[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]








  THE GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER: HELPING OR HURTING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 25, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-56

                               __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs




    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]






Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov, 
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                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
                 
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                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                   MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking 
JOE WILSON, South Carolina               Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
DARRELL ISSA, California
ANN WAGNER, Missouri
BRIAN MAST, Florida
KEN BUCK, Colorado
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
ANDY BARR, Kentucky
RONNY JACKSON, Texas
YOUNG KIM, California
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, 
    American Samoa
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
JIM BAIRD, Indiana
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York
CORY MILLS, Florida
RICH MCCORMICK, Georgia
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas
JOHN JAMES, Michigan
KEITH SELF, Texas

                                     BRAD SHERMAN, California
                                     GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
                                     WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
                                     AMI BERA, California
                                     JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
                                     DINA TITUS, Nevada
                                     TED LIEU, California
                                     SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
                                     DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
                                     COLIN ALLRED, Texas
                                     ANDY KIM, New Jersey
                                     SARA JACOBS, California
                                     KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
                                     SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK, 
                                         Florida
                                     GREG STANTON, Arizona
                                     MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
                                     JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
                                     JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
                                     SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
                                     JIM COSTA, California
                                     JASON CROW, Colorado
                                     BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois

                    Brendan Shields, Staff Director

                    Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
                                 ------                                

              Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability

                       BRIAN MAST, Florida, Chair
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            JASON CROW, Colorado, Ranking 
DARRELL ISSA, California                 Member
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
CORY MILLS, Florida
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas

                                     DINA TITUS, Nevada
                                     COLIN ALLRED, Texas
                                     ANDY KIM, New Jersey
                                     SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK, 
                                         Florida
                                     MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania

                     Parker Chapman, Staff Director
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                            C O N T E N T S

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                                                                   Page

                               WITNESSES

KIMMAGE, DANIEL, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY COORDINATOR, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT 
  CENTER.........................................................     8

                                APPENDIX

Hearing Notice...................................................    32
Hearing Minutes..................................................    33
Hearing Attendance...............................................    34

            RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Responses to questoions submitted for the record.................    35

 
  THE GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER: HELPING OR HURTING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

                      Wednesday, October 25, 2023

                          House of Representatives,
                      Subcommittee on Oversight and
                                    Accountability,
                      Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:06 p.m., in 
room 210, House Visitor Center, Hon. Brian Mast (chairman of 
the subcommittee) presiding.
    Mr. Mast. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability 
will come to order. The purpose of this hearing is to examine 
the purpose and the priorities of the GEC's operations as well 
as provide an opportunity to evaluate whether the work the GEC 
and its partners do today align with its mission and the U.S. 
foreign policy. I now recognize myself for an opening 
statement.
    Let's see here. We will get there eventually. There is a 
lot of procedure in this book. I always hate sitting up here so 
far away from you all. It seems very elitist. I think I have 
said that before. We are going to work to sit down there closer 
to everybody else.
    So as I mentioned, today the Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Accountability will examine the Global Engagement Center, or 
GEC, and its successes, its failures, and questions about 
weaponization.
    GEC's mission statement reads in part that it seeks to 
counter foreign, State, and non-State propaganda and 
disinformation efforts aimed at undermining the stability of 
the United States, its allies and partner nations. And we are 
here today to determine whether or not that mission is being 
fulfilled. And we look forward to you answering questions about 
that.
    On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel with a 
single goal, inflict as much pain and incite as much horror 
onto the civilian population as possible. Entire families were 
burned alive. An unborn baby was cut from its mother's womb. A 
Holocaust survivor, in her wheelchair, was dragged out of her 
home as a hostage.
    On October 7, Israel was thrust into a war for its very 
existence with rockets launched from Gaza Strip and Hezbollah 
fighters trading fire on the northern border. Israel is locked 
in battles on a number of fronts, but the Israeli people are 
facing another battle worldwide, and that is anti-Semitism and 
fake news from international institutions and major news 
outlets, including some in the United States of America.
    Look no further than October 17 when a rocket hit the Al-
Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. Almost immediately, the Hamas run 
Ministry of Health claimed that it was a gross act of war 
crimes by Israel that cost 500 civilians their lives. Rather 
than fact checking the story, news outlets, including the New 
York Times and the Associated Press, were entirely willing to 
take the terrorists' talking points and amplify them to the 
hundreds of millions of people.
    Headlines blared that Israel strikes hundreds in hospital. 
That's what Palestinians said. Here is the problem. Hamas was 
lying. And according to preliminary conclusions by our own 
Pentagon, the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic 
Jihad rocket misfire. In fact, mounting evidence even shows 
that not only was there little to no structural damage done to 
the hospital, that it was in a parking lot that was hit by 
debris from the rocket.
    Outlets like the New York Times did eventually post 
retractions, but the reputational and political damage was 
done. Violent protests and riots broke out at our embassies 
across the region. More protests with liberal hot spots here at 
home erupted overnight. Hamas leadership called for a global 
day of rage. Even the President's peacekeeping efforts were 
halted as a result.
    Jordanian leadership refused to meet with him because of 
what was going on with global media and propaganda. Those on 
the left consistently claim that words can cause violence, 
well, here's a very prime example of that prediction coming 
true.
    This single example of disinformation led to the 
condemnation of the United States of America and Israel and the 
