‘There's an information war, and we've disarmed ourselves' — ex-US diplomat on Trump cuts to counter Russian disinformation

Yahoo

30-04-2025

Russia has used information warfare to promote its interests and undermine opponents across the world as a part of its foreign policy for decades.
The Russian state was spending an estimated $1.5 billion annually on its foreign disinformation campaigns, Christopher Walker, National Endowment for Democracy vice president for studies and analysis, told Congress in 2023.
These campaigns skillfully take advantage of already existing divisions in society, inflaming tensions to divide and destabilize countries around the world, according to experts.
In the U.S., the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) had acted as the main tool to expose Russia and China's disinformation campaigns abroad since it was reformed in 2016.
But in 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration shut the center down, citing concerns about free speech and the rights of American citizens.
The Kyiv Independent spoke with James Rubin, a former diplomat who led the GEC for two years starting in 2022, about the consequences of Trump's decision, as well as Russia's continued information operations worldwide.
During Rubin's tenure, the center, which focused exclusively on what Russia and China information campaigns outside of the U.S., exposed four major Russian disinformation operations around the world, including in Latin America, Africa, and Moldova.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Kyiv Independent: How do Russia's disinformation campaigns work?
James Rubin: Russian disinformation operations, or what we used to call covert operations, mean they're putting messages into the information system in Europe, in Ukraine, in Africa, that are lies and that are unattributed. They're hiding their hand.
The most important thing we did was last September, when we showed that the Russian television network RT and its parent company were a clearinghouse for covert intelligence operations in the information domain. Our highest intelligence director told me it was one of the most comprehensive intelligence downgrades.
Find out who's telling you something. Don't just believe it.
(The RT network) used its business model to do computer and cyber sweeps, where it would generate money for the Russian army. They used their cyber intelligence tools to suck up information. And they used Russian television all over the world to discredit any country that disagreed with them.
We exposed that with the help of our intelligence community. The most important thing we did was sanction RT's parent company so that it could not use dollars anywhere in the world. It had a real impact. In my understanding, these sanctions are still in place under Trump's administration.
The lesson here for everyone is: find out who's telling you something. Don't just believe it. Wait and see who the source of the information is.
In (the United States), we got into a big debate about censorship. Who could say what, when? But the issue is not censoring information. It's providing more information. It's being sure that someone knows that it's the Kremlin apparatus that's coming up with these crazy ideas.
The Russians spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to skew the election in Moldova.
And they failed partly because European countries, the U.S., and the Moldovan government got together and shared information on what Russia was doing, who they were paying, and how they were using phony politicians to pay off local journalists who then put out phony information. They lost that election, which shows that we can beat them.
There's an information war going on around the world, led by the Russians, including the Chinese. But in the U.S., battling it is especially hard now that we've unilaterally disarmed one of our tools — the ability to expose Russian covert operations in the information domain.
The Kyiv Independent: With Russia spending nearly $1.5 billion annually on its foreign disinformation campaigns, how do you think the U.S. will fare in this disinformation war with Russia and China now that the center that countered it is shut down?
James Rubin: I think that number is low and that it's much more than that. It depends on how you count it and if you include all the facilities they created through RT, and you include all the people who are in the business.
I read a book called 'Active Measures (:The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare' by Thomas Rid), which was about what the Soviet Union did with Eastern European countries during the Cold War.
(The authors of the book) were able to get real information because when the Cold War ended, the Eastern European countries opened their files and showed how much effort went into what were called 'active measures," meaning forgeries or other covert operations in the information space.
Back in the 1970s, they were spending $4 billion (annually) on that program. It didn't go away. It just changed its location. It's changed its form.
So I think (Russia is spending) tens of billions of dollars all over the world (on disinformation).
The Kyiv Independent: What other goals does Russian disinformation pursue worldwide?
