Global Affairs Expert Webinar: Foreign Influence and Democratic Governance 

Miles Kahler, senior fellow for global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, leads the conversation on foreign influence and democratic governance.

Speaker
Miles Kahler
Senior Fellow for Global Governance
Council on Foreign Relations

Presider
Irina A. Faskianos
Vice President, National Program and Outreach
Council on Foreign Relations

Transcript

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome today's Winter/Spring 2025 Global Affairs expert Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. 

Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on education.CFR.org if you would like to share the materials with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

We’re delighted to have Miles Kahler with us to discuss foreign influence and democratic governance. Professor Kahler is senior fellow for global governance at CFR, and research professor in residence and distinguished professor emeritus at American University’s School of International Service. He is a senior advisor and past member of the editorial board of International Organization. He is published widely in the fields of international politics and international political economy, both having authored articles and books on global governance, international financial institutions, and Asia-Pacific regionalism. And most recently, he published a Council special report in October entitled, Foreign Influence and Democratic Governance: Defining and Countering Malign Influence. And we shared that with you all in our background materials. And I commend the report to all of you.

So, Miles, thanks very much for being with us today. Perhaps you can begin by defining malign foreign influence and providing some examples of how other countries have attempted to influence the democratic governance of the United States, and some of the recommendations you put forward in your report.

KAHLER: Sure. Thank you very much, Irina. And thank you for inviting me to lead this webinar.

I want to point out at the outset my special report, which was published in October of last year, was limited in two ways. It was focused on the United States. So I wasn’t able to spend or provide much information on foreign influence in other democracies. And since publication much has changed with the new administration. And I will touch upon that a little bit later in my opening remarks. What I wanted to do today, in line with your question, is to talk about, first of all, how we define malign foreign influence. First of all, though, I would like to note that most foreign efforts to influence U.S. democracy are benign. And in fact, foreign influence can provide useful information about the effects of U.S. foreign and domestic policies on other societies. So we shouldn’t think that all foreign influence is necessarily malign. 

In terms of defining malign, I would distinguish between who and how. So who is, we normally give more scrutiny to authoritarian adversaries or rivals of the United States and their efforts to influence our democracy. But also there are some actions that would be malign even if they are carried out by governments that are aligned with the United States. So how, what actions are attempted or implemented, is a better benchmark, probably. And that, I define in the report, as attempts to influence domestic politics through coercive, corrupting, deceptive, or clandestine means. I’m borrowing that from Australian government, U.S. government, and other definitions as well, that basically pick out those characteristics to define malign influence. 

Now there are three categories of foreign influence that can be damaging to democracy or that we should be somewhat questioning of. The one we pay most attention to are actions that are intended to increase the distrust of democratic institutions and their elected leaders. And this would be, for example, efforts taken by Russia and China and Iran during our election campaigns last year. Second, though, are actions by any government that are not intended to undermine democratic institutions but will undermine confidence in democracy through the means deployed. Which could be, for example, corruption. 

The recent cases of convicted Senator Menendez in New Jersey, the case of—the indictment of Henry Cuellar, the representative from Texas. And, of course, the indictment of Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. These were all countries—these corrupt actions were alleged by governments that were aligned with the United States—Egypt, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Turkey. So, these are actions that undermine democracy in a different way, democratic institutions, but they’re not by our adversaries. It’s by—it is because of the means that are used. 

And then finally, a category we probably won’t want to discuss today a great deal, but we need to think about it, which is foreign intervention that skews our foreign policy away from the preferences of the democratic electorate. In other words, foreign governments or lobbies that act like other special interest groups and lobbies, in which they exert a great deal of power, more power perhaps than others—individuals within our own electorate and take foreign policy in a direction that the electorate might not prefer. So there are three different categories. We’re going to talk mainly about the first two as malign foreign influence.

Now, I’ve tried to make it—I think there’s a clear definition here. Let me just give you some ambiguities, though. What if a domestic political actor echoes or replicates arguments of a foreign government? Is that foreign influence, or is that something that the domestic actor actually believes? It’s not clear that when there is foreign interference in our domestic politics every political actor in the United States, or any other liberal democracy, is going to object. Very often, there’s not a unified response. Sometimes it is welcomed by some actors. There’s a question of short-term manipulation by foreign actors as opposed to longer-term influence or effects to reshape public or elite opinion or erode democratic institutions. And then the question of the effects of foreign influence. Even if it’s unsuccessful, the simple revelation that foreign influence has been exerted in our elections, for example, can undermine confidence in our democratic institutions. So there are all these kind of gray areas, ambiguous questions, ambiguities that we have to raise when we talk about foreign influence. 

I’m not going to talk about the avenues of influence in detail that I described in the report. I put three buckets out in the report, essentially. Economic incentives and business relations. This clearly comes up with the first Trump administration. It’s now coming up again, as I’ll mention in a moment, with the second Trump administration. Campaign contributions. Bribery, as we’ve seen in the cases I already mentioned, of American politicians. Lobbying and the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which attempts to regulate foreign lobbying in the United States. And economic coercion and self-censorship by—on the part of businesses in particular, which has become clear in the case of China, for example. 