heightened likelihood of multinational conflict, very real 
consequences. In my opinion, this story is exactly the type of 
disinformation the State Department anti-propaganda body should 
be focused on countering, but I have questions about whether it 
saw this coming.
    Even if we give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that 
GEC was involved behind the scenes offering support to the 
Pentagon and other agencies, the State Department's anti-
disinformation apparatus has failed to quickly and publicly 
counter blatant disinformation. In many cases, this case 
highlights the problem that I have with GEC, Mr. Kimmage. We 
know very little about the day-to-day operations.
    According to an OIG report, GEC's leadership was ``unable 
to determine whether it was meeting its strategic goals and 
objective to counter State sponsored disinformation.'' We will 
want answers on that.
    If GEC isn't countering real-time disinformation that is 
damaging one of our greatest allies, what is it focused on? A 
few examples that we can point to seem to form a problematic 
pattern.
    GEC has issued grants to organizations that labeled 
Alexander Hamilton's New York Post one of the riskiest outlets 
and another that had a hand in content moderation practices 
that targeted conservatives online. It has backed ``independent 
fact checking organizations'' that are actually supported by 
left wing billionaires.
    In the next year, this committee will decide whether or not 
GEC should be reauthorized. At this moment, we will determine 
what the problems are, if there are solutions to fixing any of 
those problems, and whether they should be reauthorized.
    The first problem that I see is actually fulfilling your 
mission to counter disinformation from foreign sources. I do 
not believe that you've adequately in your statement quantified 
your success in doing so.
    The second problem that I want addressed, areas where you 
should be involved and may be perceived not to be involved in 
at this time, as I gave the example of Hamas and Israel.
    The third place that I have concern, there seem to be some 
operating in your office that are not as interested in 
fulfilling the mission statement, but are interested in 
weaponizing taxpayer resources in order to undercut media 
outlets and individuals who have a particular point of view.
    Mr. Kimmage, we have spoken, and I have read your opening 
statement. And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with 
me.
    I do not feel that the answers to all of those questions 
were in the opening statement that you wrote, your letter to 
us.
    I need you to convince us that GEC should be reauthorized. 
I need to hear about how GEC tangibly measures success, how it 
oversees its partners to ensure that it isn't perpetuating 
disinformation in other places, and what it does to prevent 
disastrous foreign propaganda on a daily basis.
    The onus is on you to change my mind. So I would encourage 
you to take a moment, think about your opening remarks, as my 
colleague will be giving his opening remarks. And do not just 
read us what you wrote to us, but please give us answers to the 
questions that we have for you so that we can have a very real 
and true understanding of the work that is being done, whether 
it is to counter our adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, 
Hamas, or any other. And with that, I thank you for bearing 
with me.
    Let's go back to the script here. I am now going to 
recognize my colleague here for an opening statement of however 
long you choose to make your opening statement.
    Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman. And I will spare you all and 
make this a short one so we can get into the important work of 
having a discussion that the chairman outlined.
    I want to thank you, Mr. Kimmage, for coming here today and 
offering insights into the very important work of the Global 
Engagement Center that is doing its part in the counter 
propaganda and disinformation from Iran, China, Russia, and 
many other adversaries.
    Your involvement with the Global Engagement Center spans 
most of its existence, and as such you have seen the 
organization evolve as congressional mandates have changed.
    And I know your testimony will help us understand how the 
Engagement Center's work strengthens our national security, 
counters these adversaries' false narratives, and shines light 
on their malign behaviors.
    Now I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the unique 
context in which we hold this hearing. Iran's proxy, Hamas, has 
conducted the deadliest terror attack in Israel's history and 
engaged in extreme brutality against innocent civilians.
    One of our challenges now is preventing the spread of this 
terror and this conflict into a broader Middle East war. And a 
large part of that effort is around countering disinformation 
and misinformation.
    At the same time, China continues to undermine peace and 
stability in the Indo-Pacific and around the world by spreading 
its malign influence and engaging in provocative behavior 
against our partners.
    In Russia's illegal war against the people of Ukraine, it 
is now entering its 21st month. In each of these contexts, our 
adversary's propaganda machine play a key part in keeping the 
world divided and obfuscating their true actions and intentions 
and straining our partnerships and alliances, undermining our 
policy, our security, and our stability. For those our partners 
are our allies, and it is an undeniable goal of our 
adversaries' efforts.
    The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit, 
founded by Congress on a bipartisan basis, is one of the tools 
we use to stem the tide of this disinformation wave. Support 
for the Global Engagement Center has, and continues to be, 
bipartisan. Although its current mandate expires at the end of 
2024, House and Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans have 
supported repeated attempts to extend this mandate over the 
last few years.
    Any glimpse at news headlines today makes it clear that it 
is not the time to take an important bipartisan tool to counter 
authoritarian and terrorist disinformation off the table.
    There are a handful of critical national security concerns 
that should be the focus of today's hearing, including Iranian 
propaganda, undermining our security and that of our most 
important ally in the Middle East, sophisticated information 
operations by China, which is the pacing threat of our time 
across the Indo-Pacific, Europe, Africa, and our own backyard, 
Russia's disinformation campaign propping up its war in Ukraine 
and aiming to divide the United States from our allies and 
partners in support of Ukraine.
    Bipartisan oversight of ways to address foreign malign 
efforts like these are both possible and necessary. What we 
should not do at this time is chase conspiracy theories or 
pursue unsubstantiated allegations that will be 
counterproductive and undermine our efforts to do this 
important work.
    Now Mr. Kimmage, many of my colleagues will have good 
substantive questions about how the Global Engagement Center's 
work serves U.S. interests, making sure we do our duty, our 
mutual duty of oversight, to be good stewards of the American 
taxpayer dollar.
    So I look forward to your answers on these questions 
because the American people do need to know what it is you do 
and why it's important, how we are succeeding, but also ways in 
which we are falling short because there are never instances in 
which any unit, any agency or department fulfills all of its 
missions. There are always challenges.
    So let's have a real discussion about what those are and 
what we can do as Members of Congress to help support that 
mission, which is essential to our mutual interest.
    So thank you again for your time and for being here today 
and with that, I yield back.
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Crow. Other members of the 
committee are reminded that opening statements made be 
submitted for the record. We are pleased to have a 
distinguished witness before us today on this important topic.
    Mr. Daniel Kimmage is the principal deputy coordinator of 
the Global Engagement Center. While serving in this role, he 
had led efforts designed to counterterrorist recruitment and 
State sponsored propaganda and disinformation. Your public 
service career includes a number of State Department positions, 
including uncovering counterterrorism issues for the Office of 
Policy Planning and as a principal deputy coordinator of the 
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.
    I want to thank you for being here today. I got to learn a 
little bit about you in a conversation this morning. A fluid 
Arabic speaker so please do not speak to us in Arabic because 
we probably will not understand much of what you're saying. But 
I want to thank you for being here today.
    Your full statement will be made a part of the record, and 
I will ask you to keep your spoken remarks to 5 minutes. But if 
you are saying really important stuff that we need to hear, I 
can tell you that I'm not going to cut you off. And after that, 
we will allow time for member questions. I now recognize you 
for an opening statement, sir.

