How Can the United States Win the Information War?

7/24/2019 How Can the United States Win the Information War?

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How Can the United States Win the

Information War?

Ambassador Kurt Volker: My name is Kurt Volker, I have the honor of being the

executive director of the McCain Institute, a part of Arizona State University thatis named for Senator McCain, Mrs. McCain, and the McCain family here goingback several generations. It's an honor to the legacy of service of that family toour country. The McCain Institute has been a part of ASU for about four years,and our principal focus is promoting character-driven leadership in the UnitedStates and around the world.

How do we instill good values and good character in a next generation of leaderswho will deal with the challenges that our country and our world is facing. Wealso take on particular projects in areas of humanitarian work, human rights, lawand governance, national security, so that we can try to function as anaction-oriented do-tank ourselves. What can we accomplish as a small but

determined NGO as an entity rather than merely as a think-tank.

We like to have interesting thoughts, but we're more interested in what we canaccomplish than just publishing papers or holding conferences. One of the thingsin our charter has also been to stimulate a culture of debate about the choicesthat we face as a country, and as a global community. What are the challengesand how do we deal with them? So we launched a debate and decision series withthat in mind.

I think we've held probably close to 20 debates now on different topics, thingssuch as should we get out of Afghanistan? Should the United States intervene in

Syria? Is Iran a threat, a nuclear threat? Is cutting our defense budget a gift to ourenemies? And on, and on, and on. We've done China, we've done human rights,we've done all sorts of topics. Today's topic I think is a very timely one and a veryexciting one, very appropriate for the Cronkite School of Journalism where weare here at ASU.

The topic is "How Can the United States Win the Information Wars?" Let meexplain very briefly what that question means. We are in competition with ISISfor hearts and minds. We're in competition with Russia, we're in competitionwith China. This is not new, the United States has always been in a competitionfor hearts and minds promoting our values of freedom, democracy, marketeconomy, rule of law, human rights.

Sometimes with greater success, sometimes with lesser success, but in today'senvironment you see extraordinarily proactive and successful efforts from manyof our adversaries to shape beliefs and attitudes, shape hearts and minds aroundthe world. The question is, is the US winning or losing? The fact is we couldn'tfind anyone to argue the US is winning. So we had to reshape the question to be,"How can the United States win?"


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We've assembled a panel of really world-renowned experts to introduce ideasabout how we can do a better job tackling this set of issues. I'll leave theintroductions of the panel to our moderator, and let me now introduce ourmoderator. Moderator for this discussion is Jeff Cunningham, Jeff is a member ofthe board of trustees of the McCain Institute. He is a faculty member here at the

Cronkite School and will be joining the faculty of Thunderbird coming up.He is a former publisher of "Forbes Magazine," he is currently leading a digitalseries called iconic voices. You've seen advertisements for that in the lobby as youcame up, which is interviews with very prominent, very interesting figures fromreally all walks of life, that create a digital archive of these interviews. People thathe has interviewed include Warren Buffet, Michael Milliken, the CEO ofFreeport-McMoRan here in Phoenix Richard Atkinson, CEO of GE Jeff Immelt,

Jeff Immelt also happens to be on our McCain Institute board of trustees as well,and many, many others. In addition to Forbes Magazine he was a publisher of"American Heritage Magazine," he founded "Directorship Magazine," he was in

the leadership of the National Association of Corporate Directors. He's had anextraordinarily distinguished career that straddles both business, and boardmemberships, and publishing. So Jeff will be leading our discussion here andmoderating the Q&A.

When we do debates, at the McCain Institute, we try to impose a little bit of orderin order to bring out the best arguments rather than a panel discussion wherepeople just present, we pose questions, we try to time answers to make it fair andequal for everyone, and we push back, and we try to get responses to opposingpoints of view. That's what we hope to provide for you this evening as well.

It is being live webcast, it will be available as a digital archive afterwards, and it ispart of the series that we do of debate and decision events for the McCainInstitute. With that, and without any further ado, let me invite our moderator JeffCunningham to come to the stage.

Jeff Cunningham: Thank you, Kurt.

Ambassador Volker: Thank you, Jeff.

Moderator: Thank you. You'll have more to applaud when I'm finished, believeme. Very good to be with you, my job is simply to be the docent and point the waytowards the rock stars. I'll tell you a little bit about the session today, what we

have in mind. The airwaves are flooded with images of refugees, terror, outrage,and the reason they're flooded with those images is because we are in somethingcalled the information war. More pointedly the war for hearts and minds.

It's a war that only generals dream about, the US enjoys every conceivable tacticaladvantage, the technology and the media being used and the tools are American,largely speaking. Our resources are unlimited and yet one pundit said aboutAmerica's strategy, "Too much George Patton, not enough Steve Jobs."


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Of our current efforts, Ken Weinstein, a member of the Broadcasting Board ofGovernors, to policy wonks that's BBG, and you're going to hear a lot about BBGtonight, said, "US communications strategy needs to be rebuilt from the groundup." The resources aren't being squandered either. State Department estimatesthat the Russians spend $1.5 billion on essentially propaganda, while the BBG is

hoping for an additional at the time this was written, $15 million to deal withRussia and the Islamic State.

Help may be on the way. You'll hear about House Committee Foreign AffairsChairman Ed Royce, and HR 2323 which is a bill designed to reform the BBG andbring in a full-time CEO on Capitol Hill. I ask is that a remedy or a magic potion?As is happening with some of our political primaries, the BBG may be time toshake-up the team. Let me tell you about our panel and why they are particularlyable to discuss and debate this issue.

This is to my left and on your left as well, Matt Armstrong who is a member of theBroadcasting Board of Governors, thought leader in public diplomacy. He serves

as the secretary to the Public Diplomacy Council, sits on the editorial board of the"Journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence," he chairsthe special committee on the "Voice of America in the 21st Century."

To Matt's left is David Ensor, he is the former director of The Voice of America,and currently executive VP of The Atlantic Council. He spent a semester at theHarvard Kennedy School writing about international broadcasting and digitalmedia. David's an Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist, 32-year careerincludes CNN's national security correspondent, and prior to that an ABC Newsglobal correspondent.

Moving one over is Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, Vice President Middle EastMedia Research Institute. He has used as a US Foreign Service officer in Iraq,Kuwait, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and the United Arab Emirates, and isthe State Department's coordinator for the Center of Strategic CounterterrorismCommunications, and is US Ambassador to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.

He's also held a variety of Foreign Service roles in the Republic of Sudan,Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, and Guatemala. No comments about the garden spotsyou've been sent to, Ambassador.

Jeffrey Gedmin down there to my far left is former president and CEO of RadioFree Europe, Radio Liberty, reporting directly to the BBG, the Broadcasting

Board of Governors. Today he's a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Schoolof Foreign Service and a senior fellow at Institute for Strategic Dialog in London.With that out of the way, gentlemen, let's begin our debate.

I'd like to toss out a question. We call it the information war, Ambassador, willyou take a crack at this? Are we exaggerating for political reasons, and if we arenot, what are the consequences of losing this information war?

Ambassador


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Alberto Fernandez: Well, I don't think we're exaggerating the challenge ofinformation war. Information is a tool like any other tool that you use in astruggle, a struggle for ideas, a struggle for supremacy, for power, for influence inthe world. Influencing people, you can do that politically, you can do iteconomically, you can do it on the battlefield, and you can also do it in that most

important space, the space between people's ears.So the question is, does the United States have a role to play in this ideological,intellectual, emotional battlefield? I would say absolutely, and in fact one of theproblems that we face is that we have not treated it with the priority, and theurgency, and the importance that many of our adversaries have. The Islamic Stateprioritizes propaganda more than the United States does. The actually pay theirpropagandists more than they pay their fighters.

The Russians have hired a troll army to go online to basically fill the space andcontest the space, put out the message that they have. Our adversaries and otherswho are challenging us think that this is really important, we should do so the

same.

Moderator: Before I ask for a follow-up, I'd like to get the clock started, please.Matt, I'll turn to you. Who is the enemy?