Second bucket is information, which has gotten the most attention because of the growing importance of social media as a source of news and information. And here, as I point out in the report, there are many experts, scholars—some of them on this call, I suspect—who worked on this, rigorously trying to determine what are the net effects of foreign disinformation, what kinds of foreign disinformation are most effective, how we can counter foreign disinformation. This has gotten a lot of attention. More research is still required to determine what the net effects are. And then the third bucket is people. And here I’m talking about primarily diasporic communities, people who identify with another country as their homeland, maybe even in the distant past, part of another national community, have a linkage to another country. And they become—they have become targets of both influence and intimidation through transnational repression by other governments. 

Now, what should be done? You raised this in your initial question, Irina. Accurately assessing the effects of foreign influence is very important. And that is extremely difficult, for some of the reasons I’ve already outlined. As I mentioned, there are many scholars who are doing very rigorous research on this, especially with regard to the effects of foreign influence through the social media platforms. And it’s just very, very difficult, in part because these influence efforts are designed to be hidden. And you come up with very different results depending on how you evaluate the consequences of foreign influence. For example, if you look at public opinion surveys, it’s not clear that American public opinion toward China and Russia has been influenced in a positive direction by these foreign influence effects, even if they might have had an effect on particular segments of the electorate during election campaigns.

We need to carefully evaluate responses, given that the responses can be damaging in themselves. There are risks attached to our responses—for example, demonizing immigrant communities because they might be seen as sources of influence for a foreign government. We need to mainly review the shortcomings in our domestic institutions. And I think one of the points that is now going to become even more apparent in the coming months is that many of the concerns we have about foreign influence could be rectified by rectifying some of the shortcomings in our own democratic institutions and policies. For example, in campaign contributions. It would be much easier to identify foreign influence through illegal campaign contributions if there were not so much dark money already involved in American election campaigns. That’s just one example.

So let me—let me just mention—the big—I guess if I were going to give the big recommendation I have, it is basically we need to have a whole-of-a-society approach, or what I call a transparency and accountability ecosystem, which includes government, civil society, private corporations, working together to deal with the risks and threats of foreign influence. And I’ll close by talking about some of the recent changes, because basically my hopes for such an ecosystem, or a whole-of-society approach, I think, are basically falling apart in the United States. And here are just some of the recent changes. And I can’t claim to have kept up with all of them. Some of the members who are on this call, some of the participants, may want to add to this list. 

But, first of all, in the information bucket that I described, the Global Engagement Center in the State Department was terminated in December of last year, before the Trump administration. It did not receive authorization from Congress. It was designed in the State Department to counter foreign disinformation and propaganda and coordinating interagency efforts in that regard. So the Global Engagement Center is gone, for now. Department of Justice. The attorney general—the new Attorney General Bondi dissolved the Foreign Influence Task Force in the Department of Justice, which was formed to combat covert influence efforts by foreign adversaries. And she has also limited charges—criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors. In other words, very much narrowing what can be tried under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

The new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has put on administrative leave employees working on teams combating foreign disinformation within the election security arm of a very important unit, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, C-I-S-A, which protects our election infrastructure against foreign interference, as well as dealing with foreign disinformation. And the language used by Secretary Nome implied her concern over so-called “weaponization” of these efforts in the previous administration.

On the economic influence and corruption side, we had an executive order on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This does not directly affect foreign influence on the United States, but it’s a signal about how we feel about corruption in general. And essentially, enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which goes back many administrations to the late 1970s, is going to be severely reduced, according to the executive order. There has been—the director of the Office of Government Ethics has been fired. He was confirmed in December for a five-year term. And many of the inspectors general, as you may have seen, in many of the departments were which are meant to oversee possible corruption and illicit practices, have been fired by the new administration.

And finally, and most prominently in the media, last weekend, the Department of Justice ordered the dropping of charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was charged into September of last year with illegal campaign contributions from Turkey and accepting $100,000 in travel and hotel perks in exchange for official actions. And as you may all have noticed in the media, this led to the resignation of the acting U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York who was in charge of this prosecution, and several other prosecutors in New York and in Washington, who saw this as a so-called quid pro quo for Adams’s cooperation in immigration enforcement. 

And even more apparent are the conflicts of interest within the top levels of the administration. The fact that the president is been selling a crypto memecoin which allows anyone in the world to enrich themselves, and enrich him, by buying this coin. That’s one example. And there’s the prominent example of Elon Musk and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), and the national security risks that were discussed by Goldgeier and Saunders in one of the articles in Foreign Affairs that was on the circulated reading list. But less noticed, and I don’t think it was mentioned by Goldgeier and Saunders, is that USAID, and less noticed, the National Endowment for Democracy, had been targeted specifically by Elon Musk and DOGE. He called the National Endowment for Democracy an “evil organization that needs to be dissolved.” 

And both of these, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, have been targets of the Chinese Communist Party for a very long time because they support NGOs and other activities that investigate and promote human rights and democracy in China. So they have now been—much of their funding has now been suspended. Many of these NGOs now are essentially adrift without support from the United States. This, at the same time that Elon Musk’s dependence on China and the Chinese economy via Tesla has continued to grow, and literally opened a new battery factory in China this month. Sales of Tesla in China are up. Sales of Tesla in the United States and Europe are down. And all this despite the widening of economic conflict between the United States and China. And we also have then, of course, the TikTok reprieve that has been branded by President Trump as well. 