  STATEMENT OF DANIEL KIMMAGE, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY COORDINATOR, 
                    GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER

    Mr. Kimmage. Chairman Mast, Ranking Member Crow, members of 
the subcommittee, I would like to thank you for this 
opportunity to testify on the work of the Global Engagement 
Center.
    The malign influence of foreign adversaries is a growing 
threat. It must be an integral part of our national security 
policy to confront the Nation's nefarious actors that seek to 
undermine our interests and values with information 
manipulation.
    The GEC's mission is to lead our government's response to 
the threat posed by foreign malign influence actors overseas. 
It starts with coordination.
    We work closely with our colleagues at the State 
Department, the White House, the intelligence community, and 
Department of Defense to make sure that we use the full 
spectrum of our capabilities.
    We engage with allies and like-minded partners to push back 
effectively against State and non-State actors that want to 
undermine the way of life that democratic nations have fought 
to protect and preserve.
    Recent events have reminded us that terrorism continues to 
threaten our security. We must remain vigilant to the spread of 
toxic propaganda by violent extremist groups like Hamas, 
Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.
    I would like to share with you an example of our work on 
counterterrorism. In 2020, we learned that ISIS Amir al-Mawla 
had been in U.S. detention. While detained, he provided 
actionable information about his fellow terrorists. We worked 
with interagency colleagues to declassify the tactical 
interrogation reports.
    We developed a plan to publicize them. We executed the 
plan. And we tracked the results. We recorded a measurable 
shift in perceptions as the leader of ISIS lost credibility 
with some supporters.
    The State Department's Rewards for Justice Program 
generated a fourfold increase in priority tips when it 
referenced the declassified reports.
    To sum-up, the GEC lead a successful campaign to discredit 
the leader of ISIS.
    Of course, our primary focus is on strategic competition 
with Russia and the People's Republic of China. Last month, the 
GEC released the first public U.S. Government report detailing 
the PRC's efforts to reshape the global information 
environment.
    Our report starts with a simple premise. Every country has 
the right to tell its story to the world, but that story must 
stand or fall on its own merits.
    The PRC uses deception and coercion to promote its national 
narrative. Beijing is gaining overt and covert influence over 
content and platforms. It is constraining global freedom of 
expression, and it is building a community of digital 
authoritarians. Our report documents this comprehensively and 
convincingly. It has garnered worldwide attention since we 
released it last month.
    We have every reason to believe that it will inform and 
embolden our partners and allies as they, too, confront the 
PRC's aggressive push into the information domain. This 
tangibly advances America's effort to compete with the PRC.
    Malign influence is at the core of Russia's national 
security strategy. President Putin has created a virtual 
Potemkin village to hoodwink his own people and deceive the 
rest of the world. We call out this disinformation. We give our 
partners and allies the tools they need to do the same. And we 
actively support Ukraine against Russian aggression.
    In 2020, we publicly exposed a network of proxy media 
operations, some supported by the Kremlin security services. 
Public scrutiny made their lives harder. The editor of one 
proxy website later described the impact as devastating.
    Technology is central to the issue of information 
manipulation. It is part of how our adversaries try to attack 
us, how we defend ourselves, and how we retake the initiative.
    GEC-IQ is an information sharing and analytics platform 
with collaborative tools, a centralized data source, and a 
research library. It links the U.S. Government and key 
international partners so that we can be more effective 
together.
    We follow the latest vulnerabilities and opportunities 
associated with artificial intelligence. We hold tech 
challenges to find and support innovators. Most recently, we 
did this last month in Cote d'Ivoire. The GEC is the only part 
of the U.S. Government with a congressional mandate to lead 
U.S. efforts to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation 
abroad.
    It has had its current mission for a little more than 5 
years. It has had some growing pains, but it has also had real 
successes as I've noted here and looked forward to explaining 
in greater detail in this hearing.
    We must ensure that the United States does not fall behind 
our adversaries and competitors as they seek to manipulate the 
global information environment for corrupt and coercive 
purposes.
    There is no substitute for Congress' continued support for 
the GEC and its mission. We are eager to build on what we've 
achieved as we safeguard our Nation's security and advance its 
interests.
    Thank you again for this opportunity. I look forward to 
answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Kimmage follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, sir. I now recognize myself for 5 
minutes of questioning. One of the GEC's focus areas, as you 
spoke about, I think all of us have spoken about so far, is 
extremist terrorist groups. And let's continue to use the 
Israel, Hamas, Palestinian conflict as the example.
    In advance of this, was GEC working to produce products to 
counter, to perceive that Hamas might conduct such 
disinformation campaigns, like what we saw with the hospital, 
or to counter such disinformation campaigns, like what we've 
seen with the hospital under any attack that might take place 
or propaganda campaign that might take place?
    Mr. Kimmage. So the Global Engagement Center for years has 
tracked extremist organizations like Hamas in how they seek to 
distort events to promote their narrative----
    Mr. Mast. Can I pause you a second?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure.
    Mr. Mast. When you say like Hamas, do you mean terrorist-
like organizations or are you literally saying Hamas?
    Mr. Kimmage. I mean, designated violent extremist 
organizations, including Hamas. Our primary focus----
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, including Hamas.
    Mr. Kimmage [continuing]. Including Hamas, our primary 
focus has been on ISIS and Al Qaeda We have looked at these 
groups how they try to manipulate the information around to 
advance their narrative. What are the tools and techniques they 
use? What are the platforms they use? What are the specific 
campaigns that they use?
    Now we are not an intelligence organization so we are not 
part of the intelligence community looking at what groups are 
going to plan. But we do have a broad familiarity with the 
types of techniques that they use.
    We have worked with partners for years to give them the 
tools to push back against those narratives. We have, in the 
broader context of Iranian proxy organizations and of Iran's 
disinformation and propaganda, we have worked to dispose the 
divisive and destructive influence of Iran in the region and 
particularly for Arabic speaking target audiences.
    Mr. Mast. So is that a yes you do have a Hamas product that 
we could read?
    Mr. Kimmage. I do not know that we have a specific Hamas 
product that you can read. I will ask our analytics and 
research folks to go back through their reports to see if there 
is anything.
    We have been, since the beginning of this crisis, doing 
daily monitoring. We have been producing both contributions to 
the State Department's situation reports. We have produced a 
spot report. We are working closely with our colleagues in the 
inter-agency, including the Department of Defense and the 
intelligence community. And we have shifted resources so that 
we can use cutting edge technology to identify the best 
approaches to undermining Hamas' specific narratives in the 
region.
    Mr. Mast. And from my understanding previously and from our 
conversation earlier, which thankfully I appreciate you 
educating me on some things I didn't know, helping clear things 
up, in part you worked through a number of third-party 
organizations. It is fair to call those grant recipients? Would 
that be a fair characterization of them?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. Some of them receive grants. We work 
with third-parties because the U.S. Government is almost never 
the most credible or effective communicator with the target 
audiences we need to reach.
    So, yes, we use grants, but we can also provide technical 
training. We can provide sort of networking experience to link 
different partners. Grants are only one of the tools in the 
toolbox. But we work very broadly with partners because that 
is, in the end, the most effective way for us to get to the 
countering part of our mission.
    Mr. Mast. What's your budget for third-party organization 
funding?
    Mr. Kimmage. Our budget for third-party organization 
funding has been roughly 30 percent or so of our $60 million 
budget. It is more in Fiscal Year 1923 because of money we 
receive through the Ukraine supplemental. And so it's in the I 
would say low tens of millions across the board, and I would be 
happy to get you specific figures.
    Mr. Mast. Have you given us a list of the third-party 
organizations that you've worked through?
    Mr. Kimmage. I do not know that we've provided a full list, 
but we've be more than happy to provide more information in a 
closed setting.
    Let me just be clear that we're dealing with adversaries 
like Russia, like Iran, that have very aggressively targeted 
critics of those regimes. We need to be mindful of the security 
of our partners that are operating in dangerous conditions in 
some cases. So we would be very happy to sit down and go into 
more significant detail on our partnerships in a closed 
setting.