Matt Armstrong: That's a good question. First, thank you, thank you McCainInstitute, thank you Kurt. It's a good question, if I can follow-up on Alberto'scomment, just to encapsulate that. The priority is just not there, and so if youdon't have the understanding that public opinion matters in this day when stateshave less autonomy to control within their borders and individuals have greaterfreedom to influence others as well as to cause disruption and destruction, thepublic opinion of individuals and of groups matters tremendously.

So the enemy is a hard term, because we have so many different audiences, wehave so many different adversaries that I would phrase it that there are a numberof adversaries. Some are more fatal if we don't engage quickly, less some othersare going to take time to really engage. The adversaries here are those that areactively working against our national security and our foreign policy.

Moderator: Before I...

David Ensor: Just can I say this, there's one other adversary, ignorance.Ignorance is a very serious enemy of ours. When people are well-informed they

make better decisions. I have a lot of confidence in American values, they're notjust American, you might call them Western, or in any case the ideas aroundwhich our society is organized. If those ideas can be projected with honestinformation attached, a lot of people would like to have them. I think one of ourbiggest enemies is ignorance.

Moderator: David, let's turn this into a town hall. I'm going to give you fourchoices, just raise your hand. You can't be wrong, OK? Who is our mostsignificant adversary in the information war? And you can certainly raise your


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hand more than once. Islamic State? Russia? Iran? China? So China wins. Jeffrey,what do you think about that?

Jeffrey Gedmin: I think that they all won, because in this unscientific poll wegot hands on all of them. I think it depends on what you mean by the question.Globally, China is a rising power and has to be contended with. Russia's not arising power, but it's a power that's decided it can play a "we can" very strongly,and look what it's doing. It's trying to divide and weaken Europe, and build thisRussia up by cutting America down.

ISIS is another kettle of fish altogether too, this is a group that not only is wagingwar with the West, it's waging war in the Islamic world. Most people killed byISIS are not Christians or Jews, actually, they're Muslims. That is a different kindof war with a different kind of scope. So anyway, I'm just going to tell you you'reall right, but some of you forgot to raise your hands the whole time.

[laughter]

Moderator: Ambassador, you spent some time in that part of the world, theIslamic State part of the world. Why is their approach, why does it appear to be soeffective? When I say effective I'm talking about their ability to use it forrecruitment.

Ambassador Fernandez: Of course they're extraordinarily effective and arevolutionary success in relative terms. Sometimes we go to extremes, right? Itseems to me extreme when you talk about ISIS, it's either, "This is insignificant,"or "My God, it's World War III." The reality is neither one of those. This is anextraordinary revolutionary powerful challenge, not to us, it's a challenge in theMuslim world among Muslims. It's a challenge for authority, for power, for

leadership.

At the same time, despite the extraordinary success of the Islamic State,extraordinary success that tens of thousands of foreigners have joined it,thousands of people have left the comfort of life in the West to go to Syria, to goto [inaudible 15:19] to join the Islamic State despite that extraordinary success,they still have been able to mobilize only a tiny minority of the Muslim world. Butthis is revolution, this is what the Islamic State is trying to propose, or trying toset, it's the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917.

It's the euphoria of Utopia is coming, the end of the world is coming, and this is

powerful. This is heady, especially if you are young and stupid as many of thepeople that are attracted tend to be.

Moderator: David, let me turn to you. Maybe we want to examine the word stupidfor a moment.

Ambassador Fernandez: Shallow.

Moderator: Ignorant, perhaps?


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David: Uninformed, ignorant.

Moderator: Because this is reaching here, it's a question of the effectiveness ofwhat we're calling digital media, the whole world, social media, digital media,websites, non-broadcast television, non-print media. We're seeing a minorexample of that in our own country, in our own primaries. Now, we're not forthose who want to get a quote here and say that I'm saying ISIS is like BernieSanders, I am not saying that, OK?

I'm just saying, we're seeing people who knew nothing about a candidate, whoknew nothing about the state he was from, get very energized and in some waysthey're detractors might say that they're ignorant, or they might say that this guyis tapping into something that's really important. If you will sanitize ISIS orIslamic State's approaches to their business for a moment, and just look at themas a marketing organization, are they tapping into something that we need to tapinto? David?

David: They're making, for what they are trying to do, brilliant use of digitalmedia. It is fascinating to watch, because frankly just in terms of the productionvalues and their ability to pull attention to themselves, I sometimes envy them.But you know, ISIS is using the pornography of violence which does attractmostly young men in a certain way. In a way that ultimately is destructive notonly to everyone else but to them as well.

But it has a certain quality to it that pulls people in and it's something we have to,as the Ambassador said, we simply have to face it and find our own way tocommunicate in that space which is something you worked a lot on when youwere at the State Department.

I very strongly, and I ran a broadcasting organization that was trying to do news,honest news, but I very strongly believe the US government also needs to be, ifyou will, in the gray area too of fighting and fighting hard against recruitingwebsites, against the ideas that ISIS is trying, the sick ideas, that ISIS is trying tosell, and frankly also if we can shut down some of their ways of getting on theWeb, we should be doing that.

There should be a much more serious and I think controlled at the highest levelin the US government, effort, over several different spaces. Journalism,broadcasting, is only one of them.

Ambassador Fernandez: If I could just add on to that one point.Moderator: Please.

Ambassador Fernandez: Those are important words, but there's a greatmisconception when we talk about Takfiri Salafi Jihadist organizations like ISIS.Their appeal is revolutionary, it's extraordinary, but it is not sick or perverse. Thestrongest thrust of the ISIS appeal is positive not negative. We see the snuff


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videos, and we see the beheadings and all of that, and we say, "Oh, this ishorrible."

Actually the overwhelming bulk of what they put out is aspiring people to agreater ideal. In that they are like Nazis, like Communists, like otherrevolutionaries, it's not about the evil they do. Of course everything they do isevil, but what they present is a positive vision of the world which is powerful, andconvincing, and put out with a revolutionary fervor. One of the problems we facewhen we talk about the information war is what is our vision?

What are we talking about, those values that you talk about, those Americanvalues which are also universal? How do we present those in a fresh,extraordinary, and powerful way, the way that they're doing?

Moderator: Matt Armstrong, we're having a debate really about the message, andI want to turn it, because we're going to come back to that. I want to turn it a littlebit to the messenger. Is it also the case that our adversaries, the two we're

mentioning, are playing the long game, and we don't know how to play the longgame?

Matt: I think that's part of it. I think a more central piece particularly with theissue that we're talking about now with Daesh, is we're not the right people to beengaged in the conversation. We are naturally an outsider, part of what Daesh isable to leverage is this interpretation of Islam, the fact that you can't questionIslam, the structure of the conversations. We're not in a position, we're notappropriate to get into that conversation, and we tend not to do it very well whenwe get there.

So our focus should be more how do we enable Muslims to question, to push, to

reject some of these notions. So that does get into who is the messenger, and forthis part of the conversation because so much of the influence is occurring in adomain that we have no credibility in, we have to empower those that have thecredibility to stand up and question. Now there are other market spaces such aswith Russia, where their big power, yes as Alberto said and Jeff said, their bigpower here is really the undermining of democracy.

The question more is really a brilliant tagline for Russia today, it's great becausethey don't want you to come up with an answer, they want you to question thewhole utility vitality of the whole democratic process of alliances, of the newsmedia itself, and in that way, it is a tremendous threat regardless of what Russia's

going to do, it is a threat to the whole Western project.Moderator: Jeffrey Gedmin, is it possible that as journalist Luke Harding said,"Putin's actions are following a classic KGB doctrine, the goal is to createdivisions in NATO and use the refugee community as a way to undermine Europeand to undermine the West." Is it possible that they haven't forgotten the lessonsof the past and we have?


