The Case for a Mis- and Disinformation Center of Excellence
Authors: Matt Masterson, Alex Zaheer, Chase Small, Carly Miller (Stanford Internet Observatory)
It is undeniable that online falsehoods played a role in motivating those that stormed the US Capitol on January 6. Therefore it is undeniable that misinformation and disinformation pose a direct threat to the security of the United States. Recent efforts to address the implications of widespread disinformation have been spread across the government: the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and others, who have responded with an array of actions include sending tips to social media platforms, engaging in law enforcement activity and providing proactive resilience messaging to slow the consumption of mis- and disinformation. While these have been important first steps, the evolution of mis- and disinformation demonstrates that further coordinated and decisive action must be taken by all levels of government in partnership with academia, nonprofits and the private sector to build resilience among the American people against weaponized falsehoods online.
Resilience to mis- and disinformation can be defined as reducing the psychological effects of its tactics. Fostering resilience can be sorted into two lines of effort: reducing the supply of mis- and disinformation by making it less prevalent in our information spaces, and reducing the demand for mis- and disinformation by “inoculating” the public against it. Early partnerships between government, social media companies and academia to reduce the prevalence of mis- and disinformation were born out of the lessons learned from the 2016 election, and some academic work is starting to explore the promise of reducing the impact of weaponized online falsehoods. However, since 2016, the size and scope of the information disorder problem has grown significantly, as actors foreign and domestic continue to wage influence operations targeting the American people. As such, the threat posed by mis- and disinformation continues to outpace government efforts to counter it.
Because of the dynamic threat that mis- and disinformation poses to national security, we recommend the creation of a federal Center of Excellence for mis- and disinformation housed in the Department of Homeland Security’s CISA. This center will pursue three main goals:
To serve as a single federal center for the expertise and capabilities necessary lead mis- and disinformation resilience and countering efforts;
To coordinate mis- and disinformation countering efforts at the federal level and in support of state and local government efforts as well as the private sector; and
To play a leading role in building capacity inside government, as well as in civil society and the private sector, to increase resilience to mis- and disinformation.
Current Federal Activities to Counter Mis- and Disinformation: Shortfalls and Opportunities
Presently, there is no lead federal agency or department for countering mis- and disinformation, foreign or domestic. Instead, the federal government has several disparate efforts for the identification and countering of mis- and disinformation. Below is a breakdown of the main federal entities currently tasked with addressing the issue and the roles they currently play in addressing it.
Global Engagement Center (GEC) - The GEC at the Department of State is tasked with directing, synchronizing, integrating and coordinating federal efforts to recognize and counter foreign state and non-state disinformation efforts aimed at influencing US policy, security or stability.
Resilience Role: The GEC is entirely foreign focused but works collaboratively with CISA and other federal agencies to understand foreign mis- and disinformation campaigns. The GEC also helps create resilience products to help Americans understand the scope and nature of disinformation. An example of this work is the recently released “Harmony Square” game that takes players through the steps of developing a disinformation campaign to sow division and disrupt the peace of a fictitious town square. While this game was created as an academic exercise, it demonstrates the promise of using public-facing products as a resilience strategy to reduce the impact of mis- and disinformation.
Federal Bureau of Investigation - The FBI’s foreign influence task force (FITF) served an important leadership role in countering mis- and disinformation related to the 2018 and 2020 federal elections.
Resilience Role: The FITF’s primary function was to work collaboratively to identify efforts by foreign governments to overtly or covertly interfere with the election using social or traditional media. The FBI and social media companies did excellent work sharing information to tip and cue each other to possible foreign activity and take action. The FBI also collaborated with CISA to provide a series of public service announcements before the 2020 election regarding possible hybrid disinformation campaigns seeking to sow doubt and distrust in the election. These releases ranged in topics from voter registration data to election night reporting and voting machines. The intent of the releases was to build resilience among the American voting public to possible attempts by foreign governments to undermine the election.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - Prior to the 2018 election CISA created a countering foreign influence task force, a team within the Election Security Initiative designed to degrade the effectiveness of campaigns such as those used by Russian actors to interfere in the 2016 election.
Resilience Role: The purpose of this task force was to work collaboratively with state and local election officials and other trusted voices within communities to help Americans understand how mis- and disinformation is spread and how to best prevent it. One example of the task force’s work is the “War on Pineapple” campaign which used the example of an innocuous controversial issue, whether or not pineapple belong on pizza, to show how Russian disinformation actors may use it to divide Americans online. The goal was to demonstrate the potential of public-facing education campaigns while demystifying the tactics and intentions of information operations.
