[House Hearing, 116 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION ATTACKS ON ELECTIONS: LESSONS FROM EUROPE ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, ENERGY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ July 16, 2019 __________ Serial No. 116-55 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http:// docs.house.gov, or http://www.govinfo.gov __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 37-051PDF WASHINGTON : 2019 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center, U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free). E-mail, [email protected]. COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York Member ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida JOE WILSON, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts TED S. YOHO, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin DINA TITUS, Nevada ANN WAGNER, Missouri ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York BRIAN MAST, Florida TED LIEU, California FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania DEAN PHILLPS, Minnesota JOHN CURTIS, Utah ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota KEN BUCK, Colorado COLIN ALLRED, Texas RON WRIGHT, Texas ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey STEVE WATKINS, Kansas DAVID TRONE, Maryland MIKE GUEST, Mississippi JIM COSTA, California JUAN VARGAS, California VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas Jason Steinbaum, Democrat Staff Director Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director ------ Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and The Environment WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts, Chairman ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois, Ranking GREGORY MEEKS, New York Member ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina THEODORE DEUTCH, Florida ANN WAGNER, Missouri DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida DINA TITUS, Nevada BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana DAVID TRONE, Maryland RON WRIGHT, Texas JIM COSTA, California MIKE GUEST, Mississippi VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee Gabrielle Gould, Staff Director C O N T E N T S ---------- Page WITNESSES Fried, The Honorable Daniel, Distinguished Fellow, Future Europe Initiative and Eurasia Center, Atlantic Counsel (Former State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy, Former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Former United States Ambassador to Poland)..................... 7 Aro, Ms. Jessikka, Investigative Reporter, Yle Kioski............ 20 Kalensky, Mr. Jakub, Senior Fellow, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council........................................................ 33 Kagan, Dr. Frederick W., Resident Scholar and Director, Critical Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute................. 51 APPENDIX Hearing Notice................................................... 72 Hearing Minutes.................................................. 73 Hearing Attendance............................................... 74 RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION ATTACKS ON ELECTIONS: LESSONS FROM EUROPE Tuesday, July 16, 2019 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:21 p.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William R. Keating (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. Keating. The hearing will come to order. I want to thank the members that made it up from the last roll call. We were delayed a bit as a result of a roll call. I want to thank our witnesses for their patience in that regard. Our national elections are just 15-plus months away. Just this week, AP reported describing how voting systems across our country still rely on old software that is vulnerable to hackers. The list of threats to our elections are numerous, and it is our job to address the weaknesses with the utmost haste and diligence. Our intelligence community is united in its findings that the U.S. will once again face Russian threats to our elections and our democratic process, and other countries could indeed follow suit. We know countries like China are already stepping up disinformation efforts on their own. Today's hearing is on Russia's attacks on democratic elections through targeted disinformation campaigns and the takeaways from Europe where this activity has been accelerating for years. It is on what the EU and the European countries are doing themselves, what has been effective, what has not been, lessons learned. The United States awoke to the threat from Russian disinformation as a result of the interference in the 2016 Presidential elections. Yet this malign tactic is nothing new for our allies and partners in Europe who have experienced disinformation campaigns since the time of the Soviet Union. Based on this experience and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Finland put in place a whole government strategy to combat Russian disinformation and increase the resiliency of its population against these attacks. We are lucky today to be joined by Ms. Jessikka Aro, who is a journalist from Finland and has reported extensively on this topic. And while it was rescinded under questionable circumstances, she would have received an International Women of Courage award earlier this year for her work exposing the network of pro-Kremlin trolls linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency, a Russian institution which, as we all know, was heavily involved in the 2016 Russian interference in our election. That was detailed in part one of the Special Counsel Mueller report. Finland is not alone. Following numerous elections and referenda where Russia and Russian-supported actors spread disinformation and stoked conflict between and around public debates, including in the recent EU parliamentary elections, the European Union and its member States have since deployed strategies to combat Russia's malign influence. U.S. elections are the very bedrock of our democracy. And as Members of Congress, we have shown an oath to uphold that kind of protection of our democracy. Russian interference undermines our elections, as well as those of other countries around the world, while stoking anti- Western sentiment and threatening our alliances and our security. We have to do more. In today's hearing we examine the lessons from our allies in Europe and we will explore areas where transatlantic cooperation serve us in advancing our response to Russian election meddling here at home. We are faced by different types of disinformation, different actors who perpetuate it. Different options for trying to stop it have been put into place, but there are efforts to even destabilize those types of efforts. This is where learning from our European partners comes into play. While there have been steep challenges in their effort to combat Russia's disinformation activities, we could build on their progress and start moving much more aggressively to address this here at home. So today I hope we can learn more about what has worked, what has not worked, what opportunities exist to engage with civil society, social media companies, our legal system, multilateral institutions, how countries are increasing their resilience through media literacy programs, even some of those at the grade school level. And this is important: How investigative journalism has helped expose Russian disinformation and what we need to do to protect those individuals who take on great risk to defend the democratic institutions that we all depend on to safeguard our freedoms. Just as we are seeing in Europe, we will likely need to adjust course from time-to-time, monitor to make sure protections against disinformation do not veer toward unjustly restricting freedom of speech or failing to appropriately respect privacy concerns. Our enemies use our freedoms as a type of sanctuary. However, we have to do more. So as soon as it is possible, on a number of fronts, we will move forward. Our efforts to date, as a government, and the efforts among social media companies and other private sectors, have been woefully lacking compared to the threat we face. I would like to thank the witnesses for joining us and some for traveling great distances to be here today. Your testimony and expertise are greatly appreciated. I hope that we can come away with some concrete next steps to guard against Russian disinformation campaigns here at home and those affecting our allies overseas. With that, I would like to recognize the ranking member, and then I will go through some of the ground rules of this hearing. So I recognize the ranking member, Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the panel for joining us today. You have all great reputations, your work proceeds you, and we are excited to have you here with us. Prior to the 2016 election, Russia engaged in one of the most sophisticated information operations to date against the United States. Regardless of your opinion of the Mueller report and reading the first part of that and seeing the depth of Russian attempts is eye opening, to be involved in this election, as well as elections in other parts of the world. This was not the first time that Russia has used disinformation or malign influence to interfere in the democratic process of Western society and I guarantee it will not be the last. Russian trolls will amplify any message that seeks to divide Western democracy and sow discord and chaos. From supporting Code Pink and fascist groups in the United States to spreading anti-European Union and anti-NATO messages across Europe, Vladimir Putin's goal is to divide the bond that holds democratic nations together. As long as Putin's hold on power remains unchallenged, he will continue to meddle in Western democracy. I believe that we must go on the offensive. While Vladimir Putin won a sham reelection and will be in office until 2025, the State Duma is slated to have an election in 2021. That means that the United States has just over 2 years to highlight how Putin's corrupt tactics have stolen money from the Russian population, devaStated their economy, and ostracized their nation from the West. From an economic standpoint, Russia's GDP of $1.65 trillion is dwarfed by that of the United States and the European Union, which sits around the $40 trillion mark. However, in far-off places like Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, and across the Baltic and Balkan regions, Russia can use little capital to extract unproportionate pressure. Take Ukraine, for example, where Russian propaganda targeted a joint U.S.