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Jeffrey: Let me, Jeff, before I answer that, I want just a moment. I do want tosuggest for this entire conversation that we put it in a context, because this entireinformation debate, whether we're winning, losing, how to win, has to be seen Ithink in a bigger debate. It occurred to me as I heard my colleague speaking amoment ago, in the context of where we are in the United States, and where

American foreign policy is. The fact is, 2008 happened.The fact is going into Iraq was a problem, the fact is getting out of Iraq was aproblem, and the fact is we have a pretty turbulent, untidy, complex electionprocess right now. That's us in the world, and we have some homework to do. Thesecond point is I think important, is when we finally get American foreignpolicies right vis a vis China, vis a vis Russia, vis a vis ISIS, that will make thisconversation a lot easier, because I think in many circles, in many places aroundthe world, people think that America's in retreat and losing, and winning counts alot. First point.

Second point to your question, lessons of the cold war. I think there's no doubt

about it, that to understand this Russia is to look at the person of Vladimir Putin.It's a system and culture around him, but the person of Vladimir Putin, andpeople say he's a nationalist, OK. People say he's an authoritarian, OK, but he is aKGB man. Some of you know what that means, and some of you are too young toknow what that means.

I have Georgetown students who say, "Oh, you mean like the FBI, or somethinglike that." No, this is a level of culture that prizes lying as an art and science.Deception in every level of life, and he as good at it.

Moderator: So you're saying a political [inaudible 24:25].

Jeffrey: Just finish with one point, gosh, the equivalent of the KGB in EastGermany was the Stasi. Guess what they found a few years ago, 2009 to beprecise, in the Stasi archives by accident? They found out that a key momentduring the peace movement in West Germany, a West German policeman shot astudent protestor in the back of the head and it ignited protests throughout thecountry. Guess what?

He was a Stasi KGB agent, shot him in the back of the head. All I'm saying is, weproceed I think with a level of innocence and naivet that makes Vladimir Putinlick his chops every night. I think he finds us like a walk in the park.

Moderator: This is a bit of a complicated walk in the park, I'll turn toAmbassador, if you examine our moves in the last year with Syria and with Iranhow do we put out a cohesive message to whatever we would call the Islamicworld, given our relationship between what's happening in Syria and with Iran?

Ambassador Fernandez: Whether we intend to put one out or not, the messagehas been received. The message that is received certainly in most of the Muslimworld, especially in the Sunni Arab Muslim world is the United States is weak, theUnited States is in retreat, and the United States is either cynical or criminal, and


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in the pocket of the Iranians. It was fascinating to watch the president a few daysago do a very nice thing, a very good thing and go to a mosque in Baltimore andshow his solidarity with American Muslims.

In the Arab world when that happened, what people were talking about wasAleppo, and Aleppo being cut off, and the advance of the Russians in Aleppo, andit did not reflect well on US values or US foreign policy, or US tolerance. Thatnarrative, the narrative that we are both weak and duplicitous of course isextraordinary helpful to the Islamic State. You talk about Iraq, the narrative ofthe Islamic State and of the Salafi Jihadist is this.

The Americans went into Iraq to overthrow a Sunni Arab Muslim dictator, andthe Americans refuse to go in Syria to keep a non-Sunni Arab Muslim dictator inpower. So they see it, you can say this is conspiracy theory, you can say that this iscrazy, but they've drawn real conclusions from our actions. Jeff is absolutelyright, one of the problems we talk about in the information war is we divorce itfrom foreign policy.

I call it public diplomacy magic pixie dust. If only we put some magic pixie duston this problem it will go away. If the foreign policy is lousy, no matter of silk isgoing to make that sow's ear acceptable.

Moderator: David, we're dealing with what I'd call unitary doctrinary regimes,single belief, or single focus. Does it make it difficult if not impossible for ademocracy, getting back to the information war, to wage war against regimes forwhich physical war and information war are parallel?

David: Parallel, you mean they're all part of the same thing?

Moderator: They're reconciled.

David: Yeah. Look, I might have lower expectations for our struggle on theinformation side than maybe some do. I agree with the Ambassador, you can'tlipstick on a pig, so if the policies aren't good, no matter what you do ininformation it's not going to do all that well. But, I really do think we could bedoing more of this, we should be doing more of this, and even if we're not surewhat our foreign policy should be, we should be doing a better job of informationpolicy.

In Pakistan, when I was the OA director, very difficult country. It's a countrywhere over a long period of time the government, members of the governmenthave deliberately fanned the flames of anti-Americanism. Where the governmenthas deliberately support and given succor to the Taliban for complicated, weirdPakistani reasons. They've supported a terrorist group living in their midst andattacking the country next door, and it's now coming back to bite them. So it's areally screwed up place.

When I came in, we decided to try to, not to try to do news broadcasting so muchin Pakistan, but to take it back more to the people to people level. Because there


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was such difficulty with drone attacks, if you report them as news, you're rilingpeople up. We decided to just go back to the people to people basis, to forexample, invite young Pakistani women journalists to come to the United Statesfor a year, travel around the country, meet people, and do whatever storiesseemed appropriate to explain our country to theirs.

To show that normal people in America have similar wishes, desires, dreams asyoung Pakistanis do. To show what young Pakistani's lives are like when theycome to American universities, which many of them aspire to do. Even if youcan't solve the problems of foreign policy, I think there's important work that canand should be done, and isn't being done at the level it should be done around theworld to help build understanding of our country, and to make friends, frankly,for our country.

Moderator: Matt, I'm going to give you a question so you can tell me you won'tanswer my question, you'll answer yours, is that OK?

Matt: Well let's see what your question is, yeah.Moderator: Is the challenge, and we talked about BBG and the structural issues,is the challenge with our poor strategy that we have an organization that is toopoor to create good strategy?

Matt: OK, so I can combine my answers. Here we go. So the question earlier hadto do with can democracy, is democracy compatible with the information war andfighting the information war? The answer is absolutely yes. I'm writing this book,I've been writing this book for years now, hopefully I'll be done this year, on thefoundation of these activities, and it's 1917 to 1948, and I'll tell you the workingtitle which I think is appropriate for this environment, and it's, "How Exporting

the First Amendment created the Voice of America."

Now it's actually about public diplomacy, US public diplomacy, but it wascatchier to just say Voice of America, it's also the public affairs officers, and allthat stuff. What I find in this early part of the Cold War, it was absolutelycompatible. What we did is we realized that public opinion matters, perceptionsmatter. You had a Congressman, Carl Mundt, who said because of the lack ofinformation, and yet we were doing things to help the Europeans not least ofwhich to get rid of the Nazis.

He said, "We're creating a generation of Europeans that have full bellies but

whose minds are turned against us because of the Communist propaganda." Sowe created this peace-time environment of information that was compatible andworked with and support with our foreign policy, and it was a foreign policy thatall that needed to be known, was that it needed to be known. It was somethingthat could stand on its own, there was no lipstick on a pig necessary, there was noredirection, change of subject that was necessary.

You move on a couple years, and the USIA was created to streamline the StateDepartment so it could focus more on its foreign policies, to create a single


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accountable place for these broad information programs which included libraries,exchanges, posters, magazines, books, and then by the way, a relatively small, itwas less than a quarter of the budget, this broadcasting element.

That was part of a streamlining, of integrating the defense department and thestate department all together in 1953, and we've forgotten all that. So here we arein these past 10, 20 years really, I would argue post early 1970s when I think wehad a shift from minds and wills, a struggle for minds and wills to boomers andbombers, negotiations behind closed doors.

In 1972 Senator Fulbright who was attempting to abolish all of the radios, RadioFree Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and then went after USIA said,"It's time for the radios to take the rightful place in the graveyard of cold warrelics." That was 1972. There was a shift. We haven't caught back up to the earlypart of that Cold War when there were not walls up, public opinion mattered.

What you have now, there's that. Now with the BBG I think we're finely getting

the house in order, you made a comment about this HR 2323. At this point wehave a CEO, 2323 would split the organizations to one unaccountable to thetaxpayer organization with its own CEO, own board, the White House, Congressdoesn't have a say in that, and then this other thing.

