Identifying “[f]oreign information manipulation and interference [FIMI] [as] a national security threat,” the U.S. Department of State has announced two initiatives to counter FIMI.Footnote 1 In January 2024, the Department launched a Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation that “seeks to develop a common understanding of [the] threat [of FIMI] and establish a common set of action areas from which the United States . . . [and its] allies and partners . . . can develop coordinated responses . . . and protect free and open societies.”Footnote 2 Two months later, the Department unveiled a Democratic Roadmap “for global policymakers, civil society, and the private sector” that proposes steps to “tackle the information integrity challenge in ways that are consistent with democratic values, freedom of expression, and international human rights law.”Footnote 3 The Framework and the Democratic Roadmap join existing and planned multinational counter-FIMI projects, including the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online (GDIIO),Footnote 4 the OECD Hub on Information Integrity,Footnote 5 and the UN Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms.Footnote 6 These efforts aim to fight what the United States and the European Union (obliquely referring to actions by the Chinese and Russian governments) have jointly described as the “borderless threat [of foreign state information manipulation] that poses a risk to democratic values, processes, and stability.”Footnote 7 The initiatives have taken on particular importance during a year in which there are major elections around the world, including in the European Union, India, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela.Footnote 8 In the United States, governmental action to prevent the spread of misinformation on private platforms raises First Amendment concerns.Footnote 9
At the third Summit for Democracy in March 2024, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken avowed that “[b]uilding a more resilient information environment is . . . a vital national security interest” of the United States.Footnote 10 He emphasized “the challenge of disinformation—of material deliberately meant to deceive and divide—as well as other forms of false and misleading content.”Footnote 11 And he warned that “our adversaries are using disinformation to exploit fissures within our democracies by further sowing suspicion, cynicism, instability. Pitting one group against another. Discrediting our institutions.”Footnote 12 “This distortion of the marketplace of ideas,” he said, “is not an unfortunate byproduct of free speech–it's a direct threat to freedom of expression itself.”Footnote 13 He pointed out that “[t]he Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines not only the right to express ourselves; it protects our freedom . . . ‘to hold opinions without interference.’”Footnote 14 “The manipulation of information,” he concluded, “undermines our ability to exercise that fundamental right.”Footnote 15
At the summit, Secretary Blinken highlighted the Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation unveiled earlier this year. The Framework focuses on five “Key Action Areas” for signatories. First, countries agree to “develop[] and implement[] strategies . . . [that] ensure safeguards for freedom of expression, protection for marginalized groups, transparency in media ownership, and a commitment to protect elections from foreign malign influence.”Footnote 16 Second, countries commit to “organize dedicated government institutions to lead and coordinate national efforts, international engagement, and fact-based digital communication on foreign information manipulation.”Footnote 17 Third, countries pledge to “[b]uild[] effective capacity [to counter FIMI] . . . [through] investing in digital security tools that can detect foreign state information manipulation and ensuring interoperability between government partners.”Footnote 18 Fourth, countries promise to “protect and support the role of independent media, promote independent fact checking and media and digital literacy, and welcome public advocacy,” as “[c]ivil society, independent media, and academia can play essential roles in” countering FIMI.Footnote 19 And fifth, countries agree that “[m]ultilateral organizations that leverage international cooperation to counter and build resilience against foreign state information manipulation are indispensable to alleviating information and capability shortfalls across partner nations.”Footnote 20 Nineteen countries and the United States have endorsed the Framework to date.Footnote 21 To facilitate implementation, the United States is entering into agreements with countries to “train[] partners to analyze disinformation, building capacity and resilience to this challenge.”Footnote 22
A second major initiative, the Democratic Roadmap, announced in March, posits that, given the capacities of new technologies, governments, the private sector, journalists, and civil society must “build civic resilience to digital information manipulation and . . . strengthen the integrity of the digital information realm in support of democracy.”Footnote 23 The Roadmap lays out four steps and a detailed list of best practices to “tackle the information integrity challenge in ways that are consistent with democratic values, freedom of expression, and international human rights law.”Footnote 24 The first of these is to “[h]ighlight the importance of the digital information manipulation challenge.”Footnote 25 According to the Roadmap, “[d]egradation in the integrity of the global digital information realm has contributed to the erosion of citizen trust in democratic values and institutions.”Footnote 26 Second, countries must “[r]ecognize that building information integrity can be consistent with freedom of opinion and expression.”Footnote 27 Since “digital information manipulation undermines one's ability to exercise the freedom to seek and receive information necessary to form opinions,” protecting freedom of expression is consistent with “preventing the spread of ‘harmful’ content.”Footnote 28 Third, private digital platforms should reinforce their ability to promote information integrity.Footnote 29 This can be done through community guidelines and enhance transparency about algorithms, privacy, the sharing of data, advertising, and generative artificial intelligence content.Footnote 30 Finally, the Roadmap calls for the “address[ing] generative AI (GAI), particularly in the context of global 2024 elections.”Footnote 31 This could be accomplished by “incentivizing private sector investment in beneficial applications of GAI that build civic resilience to digital information manipulation and enhance the quality of the digital information realm.”Footnote 32
