The China-Russia Nexus of Disinformation | Radio Free Asia (RFA)

hello again everyone uh welcome to today's event on the China Russia Nexus of disinformation my name is David Salvo I'm the managing director of The Alliance for securing democracy at the German Marshall fund of the United States I'm joined here by my colleague Brett Schaefer also of the alliance for securian democracy and uh representatives of Radio free Asia and radio free Europe Radio Liberty we're really thrilled to have such uh terrific expertise on today's panel to discuss a really timely topic I think we've long Associated disinformation and information manipulation r large with the government of the Russian Federation but certainly the People's Republic of China has caught up we now see State actors and state sponsored media from both countries waging information operations around the globe to advance our interests and to undermine the interests of the United States and our allies and partners our discussion today will focus on whether there really is indeed a Nexus between these two governments uh in their information campaigns what methods the regimes do use to wage information operations around the world and where specifically do they hone these tactics we'll also discuss these issues in the context of an all-important election year here in 2024 uh as many of you know Taiwan recently held elections this is a great framing to discuss the prc's information manipulation tactics we've recently commemorated the two-year uh We've recently commemorating the two-year Mark of the fullscale Russia full scale invasion of Ukraine and that of course is a necessary framing to discuss Russia's information operations around the globe um and there are many other elections on the horizon I don't need to delineate which ones I think we all know which that both uh nation states will have their eye on in terms of uh conducting information operations again around the globe we have a great panel to tack to tackle these questions uh RFA and rfl are covering these issues every day in the fields uh here at gmf ASD is tracking state sponsored narratives around the globe through our Hamilton 2.0 dashboard so there's a lot of a lot of ground to cover I will quickly go over the ground rules introduce our speakers and we'll just dive into the conversation so quickly ground rules this is an on the reccord conversation which is good since we are working with journalists here so they know this all too well it is open to media and attribution and audience members please feel free to ask questions using the chat function in uh in Zoom Q&A Q&A function sorry not the chat function the Q&A function uh important delineation thank you um and we will get to as many as we can we will definitely leave time for audience Q&A so our panelists Min Mitchell who's the executive editor of Radio free Asia she oversees companywide editorial operations She's Been instrumental in developing rfa's comprehensive editorial strategy to match the fast evolving needs of audiences in Asia and globally as well as addressing the challenges posed by the global rise of authoritarianism and disinformation which of course go hand inand she's led the development of rfa's Asia rfa's Asia check lab which debunks falsehood and tracks the spread of malign influence and propaganda seated in misleading narratives such as a recent surge in China Russia coordinated misinformation on the war in Ukraine and Chinese interference in the 2024 Taiwan presidential election two issues we will certainly cover today Brett Schaefer is is the senior fellow for media and digital disinformation here at the German Marshall fund at the alliance for secur and democracy he heads our information manipulation team he's the Creator and manager of the aformentioned Hamilton 2.0 dashboard which is an online open- Source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russian Chinese and Iranian State media Outlets diplomats and government officials across numerous media platforms he's an expert in computational propaganda state-backed information operations and Tech regulation and he's spoken at conferences around the globe and advis numerous governments and NOS on these very issues and finally we have Reed sish he's uh the correspondent for Radio free Europe Radio Liberty based in Prague and the author of the China and Eurasia briefing he focuses on Chinese foreign policy in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and has reported extensively about China's belt and Road initiative and beijing's interment camps in shinhan prior to joining rfl Reed was also an editor at foreign policy magazine and his Moscow correspondent he's also written for the Atlantic and the Washington Post so with that let's dive in we should start with sort of the all important question because it's been covered but I don't know if anyone really has sort of the magic answer to the question is there actually a Nexus of Russian and PRC information operations is there a true convergence in the tactics and methods that these um that these two governments use and if so what are they and if not where do they diverge so mid why don't I start with you to maybe set the scene and then Reed and Brett can can chime in as well wonderful thank you David for hosting this timely discussion it's a pleasure and honor to be on this great panel with people I admire greatly and I also want to thank you for inviting me and congratulations for your outstanding work through the alliance for securing de democracy project so let me um offer my observations on Russian and specifically Chinese information manipulation tactics and how they diverge first so as you all know better than I uh Russian information manipulation traditionally has focused on amplifying rumors to so seeds of distrust in the west and in countries that lean to the West that means undermining NATO the EU Ukraine Poland uh Baltic countries and of of course the United States among many other countries they have become very adapt uh at using local journalist media and social media accounts to make uh disinformation seem organic and on the other side the Chinese Communist party's information manipulation has traditionally been aimed at its own population but over the past decade the CCP has focused more and more on reaching chinesee speaking population overseas their main purpose is has been to burnish the record of CCP uh uh degrate the United States and convey how Western democracy is deficient and not appropriate for the Chinese people most recently however China has begun deploying Russian style disinformation tactics there are a few uh examples during the covid pandemic for Beijing Amplified bogus story seeking to deflect attention to itself