The Trump administration's 2017 National Security Strategy document hit the nail on the head. "U.S. efforts to counter the exploitation of information by rivals have been tepid and fragmented." Ironically, the Russian Academy of Sciences concurs, reporting in 2021 that the U.S. information war structure looks like "a dusty relic of a bygone era." Both statements are factual and explain why the nation that invented the internet continues to lose the information war to despotic regimes. It should be no surprise that freedom has been retreating around the world for nearly two decades, imperiling our national security.
Nothing has changed significantly since the first Trump administration sounded the alarm. In his second term, with a Republican majority in each House, President-elect Trump has an opportunity to create a 21st century strategic messaging structure that can persuasively tell America's story to the world while undermining despots by stoking the coals of discontent among those they misruled and abused. Think Putin, Xi, Khamenei, and Kim. The president should seize this new opportunity to put us on the offense in the battle of ideologies, a battle we must win or, in all likelihood, perish as a free and prosperous nation.
Broadly, our adversaries are on the attack, employing every means of hybrid warfare, from outright invasion, as in Ukraine, to sabotage, as in the severing of vital cables in the Baltic; to terrorism, as in the attempt, believed to be Russian, to hide incendiary devices in cargo meant for air shipment to the U.S.; to assassination plots, witness the November federal court indictment of three persons accused of plotting to kill Trump on behalf of Iran. In between increasingly frequent acts of attempted or actual violence, there is the daily poisoning of human minds by disinformation meant to confuse and demoralize. We've never faced anything like today's hybrid war. But we'd better get used to it because it's here to stay as long as there are evil regimes in the world.
To survive and triumph, we must bring to bear every instrument of national power. Trump has vowed to rebuild our armed forces, restore self-sufficiency in our defense industrial base, and protect essential infrastructure from cyberattacks. Those big programs reflect one of the president's well-known business principles: Think big. But they will take years to accomplish.
In the meantime, there is an opportunity to go on the offense right now at relatively little expense. During the Cold War, we used soft power delivered primarily by shortwave radio to persuade ordinary Soviet citizens that communism was a dead end and that life on this side of the Iron Curtain was better than on theirs. We should replicate that feat today, using social media to persuade foreign audiences that freedom is the road to a better life and authoritarianism, the road to despair. But we can't, because in 1999, the United States Information Agency, which spearheaded our Cold War effort, was abolished, leaving its key remnant, the Voice of America, to morph into a news agency in a world awash in news. What went AWOL in the transformation is persuasive advocacy.
President Trump should act decisively and quickly to restore our ability to prevail.
Here are the problems and their solutions.
No president since 1982 has committed the U.S. to win the information war. As a first step, Trump should make an explicit public commitment.
There is no plan to win. Trump should instruct the National Security Council to create an information warfare strategy plan posthaste that parallels the National Defense Strategy in specifics.
No one is in charge. The president should designate an info war czar within the National Security Council to oversee execution of the strategic plan. Daily operational responsibility should be placed outside the existing bureaucracy and headed by an expert in the art of persuasion — not journalism — someone with access to Cabinet meetings and the Oval Office.
Far too much reliance is placed on the transformative power of news and the Voice of America. Truthful news is vital and should remain a key part of our information war arsenal. But news programs are not winning the information war. That's because journalists write news to inform, not to persuade. Winning the information war requires putting persuasive advocacy — distinct from news — to work again after decades of disuse. Advocacy is the keyword, advocacy that makes America's case powerfully and unapologetically.
The Trump administration should create a new, separate agency whose bright lodestar is national security, not journalism, whose purpose is to win the information war by producing content so persuasive, entertaining, and compelling as to keep audiences coming back for more — information that will stimulate a yearning for freedom and, at the same time, undermine despotic regimes. Let VOA report objective news. Let the new agency move the front line in the information war from our shores to the walls of the Kremlin and the redoubts of despots in Tehran, Pyongyang, and Beijing. After decades of fecklessness and losing, it's time to fight back with the will, the leadership, the structure, and the resources to win the pivotal battle for hearts and minds around the world.
Former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey served on the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committees. He publishes a Russian-language YouTube channel, Nashi Emigranti, that tells America's story to the Russian people.
S. Enders Wimbush was director of Radio Liberty 1987-93 and governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 2010-2012.