    Mr. Mast. Very good. I am going to yield to my colleague, 
Mr. Crow, here for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Kimmage. Can 
you tell me in the time that you've been with the Global 
Engagement Center--well, let's actually narrow the time down. 
Let's not say the whole time. Let's just say in the last 2 
years, how has the information environment changed?
    Mr. Kimmage. Thank you. The information environment is 
always becoming more dynamic. The information environment most 
recently has been, I would say, rocked by advances in 
artificial intelligence. That's something that we track very 
closely. It's the reason we have a very active technology 
engagement program.
    But what I would really flag in the last 2 years is an 
increasing alignment among the main adversaries, what I would 
call sort of the axis of blame America first.
    So if we look at Russia, Iran, and the People's Republic of 
China, they all share an objective of undermining and weakening 
the United States, of reducing our global prestige of broadly 
speaking, blaming America first in every crisis.
    They often have similar narratives. We initially saw this 
in the global pandemic. We have seen this in Russia's 
aggression on Ukraine and more recently in the last 2 weeks, we 
have seen this in the crisis in the Middle East wherein----
    Mr. Crow. So increasing coordination between Russia, China, 
and Iran on these messages?
    Mr. Kimmage. I would be careful with the word coordination 
because it is not entirely clear what is happening behind the 
scenes, but we certainly are seeing alignment of messages and 
messaging.
    We are seeing alignment of some of their platforms. The PRC 
has invested billions of dollars in global media properties. 
Russia has a very extensive network not just of state-funded 
media, but also proxies, troll farms, various mechanisms for 
influencing the information environment. Iran has its own 
smaller, but very active ecosystem. We have seen----
    Mr. Crow. Can you tell me--I'm just going to move along 
here.
    Mr. Kimmage. Yes.
    Mr. Crow. Can you tell me on the AI front, whether the 
Engagement Center is structured and resourced? That it has the 
technology to address that in the way that you would like to. 
And if not, what do you need to address that effectively?
    Mr. Kimmage. So we have a very active analytics and 
research team that is deeply engaged on questions of artificial 
intelligence. We are looking both at the vulnerabilities that 
it creates. We are looking at some of the opportunities it may 
create. We have, I would say, two or three people who are 
focused exclusively on this issue. We are bringing on more 
people to do this. I think that we are well positioned right 
now on the issue of AI. We are very plugged in.
    Mr. Crow. What does that mean?
    Mr. Kimmage. What I mean by that is that we have people 
with the right expertise to be looking at the vulnerabilities 
and opportunities. We are talking to people in the Office of 
Science and Technology Policy for example in the Office of 
Cyber and Digital Policy in the State Department.
    So I think we have the right connections and some of the 
right expertise to be involved in this issue, yes.
    Mr. Crow. OK. So there's the qualitative element to the 
information space, but there is the quantitative element. And I 
travel a lot on these congressional delegations when we visit 
embassies, when we visit foreign partners.
    Across the board, they all tell us that they are just 
getting overwhelmed in the information space. Just 
quantitatively, it is 20 to 1 in terms of the messaging. Can 
you just briefly describe the quantitative overwhelming 
challenge that we face and how we address that?
    Mr. Kimmage. So here, if I said we are relatively well-
positioned in terms of expertise on artificial intelligence, we 
also are dealing with a deluge of information. We are coping 
with the enormous amounts of output from the propaganda 
mechanisms of Russia, the PRC, and others.
    So there is the output. There is the data piece of this to 
understand how the environment is being shaped by others. I 
would say that we are also coping with this. It is an enormous 
challenge because you have both the dynamism of the environment 
and the volume of the information. So, yes, you have identified 
one of the primary challenges we face.
    Mr. Crow. So I have this test that I call the bar stool 
test. And when we are talking about complicated issues, I 
pretend that I am sitting on a bar stool with a beer telling 
one of my friends who has no idea what's happening in 
Washington, DC. and government and explaining to him or her 
what is going on.
    So imagine yourself sitting at a bar stool now with your 
beverage of choice and that person says, what would happen if 
the Global Engagement Center does not become reauthorized?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. So you have got People's Republic of 
China, Russia, Iran, all of these countries trying to 
misrepresent us, distort our values, present America as the 
villain in every circumstance. They are out there working every 
day. There are thousands of people, billions of dollars going 
to blame America first and make us seem like the villain.
    We are leading the charge on our side to make them less 
effective, to tell the truth about our story, to increase our 
global prestige and standing so that we can advance all of our 
interest in the ways that maintain our standard of life that 
will allow us to sit here and have this beer in freedom and 
relative security.
    So if we go away, all of those enemies are going to have 
that much easier of a time presenting us as the villain and 
making our job harder in our foreign policy, making it harder 
to advance America's interest.
    Mr. Crow. Thank you. And thank you for the additional time, 
Chairman.
    Mr. Mast. Like me, many of your friends are Rangers, so I 
have no doubt you have a lot of bar stool conversations so.
    Mr. Crow. That we do.
    Mr. Mast. That's right. I yield to my friend from Florida, 
Mr. Mills.
    Mr. Mills. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to pick up on 
what my colleague was asking and your response. You said that 
you wanted to ensure that you were re-engaged and refunded so 
that you could stop presenting our foreign policy in a failed 
way.
    Just that on the surface sounds so funny to me because when 
you have things like botched Afghan withdrawals, when you have 
every other nation who has been able to get their citizens and 
when we were one of the last, actually the last, to be able to 
even get a plane on the ground to try and help them. When you 
look at unfreezing $6 billion that helped to--even if they want 
to claim that it was being held by a mediator, it was still 
fungible income that could be moved from bucket to bucket, that 
allows, not just--again, I agree with one of the key things, 
China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, that geopolitical 
alignment in itself is focused primarily on the west. And their 
overarching goal is to stop developing nations from being able 
to trust that we will actually be there when the time is 
needed.
    But we are doing that on our own. We are giving them all of 
the messaging and ammunition that they need. And the only way 
we are going to counter that is by actually getting good 
foreign policy and getting a President in the oval office who 
understands that our foreign and domestic policies are 
intrinsically linked in an effort to try and go ahead and stop 
the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative, which its entire 
intent is the Eurasian expansion, the domination of Africa, and 
to cutoff Western hemisphere's supply chain from the Horn of 
Africa, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Black Sea, Persian Gulf, to 
control those elements, utilize the WHO, and the WF, and OPEC 
to attack the petrodollar and the U.S. dollar as the global 
currency while simultaneously utilizing their propaganda 
misinformation campaigns in our own hemisphere to go after 
economic coercion in Panama and Honduras to control the Canal, 
to utilize their marriage of convenience with Russia, for 
Chavez of Venezuela or Petro in Colombia, or now as they look 
into Argentina with what my colleague Maria Salazar has pointed 
out a 400 football length satellite that many of the 
Argentinians do not even know about, and we are not doing 
anything about, not to mention the spy and military training 
base in Cuba, 92 miles off of both myself and Chairman Mast's 
great State of Florida.
    So tell me, how is your department going to prevent the 
President and others from making these failed foreign policy 
decisions?
    Mr. Kimmage. So let me draw a distinction between the 
legitimate debates that we have about foreign policy and the 
illegitimate misrepresentation of America as a country by our 
adversaries, adversaries that seek to paint us as the villain 
in every situation, that seek to entirely misrepresent 
everything we stand for and everything they are doing.
    So for example, on the Belt and Road Initiative, which the 
PRC presents as an economic boon to partners, Global Engagement 
Center has supported work that shows definitively that the 
projects that they are funding are not what they are cracked up 
to be. We have translated that work into local languages. We 
have done it to make the case with the decisionmaking elites to 
try to shape the environment in a direction that is accurate, 
that is true, and that is less conducive to the PRC promoting 
its interest.
    So we are not going to solve all of the debates about U.S. 
foreign policy. But we will continue to try to make progress 
against these illegitimate, untrue misrepresentations of the 
United States of what other countries are doing, including in 
South and Central America as the PRC tries to make inroads. We 
are actively engaged in exposing that, and once, again, trying 
to influence decisionmaking elites with a truthful picture so 
they can make the right decision on these issues.
    Mr. Mills. But when you talk about the economic strongholds 
where they try to come in and they promise things, for example, 
that they are going to develop infrastructure and 
