Fighting back against Russian disinformation

Turns out Obama didn’t want to piss off the Russians, so he didn’t want to make it an issue. And Trump’s administration simply isn’t staffed to handle it if they want to:

In the messy aftermath of our last presidential election, Congress finally had enough of Obama’s egregious passivity, and with bipartisan support it placed a mandate to push back against “state propaganda” in the end-of-2016 National Defense Authorization Act. Although the NDAA didn’t use the word Russia, there’s no doubt who was the intended target of this belated effort at counter-propaganda.

Specifically, thanks to a strong push by Sen. John McCain, who has urged Washington to get serious about Russian threats for many years, the NDAA gave the State Department not less than $60 million in 2017 to engage in counter-propaganda work—in other words, debunking Fake News aimed at undermining Western democracies. According to the NDAA, the Pentagon is supposed to transfer the funds to Foggy Bottom, which is perennially short of cash; for the Defense Department, $60 million barely constitutes a rounding error. When Congress passed and President Obama signed the NDAA on December 23 of last year, it became law.

However, five months have passed and nothing has happened in Washington that’s worth mentioning in the fight against Kremlin disinformation. The State Department has established a tiny office inside its Global Engagement Center, which is charged with pushing back against jihadist propaganda; the effort against Russian lies is supposed to be an add-on for the GEC. However, to date nobody has been hired, and the State Department has only a small handful of experts in Russian disinformation on the payroll, nowhere near enough to implement the law.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here, though none of it belongs to the overworked GEC. The Trump White House’s hiring freeze has made it impossible to bring qualified personnel into the State Department. Neither does it help matters that the Trump administration has decided it doesn’t need its own officials to implement its policies. To date, of the 557 jobs that require Senate approval, President Trump has nominated 49, announced the nomination of 19, while only 29 people have been confirmed; 460 jobs have no nominees at all. No previous White House has ever been this slow to get its own people into top positions in Washington.

The impact of this on implementing the NDAA—and countless other laws—is cancerous. Most of the staff work that goes into making the Federal bureaucracy function is approved at the level of assistant secretaries and their deputies. And those critical jobs are almost entirely unfilled at both the State Department and the Pentagon. When closely examined, there’s really no mystery why the will of Congress regarding Russian Fake News isn’t being followed: there’s nobody to make decisions, sign paperwork, transfer funds, and hire staff.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t explain why Congress isn’t asking questions. Several of its senior members have been passionate about getting our government in the fight against Putin’s noxious lie machine. While it’s no surprise that Team Trump isn’t excited about pushing back against Russian propaganda, why patriots on Capitol Hill don’t have pointed questions about the law not being followed is something of mystery. Until senators and representatives start asking what’s going on here, the struggle against Kremlin Active Measures will be fought by our European allies on our behalf.