Finally, and I’ll close here, U.S. government spokesmen themselves have recently intervened in unprecedented ways in the politics of other liberal democracies. And here, most prominently, Vice President Vance met last week with the leader of the AfD, the far-right, extreme right party in Germany, Alice Weidel, and did not meet with the chancellor of Germany, Chancellor Scholz. And at his speech at the Munich Security Conference, he declared what was seen as—by many as common cause with anti-immigrant parties in Europe, such as the AfD, which is seen by many in Germany as an extremist threat to German democracy. 

So, it’s not clear under the new administration whether foreign influence exerted on our democracy or other liberal democracies will be a priority. As I mentioned the report, domestic political polarization on this issue has been a real detriment to developing a whole of society and consensus approach to foreign influence—malign foreign influence efforts. And the transactional approach of the Trump administration makes it even more unlikely. So you could argue, and here I’m following somewhat the argument of Lindsay and—Daalder and Lindsay in the Foreign Affairs article that was also circulated, the United States could be undergoing sort of unilateral disarmament in this regard. We’re reducing our ability to monitor and counter malign foreign influence in our own democracy and in assisting other democracies in that effort. But authoritarian regimes are very likely to step up their efforts in this regard at the same time. 

So with that, Irina, maybe we should open it up for questions and discussion. And as I mentioned, I think there are experts on the line, on the call, who probably have more to add on these questions.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Miles. Really appreciate that. 

Let’s go to all of you now for your questions and comments. 

(Gives queuing instructions.)

The first raised hand is—let me just click in there—Dennis Jett.

Q: Hi, Irina. Thanks very much for this very useful webinar.

Just today President Trump has declared that President Zelensky is responsible for the invasion of his country by Russia, and also he’s a dictator. Obviously, any sentient human being knows both those are lies. But I was just wondering whether this is a good example of foreign influence, or whether you think Trump has some other motivation for saying such ridiculous things. Thanks. 

FASKIANOS: And Dennis is at Pennsylvania State University. 

Q: Yeah, sorry about that, yeah.

FASKIANOS: No problem.

KAHLER: Should I respond to that, Irina?

FASKIANOS: Absolutely.

KAHLER: Sure. Well, I think Professor Jett has raised a very interesting question. And I mentioned it briefly in passing and it comes up in the report. In the report, I mentioned Chancellor Schröder of Germany, who is on the payroll of many Russian energy companies but also has a long history of believing in reconciliation with Russia and believing that Russia is not a threat. And so he has his own personal views. They happen to coincide with those of the Russian government and the Russian corporations that hire him. Is it because he’s being paid by the Russian corporations or because he believes these things? 

And I think we come with the same—we encounter the same problem with the comments of this kind by President Trump. Is it because he had a phone call with Vladimir Putin, which we know he had, that he’s received indications from Putin as to what’s going on in Ukraine and how he should respond to Zelensky? Or is it because Trump has long held these views and these are just being reinforced by what is happening in terms of the negotiations with Russia that have recently been opened? It’s very, very hard to tell. It was mentioned in the press this morning that Russia, apparently in these negotiations is waving economic benefits to the United States and to United States corporations if there is a relaxation in tensions and a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. 

Well, that appeals to the very transactional approach that the president and his administration take to foreign policy. But is it because Russia offered these things or is it because that is something that they would believe in, in any case? And I don’t see that there’s any easy way—we don’t have a control, to use methodological terms—we don’t have a control for this, because we don’t have—we know that Trump has long held views that our allies are exploiting us. He’s voiced these. He believes that they’re ripping us off, that they’re not paying their way. And Ukraine as an ally could be put in that category. Where he gets the idea that Zelensky is a dictator, hard to say. Once again, the line is the same as Russia’s, but maybe these are also beliefs that Trump has held himself for a while or for some time.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to Judith Kullberg, raised hand. If you can unmute yourself? Hmm. You still need to unmute yourself.

OK. I’m going to go on to the next person. Rita Kiki Edozie.

Q: Hi. 

FASKIANOS: Hello. If you could give us your affiliation.

Q: Yes. Kiki Edozie. I’m a professor at UMass Boston. 

Thank you, Professor Kahler. Thank you for your presentation. I have a question about DOGE’s recent release of—announced that USAID has been funding Boko Haram, the militant terrorist group in Nigeria. Even though this has been debunked and denied by the Nigerian government, unfortunately over social media, and some credible sources because it comes from the administration, there’s a lot of belief in it. Why would USAID—if it’s true, why would, you know, for the life of me, USAID fund—(laughs)—Boko Haram? I’m just wondering what your comments were, given this topic. 

KAHLER: Well, I think there have been many things alleged by DOGE about USAID and other U.S. government programs that have been proven to be false. And I suspect this is one of them. It seems there’s a lot of—you must recall that the individuals who are working—so far as we know, and this is not a very transparent operation—the individuals who are working on DOGE are young. They’re not particularly versed in foreign aid or any of these programs. They come up with things that they see in their ferreting out of information or data from various agencies, and then they interpret it in various ways, and then it is picked up by Elon Musk and broadcast to his millions of followers. 