James Rubin: We learned that these people take information warfare very, very seriously. They wake up in the morning and they say: 'OK, what can we do today, somewhere in the world, to undermine the U.S., undermine the West, undermine democratic institutions?'
They took this idea from the novel and tried to implant it into the minds of the people.
One of the things I was most proud of, in addition to (exposing the work of state-controlled) RT media, was what we did in Africa. It was particularly pernicious there because the Russians were going to create a phony argument, using an idea that came out of a John Le Carre novel, that biological weapons were being used on innocent Africans by the big pharmaceutical companies.
And so they took this idea from the novel and tried to implant it into the minds of the people in Africa, so that they wouldn't go to the Western medical centers and wouldn't use Western medicine. Then the U.S. and the West wouldn't get the so-called "soft power" benefit of helping the people of Africa. We were able to expose that before it took hold.
And that's the real lesson here — if we ever get serious again about the information war, you have to act early, ideally before the operation starts, but certainly in the first few days and weeks. Because once information takes hold, it's very hard to put it back into so-called Pandora's box.
By preventing Russia from doing that last year, we were able to convince Africans not to avoid Western medicine, but to take advantage of it. And we know that that has helped save lives.
I suspect they'll work in Latin America and try to play off the fact that President Trump is unpopular, and try to change people's minds about the war in Ukraine using President Trump's own arguments.
The real tragedy of it is that the Trump administration has accepted some of the arguments about who caused this war. Unfortunately, some in the Trump administration have used the arguments Putin and his friends use.
The cause of the war is in the Kremlin. But somehow, some people have persuaded other people that this war is somehow Ukraine's fault, the United States' fault, NATO's fault, although it was Vladimir Putin's choice to wake up one morning and invade his neighbor.
And I suspect Russia is going to try and spread those official American statements to try to change minds. Hopefully, the world has already made up its mind about whose fault the war is, and nothing anyone says is going to change the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine.
Read also: How US right-wing podcasters shape pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine sentiments
The Kyiv Independent: Speaking about official U.S. statements, would you agree that the Trump administration dismantled the Global Engagement Center (GEC) that you were leading, which helped expose Russian propaganda, in part because it currently aligns with some of the Russian statements?
James Rubin: I don't know exactly why they did this. But I can say that in the time I served in government, it was certainly true that some American congressmen would repeat Russian arguments. They would repeat Russian lies about Zelensky's yachts, or corruption in Ukraine, or biological weapons (allegedly developed in Ukraine with NATO to target Russia).
When we rejected those arguments as untrue, some in the Republican Party, I'm sorry to say, felt that we were censoring Americans who agreed with Russia.
Let me say this clearly: Americans have a right to agree with Russia.
Americans were being paid by Russia to promote the idea that instead of giving arms to Ukraine, we should be shutting down our southern border.
We don't control American points of view. But there's nothing wrong with telling people that it's also a Russian argument. And then people can decide for themselves whether the fact that they're repeating the argument of a country that invaded its neighbor is relevant.
I'm sure that one of the reasons they closed down these efforts to stop disinformation is because they began to feel that by opposing Russian information operations, we were somehow opposing the points of view of certain members of the Republican Party.
We found out that a group of Americans were being paid by Russia to promote the idea that instead of giving arms to Ukraine, we should be shutting down our southern border. Those arguments were actually used by members of Congress to delay aid to Ukraine.
Outside of my work in the State Department, I happen to know that Russia believes that these groups were serving effectively as useful idiots for Russian propaganda inside the U.S., persuading American congressmen to focus on immigration rather than aid to Ukraine.
It harmed the speed at which we were able to provide aid to Ukraine, when it took six to nine months under (former) President Joe Biden to get the military aid through Congress.
The Kyiv Independent: Within the U.S., what tools do you think Russia uses to influence the American public other than paying bloggers and influencers?
James Rubin: All sorts of social media, all sorts of communications tools are being deployed all over the world to try to undermine Western support for Ukraine.
Let's face it, it happens every day, because the only way Russia can win this war is if everyone quits. But with all the work they're doing, they failed to stop Western support for Ukraine.
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