Prior to the 2020 election, CISA published a disinformation toolkit for state and local officials to use to talk to voters about mis- and disinformation and drive them to trusted sources of information like verified election official websites. CISA also worked directly with social media companies to enumerate possible scenarios where mis- or disinformation could be pushed as a result of COVID-19-related changes made to the election process. Based on these simulations, CISA encouraged state and local election jurisdictions to publicize information about changing election procedures directly to voters in an attempt to get ahead of possible mis- and disinformation narratives.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)/Intelligence Community - In response to foreign interference in the 2016 election, ODNI established an Election Threat Executive to serve as a coordinating authority for the Intelligence Community (IC) and a bridge between foreign collection activities and domestic actions to secure the elections.
Resilience Role: The role of the IC so far has been in threat awareness, which in turn can inform resilience efforts. Throughout the 2020 election, ODNI engaged with the IC and private sector to assess ongoing foreign activity, brief stakeholders including state and local officials and even proactively message regarding ongoing foreign attempts to interfere in the election. Following the 2020 election, Congress passed a bill requiring ODNI establish a Foreign Malign Influence Center. This Center is intended to be an IC clearinghouse for intelligence related to malign influence from foreign governments and provide assessments and warnings of such activities. Critically, this organization is meant to streamline IC coordination on mis- and disinformation, but is unlikely to address resilience needs.
While the agencies outlined above coordinated very effectively within the federal government around election security, there are still gaping holes in the US government's response to mis- and disinformation. For instance, efforts at the federal level continue to be focused on foreign adversaries' efforts to spread mis- and disinformation and are specific to each department’s mission. This approach is understandable because of the necessary constitutional boundaries that exist around freedom of speech and lawful search and seizure. However, the federal government needs to prioritize the threat that domestic mis- and disinformation poses to national security, and work collaboratively with academia and civil society to identify the appropriate federal role in combating domestic disinformation. These partners are important to understanding overall trends in tactics by disinformation actors, and play a critical role in determining what remediation work is and is not possible.
In addition, federal efforts on mis- and disinformation have largely focused on the supply side and have paid little attention to curbing demand for this information. Throughout the 2020 election we saw Americans amplifying mis- and disinformation related to the election. Understanding how and why Americans were driven to spread this information and working to drive down that demand through promising interventions such as “prebunking” is essential to a meaningful plan to combat mis- and disinformation. This will take a multi-year and multi-faceted effort to meaningfully impact this demand, and will require further academic study to do effectively, work that could be coordinated by experts in the federal government.
Federal Mis- and Disinformation Center of Excellence: A Path to Resilience
It is time for the federal government to restructure its approach to face this threat directly. This memo recommends the creation of an Mis- and Disinformation Center of Excellence (CoE) to be housed within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to better coordinate this work. The Center should have the following responsibilities:
Centralize Mis- and Disinformation Expertise: Mis- and disinformation targeting other domains will likely emerge over time, and misinformation in realms such as elections are unlikely to diminish in fervor or volume. Given this expansive and rapidly-changing landscape, the mis- and disinformation CoE should serve as a collection of subject matter experts, analyzing nationwide trends across social and traditional media platforms to determine if particular strains of mis- and disinformation threaten national security. This will include consulting academic experts, private companies, and the intelligence community.
Coordinate Government Mis- and Disinformation Countering Efforts: Countering mis- and disinformation presents a difficult collective action problem: it is sometimes unclear who is best poised to directly counter particular online falsehoods. For example, while election misinformation is clearly best countered by election officials, vaccine misinformation counter-messaging may require a mixture of public and non-public entities to be most effective. A CoE would draw on expert analysis of current rumor spread, as well as the research outlined above, to determine how best to uplift authoritative pre- and debunking communicators, and lead public sector efforts to do so.
Lead Resilience Capacity-Building Campaigns: Increasing societal resilience to mis- and disinformation poses a complicated long-term policy challenge, involving media literacy, civic education and other long-range interventions. Determining the most effective and sustainable manner to pursue these avenues requires navigating myriad stakeholders in many sectors and at many levels of locality. The Mis- and Disinformation CoE should spearhead this stakeholder coordination, supplying funding and resources for research and development as needed.
A federal Center of Excellence can tackle mis- and disinformation by coordinating necessary whole-of-society solutions. The federal government cannot be in the business of policing online content, even if certain online narratives directly threaten national security. For precisely this reason, this Center of Excellence must focus on resilience and narrative responses like pre-bunking or rumor control sites rather than actively removing content. Coordination with civil society, academia, and platforms will allow the federal government to do this effectively and without overstepping. For example, a Center of Excellence could have gotten ahead of the foreseen issues around COVID-19 vaccination mis- and disinformation by coordinating leading health agencies such as the CDC, the Office of the Surgeon General, and others before the vaccine rollout.
As effective disarmament of mis- and disinformation becomes better understood in academic research, there must exist a dedicated, empowered entity within the federal government that puts this research to work. While private entities like social media companies remain at the forefront of reducing the spread of misinformation, the federal government must play a coordinating role in generating consensus on the best path forward in order to enable a whole-of-society approach.