But right now we have a CEO who we need to have fully empowered so that if myjob even exists anymore, it's to create a firewall, but if we have an empoweredCEO once again we get to a place where it's a single point of accountability,coordinating the enterprises of these news and information tools. So part of it iswe're getting to this point, the priority of news and information is not wellunderstood, you made the comment about the funding.

The BBG last year was authorized to spend $22 million in Russian languageprogramming. So when you compare the BBG budget to the Russian budget, $22million versus a lot more in the Russian languages, it's a difficult thing. Plus whenyou look at when we raise RT, you can't say Russia Today without Sputnik andwithout a couple of other products. The BBG just for point of reference is notauthorized, funded, or oriented to combat, to compete, to engage in the samespace that RT is in. They're two separate actors in two environments.

Moderator: Would you explain RT for those here who may not be familiar?

Matt: Oh, sorry. So RT is Russia Today. They did a clever rebranding, and they

dropped Russia Today, it's just RT now. You can learn all sorts of remarkablethings, I think there are two fun things to do if you ever watch RT. Google thespeakers that are on their panels, and find out what their real backgrounds are.The other is what interesting fact can you learn? For example, I was watching RTand I learned that the lack of badger rights in the United Kingdom is symbolic ofWestern hypocrisy in Africa. That's a true story.

David: And when the Malaysian air jet was shot down over Ukraine, and theworld's media were reporting on increasing evidence that the missile that fired it


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down was a Russian-made missile, and that it had come from a part of Ukrainethat was occupied by the Russian-backed rebels, what was RT reporting? Wellthey had something new every news cycle. They said, "Oh, this is probably a CIAplot." Or, "Oh, they were trying to shoot down Putin's plane."

They had a new one every cycle. The point was not as you said earlier, the pointwas not to elucidate, the point was to confuse, to create smoke in the air so thatthe clarity of the information that was coming out everywhere else would not beso clear to some audiences.

Moderator: They were operating then I would say, again to sanitize the content,much like what I do. I work with venture capital, and digital media, and startups.The way you described it would be the perfect business plan for a startup wantingto break into the space. So why are they beating us? We invented startups, weinvented digital media. Open it up to all of you, by the way.

Matt: I think you have to break down that, "How are they beating us?" I think in

the space of RT, there is a quick tendency to overinflate their actual impact.They've done a remarkable job in that we look at a spectrum, it's a linearspectrum, you have the far left and the far right. For RT they've bent it, so theyappeal to the far left and the far right simultaneously. It's actually quite clever, Idon't know that they intended to do that.

Moderator: It's a Trump-Sanders ticket is what you're saying?

David: Yeah, anybody who's against government, against the media, who doesn'tfeel that they're being satisfied, and a senior person at RT actually commentedthat if the Western media was doing its job, RT wouldn't have a market. Theother thing Jeff is that in a digital space as we now have, anybody has a voice,

right? If they're determined enough and put enough effort into it, they can put allsorts of things out.

If you don't care what the truth is anymore, if the truth doesn't matter to you, youcan say anything. You can get plenty of attention for outrageous claims justbecause they're outrageous. They might not last very long, over time yourcredibility will be nothing, but you'll certainly get attention. RT has gottenattention, I would argue however, they have not gotten much audience over all.

Moderator: Just a point of reference, RT has 300 million subscribers on YouTubeto CNN's 3 million. So they're not effective in certain media, I don't know exactly

why maybe in televised media, but on YouTube they're dramatically effective,point number one. Point number two, it goes back to my question, is a democracycapable of waging an information war because the adversaries are doing thingsthat are against our rules of engagement?

David: On point number one, maybe the others want, on one I'll just say this. RThas 300, I don't challenge your number, I know it's very high. Because they havepeople who spend all day every day...


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Moderator: Trolls?

David: ...putting videos up that have already drawn large viewerships fromanywhere on the Web. So they just take, I'm not going to say cat videos, butthings that have grabbed people's attention and throw them up there to drivetheir numbers up in a way that will cause you to quote them. Some of that is justchurn.

Moderator: If I'm an investor, they're building market share to do whatever theyneed to do down the road. So I don't know that that's a criticism actually.

Ambassador Fernandez: Both RT and actually ISIS do the same thing in the senseis that they prioritize volume. Volume has value. We all know in our lives howoften have you seen somebody say something really stupid, an individual sayingsomething really stupid, who cares? A thousand people or 10,000, or 100,000,you have a movement, you have an echo chamber.

Both the Islamic State in the social media space, and the Russians as well, knowthat saying that lie, saying that outrageous thing loud enough, strong enough,with enough conviction, has a certain amount of weight. By the way, there's noreason that a democratic state can't do that and also be faithful to its values.

Moderator: Right. Jeffrey...

Matt: Also, if I can, there's the commercial media too, we're forgetting about that.One of the things that was interesting is that the commercial media went afterTom Brokaw. Not Tom Brokaw, I'm sorry, Brian Williams. Went after BrianWilliams. Why isn't the media going after RT? There is a responsibility here, bothto educate the consumer and to deal with the other media.

There's an oversight here, and it's not just the role of the government. In fact weas Americans have a real natural distrust of the government engaging in ourdomestic information sphere. That's the job of our media, but our media is simplynot doing that.

Moderator: Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Thank you, Jeff. Two points to this, first of all back to foreign policy. Iwould like to see us have a thoughtful, robust foreign policy that pushes Russiaback and contains Vladimir Putin. I think it becomes a different conversation.He's cyberattacked Estonia, he invaded Georgia, he annexed Crimea, then he

went into Eastern Ukraine, and all these markets across Europe and EasternEurope, he has a multi-faceted specific strategy.

A little bit different for Romania, a little bit different for Moldova, they acquiremedia, they set up radio, television, digital. It's robust. The first point I want tomake is the moment we start pushing back and containing, it will make adifferent sort of problem. Informationally I would like to do that too. In large


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part, we run around Washington talking about what will Putin do next? And howshould we respond? It's a great parlor game.

I don't think he spends a lot of time in the Kremlin thinking, "What will theAmericans do next, and when they do it, how will I respond?" He is a kleptocraticauthoritarian ruler who is looting his country financially, spiritually, cultural.Liberal democrats don't like him, but Russian nationalists should not like himeither. So not only would I like to push him back in terms of a foreign policyobjective, but we ought to be squeezing him constantly informationally, so that heis on the defensive. Then it becomes a different conversation.

Moderator: Jeffrey, an old Arkansas expression we'll put you down as lukewarmon Putin?

[laughter]

Jeffrey: I'm just trying to share.

Moderator: When I think about our message, our message of democracy, and I'ma business guy, so to speak. I'm a professor of practice, I spent my life in thebusiness world. If someone said, "That's your job, sell democracy," and I grew upin the Middle East for part of my life, I'd find a new job. I'd say it's like having aRubio moment, I just have to repeat the same line over and over and hope thatthey listen.

How do we make a credible shot at convincing an indigenous people within anindigenous religion, that we're on their side and we have something to say?Ambassador.

Ambassador Fernandez: That's a big question. Look, we have a problem and thatproblem is that we are confused. The Bush administration, and I'm on recordcriticizing some aspects of the Bush administration. The Bush administration hada clear vision for the Middle East. It was that the solution was a liberaldemocratic order. Maybe that was ridiculous, maybe that was too soon, maybethat was overstated, but they had a vision. They had something.

You have to counter something with something. Right now we basically have avoid, a vacuum. I've spent most of my career in the Middle East, and in the Arabworld, and what the Arabs always joked about is that the Americans always hadthis struggle between [Arabic], you know? Principles and Interests.

But our interests always won out on our principles. We were never faithful to ourprinciples, we never stood up to our principles, and what attracted them to uswas our principles, was what America is really like, not the ugly aspects of foreignpolicy that they saw in the region. Rightly or wrongly interpreted that way. So wehave a good story to tell, but sometimes we trip over ourselves in trying to tell it.