over the pandemic's origin by pushing the narrative that the United States military may have been the source of CO as you all know and I should also add when CCP covered up its under reported fatalities and mishandling of its response in Wuhan early on Radio free Asia among is among the first to report fatality ities being much much higher and Taiwan as we just talked about of course has been the leading Target of CCP disinformation providing a window into their evolving methods according to the University of gothenberg in Sweden for 10 years straight Taiwan has been the country most impacted by Foreign disinformation and RFA through its Asia fact check lab which we established in 2022 closely covered how the CCP has distorted news and spread falsehood about Taiwan efforts which intensified in advance of taiwan's national election in January 2024 this included campaigns by state backed media as well as rumor recycled uh on Chinese social media so the CCP is fully aware of the vulnerabilities in taiwan's media space and has become quite Adept at striking its weak points in the process it has gained considerable experience in disinformation campaigns and as as reported by our fact check lab CCP disseminated messages for instance sought to promote themes like doubt about the US commitment to taiwan's security one campaign pushed the narrative that the US sees Taiwan as merely a bargaining cheap and will abandon it eventually and another subn narrative was that the US plans to destroy taiwan's semiconductor giant tsmc to hurt China and another message try to uh is try to increase anxiety about inevitable inva Invasion and conflict this includes uh inciting fear in ordinary Taiwanese that China military Chinese military will attack the island if the wrong candidate wins and another message sought to convince Taiwanese that the US and the West engage in election interference and this includes narratives that the US is backing specific candidates and parties and our fa Asia fact check lab found CCP uh was actually connected to a fake election pool in order to favor uh their interest and this report got cited by taiwan's foreign minister just days before the election and speaking of where uh Russia and China uh uh their tactics converge I have uh an example uh as you know Russia has pushed the story about uh uh bow weapon lab that us was helping uh Ukraine uh to build uh during uh the the their Invasion and guess what uh there is a crazy story We fact checked that involves the same narrative that uh us and the Taiwanese official secretly met in South China Sea in 2022 to discuss creating a bioweapon lab it was all over Chinese State media and social platform and it even reached my own parents line group it's a communication app like WhatsApp in Taiwan I'm originally from Taiwan and my parents still live there so my parents 80-year-old friends shared the story in their group chat and they got into this heated argument about whether the US is inciting a war between Taiwan and China and my parents sent it to me I returned the taex with our fact check story my mom wrote back is your story true uh so my mom demonstrates that while Taiwan has steadily uh enhanced its REI uh resilience against ccp's information manipulation Chinese influence operation are becoming more and more skillful and more more and more like Russia in its tactics with that I will uh give it back to David and maybe uh my colleague Reed can elaborate on this thanks man yeah readed Brett maybe if you have two fingers on that to sort of flush out some of those comments sure sure pleasure to um well thank you guys all for for having me here so I mean I think you know the the name of this you know we're talking about collaboration which maybe that is kind of the right word here um you know there there's growing cooperation happening between the Russians and the Chinese but I think it's still really unclear if you can say any of this is coordinated in any way um I think by most accounts it's not rather you know there's a lot of watching copying and learning and I think the thing we're seeing is a lot more of sort of formalized ways of learning and sharing tactic tactics and that's a lot of what's going on you know talking about Ukraine um you know Min brought up the example about the biow weapons or sorry the biolabs which is an thing that's been cycled around in in Russia for forever but I think also around uh the war in Ukraine I mean there was a lot of these these really Russian Uh Russian State media disinformation tactics that have been around for a long time that really started popping up um on the Chinese networks through Chinese platforms um you know there's things about uh covering over the the buah uh Massacre that happened in Ukraine you know saying that that was a hoax you know there's a lot of stuff about George Soros conspiracy theories and things like that popping up in a lot of cases sort of almost word for word for how they appear in in the Russian press um but I think more what's been a little bit interesting around Ukraine especially when you look at how the Chinese have tackled it um you know there's a lot of that is geared around discrediting the United States it's about you know showing that there's holes in Western resolve that you know this war war is the fault of NATO and and especially around especially in the early the first year and maybe a little bit after that there was a really strong narrative there about you know giving cover for Russia its own narrative and his justifications for invas invading in the first place and I think obviously we know Chinese media uh Chinese officials they've never called it actually an invasion since they one and kind of go to Great Lengths to avoid all of that so um you know I think zooming back a little bit from that and like where we are in this moment you know we want to talk about Russia and China what kind of cooperation exists there you know I think it's important to note you know this is in some ways the fact that we're talking about this now is this culmination of like a decade of new found agreements that have been happening between China and Russia essentially since she came to power actually the very first meeting that Putin and she had together as official heads of state they did sign a big agreement on information Co operation sharing you know fighting as you know basically about keeping Western information out of Russia and China um and that's really expanded quite a lot and I think that's you know when we're talking about the war right there's we're talking about collaborating on these narratives but really I think the a big point of what's happening at the war while they're doing stuff abroad it's really about the coordination