transportation and communication platforms that they know that 
they are going to control and actually utilize financing that, 
we do not have to do anything to try and counter them because 
usually they fail to complete their packages to begin with or 
it is poor quality. And in most cases, like the country of Iraq 
as an example, who initially started to go toward that Chinese 
influence as a result of their relationships of the 2005 
Constitution that gave sectarian democracy for Iran's 
stronghold, they are failing to meet every one of the 
requirements and now looking at the quality of American 
products and goods again.
    So, again, I am just trying to talk about one of my 
colleague's comments, how does giving more funding to your 
organization truly in any way help us?
    Mr. Kimmage. So on the PRC, we have supported work that 
tracks water levels in the Mekong River Valley showing that PRC 
dam projects are harming local agriculture. We supported a 
dynamic monitor----
    Mr. Mills. But this is an economic resource warfare that we 
are involved in with China.
    Mr. Kimmage. Yes.
    Mr. Mills. It is not about just an environmental factor 
that is being----
    Mr. Kimmage. I understand.
    Mr. Mills [continuing]. And they are complicit in that. I 
see my time has expired, and I appreciate your time. And with 
that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Mast. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Titus for 5 
minutes.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to 
that bar stool conversation to be sure I understand all of 
this. The way I see it, you are both on the offense and one the 
defense. On the defense, you are there to discredit other 
stories about the U.S. or other facts that are--non-facts that 
are put out. And--let me start over.
    On the offense, you are there to discredit what they are 
saying. On the defense, you are there to counter the blame 
America first. Is that accurate?
    Mr. Kimmage. It is accurate. I would only add that on the 
defense, we are working with our partners to make them more 
resilient. So we are doing more than just the communications 
piece, and I am happy to detail how we are doing that.
    Ms. Titus. OK. And also you give targeted information, 
perhaps like in a country where China or Russia or Iran are 
trying to influence an election. So you can target that 
population with a certain set of information about that 
circumstance. But at the same time you do that target 
information, aren't you trying to influence public opinion at 
large around the world in some instances?
    Mr. Kimmage. So we do not seek to influence any outcomes of 
elections.
    Ms. Titus. Oh, I know you do not. I am saying countering 
someone's attempt perhaps to influence an election.
    Mr. Kimmage. We want to present truthful information or 
give people the tools so that they have access to that 
information to safeguard the integrity of a process that 
depends on it so that people can make an informed choice.
    Ms. Titus. So that's kind of a narrow case, but also do not 
you do broader information to influence world opinions, for 
example, like the Belt and Road Initiative?
    Mr. Kimmage. Yes. So we have supported in-depth research on 
the Belt and Road Initiative to expose the falsehoods and 
misrepresentations that the PRC promotes.
    But bear in mind also that the Global Engagement Center is 
part of a larger public diplomacy enterprise at the Department 
of State that includes exchanges, that includes public affairs. 
And we also work with our colleagues at International 
Broadcasting who bring objective news and analysis to many 
environments where that's not otherwise available.
    We work closely with them because we understand we cannot 
do all the work ourselves. We are focused on this specific 
issue of propaganda and disinformation, but we are lucky to be 
part of this broader enterprise to work with our talented 
colleagues in helping to ensure information, and to give people 
that broader picture you were talking about.
    Ms. Titus. And would that be like NGO's or Radio Free 
Europe, those kind of partners? Is that who you work with?
    Mr. Kimmage. Yes. So International Broadcasting includes 
Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where I was 
honored to work for several years before I came to the State 
Department. We also work with NGO's, with non-governmental 
organizations, with civil society. Yes, we have a very broad 
range of partners because as I said earlier, partnerships are 
absolutely essential to our work.
    There is a small subset of things that we can do on our own 
with the coordination with other parts of U.S. Government, 
hearings like this, but to really reach people out in the world 
so that we can counter the propaganda and disinformation from 
our adversaries, we need the partners with the right 
credibility to do that.
    Ms. Titus. You just issued a report on China. You mentioned 
it briefly. It surprises me that some members of this committee 
want to kind of kneecap your organization when they are so 
adamantly anti-China. Would you talk a little bit about the 
findings of that report and how it's been valuable to us in 
shaping our diplomacy?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. The China report that we released last 
month--and it's on the State Department's website, it's 
available in multiple languages--it details how the PRC is 
trying to reshape the global engagement environment by using 
propaganda and censorship by bringing digital authoritarians 
together, by gaining control or trying to gain control of 
international organizations, by trying to co-opt other 
communicators, and by trying to control the Chinese language 
media all over the globe.
    They are doing this to work along kind of three major lines 
of effort. One is to control content in here. I am not trying 
to be cute here, but it is the three C's. It is content, 
constraints, and community. They are trying to insert as much 
pro-PRC content into the environment as possible. They are 
trying to constrain freedom of speech not just inside China, 
but globally. And they are building a community of 
authoritarians worldwide.
    So this report for the first time details all of this from 
the U.S. Government. It is from the Global Engagement Center. 
It is available on the State Department's website. And I would 
urge everyone to take a look.
    Ms. Titus. I would wager that China is putting a lot more 
investment into their effort than we are here into your agency 
to try to counter that.
    Mr. Kimmage. We and others have assessed that they are 
spending billions to do all of these things to re-shape the 
global narrative, billions of dollars.
    Ms. Titus. So I do not think we should be short-changing 
you in that effort.
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, Ms. Titus. I yield to Mr. Issa.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, the work that 
you are tasked to do is certainly important and needs to be 
done, but I have a number of questions that do concern me in 
your reauthorization. And I guess I will start off, would you 
say that the New York Post is a source of disinformation?
    Mr. Kimmage. The Global Engagement Center does not do any 
work domestically, and we do not have any position on any U.S. 
media outlets.
    Mr. Issa. The same with RealClearPolitics?
    Mr. Kimmage. We simply do not do any work in the United 
States media.
    Mr. Issa. Same with Daily Wire?
    Mr. Kimmage. We do not do any work in the U.S. media 
environment.
    Mr. Issa. OK. But you did give London-based Global
    Disinformation Index hundreds of thousands of dollars, 
right?
    Mr. Kimmage. Let me be clear about the context here. We had 
an arrangement with the Global Disinformation Index to do work 
in six languages other than English for a limited period of 
time to look for Russian and PRC propaganda narratives. It was 
very specific work. It only went for a few months. It ended at 
the end of 2021. And that was the beginning and end of all of 
our work there.
    Mr. Issa. OK. You do not have to get too animated about it. 
I can tell that there is some concern there. And I just want to 
dot the I. Would you say that in retrospect that it was a 
mistake to work with them? That they were not, in fact, an 
index that you would want to use on a go forward basis?
    Mr. Kimmage. The work that we did with them was entirely in 
keeping with the GEC's mission to work against foreign 
propaganda and disinformation in overseas environments. So six 
languages other than English, completely outside the United 
States, no relation to anything else.
    Mr. Issa. But when you have a disinformation source, one 
that named those entities as sources of Russian propaganda, 
then the question is when you are asking them to give you 
this--you know, to help you, are you--who is vetting them when 
you choose to give them money, and in fact, they are a source 
of disinformation?
    Mr. Kimmage. Let me be clear about the timeline. The work 
that we did with the GDI ended in late 2021. I believe the work 
that you are referring to, with which we had no involvement, 
was later. It was after in 2022.
    Mr. Issa. A little more topical than a few days ago, it was 
falsely reported that Israeli assets had bombed and killed 500 
people at a Gaza Hospital. Why is it when you are combating 
disinformation, your organization is silent as to that false 
information?
    Mr. Kimmage. So first of all, the Global Engagement Center 
is generally not a front line communicator. We are not the 
Public Affairs folks. We have a different mission. We look to 
make strategic interventions.
    Mr. Issa. What was strategic?
    Mr. Kimmage. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. This has echoed around the world. It has both 
falsely continued to be repeated, even in the halls of Congress 
by some members. It is currently affecting, because the U.S. is 
the supplier of choice and of almost exclusivity to the Israeli 
government, it has affected how the United States is viewed 
throughout the world. And this disinformation is still wide.
    If there was a strategic requirement, wouldn't this fall as 