So unless this is credibly verified by another source—and you’ve already mentioned the Nigerian government has said this is not the case; one would think they would know everything that USAID is doing in Nigeria—then I would, I would definitely question whether this is, in fact, accurate or not. And this has come up again and again. I mean, the National Endowment for Democracy, for example, has been a bipartisan organization for as long as it has existed. It has a U.S. senator from Indiana on its board, a Republican senator from Indiana, Todd Young. And he was attacked by Elon Musk for being, you know, once again, involved in this corrupt organization. And no one should be sitting on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. 

And of course, Musk himself had to withdraw that accusation after it was contested by the senator. So there are many things being floated out there. And they are being broadcast widely because Elon Musk essentially controls X, and he has millions of followers. So it’s going to be very difficult for anyone else to come up with counterinformation that’s going to receive the same sort of hearing.

FASKIANOS: Yeah, and just to add, I mean, USAID funding was less than 1 percent of the federal budget. And it has to—the funding was approved by Congress. There were several layers of approval. So it wasn’t just that USAID was coming up with projects that they were implementing. They were approved by Congress, correct, Miles? 

KAHLER: Well, yes. The budget is certainly approved by Congress. There’s a lot of oversight by congressional committees. And, I would point out, there’s also an inspector general within these agencies who will review on a periodic basis what they’re doing, and point to things that need to be questioned, or that Congress should look into. There’s are many, many—before DOGE was created, there were many, many other ways that obvious fraud or corruption could have been identified and dealt with by these agencies within the government. But that also seems to have been lost in the last few weeks.

FASKIANOS: I’ll take a written question from Preston Schiller, who’s a graduate student at Brandeis University: It seems like we are reverting to a time more reminiscent of the 1880s-1890s. I read somewhere that it is because the coalitions that make up the parties are in flux, resulting in more populous and less coherent foreign policy. Once we settle this current era of instability, how should we rebuild?

KAHLER: (Laughs.) That’s a lot.

FASKIANOS: Great question.

KAHLER: That’s a lot. Unpacking that question will be difficult. Let me just—the nineteenth century, you know, the idea that we’re reverting to great power politics of the old kind, territorial expansion and the like, that’s come up repeatedly in last few weeks. I would point out, though, that this is a very different world than the nineteenth century, right? I mean, President Trump may make statements that make us think that we’re going to expand territory, and we can go back to the—you know, what maybe he believes is the good old days of that time. He likes President McKinley, obviously. And he was at the peak of American imperialism. But we live in a very connected world, right? Despite the attempts to delink the United States and China, for example, economically, we still have huge amounts of trade with China. And many other countries have even more, relatively speaking. Countries have discovered ways to circumvent many of the tariffs that have been imposed. 

The linkage is informational. That didn’t exist in the late nineteenth century, right? We are not in the age of the telegraph. Information flows very, very freely, and even penetrates into authoritarian regimes in ways that they would prefer not to have happen. So I guess I question that we can revert, in certain respects, to that world, perhaps, in the sense that the United States behaves differently. It doesn’t behave as a supporter of the liberal international order in the way that it did. But I’m not sure that other countries are going to go down this path. And many countries certainly in Europe and elsewhere don’t seem interested in going down this path. Or that it’s going to be sustained in the United States.

We’re now in the first stages of an administration. There is likely to be a lot of pushback as we go down the road, as people recognize the implications of this foreign policy course. I have to say, myself, I just find the whole—what’s happening now rather incoherent. I can’t find a pattern. I can’t find a strategy, because the Republican Party and the Trump administration—the first Trump administration were very much on the side of China hawks. They were very resistant to Chinese influence. They were very intent that China posed a real—an existential threat, in the words of some, to the United States. And yet, in these first weeks of the administration, we’re not seeing a great deal of evidence of that attitude toward one of our major adversaries or rivals, right? We have the TikTok reprieve. We have the disbanding of USAID and the National Endowment of Democracy, which fits very much with China’s wishes. So I’m just not seeing a pattern yet. I’m not seeing a coherent pattern. And I’m wondering what that will be. 

How we rebuild is a very important question about these foreign influence mechanisms that we have built. How do we rebuild our resilience? That’s going to require a political consensus. And I mentioned in the report that there was a consensus after the Russian interference in the election in 2016, despite the Trump administration’s deep skepticism about that, and even resistance to that idea, Congress—both Republican and Democrats in Congress imposed sanctions on Russian entities for that interference. So there was agreement at that time. And I think that kind of agreement could be rebuilt. But it does require a political consensus and getting rid of this idea that dealing with foreign influence is somehow weaponizing information or weaponizing these efforts against the political opposition in the United States. I don’t think that was the case, and I don’t think that has to be the case going forward. That will be required if we’re going to rebuild the consensus.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Next question, raised hand from John Francis.

Q: Hello. Can you hear me? 

FASKIANOS: We can.

KAHLER: Good morning, John.

Q: Good morning.

So my question is, from time to time, people of Irish descent in the U.S. were very influential in shaping American government on the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. So by the same token, as you compare, say, that the Ukrainian government will seek to mobilize Ukrainian opinion in the U.S., as well as perhaps people from other Eastern European countries? So picking up that influencing Congress may be more successful than influencing the White House.

KAHLER: That’s an excellent point. 

FASKIANOS: And Professor Francis is from the University of Utah.

Q: Yes, I should have said that.

