Since the October 7 massacre in Israel, Chinese Communist Party affiliated bots have flooded the internet with antisemitic and anti-American content. In America, their ostensible aim is to inflame the current social tensions so that we might unravel from within. In this regard, illicit border crossings of ChiCom nationals also play a role. Further afield, Beijing hopes its efforts might erode American influence and undercut our allies.

For decades, our adversaries have used the press and digital technologies to further their agendas and sabotage ours. For equally as long, we have lagged behind. With the end of the Cold War, Washington’s attention turned to conventional warfare. The Gulf War and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to validate the decision, such that between 1989 and 2010, military spending rose by 129 percent.

Yet overlooked was the continued multi-domain warfare being waged against us by our enemies. For Communist China, the information domain is paramount. People’s Liberation Army manuals posit cognitive warfare as its “fundamental function” and “the basis for the ability to accomplish military tasks.” Soon after he took control of the party, in 2014, Xi Jinping urged the PLA to expand an “ideological concept of information warfare.”

For Beijing, ideological work allows for the spread of its preferred narratives, suppresses dissent, and ­— so Beijing hopes — molds foreign government policies. The enduring aim of a new world order, towards which China, Russia, and Iran aim, is also likely helped by a global majority that not only accepts but champions Xi Jinping Thought and Beijing’s authoritarian vision. China plays a long game on this head.

In America, Beijing proceeds through social-media platforms like TikTok, and initiatives designed to exert influence over our education system. According to Parents Defending Education, a grassroots organization committed to countering classroom indoctrination, between 2013 and 2023, $17 million in CCP funding was funneled into 143 school districts across 34 states. The money financed what are known as Confucius Classrooms.

Extensions of the CCP’s Confucius Institute initiative, the classrooms instruct K-12 children in Chinese language and CCP-sanctioned cultural and historical narratives. Similar programs persist within American higher education. Having come under scrutiny during the Trump Administration, Beijing restructured its Confucius Institute project in 2020. It now runs under new aliases as Chinese Student Scholar Associations.

China pursues similar strategies overseas. In regions where the pushback has tended to be more muted, such efforts typically coincide with an expanded CCP journalistic and entertainment presence, and programs to train local reporters. In Africa, every CCP-affiliated news agency has a presence. China Global Television Network, overseen by Beijing’s propaganda department, has 35 bureaus across the continent’s 54 nations.

Thousands of African journalists are annually instructed in CCP communications and digital strategies, and taught to “tell China stories well.” By extension, this implies telling America’s stories poorly. For America, which has largely neglected the information sphere, such developments should be concerning. Yet, unlike the urgency seen domestically, there is a seeming lack of immediacy  regarding Beijing’s global information campaigns. 

This, despite the availability of policy tools to combat them. Consider the United States Agency for Global Media, which includes Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. USAGM is today insufficiently funded and lacking a clear mission. The division of public diplomatic responsibilities between USAGM and the State Department has also resulted in the muddied management of our information warfare efforts. 

This has facilitated USAGM’s ostensible co-option by the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” crowd. Congressional inquiries have also been made into allegedly biased reporting by networks under its oversight — biased, that is, in favor of our adversaries. At a time when China is escalating its information campaigns to undermine and isolate us and our allies, it is vital for America’s national security that Washington prioritizes cognitive warfare.

Which brings me back to October 7 and the need for revised strategies in America. A reformed and refocused USAGM could stand as a pivotal component within a wider arsenal of domestic and foreign diplomatic, military, and economic strategies. While perhaps too late for the current administration to pivot, the next needs to take heed. For Xi Jinping was not wrong that doing “ideological work properly concerns the future fate.”