one? In other words, are you only able to work with long-term 
contracts or if we re-authorize you, are you prepared to deal 
in real-time with information that once spread cannot--you 
know, the genie cannot be put back in the bottle once people 
have this view.
    Mr. Kimmage. I cannot rule out that the Global Engagement 
Center could take a more active posture. You are right. It 
would be very resource intensive.
    In general, we are not engaged in back and forth in the 
online environment in real-time. That has never been the 
operational posture of the Global Engagement Center. When I say 
strategic, I am talking about things like our Russia report or 
the exposure of the Belt and Road Initiative.
    Mr. Issa. And I appreciate that. And I certainly would 
appreciate if every time we can show that Belt and Road was 
gotten by bribes and ultimately delivered inferior product, 
that is helpful.
    But in 2020 and 2021, you spent hundreds of thousands of 
dollars producing a video game related to disinformation. Would 
it surprise you that they didn't--that video game that you paid 
for did not go after Xi or Putin or Iran, but in fact after 
citizens of the U.S., maybe not intended, but after citizens of 
the U.S. that spoke of waste, fraud, and abuse within our own 
country.
    Mr. Kimmage. So the video game that we supported is a 
neutral teaching tool. It is not directed at any environment. 
It simply shows people how campaigns can be constructed. It is 
intended to raise awareness. It does not have any political 
significance. That is not the way----
    Mr. Issa. But I thought we weren't paying for neutral. I 
thought we were paying for results that drove down 
disinformation. Did it do that?
    Mr. Kimmage. So we did have a peer-reviewed study of the 
video game, one of the games in Harmony Square. And it reported 
a 23 percent increase in people's ability to spot 
disinformation after using the game. So that part was not 
neutral and that is why we funded it.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Issa. I would be curious to know 
would that change 23 percent of how many people played the 
game, maybe they would change their minds, about how many 
people did it actually reach? I am going to yield to Ms. Dean 
now for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Dean. I thank the chairman and the ranking member. And 
I thank you, Mr. Kimmage, for your work, the work of your 
department, and for your testimony today in clearing up certain 
things.
    I will go back to Hamas, if I may. We watched in horror and 
sadness at the brutal attack, barbaric attack of October the 
7th and the hours and days after that as they unfolded in 
Israel and, of course from Gaza.
    Relevant to today's hearing, we also watched confusion. 
Some of it was just disgust among my colleagues. As you note in 
your testimony, and I quote, ``control over the narrative is of 
key importance between Israel and Hamas.''
    So I would like to try to examine what you mean by that 
because I think you are right, the story, the narrative, and 
the facts and truth about that matter. And you know better than 
I, but disinformation appears to be everywhere.
    In the lead-up to October the 7th, what was your office, 
your Department, seeing in terms of disinformation around what 
would be this brutal attack, disinformation by Hamas in Gaza, 
West Bank, wherever disinformation was taking place? What do 
you know about the lead-up?
    And I understand you are not of the moment reporters, but 
how about disinformation of the moment reporters, but how about 
disinformation around evacuation orders? We talked about 
disinformation around the hospital attack and maybe 
disinformation going on. Can you give us any sense of what your 
office saw?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. Our focus here is in keeping with our 
main lines of effort, and those are to analyze, to coordinate 
and then to work with our partners. And we have tracked broadly 
the efforts by extremist groups to promote their narrative, to 
turn every situation to their advantage.
    In this conflict, we have leveraged that in the following 
ways. We have conducted daily analysis. And on the narrative 
front, we are particularly vigilant for attempts by the major 
malign actors to pile on to the conflict and turn it to their 
advantage.
    So we are looking at not just the narratives that Hamas is 
promoting, but how Iran is then amplifying those further. How 
Russia is in many cases then amplifying those even more, and 
then how the PRC is integrating this into their global efforts. 
So we are very focused on that aspect of the narrative.
    Bear in mind our model is an adversary based model. It is a 
threat actor model. So we do not look at the totality of 
information flow. We really start with the threat actors. And 
that's because we have limited bandwidth and resources.
    Ms. Dean. And if I could ask you to paint the picture a 
little bit. I do love the bar stool analogy. I'm stealing that, 
ranking member. How do you make it plain? What was it that the 
GEC was hearing, seeing, being proliferated in terms of 
disinformation?
    Mr. Kimmage. So in terms of disinformation, what we have 
seen is Iran amplifying Hamas' narrative more or less lock, 
stop and barrel.
    What we have seen is Russia making limited opportunistic 
attempts to advance particular disinformation narratives about 
weapons, et cetera. They have tried to draw a link between 
weapons we have provided to Ukraine and the conflict in the 
Middle East. That's a very classic, so far limited, but Russian 
approach.
    Ms. Dean. If I could just take you back. I can appreciate 
what amplification took place by other malign actors, larger 
ones, what did Hamas put out?
    Mr. Kimmage. Hamas has put out an avalanche of propaganda 
claiming falsely to be the legitimate representatives of the 
Palestinian people. They are not. And, we have, of course, 
tracked that, and we tracked the amplification of that, 
primarily by Iran, but also by others.
    Ms. Dean. And what did they say about Israel in their 
propaganda?
    Mr. Kimmage. Which?
    Ms. Dean. Hamas.
    Mr. Kimmage. Hamas denies the legitimacy of Israel's right 
to exist.
    Ms. Dean. Yes. And the disinformation that continues, of 
course, now during this conflict? Is there anything kind of 
granular that you can say in this setting that is going on?
    Mr. Kimmage. What I would say in this setting is that we 
must be vigilant to attempts by our adversaries to link this 
into a global narrative. And we must be aware of the enormous 
resources that they bring to bear.
    This is everything from television stations like the Arabic 
language Al-Alam that Iran has to Russia Today in Arabic to the 
global media properties of the PRC, all the way down through 
troll farms and cyber tools.
    This is an enormous global propaganda apparatus. It is one 
that seeks to turn every event into a blame America first 
incident where they can turn it to their advantage. And so we 
are tracking that, and we are leveraging everything we can to 
push back against it.
    Ms. Dean. Well, it seems like the folks in your office in 
GEC must feel like they are in a blizzard of disinformation, 
and we have to do everything we can to support you and your 
work. Thank you. I yield back
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, Ms. Dean. I appreciate the line of 
questioning. I would caution perhaps not to necessarily make 
policy, exactly, whether Hamas does or does not represent the 
Palestinian people. I know we had Erdogan just say that he 
called them a liberation group. So I think that's a pretty good 
representation of a lot of the sentiment of the Arabic world 
unfortunately. And his characterization of them does not make 
them seem so strictly as an enemy of the Palestinian people. So 
I would caution you in your policymaking. I am now going to 
yield to Mr. Kim for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Kim. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Kim. Thank you, Mr. Kimmage, 
for joining us. Actually, I want to pick up where you kind of 
left off. I thought you made a very strong and compelling vivid 
picture about this enormous propaganda machine that we are 
facing here.
    I guess I would just kind of start with you, like, are we 
scaled to the magnitude that we need to be to counter that? I 
mean, that certainly sounded very formidable.
    Mr. Kimmage. So we also bring formidable capabilities to 
the table. They are not resourced to the extent that our 
adversaries are investing in this.
    We do have International Broadcasting. We have our 
colleagues in the public diplomacy enterprise who are working 
hard. We have the Department of Defense. We have our 
intelligence community. And we have our partners and allies.
    So we do have all those things. I am clear-eyed about the 
enormous investment that our adversaries have made. But I would 
like to draw attention to recent efforts that we have made to 
make our allies and partners more resilient. We talked about 
the offensive part of our mission, the exposures, the reports.
    I would like to talk a little bit about the defensive part 
because this is what will eventually undermine our adversaries' 
investment.
    We have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with 
North Macedonia, with Bulgaria, with Moldova on principles that 
we believe will make all countries more resilient. These are 
having a national strategy to deal with information 
manipulation, having specific structures and institutions like 
the Global Engagement Center, having the capability to see 
what's happening in the information environment to see what our 
adversaries are doing, to have vibrant civil society in media, 
to expose and shine light on information manipulation, and then 
to have multilateral engagement on this.
    And this is maybe less eye-catching and glamorous than some 
things. But it is the necessary work of diplomacy that the 
State Department does every day to make us and others more 
resilient. And that will help to counter some of this enormous 
investment that our adversaries are making in lies and 
falsehoods.
