p.

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 that
is named for Senator McCain, Mrs. McCain, and the McCain family here going
back several generations. It's an honor to the legacy of service of that family to
our 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 United
States and around the world.
How do we instill good values and good character in a next generation of leaders
who will deal with the challenges that our country and our world is facing. We
also take on particular projects in areas of humanitarian work, human rights, law
and governance, national security, so that we can try to function as an
action-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 can
accomplish than just publishing papers or holding conferences. One of the things
in our charter has also been to stimulate a culture of debate about the choices
that we face as a country, and as a global community. What are the challenges
and how do we deal with them? So we launched a debate and decision series with
that in mind.
I think we've held probably close to 20 debates now on different topics, things
such 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 our
enemies? 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 very
exciting one, very appropriate for the Cronkite School of Journalism where we
are here at ASU.
The topic is "How Can the United States Win the Information Wars?" Let me
explain very briefly what that question means. We are in competition with ISIS
for hearts and minds. We're in competition with Russia, we're in competition
with China. This is not new, the United States has always been in a competition
for hearts and minds promoting our values of freedom, democracy, market
economy, rule of law, human rights.
Sometimes with greater success, sometimes with lesser success, but in today's
environment you see extraordinarily proactive and successful efforts from many
of our adversaries to shape beliefs and attitudes, shape hearts and minds around
the world. The question is, is the US winning or losing? The fact is we couldn't
find anyone to argue the US is winning. So we had to reshape the question to be,
"How can the United States win?"

p.2

We've assembled a panel of really world-renowned experts to introduce ideas

about how we can do a better job tackling this set of issues. I'll leave the
introductions of the panel to our moderator, and let me now introduce our
moderator. Moderator for this discussion is Jeff Cunningham, Jeff is a member of
the 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 digital
series called iconic voices. You've seen advertisements for that in the lobby as you
came up, which is interviews with very prominent, very interesting figures from
really all walks of life, that create a digital archive of these interviews. People that
he has interviewed include Warren Buffet, Michael Milliken, the CEO of
Freeport-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 an
extraordinarily distinguished career that straddles both business, and board
memberships, and publishing. So Jeff will be leading our discussion here and
moderating the Q&A.
When we do debates, at the McCain Institute, we try to impose a little bit of order
in order to bring out the best arguments rather than a panel discussion where
people just present, we pose questions, we try to time answers to make it fair and
equal for everyone, and we push back, and we try to get responses to opposing
points 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 is
part of the series that we do of debate and decision events for the McCain
Institute. With that, and without any further ado, let me invite our moderator Jeff
Cunningham 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, believe
me. Very good to be with you, my job is simply to be the docent and point the way
towards 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 something
called 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 tactical
advantage, the technology and the media being used and the tools are American,
largely speaking. Our resources are unlimited and yet one pundit said about
America's strategy, "Too much George Patton, not enough Steve Jobs."

p.3

Of our current efforts, Ken Weinstein, a member of the Broadcasting Board of

Governors, to policy wonks that's BBG, and you're going to hear a lot about BBG
tonight, said, "US communications strategy needs to be rebuilt from the ground
up." The resources aren't being squandered either. State Department estimates
that 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 with
Russia and the Islamic State.
Help may be on the way. You'll hear about House Committee Foreign Affairs
Chairman Ed Royce, and HR 2323 which is a bill designed to reform the BBG and
bring 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 to
shake-up the team. Let me tell you about our panel and why they are particularly
able to discuss and debate this issue.
This is to my left and on your left as well, Matt Armstrong who is a member of the
Broadcasting 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 chairs
the 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 the
Harvard Kennedy School writing about international broadcasting and digital
media. David's an Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist, 32-year career
includes CNN's national security correspondent, and prior to that an ABC News
global correspondent.
Moving one over is Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, Vice President Middle East
Media Research Institute. He has used as a US Foreign Service officer in Iraq,
Kuwait, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and the United Arab Emirates, and is
the State Department's coordinator for the Center of Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications, 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 spots
you've been sent to, Ambassador.
Jeffrey Gedmin down there to my far left is former president and CEO of Radio
Free Europe, Radio Liberty, reporting directly to the BBG, the Broadcasting
Board of Governors. Today he's a senior fellow at Georgetown University's School
of 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, will
you take a crack at this? Are we exaggerating for political reasons, and if we are
not, what are the consequences of losing this information war?
Ambassador