and the learning that is happening that's getting applied back at home for their domestic audiences and what they're feeding them um so you know a few years ago there was some hack documents that came out that talked about a deal between Russia and Chinese uh State Le Outlets basically about you know sharing content best practices organizing exchanges and co-producing a bunch of different shows um and also say that at radio for Europe last year uh we also got this big Trove of hack documents that showed all these various meetings that had happened from 2017 to 2019 between rosor which is the government agency that's charged with policing Russia's internet and then the cyberspace administration of China and those files really gave us this interesting behind the scenes look into what was happening at a very practical level um and a lot of that you know we see these kind of to be honest having listened to a lot of those recordings quite boring conversations you know very boardrooms translators all those kind of things but it is really it's a focus on learning best practices and it's really interesting because you know you can really see what the other one thinks that the other one is doing better than them and how they can learn from that and how they can apply that to suit their own needs and it also shows us a lot of like what they're concerned about what they're focused on which there's some Divergence that's happening there so you know for instance the Russian officials they're asking the Chinese for guidance on how to disrupt vpns how to deal with tour how to better attack and crack encrypted internet traffic and messaging platforms um and the Russians also wanted to arrange a visits to China to send Specialists there to study how the great firewall worked in better detail so about you know really censoring and controlling the flows of information at home and the Really technical aspect the Russians were really trying to to zero in on that from the Chinese um and then the Chinese priorities I think were also pretty Illuminating you know especially if we think about what what Min was saying about China really looking you know cares a lot about its image um you know trying to portray itself as this leader of the global South in a lot of ways um so they were looking at you know the ways that Russia can control information online to curve protests they were also looking at how what they call you know Russia's imag making abroad they really were quite curious about that and asking to learn more on that and then also some very you know interesting asking to you know block uh content inside Russia about Shang weers curiously this very old 60 minutes interview with jeni Min I think it's because he talks about the tianan square uh protest there um so it really kind of shows us what's happening now it's not just abroad what we're talking about it's it's there there's this two-way flow and a lot of what's getting I think learned and applied at home is also getting uh sent out and used abroad as there's that that learning and so maybe I'll leave it there and turn it back to you guys but I think there's also still a lot more to to dig in there thanks three there's there's a lot of to comments on there there's also one thread I would love if you could pull since you're studying sort of the overt space like I re sort of framed what's happening maybe behind the scenes in the in the gray uh disinformation world but there's something that Min mentioned where she said that the PRC focuses a lot on its diaspora overseas but they've also as re just said asked Russia for help with its image making tactics uh which suggests maybe an evolution in its target audience and I'm wondering if you see anything um that suggests that the PRC is increasingly focused on say foreign speaking audiences as opposed to Mandarin speaking diaspora groups overseas or whether that's still really like part and parcel of what they're trying to accomplish well I mean one of the interesting things that we've looked at since we started studying both countries around 2019 2020 is that Kremlin used to be very different from what we saw from China and that the Kremlin really didn't talk about Russia with its external messaging so when we did an analysis of every YouTube video published on RT America over a course of a year or two something like 4% of those videos even mentioned Russia when we did the same thing with cgtn was roughly 25% so China really was still attempting to present this positive image of China to the world where Russia frankly didn't really care it wasn't about attracting audiences to Russia it was about repelling them from their adversaries we we've seen China shift in the Russian Direction the last couple years but I'd say in the last year or so they've maybe shifted back in the other direction so a lot of coverage uh in the media is focused on China's wolf Warrior diplomacy style and we certainly saw it wasn't all of Chinese diplomats and it certainly wasn't all of their Embassy accounts but maybe 20 or 30 of their most vocal diplomats on Twitter adopted this very aggressive confrontational sty we're sort of dubb the wolf Warriors I think China has found that that's really not an effective strategy for building China's image globally yes it was very good at attracting audiences on Twitter I mean those were the people who had huge followings so when you talk about jaly Jen for example who's China's um I think he was the number two spokesperson in the Chinese MFA he had something like a million followers and had attracted this huge sort of cult following on Twitter but I don't think that was really helping China in terms of their public diplomacy and and their efforts to uh present China positively on the world stage and now he is heading I think the boundary and ocean department so he's been sidelined and we've seen others sort of these fringey Chinese diplomats like the council General in Belfast who used to when we had Twitter access on Hamilton almost every week she was the number one account of all of the Chinese accounts we tracked on Twitter now X uh basically because she was confrontational she was conspiratorial and her rhetoric has totally shifted over the last six months so I think the wolf warrior style has um has been drawn back a little bit because I think the higher ups realize that ultimately it's not all that effective especially in Europe so I I think China's fine being confrontational with the United States if you're talking about the Nexus between China and Russia the glue there is anti-americanism if you look at their Outlets globally that's the one commonality but I think the confrontational style directed at Europe I don't think they found that to be a winning