-Ukrainian training exercise claiming that American troops were going to provoke protests across Ukraine to interfere in their electoral process. While this operation was easily debunked, it shows how the Russians use a handful of hackers to spread lies through social media. However, other operations take decades of planning and complex support networks to execute. It has been almost 25 years since the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, Russia has used this time to support nationalist politicians within the republic, the main belligerents of the Bosnian war that employed genocide and killed over 100,000 people. Last October, Bosnia held legislative elections. Since they have been unable to form a government, given disagreements between pro-Western political parties and the nationalist Serb parties over what the relationship Bosnia should have with NATO. Staunch anti-NATO sentiment and threatened cessation from Bosnia has been a staple of the Russian-backed Alliance of the Independent Social Democrats, who have, in effect, been blocking the government formation over NATO accession. The Europeans have abandoned Bosnia, and the United States cannot carry all the weight. If we want to counter Russian malign operations, we must do so in conjunction with our European allies. We must show Bosnia and other nations being tempted by Putin that Western democracy is a far better option than the tyrannical Russian system. Examples like Bosnia and Ukraine show why holding a hearing to expose Russian malign influence is so important. And I want to put a bit of an emphasis on having recently met with representatives from the Balkan region, from all areas, every one of them mentioned, without exception, that the United States is basically the only partner standing strong with them against the Russians. And that is not our backyard. That is Europe's backyard. Europe has a responsibility to step up and do more as well. This cannot be a U.S.-only operation, but we are happy to lead with our European friends. And I thank last I will say this. Part of exposing Russian disinformation is understanding that if you see a news report or a media report that seems way too crazy, it probably is. Many of us here have been involved in or had written articles about us by Russian trolls that are then posted by Sputnik or RT and retweeted multiple times until it becomes mainstream. By the way, did you know that I helped create ISIS, according to some RT story that was put out there? So that said, understanding the idiocy of some of the stuff you read is the first step to pushing back against Russian disinformation, because without that they have no other weapon. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Mr. Keating. The chair thanks the ranking member. And I will now introduce our witnesses. Ambassador Daniel Fried is a distinguished fellow with the Future Europe Initiative and Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. He has previously served as the State Department coordinator for sanctions policy, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and the United States Ambassador to Poland. Thank you for your service, and thank you for being here, Ambassador. Ms. Jessikka Aro is a Finnish journalist, working for Finland's public service broadcaster Yle. She has received awards for investigative journalism on pro-Russian internet troll factories, having traveled to St. Petersburg to interview employees of the Internet Research Agency and the Russian journalists who first uncovered them. Thank you for making the trip here. Mr. Jakub Kalensky is a senior fellow with the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. He formerly worked for the European Union's East StratCom Task Force and was the leader for countering disinformation. Thank you for being here. Dr. Fred Kagan is a resident scholar and director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. He is formerly a professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Thank you. We all appreciate your being here and look forward to your testimony. Please limit your testimony to 5 minutes. And without objection, your prepared written statements will be made part of the record. As a reminder, all members will have 5 calendar days to submit materials and questions for the record. I will now go to Ambassador Fried for his statement. STATEMENT OF DANIEL FRIED, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, FUTURE EUROPE INITIATIVE AND EURASIA CENTER, ATLANTIC COUNSEL (FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT COORDINATOR FOR SANCTIONS POLICY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN AFFAIRS, AND FORMER UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO POLAND) Mr. Fried. Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Kinzinger, members, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. The topic is relevant and timely. I have to say it is an honor to be on this panel with Jessikka Aro and Jakub Kalensky, two fighters against disinformation, and a pleasure to be here with my old colleague, Fred Kagan. The Russians may be leaders in State-sponsored disinformation, but they are not going to be the last. The Democratic community, the free world, needs to face the challenge of Russian and other forms of contemporary disinformation while remaining true to our democratic values. As we learned during the cold war, we must not and need not become them in order to fight them. I want to focus on what is to be done. First, the Europeans, then the U.S. Europeans have moved since 2018 toward action to deal with disinformation. The EU approach includes strengthening the EU's capacity to identify and expose disinformation, and hopefully that includes strengthening support for East StratCom, where Jakub Kalensky used to work. They have established an EU Rapid Alert System to spread news of disinformation campaigns in real time. Most important, the EU has negotiated and concluded a Code of Practice on disinformation with U.S. social media companies setting out terms of behavior and standards. The code notes that if progress is not satisfactory, the EU could turn to regulation. The EU is also looking at improving social resilience against disinformation, creating a European network of independent fact checkers, launching an online platform on disinformation, and social media literacy. European governments, particularly France, Sweden, but others, perhaps in reaction to Russian hacking of the Macron campaign in 2017, have been active. The good news is that the EU and some European national governments have been addressing the disinformation challenge. The bad news is that EU implementation, even of its own plans, has been uneven. This is just beginning. The United States, though, and I am sorry to say this, lags the EU both in conceptual framing of the issue and actions to deal with it. This is not due to lack of awareness of the problem inside the administration, but leadership has been uneven. Nevertheless, there is work ongoing in the administration. The State Department's Global Engagement Center is funding research and helping civil society groups and independent media on the front lines of the threat. U.S. Cyber Command began operations ahead of our last congressional elections to deter Russian operations. USAID is supporting local media and civil society in the European countries most vulnerable to Russian disinformation. The Department of Treasury has imposed sanctions on Russian entities tied to disinformation. The Senate has introduced sanctions legislation, so-called DASKA, which actually has some useful provisions on countering disinformation. These are good steps, but they lack the scope of what the EU has already tried to launch. There is no U.S. equivalent to the EU Code of Practice. We need to have an all-of-government approach to the problem with the backing of the highest levels of the administration. The following might serve as an action plan for the U.S. The U.S. Government needs to get organized. Somebody and some agency needs to own the problem. Whether this is State, DHS, or a national counter-disinformation center with the backing of the President, somebody needs to answer the phone when you want to call about disinformation. Mr. Keating. Did you plan that? Mr. Fried. Yes, sir, I did. Mr. Keating. That was excellent. Mr. Fried. Yes. The U.S. needs to work with its friends, starting with the European Union. We could stand up a transatlantic or G-7 counter-disinformation coalition to pool our knowledge, set common standards, and use our regulatory power to greatest impact. Social media companies have happily moved beyond initial denial, but they need to keep cleaning up their platforms and reassessing online anonymity. The administration and Congress should follow the principles of transparency and authenticity on social media, not heavy content control. Regulation, I think, is coming. It needs to be iterative, not heavy. We need to learn as we go. But I think that it is important not to be heavy content control, but to talk about inauthentic sites and enforce the principles of transparency. Last thought. Civil society groups in the United States and Europe are going to be the heroes of counter-disinformation techniques. They, not government bureaucracy, are going to be able to expose in real time Russian and other disinformation operations. We ought to put our trust in them. We ought to put some of our resources behind them, people like Jessikka Aro and Jakub Kalensky. But others, Stop Fake in the Ukraine, the Baltic elves, EU disinfo labs, the Atlantic Council's own DFR Lab, these are the people who can expose, and then when exposed, American society needs to wake up and pay attention to this. There is more to be said, but I will say it during the questions if there is time. [The prepared statement of Mr. Fried follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Keating. Thank you, Ambassador. Ms. Aro. STATEMENT OF JESSIKKA ARO, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, YLE KIOSKI Ms. Aro. Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Kinzinger, distinguished members of the committee, thank you so much. Thank you for having me here. It is such an honor to discuss the Russian trolls and how to counter them and prevent them from causing any more international damage in the future. I will tell you what I have found out in my investigations as well as give you recommendations how to prevent the damage in the future. Five years ago, I started to investigate the Kremlin tool of information psychological warfare, Russia's use of paid online propaganda workers. Thanks to the brave Russian journalists who had infiltrated the St. Petersburg-based troll factory already in 2013, we knew that a shady office paid people to build fake identities and profiles on social media. These trolls pretend online as real people and produce pro- Putin and pro-Russian content on an industrial scale. According to leaked emails between the factory supervisors and employees, the trolls' mission was to shift the balance of online discussions by increasing comments supportive to Putin, thus manipulating real people online. Back then, in 2014, the Russian trolls in Finland attacked mostly opinion leaders, for example, our then defense minister. I wanted to investigate how the trolls influence and impact in the general audience, the ordinary internet users. Did they have any meaningful impact or influence on them, on Finnish real people's ideas, attitudes, and even behavior. I found several influence methods which are still actively in use by the trolls today. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, every other social media comment sections of traditional media and Russian discussion forums were abused already back then to spread lies benefiting the Kremlin. The trolls smeared Western leaders as Nazis and fascists, blamed the U.S., NATO, and the European Union for the war in Ukraine, claimed Russian soldiers never stepped their foot on Ukrainian soil. The Russian Embassy in Helsinki supported these social media operations. In addition, anonymous operators formed groups on Facebook and conducted other psychological operations against civilians. The trolls, indeed, had impact on real Finnish people. Some Finnish who are interviewed told me that they had stopped discussing Russia-related issues online altogether just to avoid the death threats and name calling that would follow from the trolls after they did that. Thus, the digital operations had succeeded in both silencing and importing fear into Finnish public debate about Russia. That is a profound threat to people's freedom of speech coming from a hostile foreign power. But there was more. Some people had lost the idea of what is true and what is not. For example, in the case of Ukraine, disinformation had again succeeded in manipulating real people's thoughts. It is difficult to make decisions who to vote for or whether to view Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine or not after you are not sure what is factually even happening. Russia wants to brainwash useful idiots. My most disturbing finding, in my own opinion, was that some people who are subjected to propaganda believe it and spread it further in their own networks. I also learned that not everyone are influenced, but some people are and they need protection. Later, I started to investigate attacks on private Western individuals as I was myself made the target of Russian- originating and still ongoing defamation campaign because of my work. For almost 5 years, I have been defamed in Russian fake new sites, in Finnish pro-Kremlin racist and hate speech fake news sites by the German RT, by the troll factory, and by countless social media activists and neo-Nazis. The retaliation campaign against me is partly criminal in nature. It has impacted even some of my friends and has led to some of the agitated people threatening to kill me. These are real Finnish individuals. I needed police escort to attend a trial against some of these perpetrators. Police said that I faced the threat of impulsive violence if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why? Because Putin's administration's employee and other propagandists want to smear and silence me and scare and stop me from investigating and talking about the troll activity. And I am also somewhat worried to testify here today because I believe it will lead to retaliation against me just like so many other of my public appearances in the last years. Also, the same kinds of operations are ongoing against different European and even American people who voice out their criticism or information about Russia or Putin's regime. They become systematically smeared. And finally, I recommend the Western governments and international police organizations who, in my view, are in the core of countering this international disinformation campaign, they should be treated as what they are, international politically motivated organized crime conducted by intelligence officers and paid propagandists. These criminals, they do not want to take your money. They want to capture your thinking and control you. Targeted people are often civilians. They need help. More robust preventive measures from intelligence services are needed. Also, maybe it is time we start to call the Kremlin troll farms and digital disinformation for what they are, crime factories and digital crime. The word troll farm does not come close to describing the destruction of these operations. Countries should also check their legislations on libel, illegal threats, instigating violence, secrecy crimes, privacy breaches, espionage, and computer hacks as they seem to be the Kremlin's favorite online violations used in these operations. The punishments for these crimes are often not enough to prevent this organized crime. The Kremlin also knows that as long as Facebook, Twitter, and other social media giants are not properly regulated, they can abuse them as much as they can. And just my most important notion today is that the Kremlin's operations continue uninterrupted all the time between and during the elections. The trolls are given new themes every day, and they will continue unless they are stopped. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Aro follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Keating. Mr. Kalensky. STATEMENT OF JAKUB KALENSKY, SENIOR FELLOW, EURASIA CENTER, ATLANTIC COUNCIL Mr. Kalensky. Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Kinzinger, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you very much for the invitation to speak in front of you today. It is an honor. I will summarize my written testimony for the hearing. In 2014, NATO's military commander, Philip Breedlove, called the Kremlin's disinformation campaign targeting Ukraine the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare. Five years later, it is obvious that the initial blitzkrieg has evolved into a sustained and ongoing disinformation campaign using thousands of channels and dozens of languages, targeting hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. It is a campaign with the goal to undermine Western democracies, human rights, and rule of law, and to denigrate those who stand for these values, including the United States. The Kremlin's media are tasked to advance Russian military goals regardless of the current peace-war status with a given country. These pseudo-journalists are dutifully fulfilling those tasks, and they get rewarded by the Kremlin for the more visible Russian military operations like in Ukraine or in Syria. They perceive themselves as being in a permanent information war with the whole Western world. The messages of Russian State media get further amplified by an ecosystem consisting of so-called alternative media, social media, Russian officials and representatives, NGO's, and other less researched communication channels. Often, influencers in European States are repeating the messages of the Kremlin's disinformation ecosystem, giving their messages new legitimacy and spreading it among new audiences. Even in the Netherlands, the country that lost the most citizens in the tragedy of the MH 17 flight where nearly 300 civilians were killed by a Russian weapon, even in the Netherlands you can find politicians repeating the Kremlin's lies about who is to blame. As some of the opinion polls show us, the synergy of Kremlin-controlled and Kremlin-influenced channels is effective. According to one poll, 80 percent of Bulgarians did not believe that it was Russian secret services who are to blame for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, England. That is four out of five people believing a disinformation campaign instead of facts and evidence. After 5 years of sustained information aggression, it unfortunately seems that the European audiences are getting used to a certain level of disinformation campaign, almost perceiving it as the new normal. This fatigue facilities further disinformation campaigns, including those from new actors, both State and non-State. It is for these reasons why I worry that the Kremlin is currently winning the information war it is conducting against the Western democracies, mostly because we in the West do not understand that we are in such a war. We do not understand what it has already cost us and what will it cost us in the future. And we have failed to fight back and defend our values against this new kind of aggressor. It does not have to be this way. We in the West have all the knowledge and all the capabilities to win this fight. The only thing we lack is political will and the determination of our adversary. In my written testimony, I have described multiple measures that can be undertaken to defend against this kind of aggression. Out of all the examples, let me highlight here the case of Lithuania. This small nation shows us how the combination of documenting this threat, raising the level of awareness about it, mitigating the weaknesses of the information space, and punishing of the information aggressors can result in a successful defense even against an opponent who is many times stronger and has many times more resources. Lithuania has a track record of neutralizing a disinformation campaign even before it has time to spread and influence the audiences, which is the best possible result you can achieve. It is these four areas of defense which I perceive as necessary in order to successfully defend against the massive disinformation campaigns that the Kremlin conducts in the past years. What we see in many European countries and in the EU are the first three of these areas: documenting the threat, raising awareness, and mitigating the weaknesses. However, it is actually the fourth area, punishing the information aggressors, that might make the biggest difference. The other three areas will help us better cope with information aggression, but they will never help stop it. I am deeply convinced that unless we start punishing the information aggressors in a more resolute way, we will not only fail to stop their aggression, but we will also show to other potential aggressors that we in the West are not capable of dealing with this kind of threat, and we will invite further aggression. And there are other, more powerful actors in the world than Russia. If they start adopting the Kremlin's tactics, as we already see happening in a few cases, we might face a significantly bigger problem in the future. Thank you very much for your attention, and I will be looking forward to your questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Kalensky follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Keating. Dr. Kagan. STATEMENT OF FREDERICK W. KAGAN, PH.D., RESIDENT SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR, CRITICAL THREATS PROJECT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Mr. Kagan. