US launches global offensive against disinformation, instructs embassies to combat anti-American propaganda

The United States has instructed every American embassy and consulate around the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and is supporting Elon Musk's X platform as an "innovative" tool to help do this.

The cable, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests that embassies and consulates work together with the US military's psychological operations unit to address the problem of widespread disinformation.

It sets out a comprehensive set of guidelines on how embassy staff should counter what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.

This comes at a time when the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades run one of the most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses in the world, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

The telegram instructs those embassies and consulates to pursue five broad goals: countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversarial behavior, elevating local voices that support American interests, and promoting what it calls “telling America’s story.”

Embassies are being told to recruit local influencers, academics, and community leaders abroad to convey counter-propaganda messages, an approach designed to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed.

“These campaigns seek to shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews that are contrary to American interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms,” the cable said. “Using digital platforms, state-controlled media, and influence operations, they pose a direct threat to U.S. national security and incite hostility toward American interests.”

It is worth noting that the cable tells diplomatic offices to coordinate their work with “War Department Psychological Operations” – the military unit more commonly known as Miso, or Military Information Support Operations, formerly Psyop, which is part of the Pentagon.

A State Department spokesman told the Guardian that Sarah B Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy nominated in March, had made countering “anti-American” foreign propaganda “a top priority” and that the department would take “a firm stand on this harmful issue” by “fully utilizing every tool in our diplomatic toolbox.”

The spokesman did not directly address the approval of X's cable or his directive to coordinate with military psychological operations units.

The State Department also noted that Rogers had already drawn attention to a special report to Congress identifying Code Pink and several other left-wing activist organizations as vectors of Chinese influence operations within the United States.

It is not common for the State Department to openly combine public diplomacy with military psychological operations.

But similar efforts to combat foreign disinformation are not new, although previous administrations funded it through the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which lost its funding shortly before Donald Trump returned to office and had become a symbol of the alleged censorship of conservative speech – although their task had always been to target foreign disinformation outside the United States.

The GEC was once the point of contact between the State Department and the Pentagon's Miso for combating foreign disinformation, but now the responsibility falls to all embassies and consular posts, many of which are already understaffed relative to their populations and in hostile environments.

Local influencers and community leaders have historically been used to combat anti-American propaganda globally. It’s also a tried-and-true tactic used by the Kremlin, an example of which the GEC exposed in a 2024 operation called the “African Initiative.”

Last year, the FBI disbanded its foreign influence task force and the State Department closed the Center Against Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference.

Telegram also touts Elon Musk's X platform by name - specifically its Community Notes feature - as an "innovative" and "multiple-sourced" tool to eliminate disinformation to "combat anti-American propaganda operations without compromising free speech or privacy."

This approval comes after the European Union has already fined X 120 million euros ($137.5 million) under the Digital Services Act for deceptive practices – the first such fine under the law – and has opened further investigations into the platform’s artificial intelligence tools and recommendation algorithms.

Musk, who owns X, had an influential special advisory role in the Trump administration through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

The telegram instructs embassy staff to ensure that U.S. foreign assistance is prominently branded, instructing consular posts to use “prominent branding, representing the flag” so that foreign audiences know when aid or programming is coming from the U.S. government.

Offices and embassies around the world are also being told to increase the availability of international news and independent analysis translated into local languages, effectively tasking embassies with becoming distribution centers for foreign-language media in countries where, according to the cable, “anti-American propaganda is prevalent or where information is limited.”

More than 700 “American spaces” – cultural centers, libraries and exchange centers funded by the US government in countries around the world – will be repositioned under the guidelines as platforms for uncensored information and will be explicitly promoted as free speech “zones”.

The GeoPost