approach so we've seen them the pendulum has sort of swung back to what we saw in 2019 2020 where it's more about presenting China as a as a great partner on the world stage interesting and in terms of in terms of the audience Reed and and men are you noticing that there's maybe less of a focus of uh targeting the diasporas overseas or or men especially since you know you you are looking at this every day or you know as as Brett said is there more of an image more of an attempt to portray the PRC as like a you know constructive partner on the global stage because there's been a lot of media coverage about like Chinese interference for example in elections and targeting uh ethnic Chinese diaspora groups so I'm wondering sort of where this all fits together yeah China is definitely uh reaching out to its overseas population and uh uh a lot of them even outside China they still living their wayo and weij head uh bubbles so that's a very powerful machine that uh these disinformation still circulate uh in the chines uh overseas and uh uh I I think you know this is uh this is what they are uh really like expanding uh their disinformation campaign uh you know globally and uh I also want to go back to a little bit on uh Ukraine and Taiwan uh so uh our fact check lab uh worked with uh dictator media iri and double uh double Think Lab did a research report of Ukraine uh China Russia Ukraine and there's a very there there's some really interesting findings that I I would like to share like uh one technique observed that uh the indirect direct uh quoting of Russian officials or Russian media uh in mandering uh with very little identified Divergence in Russian and Chinese narratives concerning the invasion of Ukraine and the analysis indicates there are two over uh overarching themes observed in both languages uh first it's anti-American and anti-western sentiment and second it's uh positioning Russia as a victim or hero so you know these are uh these are all very interesting Trends to see how they are uh collaborating together and RT is actually the only foreign media that's officially allowed uh in China I'll just stop here for uh re yeah sure I can build off that a bit so I mean I I I I think especially in in my job I see I'm looking much more at the you know say reaching other parts of the world rather than the Chinese or mandin speaking diasporas around there um and I think you know if we take Ukraine and if we can throw Gaza into there I mean I think that that maybe isn't even really disinformation or it's partly disinformation more propaganda but it's you know given a lot of fodder to it there's a lot of fuel for China to to cook with a lot of ingredients to bring into the the propaganda disinformation kitchen um and um you know it is really this anti-us message like quite transparently so um and but that resonates in a lot of the world right and I think especially you know it is not a secret I think China has been courting the global South for quite some time um you know well before either of those conflicts it's been investing in overseas media you know if you talk about Africa I believe that shinoa has the largest network of foreign correspondents there um you know there's been billions that have been put into there it's also into the Middle East we could even talk about some areas across the former Soviet Union you're starting to see uh Chinese Network set up Affiliates there as well so there is this big expansion and yeah I think a lot of it is around partly boosting image making partly you know boosting a bit of those you know those big sensitive areas that China carries a lot car cares a lot about Taiwan um you know especially if we're talking about in the Muslim World things related to Shang and the Crackdown that happened against weers and other groups there um and so I think that that is you know there's a big there's a lot of ways to amplify that message through all of that and I think that that is it's honestly I think taking hold quite a ways you know maybe in in Western for Western audiences not so much maybe going actually the opposite direction but if you want to talk about Africa the Middle East I think that there's quite fertile terrain and um I think it's it's taking off thanks Brett do you want to maybe explain what you're seeing in the global south I mean obviously this we mentioned Middle East in Africa Latin America has also been a big uh Battleground for competition with with the United States especially from a a Russian perspective what metrics are you seeing from both you know state sponsored media outlets and government officials in these regions yeah I think we can be a little bit myopic looking at the transatlantic space and sort of gauging the success of Russia and China just looking at the sort of reactions of publics in Europe and United States if you look at the numbers in Latin America in particular they're pretty staggering when you look at the success of both China and Russia particularly Russia in Latin America I pulled numbers the other day of the last year uh on Facebook and if you look at the major Spanish language Global media Outlets RT and espanol is first in terms of followers in terms of likes cgtn and is second CNN and espanol is third Univision is fourth so they are outperforming these major independent uh Spanish language Outlets bosda America sits at about 11th of the outlets that we were looking at and so their reach in in the Spanish language markets is enormous and I think when you talk to colleagues in Colombia and in South America and Central America the sense is that they are not Fringe Outlets there they are seen as sort of major Global media players the way that you would look at the BBC here uh and it's interesting there that particularly looking at Russia the tone is quite different than what you see from RT in Europe and the United States so in the US RT Deutsch RT and France they tend to be these sort of right leaning outlets in Latin America RT and espanol is very much the sort of traditional Anti-Imperialist anti-colonialist kind of leftist uh outlet and when you do Network mapping and look at the communities that are engaging with that content they tend to be sort of way left leaning uh political communities in all of the countries that we monitored in Latin America re mentioned in Africa CTN and Africa does quite well as well uh I think it is their on YouTube cgtn and Africa I think is their their second most followed uh channel so when we only look at the successes of the Kremlin uh and Beijing in Europe in the United States we're really missing what's happening a lot of the world which I think is honestly more of their focus uh there's less competition there in some cases and there's more