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Kinzinger, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today. Thank you also for calling this hearing to address the challenges of Russian information operations against both the United States and Europe generally. It is vitally important to keep in mind, as the subcommittee clearly does, that Vladimir Putin is engaged in a general attack on the institutions of democracy and representative government throughout the West and, in fact, throughout the world. One of his aims is to destroy the trust and confidence of Western peoples in their governments and in the very institutions of representative government themselves. He pursues this aim, unfortunately, in an increasingly conducive environment, as Western people seem increasingly to be losing faith in critical institutions on their own. Addressing the Russian challenge will thus require that we also address that internal problem. Putin is not an opportunistic predator as he is often portrayed. He has a concrete program. He has articulated an end state. He has articulated an alternate vision of the world. He pursues those objectives through concrete and organized campaigns. They are very flexible, they are opportunistic, they take advantage when he can, but they are nevertheless clear. Russian military doctrine increasingly is making the argument that even tactical undertakings, even kinetic actions, should all be subordinated to the aim of shaping the information environment rather than achieving specific military ends, and that is important because I think that we need to see the activities that Putin is engaged in in the context of a political military campaign that he is pursuing globally, not just as crimes, although they clearly are crimes and also need to be punished in that way. The Soviet concept of reflexive control is central to this entire undertaking, and it is important to understand that concept. Basically, the idea of reflexive control is so to shape your adversary's perception of reality as to cause your adversary voluntarily, of his own will, to choose the course of action you prefer without even being aware that he has been manipulated into doing so. It is a kind of jiu-jitsu in information operations, which is not surprising considering that Putin himself is a fan of the Russian or Soviet version of Judo. Also, that he is a small person, which bears repeating as part of an information operation. One of the advantages that Putin's aims give him is that they are negative. What matters to Putin is less that we believe what he is saying and more that we do not believe what we are saying. And so Putin's objectives are achieved if people simply say to themselves and to each other: Well, who really knows? I mean, after all, did the Russians shoot down the airplane? I mean, who really knows? And of course, we do know. But getting people to positive belief is much harder than getting them simply to throw up their hands and say: Who knows? And we have to understand how important, how difficult that makes the challenge that we are facing here. But the approach that Putin is taking has vulnerabilities as well. It relies to a very heavy extent on a degree of stealth and anonymity and on the ability to persuade people that what they are hearing is not simply Russian propaganda but is coming from sources that they trust and so forth. And in addition to that, we have now seen on several occasions that Putin can pay a very significant price when covert operations are blown, and there are two major examples of that in, ironically, two of his biggest successes, Ukraine, where the sense of Ukrainian nationhood and nationalism and resistance to and separation from Russia in western Ukraine is higher than it has ever been. And I do not actually think that it will be undone regardless of what settlement is reached by this government in Kiev or any other. And that is a result of the reaction against what Putin did there. And even in our own election, the fact that we are having this hearing, the fact that we are here, is evidence of a Putin failure. It demonstrates the degree to which he has caused us to reflect on what he is doing. And that blowback phenomenon is something that we can take advantage of. But we are not, as my co-panelists have pointed out, equipped as a government or a people to take advantage of it yet, and we should focus on that. And so some of my concrete recommendations to you are to consider establishing cells in various places in the government, I do not really care who owns them, whose job it is to follow the Russian campaigns, to understand what Putin is trying to do generally, which will allow us to predict the kinds of information operations that he is likely to undertake, the kinds of cyber operations that he is likely to launch in support of them. And then those cells need to develop plans. When should we blow this operation? When should we make it public that the Russians are doing this? To what purpose? What will we try to accomplish? What are our plans for accomplishing that? And I would submit this needs to be a specialized cell because we must also restrict ourselves only to telling the truth. We must never get into the business of lying to ourselves, to the American people. We can do that, but it makes it harder. And so I think that this is something that organizationally and structurally would require a great deal of attention. And we also need to have cells that are prepared to take advantage when third parties blow Russian operations, because that will happen more frequently than us blowing them ourselves. We have heroic people like Ms. Aro, who will do this on their own, and others, and we need to be prepared to take advantage of that. And there are various other specific things that I think we could talk about as well, and I would be happy to address those. I simply want to end, though, by saying we also have to recognize the weaknesses in our own current political discourse that make us particularly vulnerable to what the Russians are doing. The incivility, the mistrust, the hate, the emotion that is spewed by both sides and within both parties at each other is undermining Americans' faith in themselves and what we stand for, in our institutions, and it is opening opportunities for Putin. I do not expect to get to some grand kumbaya moment where all of that stops, but to the extent that we can close that gap and restore civility to our discourse, we will make it much harder for Putin to attack us in this fashion. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Kagan follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Keating. Thank you, Doctor. I now give myself 5 minutes for questions. Ms. Aro, you mentioned in your testimony that you have been--well documented--you have been threatened in the past, harassed, defamed, and you mentioned even being here today could result in that. And I admire your courage, we all do, for continuing that effort and for the role of journalists to continue that effort. If you would like, could you take a few minutes and be more specific about the kind of things that were done to you. I think if you are worried about the future, one of the best things to do is a little sunshine and tell the kind of tactics that were used against you personally, and hopefully, this will deter them to do that in the future, if you could. Ms. Aro. Of course. Thank you so much for the encouraging words. So, for example, over 300 articles in a fake news site, pro-Kremlin, Finnish-language site called--excuse me, my language--WTF paper, somewhat popular far-right neo-Nazi, pro- hate speech site. They have published around 300 articles in which they smear me as a paid NATO agent, paid America propagandist, brain damaged, drug user, that I am a threat to Finnish national security, that I work in cooperation with British and American troll armies. And they also post really nasty photos of my face, like manipulated horrible photos, and they even attack anyone who publicly supports me or even, you know, credits my work. They attack them as well. They smear them as well. They also have attacked the policemen who have investigated my case. They have attacked just, you know, anyone. They also cyber stalk me and my activities. In addition, for example, the police found in their investigations that someone, even my colleague within the Finnish Broadcasting Company, had been keeping an eye on me inside my workplace and then passed on that information about my job assignments as well as my job, you know, activities and my location to the main suspected stalker, who works for Putin's think tank in Moscow and who has been in charge of these operations. And, yes, so because also these operations have been international, I have also received death threats and shooting phone calls from Russian-speaking countries, because there are Russian smear articles against me. And, for example, I have been forced to leave Finland some years back just to, you know, try and make my investigative book about Russian trolls in peace. Mr. Keating. Actually you had to leave your home? Ms. Aro. Sorry? Mr. Keating. You had to leave your home? Ms. Aro. Yes. Mr. Keating. That is amazing. Have the authorities done much to help you in that regard? What is available? What was available to you to help you? Ms. Aro. Yes, they have definitely investigated my crime complaints very carefully and I believe they still continue to do so. But of course these court processes take time, and the trolls and propagandists and security services who run these operations, they take advantage of our longish justice system. Mr. Keating. Thank you for sharing that. I know it was not easy. Just quickly, Ambassador Fried and Dr. Kagan mentioned this in particular, and in a different way Mr. Kalensky did too. Reflecting on the U.S. situation, what I heard from your testimony was we are not as organized or centralized as we should be, that we are lacking in political will to deal with this, and there is further need of punishing or some kind of a response to this. Pretty disturbing reflections. We are out of time, almost. Can you just quickly, what could we do to improve this in our own country? Ambassador. Mr. Fried. The signals from the top of the U.S. administration should not be ambiguous. Mr. Keating. Let me be clear. When you say top of the administration---- Mr. Fried. The President. Mr. Keating. The President. Mr. Fried. Ambiguity is not helpful. There are a lot of people in the administration, political appointees and career people, who understand the problem and want to do the right thing. But in an atmosphere of, let us say, mixed signals, there is a natural disincentive for somebody to stand up and try to own the problem, to try to push forward difficult solutions. And regulatory solutions are going to be difficult. We are going to be bumping up against issues of free speech. And you need a collaborative, cooperative base from which to tackle them. It is possible. This is not an impossible problem to manage. It is impossible if your standard for solving it is 100 percent. But that need not be our standard. This is doable, but we have to go out and start doing it. Mr. Keating. I have gone over my time. I am sure some of the other witnesses will reflect that with the other questions of the members of the committee. I now recognize the ranking member for 5 minutes, Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, thank