Jeffrey: May I add Jeff, we have a great story to tell. We have to have selfconfidence in the story. We have to be self-aware and humble enough to share


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with the world that we haven't figured it all out, and if they watch our electioncampaign they see we haven't figured it quite all out yet. But there's so manyexamples from public diplomacy and broadcasting where we get it right, and I'llgive you one. When I was running RFE/RL we had an Afghan service, and abureau in Kabul.

I went, I had a meeting with some tribal leaders. Men, tunics, long beards. One ofthem said to me, "You know Dr. Gedmin, we're a very religious, traditional, tribalsociety. We don't want to look like the United States of America," or he said,"Southern California." Then he paused, I'm not kidding you, and he said, "But,some of us, we pray five times a day." He said, "But, some of us do change ourprayer schedules to listen to your programming." True story.

You know what our most popular program at that time four years ago inAfghanistan was? It was a call-in show with an Afghan woman medical doctor,gynecologist, on women's' health. That's a tiny seed of hope and a big investmentin the long game for a country like that.

Moderator: Are these a teachable moment here? How do we, and my nextquestion was going to be to paraphrase Tip O'Neill, "All propaganda is local."How do we become adept at doing that kind of programming and we'll figure outwhen to add the democracy channel, but if we've got to get their hearts andminds.

Matt: I think we're on that path. Arvind had to do with a strategy and a purpose,same thing as the foreign policy. I think that the Broadcasting Board ofGovernors had a difficult time with a strategy. I'm on record saying the strategicplan that this agency has, Jell-O nailed to a wall has more consistency than thestrategic plan, it was just so meaningless.

Starting to bring it together, and get the five major entities, Radio Free Europe,Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Voice of America,and Middle East Broadcast Network, aligned onto a mission, onto a target. Wedon't do democracy promotion. In fact I hate that in support of freedom anddemocracy is our tagline, and I hate that because who's democracy are we talkingabout? Is it American? French? German? Italian? I don't know whose democracyit is. It's these building blocks.

It's human security, it's health, rule of law, accountability, and for some of theseaudiences, because we operate in those audiences and I say sometimes we're a

special operations command is in or will go, because we're in those denied spacemarkets, or those other difficult markets, they don't understand whataccountability is. They don't know what civil military relations are, they don'tknow how the policemen should work, they don't know that their governmentofficials can be held accountable.

That's where we need to operate is in that space, and it's below there. So how dowe get there? I think now that we have the CEO we're aligning the forces and RFE


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for example and VOA have partnered on this current time program, and there'ssome 40 other programs actually which people don't generally know about.

It's seen, so it's a partner project between VOA and RFE in this one slot, it's seenby about 2 million people in Russia every day, which a US network would love tohave a 2 million audience share for their news programming. Actually VOA isbeing broadcast in Belarus, because they have a concern about Russia. I thinkwe're starting to get the alignment there, and we're getting the systems and thegears in place.

But it still goes back to we're only a small little cog, we're only a small little bit,and there still has to be a foreign policy so that this can be more powerful.

David: Can I just add to what the governor said, the Voice of America over thelast four years has increased its audience 40 percent to almost 188 million peoplewatching, listening to, or reading Voice of America. Every week. Almost a quarterof the entire population of Iran watches at least one Voice of America television

show every week. I don't know if people realize, that is probably the largestimpact on Iran, the public in Iran, that any nation has anywhere.

It's done by the US government from a basement in downtown Washington. It'senormously impactful, and we do it by being a truthful broadcast. We do it bystaying out of the propaganda side, or we're not a spokesman for theadministration. For example, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel gavehis speech to the joint session of Congress, he wasn't exactly complimentaryabout Barack Obama's efforts in the Iraq nuclear deal.

We ran it, live, with simultaneous translation in Farsi. Because we knew that thatwas what our Persian audience would want to see at that time, and it was a public

service, and it was a way of saying, "We're an open country. We don't all agree oneverything." This is how you deal with a difficult issue, you debate it, you discussit.

Moderator: And they're the most educated audience in the Middle East.

David: It was a civics lesson for the rest of the world, the way we broadcast. So alot of good things have happened in the last four years, and I think there's a lotmore we can do. Digital media is an enormous opportunity, most of that growth Ijust mentioned, the 40 percent has actually been television. Moving from radio totelevision.

Moderator: I'm going to ask for your summaries in a second, so I just want toturn to Ambassador who's had his hand up. Please.

Ambassador Fernandez: I was going to say, we have also I think a tremendousresource that most people, most of the general public is not aware of, we talked alot about broadcasting, and that is the work of public diplomacy officers atAmerican embassies and consulates overseas. These are the people that interactwith publics in foreign countries, often in the language of the country.


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These are the people that administer our cultural exchange and scholarshipprograms, and deal with the local media. These are people doing tremendouswork. We have lousy leadership at the high levels of government in this field asfar as I'm concerned, but the working level people, the young diplomats andsenior diplomats who are doing this work are actually doing really good stuff.

Moderator: I'm going to ask the team, the A team, if they are welcome to give asummary, or talk about how we fix this. I put it as a roadmap to victory, but I'llgive you a swing thought before you launch into it. Chesterton, the Britishhistorian said that people didn't love Rome because she was great, she was greatbecause they loved her. As I look around the world, despise our adversaries, Ithink they love their countries.

David and I were talking about how fragmented our country is, I'm wondering dowe, leadership, love our country enough to be able to unify around strategies,around messaging, to fix this problem. And anyone who wants to start?

Matt: Shall we go down the line?Moderator: Sure.

Matt: I'll jump on that first. I don't know that it's an issue of loving the country, Ithink it's an issue of understanding that the boundaries are gone, and that foreignpolicy matters and that you can't pretend to be isolationists, pretend that this isall Las Vegas. This is a global environment, and what happens here influenceselsewhere, and what happens there influences here, and we need to pay attentionto that. Foreign policy matters.

So I would rephrase it, I don't think that we get that what we say can sometimes

overwhelm, I'm sorry, what we do can sometimes overwhelm what we say. I alsowant to echo what was just said, is that we have these public diplomacy officerswithin the Foreign Service office, which is a subset of the Foreign Service, and thehiring is going down. I have yet to see a Secretary of State go to the Hill and say,"I need more public diplomacy officers."

I've yet to see that this century. That has not happened, so despite my agency andwhile my agency needs more money, the tip of the spear, the people that are onthe ground are under resourced, overworked, not supported by the humanresource system, and I'll bet you that none of you know that. It would beremarkable, and they're the ones out there engaging, and they barely have time to

get out into the field.That is a critical component of our foreign policy is being able to execute. It's onething to have a foreign policy, it's another thing, what are we doing on theground, and how are we able to fix and get around the dysfunction?

Moderator: David?


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David: How are we going to win the information war, or even start to get better atit? Back in the '60s, John F Kennedy had as his chief information advisor a manwhose picture is in the Cronkite Museum over there, of Journalism. Edward RMurrow. One of the finest journalists our country has ever produced, a reallysmart guy, and on many, many levels. That was who advised the president at that

time, it was taken seriously.We had USIA, which frankly I in some ways regret was abolished in 1999 as apeace cold war dividend. I'm not suggesting we put it back in place, but we reallyneed to take this subject far more seriously than we do, that's the real headlinehere. There's a lot we can have, there's a lot of impact we can have in this area ifwe take it seriously. The British take it seriously, look at the BBC World Service.

Given the size of the country and the size of the budget of that country, that's anextraordinary investment by our allies the British. They are the most respectedbroadcasters on Earth, bar none, without any question, with an audience of 300million people who trust that broadcaster. That's the model we should emulate,

not the model of RT and CCTV. I don't envy them in the least bit, I wouldn't wanttheir communications problem because they're selling something that doesn't sellvery well.

That said, when you have the kinds of budgets that they have, I sure wouldn'tmind having some of the producers they've got, and the snazzy sets, and theability to have bureaus in lots of places that are well supplied. So I just think weshould, as a country, just take this a little more seriously. One more thought onthe broader area, I thought Martha Bayles book that a friend of Jeff's and minerecently about the impact of public culture was instructive.