opportunity to give their content to authentic genuine domestic media Outlets who are content stared so rupley for example been very good about getting uh their Stringer content to outlets in the global South who need Stringer footage from Ukraine and so they've been able to get footage in the hands of domestic media Outlets so it's not just what they're doing through their overt channels it's also what they're able to distribute through authentic local media Outlets as well that this might be a good place to Pivot and take advantage of of men and reads positions as you know journalists and editors in the field who are covering these issues sort of on a on a global scale um I'm curious sort of well two things I'm curious about one is how do you ensure that your organizations are looking well beyond National borders um to cover this phenomenon of of PRC or or Russian disinformation you know very far a field Latin America or the Middle East or Africa so that's one I'm also curious what Newsroom procedures you have in place to make sure that you are not sort of inadvertently amplifying or being the victim of uh state sponsored information operations I mean this is this isn't to pick on on you but in the in the 2016 US presidential election you know 30 plus of the of the major American news outlets were inadvertently amplifying Russian disinformation accounts online this isn't to say that RFA or rfl has done this but I'm curious what you have sort of learned from that experience to ensure that you yourselves are not uh targeted and and and inadvertently amplifying um this sort of these sorts of operations um do you want to go go first bin or do you want me to hop in no go first that's okay um sure I mean I can I I'll bite off what I what I can do there um you know in terms of I mean it's obviously it's a it's a massive problem I mean speaking anecdotally I mean you look at all the big surveys of every Newsroom everywhere I mean I think this is the biggest thing that uh people are identifying as problems for their newsrooms and then I think you couple that you know zooming out a bit I'll come back to talking specifically about um what we do but you know you're talking about all the inroads that have been made in places like Africa Latin America you know part of that is happening because a lot of the traditional Gatekeepers the big uh Outlets are you know there's they're going under there's layoffs there's less budgets um you know so in places like Africa cgtn can come and you know just hire up all these correspondents who don't have a place to work anymore and they'll happily take up the job and so that's kind of created a lot of that hole and I think that's that's part of the equation too of just the the underfunding and The Wider kind of business issues hitting news rooms on a very practical level that's coming at the exact same time that you have you know defects and AI taking over and doing all sorts of stuff that's going to make that even more difficult I mean in terms of what we do you know we have um you know public editor we have a lot that's gone there that's that's really focused on just trying to make sure that you know all those uh all the the tees are being cross crossed and the eyes are being dotted um and just trying to create in you know procedures you know when you're dealing with something that is sensitive you know you're getting extra eyes on it you know just creating all of those you know we call them fail safe um but obviously that's easier said than done especially you know you're dealing with all the Practical constraints of all right you know is this a time sensitive scoop we need to rush we need to move forward you know like you're you're you're running out of that wiggle root really to go through and be so thorough it's a hard hard thing to do in the moment I think especially um so I think it's a it's a focus then about making sure you have that editorial muscle behind the scenes and then also um I think making sure that there's a credibility and a respect of knowing that okay if you're seeing this coming from you know from us or from you know someone else you want to know that you have a relationship with your consumer and they're going to trust and respect what's coming out of your what they're seeing on your outlet yeah I will uh Echo read on this I I think uh you know the big thing is uh for us for Radio free Asia and radio free Europe uh the the uniqueness is using this surrogate journalist uh journalism model so in most of the times uh we don't have reporters on the ground in these very difficult uh media environments or or these societies period so uh we have to be even more uh uh in installing even more higher standards on our our journalism and this is why people trust uh our reporting uh we have reporters that have the language skills networks uh knowledge of of the place and this also plays into I think a bigger uh topic about the public funded uh broadcaster public funded media that we can uh just focus on the quality of Journalism and earn the trust uh of the audience in a time that they are going to see all kinds of stuff on their social media uh platforms um and and on this end uh RFA has invested a lot uh in reaching audience Beyond Asia with most with more uh digital products uh we have to meet where our audience are where they are uh be it shortwave TV or cell phones and uh we have to be even more competitive in our content and be more creative in our uh storytelling uh skills to attract them because you know if you have two minutes on on Tik Tok on on Facebook would you rather watch a dancing singing video or a really sad weager person being a arrested and sentenced to death so these are the challenges and the things that we've been do doing uh day in and day out and the other point I want to make is uh going to bread I think uh uh how to help uh local media having that mindset in building out uh uh content and media Outlets is very important um uh in the global th it's almost like a News desert uh there there isn't any local media uh so I think there is a big gap uh that we can feel uh for example uh the U us AGM uh our agency our mother agency is now trying to create a new initiative called new Global News service that would provide uh credible fact-based uh content from all networks to uh the third country's media Outlets uh traditional ones Legacy ones or uh the uh social media influencers providing them alternative content that they they can use and the other thing I want to talk about is uh uh like RFA we created a few digital brands like uh why now why now it's a digital magazine cater to younger uh Chinese audience and the the the thinking the logic behind it is to appeal to younger mandering speaking