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The US has informed countries in Europe that it is stepping back from joint efforts to combat disinformation from countries such as Russia, China and Iran, according to three European officials familiar with the matter.
European countries received a notice from the State Department last week that the US is terminating memoranda of understanding that were signed last year under the Biden administration, which sought to forge a unified approach to identifying and exposing malicious information spread by foreign governments seeking to sow chaos.
The move comes as the Trump administration has dismantled agencies across the government that sought to protect the integrity of US elections and to combat foreign malign influence at home and abroad.
The memoranda were part of an initiative spearheaded by the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department agency that tackled disinformation spread overseas by US adversaries and terror groups.
James Rubin, who served as head of the centre until December, described the move as a “unilateral act of disarmament” in the information war with Russia and China.
“Information warfare is a reality of our time and artificial intelligence is only going to multiply the risks from that,” Rubin said.
The centre was established in 2011 to counter terrorist propaganda and violent extremism online. Its mission was later expanded to tracking and exposing disinformation campaigns overseas.
It was closed in December after Republican sceptics in Congress blocked efforts to extend the agency’s mandate. Its functions were briefly reorganised into an office at the State Department, which was then closed by the Trump administration in April. The termination of the memoranda of understanding is the final step in ending the programme.
While the centre’s work focused on disinformation outside the US, it became a lightning rod for some Republicans who accused it of censorship and of stifling conservative voices.
“Far from spiking a single plan, we were proud to spike the entire GEC,” said Darren Beattie, acting under-secretary of state for public diplomacy at the State Department.
“Not only was GEC’s infamous censorship activity profoundly misaligned with this administration’s pro-free speech position, it was woefully and embarrassingly ineffective on its own terms,” Beattie said.
Rubin denied that the centre had ever engaged in censorship.
About 22 countries in Europe and Africa signed the agreements with the US over the course of last year, Rubin estimated. They formed part of the Biden administration’s framework to counter foreign state manipulation, which sought to develop a shared understanding of the threat and to work with partner countries on a unified response.
The decision to terminate the memoranda of understanding was first reported in the Atlantic.
Russia has waged an aggressive disinformation campaign in recent years to sow chaos and undermine support for Ukraine and the western-led global order.
In September last year, the GEC accused the Russian-state funded broadcaster RT of acting on behalf of Russian intelligence agencies using cyber espionage and of seeking to manipulate presidential elections in Moldova in Moscow’s favour.
The US has sanctioned RT and other Russian-state broadcasters over their role in disseminating disinformation.
The broadcaster was banned in continental Europe and the UK following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in a bid to undermine the Kremlin’s war propaganda.