There was a time when American movies, which have always been popular andstill are around the world, were a tremendously positive force for the image of ourcountry around the world. I still think movies like "The Martian," and "Spotlight,"are very positive in that regard, but a lot of our movies are frankly very violent,often very sexual in content, in ways that other cultures just don't like, don'tappreciate. They don't export very well.

Parents around the world don't like their children being exposed to all theviolence. I don't know what the answer is there, because I'm not asking forcensorship, but I think that some conversations ought to go on in this countryabout our public culture. Some thought ought to go into what we want, how wewant to be seen by the rest of the world.

Moderator: Ambassador?

Ambassador Fernandez: I am one of those that I will go where no man wants togo, and that is to say I think we do need something like USIA. We need an entityin the US government whose job it is to do advocacy for the United States, and Iam unashamed to say that.


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We have a tremendous story to tell, we have things that we can be true toourselves about, and so I believe that having an entity whose job it is to do thatand only that, that is adequately resourced and that has access to the top of thegovernment, it has access like Edward R Murrow had, briefly in the 1950s andearly '60s, USIA was part of cabinet meetings and would go to meetings where

important things were decided.Then after a while, it was kind of don't call us, we'll call you, we'll let you know ifwe need anyone to talk about propaganda. I think we need to treat it, as I said inmy opening remarks, we need to treat it with the very same seriousness andpassion that our adversaries do.

Moderator: Just as an aside, Murrow was moved out of his job, eased out of it tomake way for Walter Cronkite, just the in the random, crazy way the world workssometimes. Jeffrey last words.

Jeffrey: Jeff, thank you. USIA, US Information Agency, I too would advocate

something like that, because it's a sign of seriousness, investment, and the factwe've tried a decade and a half without it, and we haven't been terribly successful.Second point, to David's remark about this book by Martha Bayles, YaleUniversity Press on American diplomacy and culture, it's a great book and it'svery instructive.

Because David's right we don't want censorship, but it may suggest somethoughtfulness and restraint on our part. Not only is it that some cultures aroundthe world don't like the dreadful, gratuitous violence and dehumanization ofpeople, maybe some Americans want to give it a second thought too. It does havesome effect on who we are and how we project. The third and last thing I'd say israise your hand, if you would, if you've ever seen RT? OK, so many of you have.RT's secret ingredient is simply this.

We talk about the war, the battle of hearts and minds. They have lots of mindstuff, information, they're about hearts. If you watch it they're about narratives.What they do is they feed the cynicism and pacificity that exists across the West. Icall it the "Yes, but" crowd. I moved back to the United States from London lastyear. You go to a dinner in London with politicians, or business people, or culturepeople, the dinners are mostly dominated by the "Yes, but" crowd.

You say, "He annexed Crimea!" Well, the Americans went into Iraq. "China iscorrupt." Well, Italy is corrupt too. It's this moral relativism that seeps in

everywhere. Of course we have problems, but not all problems or relationshipsare equal and morally equivalent. The last thing I want to say is we have aninformation challenge, we have a foreign policy challenge, but I think we have achallenge to get back to the idea that we stand for something.

That it's universal, that it's OK to advocate accountable government, pluralism,tolerance, respect for diversity, and that we tolerate everything but we don'ttolerate hatred and violence that's being promoted. But I think we're right now a


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little bit uncertain about those things. When we clear that up, it will help the restof the things quite a bit, I think.

Moderator: Stay for questions, but join me in congratulating and thanking thispanel.

[applause]

Jeffrey: I'm taking pages from your book, you know. [laughs]

Moderator: Now the only instruction I have is if you ask a question I'm going torepeat it, that has to do with the streaming and the mic'ing. Please fire away,whoever wants to stand up, please.

Audience Member: Thank you very much, just two questions. One tools and oneon specifically RFE/RL. You talked a lot about the English-language services ofRT or CCTV or even press in Iran, but there are other options in English. BBCwas mentioned. Specifically on the former Soviet Union, Russian media reallypenetrates the former Soviet Union, so what are your ideas for a commerciallyattractive truthful news service which there hasn't been one independent of theRussian government since [inaudible 61:24].

Then specifically on radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, I feel that they're more andmore advocating in Washington policy decisions rather than broadcasting intothe region. Is that to justify funds for the organization, or is that an additionalmission of the organization? It just seems like that they're doing far more onbroadcasting or advocating in Washington than their core mission.

Moderator: I won't' repeat it, that is a Mensa test, and I think I'll pass that

opportunity, panel?David: Can I do the first half and then you take second? On the first half, look.We talk about this when I was director, we talked about it every day. I'm sure Jeffalso spent a lot of time on it. Here's the thought, one that I used to bat aroundwith people. Look, if Putin threw us out of all the radio and television stationspretty much in Russia itself, Russia proper. But there's the area of Russianspeakers in what used to be the Soviet Union that is underserved and we shouldreach with better programming.

That's why we did Natstashya Vrimya, Current Time, in partnership with RFE. Itis reaching some audience even inside Russia through mostly through streaming

on people on their computers. How about this for an idea, what if we were able tofind a private partner or a private individual who wanted to start an "eye candy"television station in Kiev, or Vilnius that would have the best soap operas.

Where the Western governments would have helped them to get some of the bestsports clearances, live sports coverage that Russians just can't resist, and then onthat same station, there could be public affairs programming and newsprogramming, that might be done by the RFE Russian language service, by Voice


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of America's language service, by Deutsche Vela's language service, and also bylocal Russians who would work for the station that would be in a place outsideRussia.

If we did that, even though Putin is blocking broadcasts over the air, I think thatthat stuff would get in. YouTube clips are everywhere in Russia. If you putsomething compelling on, and you find ways to chop it up into bite sized bits andput it on the Web, they get all over the place in Russian, if it's compelling enough.

We could even perhaps look at, and frankly this is an engineering question I don'tentirely know the answer to, but I was told by one engineer that it would beperhaps possible to get a signal from Northeastern Estonia to St. Petersburg, thesecond largest city in Russia if you put the right equipment up. I think we couldbe doing so much more than we are, and I really think we should have respondedmore forcefully in this area as well as others when Crimea was invaded.

Jeffrey: I'll just add to that. Did I tell you I like David Ensor? I think that's vision

and strategy. If you can't play the inside game, you play the outside game. He'sclosed us down, he Vladimir Putin, mostly in the inside game.

Because you know ostensibly he believes in rule of law I have to sayparenthetically, one of my claims to fame was seeing our operation decline insideRussia because every partner you worked with if there's a piece of cheese out foran hour the health inspector came, or the fire inspector, or the tax collector, theymade it impossible to do business there. Inside game very difficult, outside gamethat's imaginative, that's vision, that's strategy. By the way, these things don'tcost that much.

I mean really, let me take my former company. One tiny piece of the bigger

puzzle, RFE/RL when I was there, was about $100 million budget. If you want toknow, that's the cost of about four Apache helicopters, and they've got lots ofthose things over at the Pentagon. That's about half of what PBS spends in NewYork City. So if you believe in these things, hearts and minds, and we did 28languages in 22 countries, OK, it's real money. But in context, a big rich countrylike this, I think we could afford it.

David, your question they broadcast robustly, they're present as I said, 28languages, 22 countries. They do have a presence in Washington, it is in part tomake sure that the funder, the US Congress knows that they're alive and kickingbecause they don't broadcast in English, so that presence and visibility is

important.But it was actually greater during the Cold War because there's something calledthe RFE Research Institute, it was in Munich, but it had a subsidiary inWashington which was very significantly staffed, that was analysts. I think you'reright but I don't think it's a terrible thing.

Matt: So, can I add something, I'm on the board.


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Moderator: Yes, please.

Matt: I'm going to be additive here, I'll work in reverse order. The presence ofRFE in DC I think has shifted slightly over these last just couple of years. Thepresence is important, just like all the entities are important to be in DC.

There's not a strong awareness because the English language side RFE doesoperate in English, but it's a subset, because it's not a core language just like VOAdoes operate in English, but for most of the last 15 years there's been attempts toabolish it or just minimize it, it's not the way to look at VOA and understand whatit does, because it operates in other languages primarily.