audience and building this engaged Community with a more Niche content and that has been proven uh success we saw menusa on Russia we saw Raper uh in Philippines and we're in a different uh uh you know media landscape Information Age that we have to be more creative on how we can increase our impact and reach thanks there's there's a lot to unpack here again I know you've done a lot of work looking at s US public diplomacy and what both the state department and US AGM can do to to address the very issues that M has just talked about do you have a sense that with the rapidly evolving information space even though the United States has been thoroughly outcompeted in many parts of the world by the the Chinese and Russian State media apparatuses that there is still an ability with the right resources and the right you know new ways innovative ways of of of reaching audiences that we can get get some of these audiences back sure I mean well I'll back up to one of the truisms is it doesn't matter how good your message is if your policies are unpopular so we can spend I mean however much money we can throw at the issue if ultimately the US is seeing as a uh not particularly good partner to other parts of the world it's not a really good matter how good us AGM is able to function in those regions that being said I haven't looked at the fiscal year budget this year but when we did reporting on this the last couple years the Spanish language budget for Voice of America Voice of America was like in the 10 million doll range I mean that that's not a lot when you look at the US government budget and so certainly more resources can go towards that I will say on you know sort of an optimistic note when we started talking about this in 201 18 2019 we didn't get a lot of bites from the hill or anywhere else really there has been an increased uh focus on the fact that we are not performing particularly well in Latin America in Africa in the last two or three years so that's a step in the right direction I mean you got to start with people actually caring and understanding that there's an issue there but I think the initiative Min mentioned which I wasn't actually aware of is is great and I think that's what we should be doing I mean we have 40 million Spanish speakers in the US a lot of them are very good content creators like let's get that content distributed uh to content starved networks and places where their only alternative has been in some cases to get Chinese and Russian content so you don't necessarily need the US government to spend hundred million do to set up this massive Global media apparatus in Africa or in Latin America you just need to be I think a little bit more strategic about Distributing content well um you know because the game is not just about content creation which you have to be good at it's about dissemination as well uh and distribution so I I would love if that would really be the focus of the US government because again we have an amazingly creative Independent Media sector we have great content creators in Hollywood and we have a lot of Spanish speakers here so like let's use the sector and just work to distribute that content in places where it's needed readed I don't know if you had any further Reflections on sort of how in your organizations you can be you could ex expand your reach I me some of the new innovative ways you've talked about I think get at that um but you know we are working from behind here in a way U which is not the fault I think of either of your organizations it's just sort of the reality that we we we've lost sight of the fact that these regimes sort of double down on this particular sort asymmetric tool of of gaining influence around the world and now we're catching up as you just said um so from from your perspectives what more can we do to sort of close the gap uh yeah I I cannot agree more with what Brett just said uh we spend a lot of money it it's not even I don't even think it's a money issue like of course China pours uh uh what I think the number was like 60 billion or something for uh a propaganda uh but it is the dissemination is it is how you deliver the content to whom uh you can have the best content in the world but no one knows so there has got to be a strategy there's got to be uh uh you know people going into these markets to to market the content itself and understanding each Market's uh situation and know uh how we can up our game just for example like uh in in global South just say like in Thailand there are many uh mandering uh media Outlets there because there are a lot of uh Chinese speaking people living in Thailand and there is uh uh English uh media in Thai and there's Thai media in High and a lot of them when it comes to China reporting on China they rely on shinwa and CCTV so a lot of them won't be able to avord uh uh subscribing to AP Reuters or AFP so how do we get resources and help to them uh you know whether they take it or not I think it should be available to these local media to help the quality of uh their reporting and help us to get into the game I do not think CCP uh has any Silver Bullet in doing this they just discovered this much earlier and started much earlier and we uh now are catching up and I I think uh this uh new effort uh you know like repackaging curating and uh finding a way to get more Partners uh I also like what Brett just said we need more Partners uh in the global media land landcape to uh work together not just dumping our narrative there but us journalist to journalist these are the fact based information that we all want to publish we all want to share uh and you know um I think that that's that's uh what I thought uh you know going forward one of the recommendations that we can give to the hill to whoever uh that can give resources to do this type of work yeah if I can just pipe in a little bit there um you know I mean I I think obviously everything is going to be a little bit of a a resource issue and as someone an organization I mean more resources are always welcome because you never really feels like you ever have enough to to to work with um but I mean I think there's also a bit of um you know just speaking as a as a correspondent as a journalist someone who's reporting you know it's a bit of you know I I think that this maybe applies to all of journalism right now where we've been the last couple years is finding new ways to tell stories to deliver the information going where the audiences actually are and I think a lot of those Trends are even you know Amplified even more when we start looking at the global South where people are consuming most of their things on their phone they're you know that's happening in the US that's happening across Europe