KAHLER: No, thank you for that. That’s a really important point. The Irish American lobby, very important in the United States. Still important today. Our last president, Joe Biden, was very intent that the Peace Accords in Northern Ireland be sustained by the UKand the Irish government, because of his rather distant Irish descent. So you’re absolutely right. These diasporic lobbies have been important in the past. And not just the Irish American. The Greek American lobby in certain points in the past influencing our attitudes toward Turkey and what was going on in the Mediterranean. 

Can you mobilize the Ukrainian? Well, I would say, I can tell you that during the last election, there was certainly discussion, I believe, in mobilizing the Ukrainian American population in some of the swing states where they are not a large voting bloc, but they are significant. Particularly in Pennsylvania, I gather there is a fairly substantial contingent. And maybe in some of the other swing states as well. Now, whether—that could be influential for congressional elections. It might be influential in a presidential election in swing states, particularly given our electoral college. Whether there are enough Ukrainian Americans and other east Europeans to be mobilized to influence Congress directly at this point in time, I’m not sure. But I think that’s a very interesting idea.

And I think an even larger group would be Polish Americans. And their view of Russia is very similar to Ukraine’s, I think. You’re not going to find a lot of pro-Russian views in Poland across the political spectrum, or in Polish Americans, I would imagine. So, you know, there are larger east European voting blocs that might be mobilized. But how active they have been, and how active they might be, how they might be mobilized, I’m not—I’m really not sure. But it’s an interesting idea. And I’m not aware that the Ukrainian government has gone that route, but it’d be interesting to find out.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Taking next written question from Nagalaxmi Raman from the Amity University in Uttar Pradesh: Thank you for your insights. I would appreciate it if you could put some light on how effective are U.S. cybersecurity measures in preventing foreign influence through digital platforms.

KAHLER: Hmm. That’s a very big—a very, very big question. What I can say, from what I had been told, is that in terms of protecting our election infrastructure, CISA, the entity I mentioned earlier, which is in the Department of Homeland Security, and other entities in the U.S. government—the U.S. intelligence community in particular—have collaborated to protect our election infrastructure. In other words, there is very little evidence in the last election that there was any penetration of voting booths, voting machines, data, and the like, which would be very, very serious. 

And it seems, from what I’ve been told, that adversarial governments—and there were three that were active in the U.S. election campaigns last year. Russia, which clearly was intervening on behalf of the Trump campaign, Iran, which was clearly intervening against the Trump campaign, and China, which didn’t seem to have a particular candidate in this particular campaign, because they saw the Biden administration and the incoming Trump—possible incoming Trump campaign as equally likely to be hostile to China. So all of those governments apparently, even Russia, see actually tampering with the election infrastructure as a red line that would produce real pushback from the United States, and some sort of countermeasures from the United States.

In terms of the actual protection against foreign information efforts, that has been handled by these entities I mentioned by flagging known efforts by these governments to interfere and then notifying the individual or the organization in the United States that has—that they see being interfered with. That’s the best way to put it. And I think that has been relatively effective. Now, I don’t know that anyone so far has tried to evaluate what the net effect of these influence efforts on the electorate in particular locations, particular states, the election overall has been. I don’t know that that analysis has been done. But the U.S. government was certainly on the job during the 2024 election, and they were attentive to and would flag efforts that they saw foreign interference or foreign influence in the election campaigns. 

As I say, identifying how effective malign foreign influence is in particular instance, even the short-term effects on elections, as I mentioned in the report, is difficult. And I think there’ll be lots of people trying to analyze the data. The other difficulty that has come up in doing a kind of systematic analysis is the social media platforms have become less and less cooperative in providing the data that researchers need to make these kinds of evaluations. And that’s not likely to change, probably, in the short term with the Trump administration and their concerns about the Trump administration.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question from Steven Jones. 

Q: I think I’m unmuted now.

FASKIANOS: You are. And if you could give us your affiliation.

Q: First, hello to Dr. Francis. I received my PhD from the University of Utah back in 1995. (Laughs.) So nice to hear from you, Dr. Francis. 

Dr. Kahler, my question is around, you know, your focus has been countering malign influence. But you’ve mentioned several times some of the misinformation that’s being put out by President Trump and Elon Musk and others. So my question is, how—(laughs)—it’s bad enough that we’ve got misinformation coming from, you know, malign actors. How do we counter the misinformation that’s coming from our own leaders?

KAHLER: Well, that is the issue that has become toxic, I would say, in American politics, because there were certainly civil society organizations and think tanks that had broad mandates to look at disinformation, whatever its source. The Stanford Internet Observatory is a good example of that, which did very, very important work on this, and was seriously trying to figure out, you know, where was the disinformation coming from? How could it be—what would be the best way to deal with disinformation? That was—and we’re talking about disinformation. This is intentional misinformation that would cause public harm. That’s the way disinformation is typically defined. It has to be demonstrated to cause public harm. And it has to be intentional. Otherwise, it’s misinformation. And there’s lots of misinformation out there on the internet, as we all know. But this is disinformation.

Well, these organizations—which were largely founded by foundations—have been under attack from the Republican Party in Congress, in particular, because they have been—the allegation has been that they have been censoring viewpoints that they disagree with. OK, mainly conservative or pro-Trump, or pro-MAGA types of viewpoints. And that that’s not disinformation. That’s legitimate free speech. And Elon Musk makes this argument a lot as well. That’s legitimate free speech and it should not be censored in any way, should not be flagged as disinformation. And that includes even public health issues, right? We get into that territory, and we’re into—you know, once again, we’re into very, very difficult territory because some people regard what you, or I, or others might regard as serious disinformation that could cause public harm in public health as simply free speech. You know, as people saying what they believe about certain aspects of vaccines or other things. 