    Mr. Kim. And I appreciate you raising that because that was 
something that I wanted to get to is just that the idea of 
coalition goals. So it sounds like in your mind here--again, we 
are up against this very large propaganda machine. But it is 
not just on us, you know, that we are able to leverage and have 
coalition partners that can be a force multiplier. Is that kind 
of along the lines of what you are saying?
    Mr. Kimmage. Absolutely. I would take from the 
counterterrorism world the Global Engagement Center has co-led 
one of the lines of effort, the communications line of effort, 
in the counter-ISIS coalition for several years.
    That coalition, which I have been privileged to be involved 
with has made significant strides, countering ISIS, in 
particular ISIS propaganda. And we are trying to leverage some 
of that experience in the different but related tasks of 
countering the information manipulation by nation states.
    Mr. Kim. Now I wanted to get in, you talked about this 
increasing alignment, not necessarily direct coordination, but 
a kind of alignment between some of these actors, Russia, Iran, 
China in particular. You talk about how their efforts to try to 
shade disinformation and promote that here in the United 
States, you know, to try to sow doubt and challenges here 
amongst Americans.
    What is our capability? How would you assess our capability 
of getting information to the people in those nations? You 
know, there are countries that have very strong control over 
their own media. You know, when we think about the fight going 
on in the Ukraine, I always kind of wonder, like, how much are 
the Russian people understanding about, you know, some of this 
or are they understanding that there are a lot of different 
sides to it that they are not getting fed?
    Mr. Kimmage. You cite probably our greatest challenge, 
which is reaching audiences in the PRC and Russia. The 
propaganda disinformation efforts of these nations are 
primarily directed against their own populations.
    They have reinstituted types of control that we haven't 
seen since the Soviet Union. It is a huge challenge. We have, 
what would I describe, as modest efforts to reach Russian 
speaking audiences. We do work to support independent media 
that are doing tremendous work to show the truth of Russia's 
war of aggression against Ukraine, to show the true cost it is 
inflicting on the Russian people.
    So it is an enormous challenge. We are working. And we be 
trying to do more.
    Mr. Kim. No, thank you. And, look, I just sort of say that 
to my colleagues here on this committee. I think that we should 
be very thoughtful about. You know, when we think about this 
disinformation, certainly the defense part of it is important, 
but on the offensive side, we are not able to have that kind of 
penetration.
    If we are not able to, but they are having tremendous 
penetration within our own country, there is something there 
that we need to be thinking about. And I hope that that is 
something that we can work on in a bipartisan way. Thank you. 
And I yield back.
    Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Kim. We are going to do another 
round of questioning here for anybody that wants to, Ms. Dean 
or Mr. Kim. And I am going to touch off on something that my 
colleague, Mr. Issa, was talking about anecdotally. He was 
bringing up one of the third-parties that we used.
    And to paint the picture, they labeled risky and non-risky 
entities, whatever the timeframe was. And they said risky, top 
ten risky, New York Post, RealClearPolitics, The Blaze, One 
America News, NewsMax, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, those 
are the most risky.
    And the most trustworthy, or the not risky, were NPR, 
Associated Press, New York Times, Huffington Post, other ones, 
Wall Street Journal, and the list goes on. But some of that 
list of not risky, I consider to be highly risky.
    And so my question goes to third-parties in general. I want 
to know if there is an institutional bias for third-parties 
that are hired to do this work. Because that, as one example, 
seems like an institution that has a bias.
    And it is almost like being double-crossed because they did 
get our money and then it was saying this is risky. This is not 
risky. But the ones they said were not risky were the ones in 
real-time perpetuating the hospital lie as an example. And I'm 
not going to go through other examples, but as an example, they 
were the ones perpetuating the hospital lie.
    And so a couple of questions there, and that's where I go 
back to, one, I want a list of the third-parties that you have 
been out there hiring because I want to know if institutionally 
hired third-parties are being hired by you all.
    And No. 2, and I know this is soon after, but do you know 
for a fact at this point that any of your other third-parties 
that we do not have a list of yet were a part of spreading the 
hospital lie or having anti-Israel bias?
    Mr. Kimmage. So on our partners, we will never have control 
over what they do in the future just to be absolutely clear. 
The work that you are referring to----
    Mr. Mast. I will acknowledge that. You do not have control 
over your third-party partners. They are a third-party. I 
understand why you are using them. Not to be mean, people 
aren't following your Twitter. You are looking for people of 
influence to do this.
    Mr. Kimmage. Right.
    Mr. Mast. But do you know if any of the third-parties to 
date that you've hired were part of the hospital lie, we will 
call it that?
    Mr. Kimmage. So let me just answer your preceding question 
on bias. We have a process to select partners. We have an open 
announcement asking for the type of work. We have a panel that 
reviews the partners. And in every statement of work, in every 
agreement that we make with them, and let me read this for the 
record, we have the following, which says, GEC does not address 
United States domestic audiences nor engage in domestic 
discussions of United States policy. No activities supported 
under the scope of work shall be directed toward U.S. persons. 
Any such engagement, if determined by GEC to have been 
intentional, may constitute grounds for termination for cause 
of this award.
    That is in every agreement that we make with a third-party. 
So that is as set in stone as it can be. And I just wanted to 
make sure that you and other members of the committee hear that 
to allay any concerns that you might have.
    Mr. Mast. I will just say this, you know, the mission 
statement is to counter foreign State, non-State propaganda 
disinformation efforts that threaten the stability of the 
United States, its allies, and partner nations. So that is a 
tough mix there because you are not supposed to address 
Americans. You are addressing across the globe and obviously 
one of our allies being Israel, a partner nation, being Israel.
    So just again, to that very pointed question, do you know 
yet at this point if any of your current third-parties under 
contract were part of spreading the Al-Ahli Hospital lie with 
the rest of the Palestinians?
    Mr. Kimmage. I'm not aware of any of our partners.
    Mr. Mast. Do you plan on investigating whether they were a 
part of spreading that lie about our ally?
    Mr. Kimmage. We will look into this and get back to you.
    Mr. Mast. I hope you do, and I will look forward to you 
getting back. And I yield to my friend, Mr. Crow.
    Mr. Crow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can we talk just for a 
moment about the nature of risk when you are doing innovative 
things and in a very dynamic space where you are trying to stay 
up to speed with an evolving environment.
    Because it seems like you could be risk averse to the point 
of being irrelevant. But if you take no risk, if you are not 
innovating, if you are not experimenting with things, then you 
are actually not staying ahead of a rapidly evolving 
environment.
    So how do you address that, right? There is no situation in 
which a relevant entity that exists within a dynamic 
environment is accomplishing its purpose without taking some 
risk in trying things. And some of those things will work and 
some of them will not. So just talk to me about your approach 
on that.
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. Thank you for the question. This is a 
persistent and unavoidable aspect of operating in the 
communications space. When we work with partners, we gain 
credibility. We gain flexibility. Sometimes we gain rapidity, 
but there is a tradeoff in terms of control. A partner is not 
going to vet their messaging through the rigorous clearance 
process at the State Department to ensure that it is fully in 
line with all of those requirements. So there is a tradeoff 
there.
    There is always risk in the space. There is always a risk 
in inaction that is not perfectly safe. The risk in inaction is 
that our adversaries are going to be doing everything they can 
to undermine us in the communications space.
    To answer your specific question, we weigh this on a case-
by-case basis. We do this when we review partners. We do this 
when we make decisions about what we will, and we will not do.
    It is a huge challenge where we are always keenly aware 
that we cannot do nothing. Our mandate compels us to take on 
this mission. And we are keenly aware that there are many eyes 
on us, that there are risks in the space, and I do not know 
what more I can say beyond the fact that it is one of the more 
onerous and challenging parts of our job.
    Mr. Crow. And is it your opinion, as somebody who has 
operated in the space for a very long time and seeing how it 
has changed, that the risk of inaction is much higher than the 
risk of action, even if sometimes that action misses the mark 
or isn't exactly the way it works and you have to adapt?
    Mr. Kimmage. Broadly speaking, I would agree. We are seeing 
an increasing not just tempo of operations by our adversaries, 
but this alignment that I have referred to several times. And 
so we cannot afford to look the other way. We cannot afford to 
be mired in internal rumination. We do have to act, and we do 
