has the mission, authorities, and sophisticated tools to collect intelligence against and interrupt adversaries operating domestically and abroad. Gathering timely and reliable intelligence is essential for policymakers and those tasked with operationalizing the intelligence and translating it into action. These tools and experience are necessary to compete against other nations. Because a nation-state such as Russia is considered a “harden target,” which also uses its advanced arsenal of contrivances and decades of experience to conceal its activities, the IC is best positioned to counter it. While foreign-backed disinformation does not enjoy any legal protections, the problem is complicated. For the executive branch, the task of finding and mitigating foreign-backed disinformation circulating in the homeland also entails carefully working across government agencies and balancing important legal safeguards. IC inter-agency collaboration is critical. Foreign-backed disinformation often lives within the seams between domestic and foreign-facing IC agencies. But, despite a lack of legal protection government intervention is challenged. There are four ways a foreign adversary running an IO campaign on social media intersects with free speech legal protections afforded to every US citizen. First, the covert account generates original content, and the content is picked up and commented on by a U.S. person. Second, they take original content posted by U.S. citizens and amplify it. Third, the foreign-backed accounts call U.S. citizens to action. And fourth, a hostile intelligence agency has enrolled, many times unwittingly, U.S. citizens and portions of the U.S. press to assist in their covert scheme. The culmination of these four efforts is a tangled mess of U.S. citizens and foreign-backed malign actors.
Published Version
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