So I’m afraid, in terms of domestic disinformation, there has been a shutdown of many of the organizations. The funding has been pulled back. The funders are very scared about being pulled before Congress and questioned about their support for these organizations and what these organizations are doing. And I’m afraid the argument has basically been won by those who are saying, no, it’s not disinformation. And in any case, it’s not your business to flag things as disinformation. This is just American citizens exercising their free speech. So I don’t think there’s going to be much in the way—I mean, we have to rely on the media, investigative reporters, the mainstream media, which, of course, is also attacked for trying to flag these things. We can rely on universities and think tanks and others in the longer run. 

But in terms of the day-to-day flagging of disinformation, including disinformation that could be extremely harmful, suppose if you we had another pandemic, for example, that ecosystem, that infrastructure that was built largely outside of government—although it often cooperated with government—is now, I think, really in retreat, I would say.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Professor Jones is at Georgia Gwinnett College.

So we’ll go next to a written question from Geri Sawicki, who’s an adjunct professor at Modesto Junior College: Is all the inconsistency in these early days of Trump’s foreign policy because there was no vision as the administration came into the White House? Or is this an intentional manner of keeping foreign governments, and Americans, off balance?

KAHLER: (Laughs.) Now you’re asking questions that only the Trump administration could answer, I think. (Laughs.) Someone I know posted recently something which I tend to agree with, which is—he said: Don’t try to find a strategy. Don’t try to connect the dots. They’re just dots. And I think part of the difficulty is there are those in the Trump administration who have a strategy, I believe. For example, the Secretary of State Rubio and the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz clearly were identified in the past as being quite skeptical of China. You know, seen as China hawks, so called. One hasn’t heard much of that from them publicly at this point in time, but they clearly have, I think, strategy. 

There are others that—more on the MAGA side—who are much more skeptical of Ukraine and Europe. But everything ultimately depends, especially given the centralization that’s taking place on the executive branch and away from Congress, on what President Trump wants and what he’s thinking. And there, it seems to me, it’s dot, after dot, after dot. And I don’t see that there is a strategy. And I know there are some who argue this is a bargaining strategy, we’re throwing—trying to throw people off balance, so then we get into hard bargaining and they’ll be more likely to concede. I’m not sure we’re seeing that kind of, you know, so-called, you know, madman theory of bargaining, looking irrational to win a bargaining advantage. I don’t think we’re seeing that either. 

What we’re seeing are different ideas that come from the president day after day, whether it’s annexing Greenland, or making Canada the fifty-first state, or taking back the Panama Canal, or—and I’m not sure—you can see themes. There are some themes that have been persistent in the president’s career, such as liking trade protectionism and tariffs. But seeing a strategy at this point is a little difficult, for me. And seeing this as a way of throwing people off balance, I think it has thrown Congress off balance. And it has made it difficult for the media and the opponents of what is happening to catch up. But I’m not sure that’s because this is a coherent strategy, at least on the foreign policy side. I won’t speak to the domestic side, but on the foreign policy side.

FASKIANOS: Great.

I’ll take a question from Jovita Esechie—excuse my mispronunciation if I didn’t get it right—from Texas Southern University. There you go. 

Q: Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: Yes.

Q: Yeah.

Actually, I wanted to, you know, add to what the professor from Boston, Professor Edozie, you know, said, with regards to Boko Haram  in Nigeria. The effects of, you know, Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen are very, very serious. Women cannot go to the farms, some cannot go to the markets. Make, you know, their wives and their daughters, you know, raped, et cetera, et cetera. So you can imagine, you know the economic effects of this insecurity in those communities where these happen. So if you said, you know, USAID, it’s actually funding these elements, you know, to destabilize Nigeria, don’t you think it is—it is justified, you know, to at least withdraw this money from—you know, from that part of the world? Because, Goodluck—President Goodluck Jonathan, you know, also made this allegation in twenty—I mean, regarding his reelection bid in 2015, you know, regarding the funding of these—you know, of these—Boko Haram and all these Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria.

KAHLER: Well, once again, I would just reiterate, I would be very careful to verify that this indeed took place, because there’s been a lot of misinformation coming out of the DOGE effort that has been retracted. I find it difficult to imagine that USAID directly funded Boko Haram. I suspect the Nigerian government has a great deal of say over what USAID can do in Nigeria. It would be very unusual if it did not. But I’m not an expert on foreign aid. And I’m certainly not an expert on what happened with USAID in Nigeria. But there is a lot of loose language being put forward about different agencies. I already mentioned the National Endowment for Democracy. Sometimes agencies in the United States give grants to organizations, and those organizations carry out other activities that are not being funded by the United States. They’re not part of the activities being funded. But they have other activities that then receive attention, and that—then blame is put back on the United States. 