you all for being here. Ms. Aro, I just want to say that you are heroic in what you are doing. And I know that it is difficult, I know that it is not fun, and I know that the easiest thing to do would be to walk away and just say you did your peace. But I appreciate you being here and continuing to stand strong in the face of a really tiny man, as Dr. Kagan pointed out. Mr. Ambassador, you are correct, too, in talking about ambiguity. I think the reality is Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. We can have debates about, you know, what the result was of that, we may disagree on that, but there was no doubt there was interference. And it is going to happen to both parties eventually. It is all about creating instability. It is all about creating doubt. And it is something that we have to be very clear about, because lack of clarity leads to Dr. Kagan's point about, well, who knows what is true? And then if you are, ``Who knows what is true?'' you are, like, ``I will just watch, you know, whatever is on TV and not care,'' and still get fed this disinformation. So thank you all for your testimoneys. Dr. Kagan, I want to ask you about disinformation and any advantages or disadvantages we have. When we do Radio Free Europe, for instance, or Radio Free America, we tell the truth on that, and sometimes that truth is not pretty to our own system of governance. And telling the truth, I think, is the right thing. But that can be a disadvantage when Vladimir Putin puts out disinformation. So, yes, it is true that Vladimir Putin is tiny in stature, for instance, right, that is something important to know, that he is stealing money from his people, getting that information out there. But it is not true that Bashar al-Assad defends Christians and is the hero of Christian civilization, and Vladimir Putin is a defender of Christianity against radical Muslims, as we hear. He is just a violent man that wants power. So when it comes to us countering with our own information, what are disadvantages and advantages we have, and how do we do that better? Because again, if you put a disinformation campaign against a true information campaign, the disinformation is going to be more powerful. But we do not want to get in the lying game, either. So how do we do that? Mr. Kagan. Well, Congressman, I think you put your finger on a big part of the advantage that we have, which is actually the truth favors us. He has to tell lies in order to make anything look good for himself. He has an economy the size of Australia's, and it is not even a real economy. It is a kleptocracy, which is dysfunctional and which harms the Russian people. The Russian standard of living is dropping. Russian health is dropping. The demography is terrible. Russia is in a terrible, disastrous situation. That truth is an advantage for us. We, on the other hand, are a vibrant, thriving society with the largest economy in the world and great freedoms and the ability to have a lot of civil discord. That is a tremendous advantage for us. I think it comes down to how we tell our own story, and I think that we have been so focused on ripping each other apart that the message that we are sending to the world is that we are awful and that no one should copy us, no one should want to join us, no one should want to work with us. And I do not attribute that to any individual in government. I think it is across the board, the nature of our argumentation. So I think our advantage is the story that we actually have to tell. The disadvantage is the nature of our discourse buries that story. Mr. Kinzinger. Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. I mean, I look at we have not done a good job of selling our side. We assumed we won the cold war and that was it was 100 agreed that this was the best way of life. We can put up a $40 trillion economy between the United States and Europe versus 1.6 or 1.7 trillion dollar economy of Russia. But that does not sell it because Vladimir Putin uses ethnic tensions now, and ethnic tensions actually are more compelling than saying you get a new iPhone or you get a little bit more money. The reality is this is the best time to be alive. I mean, you have any information you want here. We are comfortable. The United States of America, at least, and most of Europe does not worry about an attack on a daily basis besides maybe a cyber attack. But yet we are more miserable than I think we have ever been in our life. And I think getting our heads around what we have and what we are and projecting that is how we won the cold war. It was not necessarily a military buildup. It was an idea war. That is how we are going to defeat radical terrorism, by giving an idea war to show what possibility lays out there. Ms. Aro, do you have anything to add to that? I only have 20 seconds left, but I want to give you a chance to add to the information side of that. You are good. I like that. All right. Well, with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, Ms. Wild. Ms. Wild. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Ambassador, I would like to direct my first question to you, and that is relative to the disinformation campaign that we know that took place here in the United States in 2016. And of course, we are coming up on a very important election again next year. In your view, what kind of Russian influence operations are currently operating in the United States? Mr. Fried. I think the Russian disinformation tactics are beginning to shift from ads and bots over to manipulated organic content and maybe in the direction of deepfake, artificial intelligence. And I mean by that that instead of making up stuff and posting it under an impersonation account, they are going to take genuine U.S. posts, blogs, tweets from radical groups, right, left, does not matter, and they are going to amplify them, and then use their sophisticated trolls to slip into that radicalized conversation and try to play both sides of an issue, the better to stimulate social tensions. Now, we do not have to search far. The Soviets used to do that, but they did it analog. It took weeks. Now it is done in minutes. But I think we are going toward manipulation of organic content rather than wholesale fabrication and then use of artificial intelligence, spreading around deepfakes. I think that is the cutting issue more than bots and ads. Ms. Wild. And do you have any sense of how the U.S. Government should work to guard against that kind of interference? Mr. Fried. Several levels. First, working to expose it. Sunlight is the great disinfectant. One of the great success stories of counter- disinformation was the French elections where European and American civil society groups exposed what the Russians were up to, and then the story became in France not what was stolen, not the stolen files and disseminated nasty information about the Macron campaign, but the fact of the Russian campaign. That was a successful example of turning back disinformation. So expose it, and then start working with social media companies so they stop acting as purveyors, unwitting purveyors of Russian intelligence operations. They are past denial of the problem; I will give them that. I think they want to be part of the solution, but they are going to need various forms of persuasion. And I was skeptical about regulation when I started looking at this issue before, but I think it is coming, and I think it probably should. I think that we and the Europeans ought to be working together to develop common standards. The democratic world, the free world needs to develop a common approach to this, and I think it can be done. Ms. Wild. And do you believe that the deterioration of our relationship with our allies adversely affects that kind of cooperation? Mr. Fried. It makes it a lot harder. Why on earth are we spending our political capital making theoretical fights against the European Union which was our idea in the first place? That is--pardon me--but that is nuts. They are our closest democratic partner. We together, we and the Europeans, form the core of the free world. Sure, the EU can be difficult to deal with. Well, so can the American government. That is irrelevant. We have a similar set of assumptions. We have a similar problem. The Finns, the Balts, the Poles, the Ukrainians, they have been telling us about this for years. Now we are in a position to listen. We ought to be working, making common cause with the Europeans. And the solution set of issues is not going to be that hard to find. There are problems in this world that are genuinely somewhere between difficult and impossible. This is not one of them. This is fixable. Ms. Wild. Ms. Aro, did you want to add something to that? Ms. Aro. Yes, please, about the kinds and types of disinformation campaigns targeted to the United States. There was last year a really interesting university research in which the researchers found that the Russian troll accounts on Twitter, which had previously been pushing pro- Russian and pro-Trump messages, they have started to push anti- vaccination messages to America, and you can just imagine the outcome of that. Ms. Wild. Yes. Thank you so much. I am out of time. I yield back. Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Missouri, the home of the Stanley Cup champions, and it pains me to say that, Mrs. Wagner. Mrs. Wagner. I thank the chairman. And you know I did not bring up the fact that my St. Louis Blues are, in fact, the NHL Cup winners, but over a certain Bruins team of Massachusetts. But very kind of you to acknowledge it, Mr. Chairman, very kind. And I thank you for organizing this hearing. And I thank you to our witnesses. Russia's capabilities in the information space cannot be underestimated. Russian disinformation activities run counter to our U.S. values and our interests, and we must prioritize efforts to counter Russian information warfare in coordination with our transatlantic partners. Mr. Kalensky, you mentioned Russia's attempts to, you said, launder information in order to obscure its source. What can the intelligence communities in the United States and Europe do to improve attribution, so to speak? Mr. Kalensky. I think for that, it is actually very useful if you have the first part of the four solutions I offered, and that is actually documenting the threat, because then you can always highlight that it was the Russian information space where the disinformation appeared. I come from a country where we have quite a pro-Kremlin President, and when the attack in Salisbury happened, the Russians tried to spread multiple versions, often contradicting, about the story. You could see after the murder of Boris Nemtsov, after shooting down MH 17, and it was the same after Salisbury, you try to spread contradicting versions of events because the aim is not to persuade about one version, but precisely so, as Dr. Kagan said, so that you end up like say: I do not know where the truth is. And one of the versions