Jeffrey: Except in Africa, where it's huge.

Matt: So the reality is that it's not operating too much there, but you asked thisother point about OK, how do we collect something? How do we engage in thisRussian language space, or any of the other languages in the Russian periphery?

One of the things I've done several times is get out in the space and see how wecan collect and get together.

I call it the NPR model, and I did this about a year and a half, two years ago,because we found that there were somewhere about 25 hours of good qualityRussian-language programming not made by Russia. Because the beauty of theKremlin is that they're able to produce all this really, shiny great content. Theybrought in Soviet TV stars and movie starts, and they create this great shiny box.Everybody's a deer in the headlight.

All the different countries, and they produce 30 minutes here, 15 minutes there,10 minutes there, BBC was doing 10 minutes. In fact BBC is only upping the

Russian language programming from 10 minutes a day to 30 minutes a day intwo months, because they had diminished it. So I went out, let's all producesomething, and let's all put it into a pot and let's pull it out. So if we get 25countries or 25 hours put in, we can pull out and have six hours each, somethinglike that.

So we started to ramp up some of the countries weren't sure what to do, they stillsort of froze, we started to move, and then there was a European Endowment forDemocracy project that kind of came up with the same thing. They call it theContent Factory and the News Exchange, two different components to produce,submit, share, and there's some other efforts that are going on as well, pretty

much three simultaneous efforts.We're still working on how do we provide this news and information, how toprovide this quality content. State Department assisted us to get PBS content,government funded content. How did we pull that in, because BBG is not fundedto do entertainment, so how do we pull in this other content? Netflix, our targetmarkets see Netflix going global as a great hurrah, because now, how do wesynchronize with that, and what's missing from that Netflix catalog that thataudience may want?


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So the point is, we're starting to spin that up. There are activities that arehappening now, some US government, some private sector, but it is a complexdynamic environment.

Moderator: Go to our next question? Please.

Audience Member: [inaudible 69:22] I want to know about psychologicaloperation information [inaudible 69:41]

Moderator: I'll try to paraphrase it, you probably got the question. He wanted toknow about Sky News, right?

Audience Member: Yes.

Moderator: How they...

Audience Member: [inaudible 69:55]

Moderator: To combat...


Moderator: To combat ISIS?

Ambassador Fernandez: Yeah, that's an ISIS question. There are two questionsthere, Sky News and an ISIS.


Moderator: I'm not doing a very good job here as the interlocutor, but why don't

you guys take it away.Ambassador Fernandez: I don't know anything about Sky News.

David: I'm not sure what the question is about Sky News.

Moderator: So is your question really about the ISIS propaganda?


Moderator: Propaganda.

Audience Member: Sky News is mostly based on English, I was wondering wouldthis fall under the same...

David: Sky News is a private company, which is a news company in the UK.

Moderator: Are they doing...

David: Which is on the satellite and therefore is seen in a lot of other countries aswell, but I'm not sure...


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Moderator: But are they doing what RT is doing? Is Sky News doing the samething, or is it a straight news...

David: It's a commercial news company. It's a profit-based, fact-based newscompany.

Moderator: It's like CNN is what we're saying. You understand, it's like CNN, it'snot propaganda.

Ambassador Fernandez: Or NBC.

David: You may or may not like how they do it, or what you perceive to be theirunderlying views, but they are a commercial company purporting to do news on afact-basis, they're not a propaganda company.

Moderator: Stay after, we'd be happy to try to take another shot at the question.Please?

Audience Member: [inaudible 71:32] more muscular public effort in the war oninformation, driven by the apathy of the [inaudible 71:46]. So 20 years ago wecould go to Paris and watch CNN and it wouldn't [inaudible 71:57], but it wouldbe truly international. [inaudible 72:03].

Moderator: I think the question is, is there a mirror relationship between whathas happened in private media and in...

David: Well, I'm a former CNN correspondent, so I'll respond. Yes, I mean look.This is the story of my career in some ways. I was a foreign affairs correspondentfor ABC News when they had 13 overseas bureaus, now they have 1. I worked at

CNN covering national security policy, now most of the coverage on CNN ofnational security policy is really homeland security policy. Although, yes, there issome international coverage too, and some of it's very, very good.

So yes, there's been a shift in the focus of the American media. I think the end ofthe Cold War, our country felt great, done, [inaudible 72:56], that's it. We don'thave to have 13 ABC News bureaus around the world anymore, because ourbiggest problem is solved. Of course, how wrong that was? One of the reasons Iliked being director of Voice of America was, because it was publicly funded, Iwas a private commercial journalist for most of my career, and I'm proud of thework we did.

I think there's some great journalism, then comes the word but. But, Voice ofAmerica doesn't have to bleed to lead. It doesn't have to be bad news to be news.I've been in the business all my life, and I've seen many a survey and the sad newsabout humanity is, human beings are more interested in bad news than goodnews. They're more likely to keep watching if things are blowing up or sad thingsare happening, than they are if there's good news. It's just a fact about us.


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It's very challenging to get something on the air in a network news programwhich is commercial that is good news. You could do it, but it's harder. I used tolove that at VOA or when I was diplomat in Afghanistan a public broadcastercould decide that the opening of 20 health clinics today is just as big a story asthat bomb that killed two people. We're going to do both, equally. We might even

emphasize the health clinics because that's actually quite big news for the Afghanpeople and they want to know about it.

You have it depends what model your journalism is, and what drives it. The profitmotive, I believe in there being commercial journalism Most of my life I was acommercial journalist and we did some great work, and I think we informed a lotof people, entertained and informed people about what's going around, and I stillvery strongly believe in that model.

But I like a mix, and I like to see some public broadcasting, and I think that Voiceof America in many of the markets where we're strong provides news that is thenews judgements are based around what do we actually think matters to these

people. Not that will keep them transfixed, necessarily, but that will matter tothem over the longer term. In some ways it's kind of nice to be able to have theluxury of making judgements along those lines.

Moderator: I'll use my privilege to say we criticize the media, but the truth andthe fact is that it was private media, those glory days, or they had been recentlyprivate. I worked for Forbes all my life, and I can assure you, if Malcom Forbeswanted to write good news, he wrote good news, but he didn't answer toshareholders. It's the transformation to public companies that has naturallychanged the shape of the media. So what I'm saying is, we're not blaming themedia, as public companies they do what they do.

Matt: Can I add to that? So it's a really good question. In the debates around theinformation, it doesn't come up. One thing that I think it's useful to know is thatall the BBG entities, RFE, and VOA now that they're under the roof, the job is togo out of business.

Where the private media is deemed to be doing an adequate job, it is to go. NowDavid has a different view of this, but in the authorizing legislation, there is thisnon-compete. Now it should be changed, but this was the fundamental idea, isthat it doesn't compete with commercial media.

David: That was the idea of the radio frees, Matt, it was not the idea of Voice of

America.Matt: It was, you'll see the book. It's very clear.

[laughter]

Matt: It's very clear.

Moderator: Wait for the book.


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Matt: It's absolutely clear.

David: I think there always needs to be a Voice of America.

Matt: It's absolutely...well the government didn't want to be in the news business,that was the job of the private sector. That's why the market place, that's why

VOA less...

David: But you're not going to find a profitable company that's going to broadcastin Hausa, in Northern Nigeria.

Matt: That's the point, that there's not the media space there.

David: So it's not going to happen.

Moderator: Gentlemen, we've got so many questions.

Matt: So, this is where it's an interesting mix.

Moderator: We're going to go all the way down to the end and work my way to themiddle.

Audience Member: [inaudible 76:51] welcoming the Syrian refugees [inaudible77:05]?

Ambassador Fernandez: I don't think it's much of a factor. I think it's more has todo with domestic foreign policy. Look at me, I'm so fuzzy, and nice, andeverything like that. I really don't think that it has a deep influence in the region.It's good for Canada, it's good for him, it's good for his party, but I don't see thatit has a major impact in the region, certainly. It's not something that people are

talking about in Arabic.