have to execute the mission that you and your colleagues have 
given us.
    Mr. Crow. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Mills [presiding]. Thank you to the ranking member. So 
I wanted to ask a couple of additional questions. You know, 
prior to 2017 when the GEC was created, what was actually the 
mechanism that was used? And if that was sufficient, what types 
of duplications of effort would GEC actually have or what makes 
GEC so special?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. You know, with the caveat that I was 
working on specific counterterrorism issues before----
    Mr. Mills. And where was that--my apologies, for the 
counterterrorism operations?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. I was the principal deputy of the Center 
for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, and in 2016, I 
was in the Office of Policy Planning. So I was not as directly 
involved.
    To my knowledge, there was no entity in the executive 
branch that had the ability to convene the interagency that was 
specifically tasked with doing the work that the Global 
Engagement Center does. And I can only point you to the 
relative absence of reports like the reports that we have done 
on Russia, the PRC in particular, and other topics before 2017 
when the GEC was created.
    Mr. Mills. So one of the things that you guys do is that 
you look and assess third-party violations of these types of 
propaganda and misinformation campaigns that are going on. And 
some of those that can be listed are social media organizations 
like VK as an example and things like this. Why wouldn't we 
list TikTok, a foreign created social media platform that is 
being utilized for these types of propaganda and misinformation 
campaigns as a violator assessed by GEC?
    Mr. Kimmage. Sure. So just to clarify, the Global 
Engagement Center does not have any regulatory role. We do not 
assess social media.
    Mr. Mills. But you do actually go and review those who are 
actually kind of misrepresenting things so that we know exactly 
how to identify an encounter, correct?
    Mr. Kimmage. What we do is we identify the tools in the 
toolbox that our adversaries use for information manipulation. 
And in fact, we have sponsored work that shows how TikTok is 
being used by the PRC.
    What we do not do is anything in the regulatory space. We 
do not either regulate----
    Mr. Mills. But you do see that TikTok is in fact being 
utilized in this manner to be pushed by the PRC as a mechanism 
to have a cultural impact by utilizing misinformation and 
propaganda?
    Mr. Kimmage. We have, I believe, supported a report that 
highlights the role that TikTok plays in the PRC's effort to 
reshape the global media environment, yes.
    Mr. Mills. And, you know, it's interesting, going along 
that thread, knowing this, would you advise, or would you, 
coming from a policy background, obviously, there are bills 
that Republicans are putting forward where they would want to 
ban TikTok.
    Now I am not asking you to say that this is a policy that 
you thereby would create, but do you think that that should be 
something which is effective in trying to tamp down some of the 
utilization of TikTok as this mechanism?
    Mr. Kimmage. The GEC and I do not take any position on 
regulatory matters. I can only reiterate that TikTok is one of 
the tools in the toolbox in the PRC's broader effort to reshape 
the global----
    Mr. Mills. I will take that as a yes. That if we were to 
get rid of that that limits the toolbox and what they are 
actually able to utilize.
    Your office mission is to direct, lead, synchronize, 
integrate and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to 
recognize, understand, expose and counter foreign State, non-
State propaganda. Are there other offices that you are aware of 
within any other U.S. agency that you can identify that 
monitors, exposes, or counters misinformation?
    Mr. Kimmage. So we work with many partners that do parts of 
this, but we are the ones who do this sort of exclusively 
because that's our congressional mandate. We work with partners 
in the intelligence community who look at adversarial 
information manipulation. We work with partners who look at the 
broader information environment.
    Mr. Mills. So there are others that do this. So there is 
potentially then--and I apologize for interrupting, but there 
is then potentially redundancies. Because I know that--I sit on 
the Armed Services Committee as well, and I sit on the 
Intelligence Special Operations Subcommittee, and I will not 
talk about anything which is classified in this unclassified 
setting, but we know that there are other areas that do exactly 
the same thing in a very similar manner. Does that not create a 
redundancy in some ways?
    Mr. Kimmage. I do not believe that there are redundancies. 
We work with partners that--you know, the information 
environment is dynamic, and it touches on almost every aspect 
of our existence.
    So we do not duplicate the work that our colleagues in the 
intelligence community do. We do not duplicate the work that 
our colleagues in International Broadcasting do. They 
complement our work, and we try to complement theirs. But I 
would argue that there are no, it's not a redundancy, and we do 
not duplicate each other's work.
    Mr. Mills. Well, I certainly look at working with your 
office and making sure that we can continue these discussions 
to look at exactly what it is that we're funding and what the 
benefits of this is in a way that would stop the PRC and other 
adversarial nations from utilizing platforms as we have 
discussed to help to be weaponized in their misinformation 
campaigns.
    But, again, I go back to my original thing is that it all 
starts within the U.S. Government and the messaging and the 
actual foreign policy that we are promoting that is being 
utilized against us because we are making the mistakes of not 
considering Iran to be the largest State sponsor of terror and 
not calling them out for that.
    We are making mistakes when we do not immediately identify 
that Iran plays a role with Hamas. And we are making a mistake 
when we do not look at China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as 
adversarial nations as opposed to competitors and then we 
started abandoning our Americans behind.
    So it is our own foreign policy, in my opinion, our own 
actions, that give credence and actually support exactly what 
is being spun around and used against us. And I think that 
starts a good strong foreign policy and that will help us to 
control the narratives that we put forward. And with that, I 
yield back. Mr. Crow, anything for you?
    Mr. Crow. I do not think you want to yield to me. You are 
the chairman.
    Mr. Mills. I was going to let you ask more questions. Do 
you want to go a second or third round?
    Mr. Crow. I am good. I am ready to go to closing if you 
are, Chairman.
    Mr. Mills. All right. Sounds good. I want to give you the 
opportunity. I mean, come on. I got to make sure my 325th 82d 
buddy has something.
    I thank the witness for the viable testimony and the 
members for their questions. The members of the subcommittee 
may have some additional questions for the witnesses, and we 
will ask you to respond to those in writing.
    Pursuant to committee rules, all members may have 5 days to 
submit statements, questions, and extraneous materials for the 
record subject to the length of limitations. Without 
objection--Mr. Crow?
    Mr. Cross. Yes, I just want to make sure you are not going 
to adjourn. Yes, OK.
    Mr. Mills. The committee will refer to you, Mr. Crow, as 
the ranking member.
    Mr. Crow. OK. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Kimmage, 
for your testimony here today and your insights into the Global 
Engagement Center and for your many years of service to the 
country.
    Your testimony has put into sharp focus the critical work 
of the Global Engagement Center and how you and your team work 
tirelessly every day to counter misinformation and 
disinformation by our adversaries that goes to the core of our 
national security as well as our proactive efforts to develop 
alliances and partnerships to spread democracy and freedom 
throughout the world.
    You talked about the risks of inaction, which in my view 
are unacceptable risks. And that is why we have to continue to 
innovate, to create, to engage, and that is obviously what you 
do as the name of your center implies.
    You also operate in the open, and you are transparent 
because I have always thought that if we lead with our values, 
if we lead by being open and transparent and with our 
partnerships that ultimately people will see that as difficult 
and challenging as that might be in this environment. There is 
really no other way.
    Your work is critical. And in my view Congress should work 
with you to reauthorize the important work of the Global 
Engagement Center to give you the resources, to work with you 
to give you the resources that you need to counter 
disinformation and misinformation by our adversaries.
    And I look forward to working with my colleagues to make 
sure that we do reauthorize this, that we conduct our 
oversight. We will always do that, make sure that we are asking 
tough questions and that we are being good stewards of the 
taxpayer dollar, and we are accomplishing the congressionally 
mandated mission.
    And I do look forward to working with you, and I think it 
is extremely important that we support your work. And with 
that, I yield back.
    Mr. Mast [presiding]. I want to thank the ranking member 
once again and our witness. Again, we will be in touch to make 
sure that we can look at how your office will truly serve its 
purpose and whether or not the reauthorization is necessary 
with regard to overarching redundancies across the various 
agencies. With that, I will consider this to be adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:23 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                APPENDIX

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            RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

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