was that it was not only Russia who was the producer of novichok, the poison that was used there, but it was also Czech Republic. The Czech President was one of the first people to repeat that piece of disinformation. Suddenly you would see the Russian disinformation machine not saying it was us inventing the lie in the first place, but it was, as even the Czech President admitted, the Czechs produced novichok. The information was laundered. You have to monitor the information space very accurately so that you can say that actually, no, it was the Russians who came with the lie in the first place, we know it, and whoever parrots it is just multiplying Russian lie and is playing a useful idiot for the Russian disinformation machine. I think that is why we also need to be a bit more resolute in punishing the information aggressors. We have to call them out. We have to call out when someone acts as a useful idiot of Russian disinformation campaign and parrots its lies. Mrs. Wagner. Absolutely. Dr. Kagan, I agree that the United States needs to develop new structures and strategies to identify, expose, and disrupt these hybrid operations. This must include coordination with our NATO allies. How should the U.S. approach the development of a coherent, NATO-based response to hybrid threats? Mr. Kagan. Thank you, ma'am. It is important for us to do as much of this work as possible at the unclassified level and probably not in the intelligence community. Mrs. Wagner. Again, the sunlight, the transparency, needs to be seen by all. Mr. Kagan. Exactly. And as soon as you do it in the IC, then it is classified, and so forth. Mrs. Wagner. Right. Interesting. Mr. Kagan. In addition to that, if you are not aware of them, if you look into the restrictions on the IC's ability even to monitor publicly available information, a lot of people would be surprised at how hard it is for the IC to do that. So I think that this is something where governments need to facilitate interaction of civil society organizations. The computer algorithms to catch deepfakes are not going to be written by the government. They are being written by private industry, by individuals. The ability to track stories from one place to another, that is out there. It is a matter of encouraging the mobilization of civil society. And then what the government needs to do is to be--and the governments need to do--is to coordinate on our responses to these things. So what are we going to try to accomplish? We know that we have got the Russians cold on this, for example. Just pick any example you like. What are we going to do with that information to maximize the damage to the entire Russian disinformation campaign and to demonstrate to our own people that there is truth out there, that we can know what it is, and to defeat the ``who knows'' principle? Mrs. Wagner. Thank you. The IC part of this I think is very, very important. Ms. Aro, in my very limited time, what lessons should Western governments draw from Finland's programs to improve media literacy and public awareness regarding disinformation and influence operation, ma'am? Ms. Aro. Well, first and foremost, of course, everyone needs to make university education free for everyone as we have in Finland, but when that is not possible, then what was mentioned already before, the program of the Finnish Government, of training government officials to recognize and counter disinformation operations already at the very early stage, and 2014 has been a good example. Also, journalistic community has started to train school kids on their free time. They just visit schools and tell what is facts and what is fiction and how you separate the two. Mrs. Wagner. You have got to find the truth. Yes. Absolutely. Well, thank you, and thank you for your courage. Thank you all for being here today. I have gone past my time. I yield back to the chair. Thank you. Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair recognizes the vice chair of the committee, the gentlewoman from Virginia, Ms. Spanberger. Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much for being here today. My colleague Mrs. Wagner's comments raised for me this idea of recognizing what the real threat is. And so before I ask my question, Mr. Kalensky, from your testimony, you outline that researchers and journalists have identified pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns have occurred in the following elections: Scottish independence referendum, Ukrainian elections, Bulgarian local elections in 2015, Dutch referendums, Brexit referendum, Austrian Presidential elections, Italian constitutional referendum, French elections in 2017, German elections in 2017, Catalan referendum, Czech Presidential elections, Italian parliamentary elections, Macedonian name referendum, Ukrainian Presidential elections, Slovakian Presidential elections, European Parliament elections. And you note that this list is likely not exhaustive. I list through those because I think it is so vitally important that while we are focused on what has happened in the United States or some of the larger known efforts by the Russian Government to meddle in election and democracies, looking at that exhaustive list is incredibly important. But I would like to ask a question focused on the European response and specifically the European Union's Rapid Alert System. It was developed this year to facilitate communication among members relating to disinformation campaigns in their countries in order to coordinate their responses. The RAS is based on open source information and will also draw upon insights from academia, fact checkers, online platforms, and international partners. However, there are reports that have surfaced, including a recent article in The New York Times, that some countries are choosing not to participate and a number of potentially high profile alerts of Russia disinformation were not shared with the public or relevant organizations because of internal disagreement over the significance of this detected disinformation. In your opinion, what tools does the European Union's Rapid Alert System utilize to combat disinformation, and what is your assessment of the effectiveness of these mechanisms? Mr. Kalensky. I am a bit worried that the Rapid Alert System looks a bit better on paper than in reality. The European Union will always obviously praise the system in its public documents. It is the job of the communication experts there. But from my private conversations with government officials from various member State governments, I am a bit afraid that the system is not as effective as it probably should be. Most of the information there is actually from publicly available East StratCom documents and that the member States themselves are actually not putting in too much information. So if we have a Rapid Alert System that does not produce any alerts, I am not sure whether it is really a rapid alert system. I think what would really help would be if the system was made public, because then the journalists and the researchers and everybody could see what is being reported there and what is not being reported there. And I could ask my, you know, Czech authorities: How come you have not reported this case of Russian disinformation that even I know about? If there is not this public pressure, and the system is nontransparent, I am a bit afraid that we can read basically anything in the public documents, but we have no way to check it. And it is a bit of a paradox that part of the EU's anti- disinformation efforts is pushing the platforms to being more transparent, and yet this system for rapid alert is actually nontransparent and nonpublic. Ms. Spanberger. And in an effort to provide greater transparency, what would be some of the actual changes to the system that you all would recommend if we were looking at a system like that, how it could be effective, or how it could be made more effective? Mr. Kalensky. I think we could learn from the best examples we have in Europe, and again, I will come back to Lithuania, the Lithuanian armed forces. STRATCOM has trained most of the important stakeholders in the country, be it civil servants, government officials, but even local authorities. So, for example, when the Lisa case, I referred to in the written testimony, when it appeared it was the mayor of a small town alerting the armed forces STRATCOM that something like this has happened. So we have to get to a phase where even a mayor of a small-sized city somewhere, you know, in Alabama or Missouri will be aware of what Russian disinformation is, what topics it exploits, what it tries to achieve. So for that, the No. 2 solution I offered, raising the awareness about the threat, I think you can achieve that. If we would be able to see what is reported in the alert system, A, we would be alerted, which would be nice, and B, we would know what the authorities actually--I mean, where is the failure in their monitoring, what they do not see, and where we, for example, the civil society, what we can help them with. Because, as Dr. Kagan mentioned, sometimes exhaustive monitoring tasks are not extremely easy sometimes. The civil society might be even quicker than the government because, yes, the civil society is younger people, more tech savvy, and they might fulfill this task better than the government. Ms. Spanberger. And it is an interesting process where you create a circumstance where you are expecting people to be aware of it if they have the ability to report or they are looped into what the reports are. Thank you all for your time today. I yield back. Mr. Keating. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Burchett. Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and thank you all for being here. I am interested to hear your all's take on how the EU and NATO can respond to these disinformation campaigns, and specifically what the abilities they have to push back are. Just all of you all. Remember, I have got 5 minutes. I know you all like to talk. If you all can kind just make sure everybody gets to answer because I have another question to followup with. Mr. Fried. NATO has set up a Center of Excellence to counter disinformation in Riga, and there is a NATO-EU hybrid center set up in Helsinki. So there is some institutional capacity already existing. These centers can do two things. They can identify Russian disinformation operations and spread the word, hopefully more effectively than the EU system, but they may get up--I am hopeful that the EU system gets up to speed. Second, they can start targeting Russian bad actors. And when I know who the bad actors are, there are various ways we can go after them, including, by the way, through sanctions. So there is the beginning of an institutional capability. But if I had one wish, you know, a magic wand loaded with one wish, it would be transparency and the ability to expose in real time Russian disinformation ops. Mr. Kalensky. What you can see in the EU and in NATO, it is definitely some of the documenting of the threat and some raising the awareness about the threat. You could see it there. I would like to see more of punishing of the information aggressors. I think we should sanction more of the Russian so- called journalists because they are not journalists, they are just part of the Russian Army. And I find it horrific that you have a person called Vladimir Solovyov, he has a show two or three evenings per week. He uses it to spread hatred against the West in general or against its countries in particular. Mr. Burchett. Is he on CNN? Mr. Kalensky. Unfortunately, no. Mr. Burchett. OK. I was just throwing that out. Mr. Kalensky. And after the show, he sits on the plane and he enjoys his villas at Lago di Como. I do not think we should allow those who are trying to---- Mr. Burchett. Say that last sentence again. You lost me. I am from east Tennessee. You are going to have to slow it down. Mr. Kalensky. Lago di Como. That is an Italian lake, a very, very nice resort, a very nice touristic area. We should also sanction the companies. When you have a look at the list of advertisers on Russian State TV, you would see a lot of Western companies even in the highest positions. This quote ascribed to Vladimir Lenin said: Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. This is precisely what the Western companies are currently doing, those Western companies that are buying advertisement time on Russian TV. They are actually paying for destroying the West. Mr. Burchett. OK. One other question. Ma'am, maybe you would--tell me how you say your last name. Ms. Aro. Aro. Mr. Burchett. Aro? All right. You say it a lot better than I do. In your view, what are the most vulnerable European States to Russian disinformation campaigns? And what do you project to be the next electoral target? Ms. Aro. Well, I would say Balkans, which were already mentioned here, because many of these countries are--for example, Serbia is very fully engaged with different types of Russian projects. For example, they do military operations. And the Russian disinformation really much wants to tie them even more tightly together with Russian Federation. So they also have a lot of pro-Russian propaganda media, which other so-called traditional, normal, neutral journalists also follow and called for stories. So I would be really careful in addressing those regions, just like mentioned here before. Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir? Mr. Kalensky. In 2016, there was an article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, and the author said they got hold of a document that the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the domestic secret service, acquired, a document created for the Kremlin, ranking the European member States, European Union member States, according to their vulnerability to Russian propaganda. And the first three were countries on this list were Austria, Hungary, and Czech Republic. So that is for the most vulnerable countries. At the end of this list were the Nordic countries. Mr. Burchett. I am out of time. But if you all ever hear about them messing in the Second congressional District in Tennessee, I would sure like to know. Thank you all very much you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back to you, Brother. Thank you again. Mr. Keating. Well, thank you. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Nevada, Ms. Titus. Ms. Titus. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of you for being here. In addition to this committee, I serve on the House Democracy Partnership where we partner with legislatures in other countries with budding democracies, and a lot of those are in pretty hostile neighborhoods. Just this morning, we had a panel talking about some of the threats that authoritarianism is kind of posing for new democracies. Three of the countries there were Georgia, Ukraine, and North Macedonia. So you know they have been dealing with this for a long time. You have talked about some of the successes that we have seen Russia have. I would like to talk about some of the failures and see what we can learn from there. They tried messing in the election in Greece and in Macedonia over the name change to try to prevent Macedonia from moving forward with the NATO accession. They failed there. They failed perhaps in the French election last time around. What can we learn from where they failed? And is it legislative? Is it policy? Is it a difference in the media structure? And if it is the latter, what can we do maybe to try to change things here? Anybody? Everybody? Mr. Fried. The common element of the successes you cited was exposure of Russian disinformation campaigns in real time, and then the national media understanding the importance of talking about that, rather than the message the Russians were trying to push. This was successfully used in France, Greece. I think that the Germans turned back some disinformation operations that the Russians tried, trying to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. That is the first piece, expose it and disseminate the exposure. The second piece is longer term. It is to get societies to be more sophisticated about what they read. And that takes time, though, that is a generation. And we need to act in the here and now. Ms. Titus. And how can we possibly do that when people do not read anymore? Students do not read. They do not write. Everything comes out in 40 characters. Is this just a challenge to our whole educational system? Mr. Kagan. I think the issue is it does not matter whether we are teaching them how to read or not. It is a question of teaching people how to process information that they are receiving. It does not--the medium does not matter. And, in fact, in many respects, I am less worried--like many others--I am less worried about what they are doing in the text space than I am about deepfakes and various other things, because it is well documented that images are much more powerful. And talking someone around from a text story that they have read is a lot easier than getting an image--something that is taken in by an image, even if it is known to be fake. And so there is a larger issue here that really has nothing to do with the deplorable fact, and I agree with you, that people do not read anymore, but that really comes to how do we process and receive information that is presented to us in any form. Mr. Fried. I agree with that. And I would add that, therefore, the social media companies need to act--they need to up their game and not be used as the conveyer belts for what I think will be the future in disinformation ops, which is lurid, provocative, completely phony visual posts, videos of speeches that look like Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren but are not, that are completely fabricated. Ms. Titus. Or slowing down Speaker Pelosi's words? Mr. Fried. That was not an even good example. A good example is going to be something that looks exactly like a candidate, sounds like them, sounds like the kind of thing they could say, but is 100 percent fabricated. That could be disseminated within minutes, and social media companies that-- the regulatory framework that I am thinking about would require social media companies to have a check, especially when they discover that there is a foreign connection, which often is going to be technically feasible. Now, I do not want to drive it into the weeds. But you are asking exactly the right question. Ms. Titus. Thank you. Ms. Aro. Ms. Aro. I would like to contribute to listing the failures of the Kremlin. The Russian agents who operated here really widely in 2016, without any foreign agent registration in place, and tried to repel the Global Magnitsky Act, as well as smear Bill Browder, the human rights promoter and businessman, but they failed and basically ended up in the Mueller and other types of investigations. So that was one epic fail. Ms. Titus. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Keating. Thank you. I know that Ambassador Fried might be leaving in a few minutes. So when you do, we will take no offense. Hold in there until you can. And the chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for this hearing on Russian disinformation. I and my sons, daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren, have visited Russia a number of times. It is so impressive, the people, the beautiful countryside, the architecture, the literature, the art. That is why it is so sad, that Putin's abuse of such talented people, with a corrupt elite, is so sad. My first visit was actually to Moscow in 1990. It was the last year of the Soviet empire. And it was really inspiring to see the empire disappear, to be replaced by hopefully a more modern society, but that did not necessarily occur. And then I had the opportunity, with the National Endowment for Democracy, to lecture to different youth groups across Siberia. And it was incredible to appear as we, on an expressway, came to Novosibirsk, and there was a sign in English welcoming everyone to the Chicago of Siberia. And then I had the opportunity to lead a delegation to St. Petersburg to place a wreath at the cemetery, on behalf of the American people, to show our love and affection for the hundreds of thousands of people in the mass grave who had been murdered by the Nazi siege. And so, again, see what an extraordinary city, St. Petersburg. And then I was grateful to participate with Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia, South Carolina, to visit Chelyabinsk, Russia, which is the sister city of Columbia, South Carolina. And so you would not anticipate all of this, but the reason I review these associations is because my view is that the American people are not anti-Russian, but they certainly hope the best for the citizens of Russia for a positive change. With all of this in mind, Dr. Kagan, Ambassador Fried, in your view, what are the most vulnerable European States to Russian disinformation? Mr. Fried. Ukraine used to be, but in a possible other epic Russian failure, Ukrainian patriotism has crystallized in a pro-Western, pro-American direction, which otherwise might not have been possible. Nevertheless, they are vulnerable because they are under attack. I think Hungary, Czech Republic are vulnerable for the reasons that Mr. Kalensky mentioned. I think Poland less so. I think Serbia is still vulnerable to Russian disinformation operations. The legacy of the NATO operations and break-up of Yugoslavia weighs heavily. But we have also found that countries you would not expect to be vulnerable to Russian disinformation ops have had them in their countries. Spain, around the Catalonia referendum; the U.K. as it turns out, with Brexit. And we do not know where the Russians are going to pop up. But the countries I mentioned come to mind. Mr. Wilson. Dr. Kagan. Mr. Kagan. I agree with the list of vulnerabilities. I would like to put a couple of other countries on the list. The issue is a little