So that’s what happened, for example, with the Global Engagement Center in the State Department, came under attack because it had funded efforts on disinformation. I think it was a nonprofit in the UK. And its funding was not directed toward anything but foreign disinformation. But the nonprofit it funded, it was alleged, also talked about disinformation domestically in the United States, which raised all kinds of political flags, right? So there are various steps in the funding process where things can go awry, but I would be very, very careful taking this allegation seriously without independent verification. Because it’s a very serious one. As you said, Boko Haram is a—has inflicted terrible harm on Nigeria and Nigerian people. And this could be just a way—another way of delegitimating USAID without real proof that that is what USAID has done.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to Larry Garber.

Q: Can you hear me? 

FASKIANOS: Yes. If you can give us your affiliation. 

Q: So Larry Garber, currently affiliated as an adjunct faculty at GW. But perhaps more relevant did work at USAID for many years. 

And, even more relevant, have been accused on several occasions of having been involved in, quote-unquote, “interfering in foreign elections.” So it cuts both ways. And, you know, probably another seminar would be worth going into those issues. But I guess what I struggle with, because of late I’ve been more focused on sort of U.S. elections and protecting the integrity of our elections, is where we should draw the line with respect to this question of foreign interference. And I know you’ve tried to do that in your monograph, but I still think it’s a tough issue because if Russia, let’s say, you know, provides money to some person, who then—who’s an American citizen—who’s, in exercise of his First Amendment rights, decides to run a campaign to, you know, use social media to influence the election, why is it different whether he used Russian money or he’s a wealthy individual like Elon Musk, can use his own money? 

And so I think what we’re going to need to do is to get away from the—because money flows very easily these days between rich people, between countries. And so making the distinction that it’s Russia, an adversary, versus Elon Musk, you know, a citizen of the United States, to me, is somewhat missing the point. And I think we’ve gotten too hung up on the question of foreign interference and ignored the tougher questions of how do we regulate these media these days when, you know, anyone could influence it with lots of money. So, you know, I struggle with it because I don’t like the Russians, or I don’t like the Chinese, or others interfering in our elections. But I think if we get too caught up on that issue we’re missing the bigger point of, you know, how do we regulate interference that can be from Russia or from anyone else in this country?

KAHLER: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, the last part of my report, I mentioned the way to make ourselves resilient to foreign influence is to improve the quality of our own democracy. And certainly, campaign finance is a complete—I think “mess” is not too strong a term to choose for it. (Laughs.) There’s so much dark money floating around, as I mentioned in the report. It’s very difficult to say where that dark money comes from. We have made some progress. I came to this topic by a project I did at the Council on Illicit Financial Flows. And you’re absolutely right. In the modern financial system, it’s very difficult to track where the ultimate source—or, the term of art—who the beneficial owners are of particular shell companies, right? Shell companies are an easy way to intervene or send money into elections in other countries.

And you raise the larger issue. In a large country like the United States, where billions are spent on elections, what’s the delta—what’s the actual effect, the net effect, of foreign influence compared to all the other things that are affecting our elections? And I think, you know, that’s a serious question to raise. I think for smaller countries it’s a much bigger issue. For example, for Taiwan, or Estonia, or Lithuania, or Romania recently, which had alleged election interference from Russia. These countries are, in some cases, more fragile democracies, and in other cases they’re much more open. And, simply, a smaller amount of money goes a longer way, as compared to the United States. But I agree with you. I think a lot of the problems of, for example, campaign finance are not necessarily foreign—I mean, foreign campaign contributions are illegal, strictly illegal. And we have evidence that people use straw donors to make illegal contributions. But how big that net effect is, compared to the larger effect of campaign finance overall, is difficult to estimate. So I basically agree with you. 

On the larger question of foreign interference, it is a controversial point. You know, President Obama made very clear before the Brexit referendum in Britain in 2016 that the United States government thought it was a bad idea for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. OK. OK. The people who were backing Brexit, and they ultimately won the referendum, did not like that. They saw that as foreign interference. I mean, so how much—you know, how much interference? What merits interference that is objectionable to one side or the other or to the country as a whole? We have an interest in what happens in other countries. A lot of countries have an interest in what’s happening in the United States. And the question is, how do we regulate their efforts to influence our domestic politics in a way that does not undermine our own democracy, but nevertheless allows them, in legal and legitimate ways, to tell us what they think, because otherwise, you know, very often the United States isn’t completely aware of what it’s doing around the world, what effects it’s having around the world. 

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take the next question from Wiky Christophin, who’s at Idaho State University.

Q: Hello. My name is Wiky. I’m from Idaho State University. I’m a grad student. 

I have a question. So—

FASKIANOS: Can you speak a little bit louder or closer to the mic? You’re really faint. 

Q: Oh, hold on. Give me one second. Sorry. 

FASKIANOS: Thank you so much.

Q: Is that better?

KAHLER: I can probably make it out. 

FASKIANOS: Yes. I think we can make it out. We’ll listen really intently. (Laughs.)

Q: Is this better? All right, well, but I’ll speak a little louder. 

So my question is, you know, we have a new administration. And there’s been a lot of changes. We talk about—we can talk about, you know, inspector generals being—you know, resigning or just being forcibly removed. We can talk about, you know, Elon Musk and AfD. And so in the next four years—also, like you said, we can’t see the net effects of what’s happening. But in the next four years, you know, we’re going to have a change in administration, whether it’s a Republican or a Democratic change, right? Are these institutions going to be rebuilt back to how they were prior to this administration? Or is this going to be something that’s going to continue?