as well but I think especially in lots of other parts of the world it's it's phone only you know it's short form video things like that you know it's tough to deliver information in that way but also I think that there's needs to be a bit of a mindset change and you know recognition that you know like I may come from a magazine background you know and you're like yeah I'm GNA do this 4,000-word investigation this detailed thing um but most people aren't going to read something that way you know Finding ways to yeah you still need to do those things but how to deliver it how to chop it up you know how to present take those same ingredients and present them in a very different way um I think is a big a big part of it and I think that maybe involves bringing in uh a new outlook bringing in some and some resources to kind of shake things up in a bit because I think that you know there can be a tendency I think I'm not shocking anyone when you say in any kind of any kind of large organization public organization right you can get into we this is a way that we've been doing things but you can never be doing things the way you've been doing them you always need to be innovating and pushing it and that's a very hard thing to maintain and I think even more so in a in a public kind of organization well thank you both for sharing those thoughts I think we're going to turn now to the audience Q&A as we're about at the 15 minute Mark so we have a question from vaa to all participants are there similarities between Russian propaganda regarding Ukraine before Russia launched the full scale scale war and Trends in Chinese propaganda before and after the elections in Taiwan uh and then a broader question can we say that certain signs in propaganda can serve as clear signs that a country is preparing a military action that's a yeah that's a a heavier one who would like to address either of those those two questions at least the change in tactics we probably well I'll actually try to start with the last one which if you look at Russia's information strategy before The fullscale Invasion um I think that probably is not what we'll see again so it's maybe not a great sort of lesson learned um kind of uh training ground there because Russia's approach before the invasion was to say that even the thought of an invasion was just absurd and Western propaganda and it wasn't going to happen and that was actually very very damaging for Russian credibility in the first six months of the war because you had all of these people who worked at these outlets around the world who I think genuinely beli this message and were putting their own credibility on the line putting out memes that were sort of mocking the US of being these you know sort of crazy propagandists and then like whoops you got tanks rolling in and you had a lot of people quit because they they just couldn't Square what they'd been saying with what the reality was so I don't think we will see Beijing adopt that if there is an invasion of Taiwan which obviously we hope there isn't so I'm not sure that there's going to be a lesson learned there if there is it would be a an odd strategy to try to replicate the first part of the question um I I don't know if I could necessarily say that there those we saw similarities between the sort of post-election in Taiwan and the post full scale Invasion uh or I guess before was the question so um yeah I I don't know I would maybe kick that to my colleagues I mean clearly we saw Russian disinformation tactics trying to dehumanize ukrainians and establish them as as the radicals and extremists I don't know if we've seen the same thing with Taiwanese maybe to would agree with some political figures but you know men would probably be far better position to answer that question yeah I I think uh uh you know before the election uh as we just discussed a couple years ago the wolf warrior style was was uh very popular uh they they go uh headon they go really strong um but during the Taiwan election they did try uh to uh mock certain uh candidates their background like uh taking briberies uh you know having having uh uh EXT exr marital child you know things like that um but I I want to quickly point out a bright spot in this uh uh very uh uh in this discussion is I don't think Russia and China are always successful I mean just look at how much resources that China pour into uh manipulating taiwan's election uh it didn't shift the the results so I I just want to provide that so we we can have some hope in uh the the general uh public audience uh they have also learned uh to be more sophis at in this not everybody um but uh there is hope so re yeah re you have a two finger there um maybe I'll pass on I was gonna say maybe uh I think that men kind of said everything I was gonna say so got it here's an interesting question so the Kremlin has frequently utilized a decentralized approach to influence information operations including Outsourcing to local actors or proxies and in effect franchising as the the audience member says uh franchising these operations out could the CCP follow a similar approach or will it remain centralized in state media and spokespeople um I I can hop in there um you know I obviously I don't have a crystal ball I'm not sure exactly what's going on in those rooms but I mean from everything um that I have ever seen or heard um it's a extraordinarily centralized model how a lot of these you know the outlets will work um in practice you know especially like a place like I'm thinking of you know my experience a bureau on the ground in Central Asia for instance right um You have your top level managers they're always going to be Chinese I mean there's still a bit of a distrust of local staff um that exists a little bit um especially in terms of holding management roles so um my first response would be I I think that actually should be quite difficult to replicate I mean I think that you are seeing the Chinese starting to things are going to change but I think that's that's a hard thing you know I think that's the biggest struggle that's been for China in a lot of ways as it's really stepped out globally with a lot of this stuff is you know taking what it knows what works at home which is quite effective but obviously you have this very walled off tightly controlled environment but when you're out in in the wild it's a very different sort of thing and you can't rely on those same mechanisms um but I'd be curious to hear what everyone else thinks I I I agree what with what Reit just said yeah yeah I mean I think even when you look at the the staff who have been hired locally by the Kremlin uh Kremlin State back media and Chinese State back media tend to be very different kinds of