Center targeting foreign influence in limbo in U.S.
Division over mission’s size, scope behind two-year delay
WASHINGTON — Experts and intelligence officials broadly agree the proposed Foreign Malign Influence Center is a good idea. The U.S. has lacked a cohesive strategy to fight influence operations, they say, with not enough coordination among national security agencies.
As Russia was working to subvert U.S. elections and sow discord among Americans, Congress directed the creation of an intelligence center to lead efforts to stop interference by foreign adversaries. But two years later, that center still is not close to opening.
The intelligence community and Congress remain divided over the center’s mission, budget and size, according to current and former officials. While separate efforts to counter interference continue, a person identified this year as a potential director has since been assigned elsewhere and the center likely will not open anytime soon.
“It really is just giving a gift to Russia and China and others who clearly have their sights set not only on the midterm elections but on ongoing campaigns to destabilize American society,” said David Salvo, deputy director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
The nation’s top intelligence official had advocated for the center before taking office. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines last year co-chaired a German Marshall Fund task force supporting it.
In a statement, spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said the director’s office “is focused on creating a center to facilitate and integrate the Intelligence Community’s efforts to address foreign malign influence.” But some lawmakers are concerned about further expanding the mission of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The office was originally envisioned as a small coordinating body to address the intelligence-sharing failures preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It has several centers that critics say are well-meaning attempts to solve problems but end up causing unnecessary duplication.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said that while he supports the center, there were “legitimate questions about how large such an organization should be and even about where it would fit” with existing government efforts to fight foreign interference.
“We want to be sure that this center enhances those efforts rather than duplicating them or miring them in unnecessary bureaucracy,” Warner said in a statement. “I don’t have any real doubt that we will ultimately stand the center up in the relatively near future, but we need to be sure we get it right.”
It’s unclear who would lead the center. Separately, there is also a vacancy for a new election-threats executive after the previous executive, Shelby Pierson, ended her term and returned to another intelligence post.
Pierson had been in the spotlight last year after giving lawmakers a private briefing on Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2020 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.
Experts on democracy have long warned that what the government refers to as “malign influence” is a national security threat. Social media have helped make disinformation a cheap and powerful tactic for adversaries who can push false or altered stories, videos and images, and amplify falsehoods already circulating among Americans to promote their own interests and create chaos.
Experts say the new center can warn Americans about interference and produce better information for policymakers.
While the FBI, the National Security Agency and several other government agencies have long worked on foreign interference, “we are not organized in a way where we are building a coherent threat picture,” said Jessica Brandt, an expert on foreign interference and disinformation at the Brookings Institution.
But there are risks in the intelligence community ramping up its monitoring of what Americans see and read. The FBI and NSA have been accused of unlawfully spying on Americans.
That history, say experts and officials, contributes to many Americans’ distrust of the intelligence community, as do Trump’s attacks on intelligence professionals and what he has derided as the “deep state.”
Opponents note the U.S. also has a history of covert interference in other countries and has helped overthrow governments seen as anti-American. A column published by the Kremlin-backed RT.com alleged the proposed center “is just official cover for American intelligence interference in domestic politics.”
The intelligence community also risks being seen as political or infringing on First Amendment rights if it takes the same untruths spread by Americans and labels them as foreign interference when they’re spread by an adversary.
The center “is going to have to figure out this enormous challenge to convey threats to American elections, American democracy, at a time when there seem to be two completely different realities,” Salvo said.
A proposal to fund the center this summer failed and it is unlikely to be completed while the government is operating with temporary funding. The center may now be included if a full spending plan is approved in early 2022.
Suzanne Spaulding, an election security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called for the U.S. government to act quickly.
“Time is not on our side,” Spaulding said. “Disinformation is a national security threat and should be treated with the urgency that a national security threat engenders.”