KAHLER: Well, that is very hard to predict. I mean, it sort of depends on what the next administration—what its political affiliation is, and what lessons are learned over the next four years. I mean, if the steps that I described that have already been taken by the Trump administration, if we continue down that line—which is basically removing at least some of the institutions that have dealt with foreign influence on elections and on our democratic politics more broadly—and there are some negative effects that are quite apparent to elites or to the wider public, then there may be an effort to rebuild some of these efforts. But right now, I would say there’s a cost. 

Even if there is a—you know, for example, if there’s a change back in four years to a Democratic administration which views these issues very differently, more the way the Biden administration did, there’s a real cost to the United States to having this constant oscillation in its policies, not only in terms of personnel who leave or get reassigned, institutional memories disappear. And in the meantime, countries that do not have our best interests at heart can take advantage of the situation. And that’s why, whatever you think about the effectiveness of these measures, at least they provide a certain amount of oversight and regulation that allows us to be aware of what’s going on and what other countries who might be exercising malign influence are trying to do. But this flipping back and forth and the kind of deep politicization of efforts to regulate foreign influence, I think, is going to be fairly damaging in the long run, no matter what administration is back in in office.

FASKIANOS: All right, I’m going to try to sneak in one last question, if it can be quick, from Amy Austin Holmes, who’s at George Washington University.

Q: Hi. Thank you for this presentation. 

My question is actually about the European Union Digital Services Act. I don’t think you’ve touched on that so far. And I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on that. There have been some news articles that they may—they’re stepping up their probe into Elon Musk’s X, given his comments regarding the German elections. So that’s actually my first question. And if you could, actually, just because at the beginning you spoke about some of the foreign influence also by allies of the United States, or partners at the United States, which I don’t think we talk very much about. And I would just be curious to hear if you have any thoughts on what kind of strategy we could use for allied countries that also engage in this type of malign influence that you mentioned at the beginning. Thank you. 

KAHLER: OK. So the European Union, yes, it’ll be very interesting to see. One thing you may not have picked up on. There was an interview in the Wall Street Journal of Friedrich Mertz, who may well become the next chancellor after the elections on Sunday in Germany. The CDU, his party, is expected to have the largest share of the vote. We’ll see what happens. But they’re generally a pretty—they’re definitely a conservative party, and generally a very pro-NATO, pro-U.S. alliance party. And after the interventions by Musk, in particular, on behalf of the AfD, he made a statement which said basically, there will be consequences for this, for Elon Musk. Now, what he meant was—he said, you know, I’m leaving aside what that will be. But that does suggest that there are those in Germany, not just on the social democratic and green party side, but also on the conservative CDU side, who really, really resent this kind of support for a party that they have tried to keep out of power, and which they see as extremist and dangerous for democracy. 

And also, I might point out, anti-American, which no one—neither the vice president or Elon Musk—seems to understand. Anyway. So that’s the first issue. I think there are ways that they will—the EU can go after Musk. You may remember that Brazil actually forced Musk to climb down when they banned X in Brazil because of its intervention on behalf of Bolsonaro. I believe it was on behalf of Bolsonaro. And, you know, Musk, you know, put up a big fight, but ultimately he backed down and did what they said he had to do if X was going to be reinstituted in Brazil. So for these big markets, the European Union has a lot of influence. But it’s important to note, Musk is in the White House. And he will undoubtedly want to use his influence in the White House to threaten the European Union if they take any measures against his platform. But we’ll see. 

And what was the second part of the question? Irina, it was—oh, what do we do about democratic—well, I don’t think you have to worry about liberal democracies intervening. I think they know the rules of the game. And I think they do not play beyond the benchmarks, the lines that we typically draw for foreign influence. But in terms of countries that are aligned with us but are not liberal democracies—such as the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt in the Middle East, Turkey—these are governments that have all been implicated in some of these corruption cases I mentioned. And it’s quite clear that they have tried to exercise influence in the United States in ways that many people would regard as questionable, to say the least. And probably gets less attention in Washington than the influence efforts by countries that are not aligned more adversarial toward the United States—like Iran, China, Russia. 

So I think that’s an important question. I don’t think we have to worry about liberal democracies at the moment because they typically engage in public diplomacy, things that are above board and typically are not regarded as malign efforts at exercising influence. Now maybe those rules will break down. That would be the final step in the road away from where we have been. But I hope that doesn’t take place.

FASKIANOS: Miles, thank you very much for being with us, for this report, and for all of you for your questions and comments. You can follow Miles Kahler at @MilesKahler.bsky.social. So you’re on Bluesky, right? 

KAHLER: Yes. I have closed my Twitter account for all counts. (Laughs.) Yes.

FASKIANOS: Yes. (Laughs.) And we look forward to your subsequent report, maybe when you look into building on the one that you did in October. But I do commend it to you all. So thank you, Miles.

KAHLER: Thank you.

FASKIANOS: And to all of you, our next Global Affairs Expert Webinar will actually be next week, Wednesday, February 26, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Jennifer Kavanagh, who is at Defense Priorities, and Philip Zelikow, who’s at Stanford University, will colead a conversation on the axis of autocracies. So I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. And you can follow us. Visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org, for research and analysis on global issues. So thank you again for being with us, and we look forward to having you participate next week.

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