people um you know the the PRC tends to hire sort of very professional um you know run-of-the-mill kind of journalistic style where the kemins has a little bit more appeal to kind of younger um more digitally Savvy and there's just a sort of different tone to even the presentation so you get this sort of New York Post style uh reporting from Uh Russian State media which you don't really see all that much in Chinese State media I mean a little bit in global time sometimes but even that is it's different so I I would agree I would think it' be unlikely that we see uh PRC State media go the Kremlin route and just kind of hiring young people who have a certain mindset and worldview and letting them run wild I don't think that's going to fit with their uh modus operandi great here's a a good provocative question uh given that we're in a major election year and it's a it's a question that we do a lot of thinking about here at gmf in the election context are Russian and Chinese objectives shifting to long-term goals of eroding Democratic discourse and democracy rather than seeking to influence a particular outcome of an election um hence recent unsuccessful election interference might be because their aims have shifted you want to start with that Brett since we think about this aot and then we'll turn it over to to Min and Reed I mean you know I do think most of the time Russia or China interfere in election they do have a preferred candidate preferred outcome I think it's sometimes unfortunate that we have covered it as just their only goal is to seow mistrust I think that is a secondary effect and they're very happy in some cases if that's the only outcome so if you look at the US election coming up I mean I think it's not a stretch to say that Kremlin has a preferred candidate for obvious reasons if they don't get their guy to win I think if you end up with half of the country mistrusting the results if you have a more polarized electorate that's a win too so there are side advantages but you know I think if they're going to spend the resources to try to interfere in an election I don't think their only goal is to try to undermine democracy and again I think there's different goals from China and Russia Russia is fine with chaos I don't think in in many parts of the world China would see that as being advantageous men Reed any anything to add there uh yeah I I I am not sure uh you know on this from uh CCP uh you know like they of course has its own agenda um but I don't I I don't see uh how uh they would be overtly uh trying to influence our uh uh election here um and the other point I want to make is um uh that I think uh you know for what we do uh this this is the time that um uh for us to cater to the Chinese domestic audience to let them know what's really going on uh in the United States that as our sister organization vaa does too and that part of their job I think it's very important uh encountering uh whatever disinformation they would put out there because mostly I think that CCP want to demonstrate the chaos in the US election campaign the chaos in American St uh democracy th this is what uh they mainly wants to sell and and our job will be uh covering uh what's really going on uh you know in in the US and also carrying the Chinese uh you know for RFA carrying the Chinese response out to uh the Chinese people and and to the uh Western uh world uh that you know how they are responding to this and also I think um um I think the uh Congress really understands the importance of uh having media Outlets like us and radio for Europe uh to keep its independence in covering these issues and uh that you know that is critical to The credibility of how we are uh covering this us election that's so important uh uh to many many countries yeah I would just add I mean in my personal opinion I mean I think this the scariest types of disinformation are always the ones that have domestic Origins um and I think are probably the more most harmful um I mean I I think you know obviously as everyone said I mean the Russians are a lot more comfortable with sewing the seeds of chaos or turning on the the fire fire hos of falsehoods as people like to say um you know I think a thing also that always sticks out to me when looking at on the China side of things is you know there is yes there is the very outward the one engaging with the world that kind of messaging but there's also a lot of reporting what's happening in the country just to send it back home which I think more in the context of American elections I mean I think it's shown look at this messy ugly process of democracy aren't you glad that we have you know stability and I think that that message is then getting sent to other parts of the world that are also more author tan and have governments that are very okay with China then broadcasting that message as well to their own people um you know I think of just a very like basic example I remember once years ago I was a freelance journalist and I wrote this thing for the Washington Post looking at the legacy of House of Cards as a TV show um and you know that's like a famous thing you know it shows this really grimy gross look at what American politics and democracy really are and you know Iran let it air on TV for everybody to watch just cuz they thought it was just so damaging look at what America's really like you know it was one of the most downloaded and watch shows in China in its second season all these things you know it was huge in Russia at the time you know so I think there's there's always this this other side of the of the blade here when we're talking about this in terms of you know yes it's interfering of things abroad but also then taking that and sending that message back home to their own people I think it a really big part of the equation well we have we have so many more interesting questions that are coming in such a thought-provoking conversation but we are about to hit time um the sad news is this is a very Evergreen topic so there's there's we can go on for hours talking about all of this um so hopefully we have another opportunity to continue this conversation um with all the elections coming up this year clearly there will be a lot more discussion of this Nexus of Chinese and Russian state sponsored uh information manipulation and disinformation uh Min Reed Brett thank you very much for sharing your insights uh please do everyone in the audience continue to to support Radio free Asia Radio free Europe uh check out our tools here at the alliance for securing democracy at ger Marshall funds we are covering these issues every day thank you for your attention for your participation and we will see you next time thank you thank you thank you thanks