US Intelligence Community To Create Hub Against Foreign Influence Operations

US media is report­ing that the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence (ODNI), the head of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, is plan­ning to set up a “For­eign Malign Influ­ence Cen­ter” in order to counter for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tions in the coun­try. Accord­ing to a Politi­co report:

April 26, 2021 The nation’s top spy agency has begun work to estab­lish a hub to com­bat hos­tile for­eign med­dling in U.S. affairs, fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple assess­ments that Rus­sia and oth­er coun­tries have sought to sway elec­tions and sow chaos among the Amer­i­can peo­ple.  The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence will cre­ate the For­eign Malign Influ­ence Cen­ter “in light of evolv­ing threats and in sup­port of grow­ing pol­i­cy and con­gres­sion­al require­ments,” an agency spokesper­son said Mon­day in a state­ment to POLITICO.  The cen­ter will be a clear­ing­house for intel­li­gence relat­ed to malign influ­ence from mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment agen­cies and pro­vide assess­ments and warn­ing of such activ­i­ties.  Its cre­ation comes after repeat­ed warn­ings by Amer­i­can offi­cials and con­gres­sion­al law­mak­ers that for­eign efforts to influ­ence the U.S. are like­ly to con­tin­ue in com­ing years.

Read the rest here.

Last month, we report­ed about a declas­si­fied US intel­li­gence report con­clud­ing that dur­ing the 2020 US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin autho­rized a range of influ­ence oper­a­tions aimed at sup­port­ing Don­ald Trump, den­i­grat­ing Joe Biden, and fur­ther­ing divi­sive­ness in the US. The report also sug­gest­ed that while Iran car­ried out sim­i­lar elec­tion influ­ence cam­paigns, Chi­na ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to deploy such efforts.

Russ­ian, Iran­ian, and Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tions are all cov­ered by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report.