less how vulnerable they might be than how desirable a target they are to the Russians. We have not spoken about Moldova, but Moldova is in the midst of a major political crisis at the moment, and where it ultimately lands on the pro-Russia or pro-West trajectory is very much up in the air. The Russians are playing massively in that space. Virtually no one in the West is paying any attention at all. And it matters a lot for all sorts of reasons, including there is still a Russian military presence in Moldova held over from the Soviet days. Latvia is very concerning to me, not because I think that the Latvians themselves are vulnerable, but the Russian minority in Latvia is vulnerable to manipulation. And as part of a hybrid war approach, that could be an immediate problem, huge problem for NATO. I am very concerned about Latvia in particular among the Baltic States, although they are all at risk. Even Belarus. We do not really imagine Belarus as ever being in play, because it is so much in the Russian orbit. But there is a gambit that Putin seems to be engaged in to try to warp Belarus so fully back into the Russian orbit that it basically recreates a single State of the two entities. And the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War has actually hypothesized that that is potentially one way in which he could imagine dealing with a constitutional problem he has as his term ends, ostensibly without ability to run again, he could theoretically make himself President of this new organization. And there is a weird degree of small, little pushback in Belarus against this, which might be worth paying attention to. And in two countries, which in principle are not hugely vulnerable, but I think will be massive targets, are Germany, because the question of who succeeds Angela Merkel will determine the fate of Europe, if you want to really be hyperbolic about it. But it is not all that hyperbolic; it really matters a lot. And so I see that Putin will for sure be all over that. And the U.K. The opportunities to continue to sow discord and advance nationalist agendas, look at the Irish question, various other things, there are a lot of opportunities there that I think Putin will be aggressive about taking advantage of. Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much. And we appreciate you and your wife. Thank you very much. Mr. Keating. The chair recognizes the ranking member for any closing statement you might have. Mr. Kinzinger. I have no closing statement except to thank again the witnesses for being here and all your great work. And hopefully we can all together, you know, do something of action instead of just talking. So thank you very much for being here. Mr. Keating. I also want to thank you. It was tremendous testimony, important testimony, not only for our allies in Europe, but for lessons learned that we should take home here. We certainly learned that from the top down, from the President, as Ambassador Fried said, we need clarity, focus, no ambiguity whatsoever. We are under attack. Our intelligence community has been clear. Experience in Europe has taught us that. We have to organize better in this country. There has been testimony about how to centralize this effort into one agency. We are fragmented, frankly. Whether it is Homeland Security, whether it is our intelligence groups and agencies, there should be, I believe--and I think it was great testimony--a greater central focus on this. And we need a strong political will as well. And that means, to the extent that we can, less infighting among our parties and among different views within our own parties. I think it is important and it has been emphasized how difficult but important social media is from the private side to engage in this, as well as a free and vibrant press, free from intimidation and threats. And making sure they are backed up in that regard. In the absence of all of this, I agree with Ambassador Fried, and some of you, there could be results in more sanctions, to put teeth into our actions, and reluctantly in the difficult task of regulation. So these are all things that we have to consider. In this closing statement, I have recognized one more member who has come. And, if we could, we will recognize Mr. Costa from California for 5 minutes to conclude this hearing. Thank you. Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And this was an important hearing with some very good witnesses. And I appreciated very much getting their insight on what is continuing to be a very vexing issue with the Russians' interference not only in our elections, but in Europe, what is obviously part of a comprehensive effort that Putin and his team have been planning on for Western democracies. To what extent on the Russian disinformation that we have discussed here this afternoon draw upon and amplify on anti- Semitism and other forms of prejudices, in your view? Mr. Kalensky. As I was trying to describe in the written testimony, it is always about finding the most pulsating weakness that the particular, that the given audience might have. And in some audiences, it might be anti-Semitism. So, yes, in some audiences you would find that the anti-Semitic remarks are being played. If I am not mistaken, it was nice research by Kate Starbird from University of Washington in Seattle, where she was looking at which accounts and which sites were pushing the lies about White Helmets. And she found out that very often they were obviously pro-Russian, or almost in all cases. But she even found out that you would find there aggressively pro-Zionistic websites, but also aggressively anti-Semitic websites. So it is always about playing both parts of the extreme, because if you manage to play both parts of the extreme, you will have a more polarized discussion, more hysterical, less rational. And less rational people are more vulnerable to disinformation. Mr. Costa. Well, and you are playing upon the populism and the nationalism that is taking place not only in this country, but in Europe as well. And a lot of that deals with not only the misinformation that is rampant, but also the fact that a lot of people are relying on social media to get their information, which I think is part of the problem when we look at the totality of what we are dealing with here. Mr. Kalensky. Sometimes. But, you know, sometimes I have a feeling, especially here in the United States, that the importance of social media is a bit overemphasized. And, for example, in the country where I come from, you have a huge group that is not present on social media, and yet they consume heavily polarized and disinformation messages, for example, via chain emails. And you would really have half of Europe and half of Europe's pensioners consuming information via this channel. They are not on Twitter, they are not on Facebook, and they do not turn on the TV news because everybody is lying. Mr. Costa. Yes. Well, has there been any, either among either of you or with other efforts that we are trying to get a handle on this, a collection of information that tries to measure to what success these disinformation campaigns have had success in elections or the impacts of these campaigns? And how much evidence do we have regarding the Russian efforts on the spread of disinformation like in the Brexit vote? Mr. Kalensky. That is, again, part of the trouble. We do not actually research this enough. There are not enough people focusing on the topic. I am aware of---- Mr. Costa. Would that be something that you think that this committee should look at in a separate piece of legislation of trying to collect and gather that data, that information? Mr. Kalensky. I believe---- Mr. Costa. Yes, if you would like to respond, please. Ms. Aro. I am sorry. Yes, definitely. I also proposed in my written statement that because part of the problem is really that we do not even--at the moment, we do not even know what kind of operations we are targeted to. We might know in 2 years, when someone starts to really investigate them. But we should address and counter these operations while they are ongoing, because they take effect like that. Mr. Costa. So, Mr. Chairman, this is something that I think we should try to look into, I mean, to measure this. We have all of this work, and we should probably sit down with you folks to get that. Finally, my time is expiring, but I guess the--as chairman of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue, I know our European colleagues are as concerned about this as we are. And to what effect do you think that they had on the most recent parliamentary elections that just finished in May in the EU? Do we have any idea? Mr. Kalensky. How impactful were the operations? Mr. Costa. Yes. Mr. Kalensky. Unfortunately, again, we do not have the measure. So what we saw, for example, from the data of the East StratCom Task Force, the team where I used to work, their numbers show that the amount of disinformation cases in 2019, before the elections, has actually doubled compared to the same period in 2018. There were two times more disinformation cases that the StratCom unit has identified. So you would see that there was probably more--more of disinformation, more disinformation messages. But measuring the impact, this is unfortunately a thing that not too many government agencies are doing, as far as I know. For example, I know about a very nice book by Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson from University of Pennsylvania about cyber war and about the effect that the Russian disinformation operations had on the U.S. elections. Unfortunately, you would not see that many investigations in Europe. Mr. Costa. Well, Mr. Chairman, my time has run out. I want to thank you for calling this hearing. And maybe this is something that, with your subcommittee, we could work together with our European counterparts to really take a deep dive in trying to measure what really is taking place, both here and Europe, in a way in which we could use it to protect ourselves from further elections--in future elections. Mr. Keating. Great. Thank you. This will be a continuation of those efforts. I am just reminded as we close that Russia and the things that they have done, these attacks, are like bullies. And many times bullies cannot build themselves up. If they cannot stand on their own success and merits, they have to tear others down. And that is what is happening with the Russian leadership. It is certainly not the case with the Russian people. I believe that today's hearing, I hope, will help the U.S. and the West work together and make sure that we realize this threat and that we address it as successfully as we can. And that means working together to address that threat. So I want to thank you for a very important hearing, and we will continue on this together. With that, I adjourn the hearing. [Whereupon, at 3:54 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] APPENDIX [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] [all]