The Framework and the Democratic Roadmap build upon the work of the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC), which is tasked with coordinating U.S. government actions “to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”Footnote 33 Focusing mostly on Russia and China, the GEC has released countless reports describing instances of foreign campaigns to influence public opinion.Footnote 34 The reports denounce Russia's “never-ending attempts” to spread misinformation.Footnote 35 One describes an extensive history of campaigns to disseminate disinformation on biological weapons as a way “to create distrust in the [United States].”Footnote 36 Others focus on antisemitic propaganda,Footnote 37 the ongoing campaign to garner support for the war against Ukraine,Footnote 38 and the spreading of anti-U.S. and anti-European disinformation in Africa and Latin America.Footnote 39 The GEC has accused the Russian intelligence services of “laundering” false information through unbranded social media accounts to discredit American initiatives in a seemingly “organic” way.Footnote 40
The GEC has similarly condemned China. It has claimed that China intentionally spreads disinformation and censors dissenting voices, investing billions of dollars to advance biased discourse.Footnote 41 The GEC lists several “deceptive and coercive” manipulation methods used by China, such as spreading pro-Chinese content in traditional media and online platforms. These methods include the use of social media bots to boost engagement, cooperation with other authoritarian governments to shape discourse, and intimidation of journalists and media outlets.Footnote 42 A GEC report emphasizes the use of the popular social media platform TikTok to drive disinformation efforts, accusing its Chinese owner, ByteDance, of censoring and tracking dissidents.Footnote 43 TikTok has garnered significant attention from Congress and been (and continues to be) the subject of a comprehensive investigation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for its potential to aid foreign actors in spreading misinformation.Footnote 44 A law enacted in April bans the platform in the United States if ByteDance does not execute a “qualified divesture” of TikTok.Footnote 45
The Framework and the Roadmap join a series of international initiatives to combat disinformation online. Most notably, in September 2023, thirty-two countries, including the United States,Footnote 46 signed the GDIIO.Footnote 47 Defining “information integrity” as “an information ecosystem that produces accurate, trustworthy, and reliable information,” the GDIIO “establishes . . . international commitments by participating States to protect and promote information integrity online.”Footnote 48 Those commitments include: addressing “information integrity and platform governance” in ways consistent with international human rights law; responding to new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence to identify their potential risks and benefits; and “[r]efrain[ing] from unduly restricting human rights online, especially the freedom of opinion and expression, under the guise of countering disinformation.”Footnote 49 The GDIIO also invites online platforms to: “[e]ncourage a responsible, human rights-based and human-centric design, development, implementation, and use” of technologies, particularly generative AI, “in a manner that upholds and safeguards information integrity online”; “[e]nhance the transparency and accountability of algorithms”; “[e]stablish [advertising] policies . . . that support education and user empowerment and that preserve election and democratic integrity”; and “[e]nsure the trustworthiness of their services with respect to accounts that purposely undermine information integrity.”Footnote 50
The challenge for all of these initiatives is to establish regulatory measures that ensure information integrity within a human rights frame that prioritizes free expression. They seek to accomplish this by: (1) construing those measures as expression-enhancing; and (2) calling on private companies and social media platforms to implement information-integrity principles.Footnote 51 As Secretary Blinken stated in his March speech, “accurate information, fundamentally, is a public good,” and it will take collaboration across government, private actors, and the public “to build a more open and more resilient environment for information, and continue to deliver a better future for [American] people and people around the world.”Footnote 52
In the European Union, the Digital Services Act requires media companies to counter “negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes,”Footnote 53 but in the United States, government regulation of media companies is more restricted due to the First Amendment. Sensitive to this, James P. Rubin, Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center, has advocated “find[ing] ways to label those information operations that are generated by the Chinese government or the Kremlin but to which they don't admit.”Footnote 54 “In principle every government should be free to convey their views, but they should have to admit who they are,” he said an interview.Footnote 55 “What is wrong,” he said, “is a covert operation to manipulate information by secretly inserting it into the system without a made-in-the-Kremlin stamp on it. When people read this stuff they should know it comes from the Russian government, and it is legitimate to point that out without anyone trying to censor anyone's thoughts or opinions.”Footnote 56 “In the end,” he concluded, “that is all I know we can do right now without interfering with a free press.”Footnote 57