Moderator: Question at the end?

Audience Member: [inaudible 77:46] I we're having an information war, is itappropriate for the public, a democracy, to put out misleading or falseinformation to try to [inaudible 78:04]?

Ambassador Fernandez: Not at all. The best propaganda is the truth. By the way,the word propaganda acquired its negative connotation because of World War IIand the Nazis have a ministry of propaganda. I'm a Roman Catholic and for manyyears the Catholic Church had the Office of the Propaganda, that propagated thefaith, and that's a good thing. So I was once told by an Undersecretary of State,don't use the word propaganda it scares people, but I use it anyway.

Jeffrey: I would even add, just very briefly, not only is it a terrible idea as yourquestion suggested, but credibility is the heart of all of this, and very quickly,once I went to Uzbekistan, I met with a small group of young people whofollowed our programs there, they were giggling the whole time, and I finally said,"Why are you laughing?"


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And they said, "Because we think you are programs generated by the CIA." I said,"OK, but if that's the case, why do you listen to us?" And they said, "Well it alwaysturns out to be accurate and truthful." Well, OK.

Moderator: Question here, please.

Audience Member: [inaudible 79:14] Don't you think calling these organizations[inaudible 79:19]?

Ambassador Fernandez: I do not. I think there's a kind of fantasy, that if you callthem Daesh, and most people can't even pronounce it, it sounds like they'resaying Dash or Dish, I don't think people who don't really know Arabic shouldn'tsay words in Arabic that way. Look, the Islamic State is imbued and saturatedwith the specific view of Islam. That needs to be confronted, maybe not by us,because maybe we're not credible enough.

But the idea that somehow we're going to cover our eyes and pretend that they

are apostates like Imam Karim recently said. It's ridiculous. The Islamic State hasa history of Takfiri Salafi Jihadism, which has a past. It doesn't come fromnowhere, and so let's call them what they call themselves, and then let's provethem wrong.

Moderator: It's a brand.

Ambassador Fernandez: Yes, it's a brand, and the brand needs to be discredited.Maybe not by us, but by others need to explain why it's not truly Islamic, andchallenge them on the words that they use, because they say, and they can back itup, that everything they do is found in the language and the thought of the[Arabic], so that's where Muslims need to fight that battle. When they talk about

Kafir, when they talk about Shirk, that's a challenge for Muslims to take on.

It's not a challenge for me to take on. I think kind of closing our eyes to the kindof ideological, political, religious challenge of it which is connected to Islam issomething that needs to be taken on. Not by us, but it's a fight that has to happen,and by the way, many Muslims are doing that today, but we need more help.

Moderator: Question?

Audience Member: [inaudible 81:19] China and Russia and other institutions thatare very much anti-US have armies of hackers that are [inaudible 81:29]. Theprivate media in the US, the private media constrains in fear of those [inaudible

81:39] from these entities, and is that another reason that the USIA should belooked at more seriously inaudible 81:49] shareholders?

Matt: I'm not aware of US corporate media being self-censoring because of thefear of hackers, or denial of service attacks, I'm not aware of any of that comingup.

Moderator: Please?


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Audience Member: Back to about an hour ago, we talked with you and we talkedabout the idea of marketing democracy in general. This may be a little off track,but I don't think of that is marketed in our K-12, in fact our K-12 is woefullyuninformed about civics, and then we see it in college young people don't knowbasic foundations for democracy.

So how can we [inaudible 88:40] K-12? And marketing it in terms of how you[inaudible 82:48] Ambassador, how do we do the fresh, aspiring work as opposedto the sick pornography of violence that David [inaudible 82:58]?

Ambassador Fernandez: I think you raise an interesting question when we usewords like propaganda, or we use words like ideology, it kind of scares people.But there are other words we can use like civics. Right? Like social responsibility,like pluralism, and this actually goes to ISIS as well, there's a vacuum that existsin the world today in actually educating people across the board.

When I was in Europe recently, I actually had a discussion with Europeans who

were concerned about ISIS radicalizing people and I told them, I said, "Look,America has many faults and many problems. We have challenges ofradicalization in our country." But, there is, and I'm a person who's a refugee, anda person who's a migrant, I was not born in the United States, but the Americanideal has power. When I see 'Glory,' have you ever seen Glory? I cried like a babyat the end of that movie.

It has power to influence people, to inspire people, and we do ourselves adisservice when we don't give people those tools. Like I said, when I was inEurope I was shocked because I asked these Europeans, "If you're a Dane, or aGerman, what can a young Muslim aspire to, what are the national symbols, whatare the things that move you?" And this one person from Scandinavia said, "Wellwe can't talk about those things because in our country national symbols andconcepts are part of the far right."

I was taken aback, I thought if how are you going to counter something withnothing? So you need to educate people up in a positive way, let them not beignorant.

Moderator: Question here?

Audience Member: My name is Ciara, I'm from Palestine, and I admire verymuch the way you talked about how the Arab should [inaudible 85:11] against

ISIS. I believe that ISIS is very [inaudible 85:16] in what they do in attractingmostly youth, because they attract them from the religious part of them, and Ibelieve that they have a lot of passion, religious, they're using religion and thepower to attract them, and they are very successful at that.

So how do you suggest that we fight that, how do you suggest that we stop themfrom influencing the youth by using their, by blinding them with their passions[inaudible 85:55]?


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Ambassador Fernandez; First of all, that's a very good question. First of all one ofthe things about the ISIS message, it's not about one thing, it's a multi-facetedmessage. For example, we've talked about religion, and certainly religion is a partof their message, but it's also an appeal to violence, it's an appeal to a Utopianfuture, it's a tailored message for different people.

So a message that they want to send to, for example, a young woman in theUnited States is a different message than they're going to send to a Tunisianliving in a slum outside of Tunis. So they tailor their message to their localaudience, to the people they're talking to. There's a problem with ISIS which isthis. It's part of a larger phenomenon.

In the Sunni Arab Muslim world, which is the part I know best, there has been fordecades an investment in a certain world view. It didn't just happen overnight.Look at an Arab movie from the 1940s, look at an Egyptian movie from the 1940s,it's like a Hollywood movie. There are women, very lovely, men with fezzes andtuxedoes, and very suave and stuff like that. Our friends in the Gulf invested over

time in a certain world view, and moved the needle in a certain direction.

They moved the discourse in a certain direction. They poisoned the wells in acertain direction, and promoted intolerance and extremism. ISIS is the bitterfruit of decades of investment in that type of world view. The tragedy is, and youmentioned it in the beginning of your remarks, is to this day there are Arabs andMuslims, Muslims and Seer Muslims, secularists, liberals, people of all sorts whoare fighting that fight, but they are political and economic orphans.

They don't have television stations, they don't have publishing houses, they don'thave voice, they have voices, but their voices are not like some whacky sheiksaying some stupid thing. If you look at the stuff we have on memory, we oftenfind people saying ridiculous things. There are people saying good things, andpositive things, but they don't have the clout and the podium that the craziesoften do.

Moderator: Please? I'm like an air traffic controller on Thanksgiving Wednesdayhere.

[laughter]

Audience Member: [inaudible 88:26] technological advantage in [inaudible88:32] political psychology, the kind that you brought to bear in the Western

world [inaudible 88:39] with the same tools it seems that are using against you.Wouldn't you have to change a level playing game, don't you have to change themessage?

Because I believe we kind of live at least in the Western post-ideological world,how do you fight something that is a pure ideology [inaudible 88:57] or why don'tyou tackle the source itself, which most of us actually know where the source ofthe ideology is? So how do you frame the message differently, and still stay in theframes of political correctness of the West?


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Moderator: While I'm at it, in this room I'll be interviewing Senator John McCaina week from tomorrow at 2:00 PM, that's Friday, is that the 19th? At 2:00 PM,you're all welcome to join.

Ambassador Volker: Friday the 19th. Thank you for coming this evening, thankyou.

[background noise]

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How Can the United States Win the Information War?

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Transcript of How Can the United States Win the Information War?