Authoritarian Disinformation: The New Propaganda Playbook’s Global Impacts

Join us for the inaugural event of “Democracy and Emergent Technology,” a year-long series of talks and panels sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center and Perry World House. Please note that this event is in-person only.

Authoritarian regimes, particularly Russia and China, have been quick to take advantage of new technologies as they emerge in their efforts to divide world opinion, worsen polarization and conflict within liberal democracies, and undermine the trust that citizens have in their own systems of government. Whether it is to change public perceptions of the war in Ukraine or of military drills around Taiwan, Moscow and Beijing have expanded their disinformation playbook by doctoring videos and images, presenting half-truths to depict themselves as victims, and utilizing global networks on social media to push false narratives. In this talk, Brookings Institution’s Jessica Brandt will assess the current and emerging threats and propose means of countering them.

Speaker

Jessica Brandt is policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. She is a leading expert on foreign interference, disinformation, digital authoritarianism and the implications of emerging technologies for liberal democracies. She was the lead author on “Linking Values and Strategy: How Democracies Can Offset Autocratic Advances,” the report of a bipartisan task force of 30 leading national security practitioners across parties and sub-disciplines, which developed national strategy for the United States in non-military domains of competition. Her work has been widely published and quoted in the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, Bloomberg, Vox, Slate, and Wired, among others.