p.4

Alberto Fernandez: Well, I don't think we're exaggerating the challenge of

information war. Information is a tool like any other tool that you use in a
struggle, a struggle for ideas, a struggle for supremacy, for power, for influence in
the world. Influencing people, you can do that politically, you can do it
economically, 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 the
problems that we face is that we have not treated it with the priority, and the
urgency, and the importance that many of our adversaries have. The Islamic State
prioritizes propaganda more than the United States does. The actually pay their
propagandists more than they pay their fighters.
The Russians have hired a troll army to go online to basically fill the space and
contest the space, put out the message that they have. Our adversaries and others
who 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 McCain
Institute, thank you Kurt. It's a good question, if I can follow-up on Alberto's
comment, just to encapsulate that. The priority is just not there, and so if you
don't have the understanding that public opinion matters in this day when states
have less autonomy to control within their borders and individuals have greater
freedom to influence others as well as to cause disruption and destruction, the
public opinion of individuals and of groups matters tremendously.
So the enemy is a hard term, because we have so many different audiences, we
have so many different adversaries that I would phrase it that there are a number
of adversaries. Some are more fatal if we don't engage quickly, less some others
are going to take time to really engage. The adversaries here are those that are
actively 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 not
just American, you might call them Western, or in any case the ideas around
which our society is organized. If those ideas can be projected with honest
information attached, a lot of people would like to have them. I think one of our
biggest enemies is ignorance.
Moderator: David, let's turn this into a town hall. I'm going to give you four
choices, just raise your hand. You can't be wrong, OK? Who is our most
significant adversary in the information war? And you can certainly raise your

p.5

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 we
got 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 a
rising 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 this
Russia up by cutting America down.
ISIS is another kettle of fish altogether too, this is a group that not only is waging
war with the West, it's waging war in the Islamic world. Most people killed by
ISIS are not Christians or Jews, actually, they're Muslims. That is a different kind
of war with a different kind of scope. So anyway, I'm just going to tell you you're
all 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, the
Islamic State part of the world. Why is their approach, why does it appear to be so
effective? When I say effective I'm talking about their ability to use it for
recruitment.
Ambassador Fernandez: Of course they're extraordinarily effective and a
revolutionary success in relative terms. Sometimes we go to extremes, right? It
seems 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 an
extraordinary revolutionary powerful challenge, not to us, it's a challenge in the
Muslim 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 go
to [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. But
this is revolution, this is what the Islamic State is trying to propose, or trying to
set, 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 the
people that are attracted tend to be.
Moderator: David, let me turn to you. Maybe we want to examine the word stupid
for a moment.
Ambassador Fernandez: Shallow.
Moderator: Ignorant, perhaps?

p.6

David: Uninformed, ignorant.

Moderator: Because this is reaching here, it's a question of the effectiveness of
what we're calling digital media, the whole world, social media, digital media,
websites, non-broadcast television, non-print media. We're seeing a minor
example of that in our own country, in our own primaries. Now, we're not for
those who want to get a quote here and say that I'm saying ISIS is like Bernie
Sanders, I am not saying that, OK?
I'm just saying, we're seeing people who knew nothing about a candidate, who
knew nothing about the state he was from, get very energized and in some ways
they're detractors might say that they're ignorant, or they might say that this guy
is tapping into something that's really important. If you will sanitize ISIS or
Islamic State's approaches to their business for a moment, and just look at them
as a marketing organization, are they tapping into something that we need to tap
into? David?
David: They're making, for what they are trying to do, brilliant use of digital
media. It is fascinating to watch, because frankly just in terms of the production
values and their ability to pull attention to themselves, I sometimes envy them.
But you know, ISIS is using the pornography of violence which does attract
mostly young men in a certain way. In a way that ultimately is destructive not
only 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 to
communicate in that space which is something you worked a lot on when you
were 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, if
you will, in the gray area too of fighting and fighting hard against recruiting
websites, against the ideas that ISIS is trying, the sick ideas, that ISIS is trying to
sell, and frankly also if we can shut down some of their ways of getting on the
Web, we should be doing that.
There should be a much more serious and I think controlled at the highest level
in 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 great
misconception when we talk about Takfiri Salafi Jihadist organizations like ISIS.
Their appeal is revolutionary, it's extraordinary, but it is not sick or perverse. The
strongest thrust of the ISIS appeal is positive not negative. We see the snuff

p.7

videos, and we see the beheadings and all of that, and we say, "Oh, this is
horrible."
Actually the overwhelming bulk of what they put out is aspiring people to a
greater ideal. In that they are like Nazis, like Communists, like other
revolutionaries, it's not about the evil they do. Of course everything they do is
evil, but what they present is a positive vision of the world which is powerful, and
convincing, and put out with a revolutionary fervor. One of the problems we face
when we talk about the information war is what is our vision?
What are we talking about, those values that you talk about, those American
values 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, and
I want to turn it, because we're going to come back to that. I want to turn it a little
bit 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 long
game?
Matt: I think that's part of it. I think a more central piece particularly with the
issue that we're talking about now with Daesh, is we're not the right people to be
engaged in the conversation. We are naturally an outsider, part of what Daesh is
able to leverage is this interpretation of Islam, the fact that you can't question
Islam, the structure of the conversations. We're not in a position, we're not
appropriate to get into that conversation, and we tend not to do it very well when
we 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 for
this part of the conversation because so much of the influence is occurring in a
domain that we have no credibility in, we have to empower those that have the
credibility to stand up and question. Now there are other market spaces such as
with Russia, where their big power, yes as Alberto said and Jeff said, their big
power here is really the undermining of democracy.
The question more is really a brilliant tagline for Russia today, it's great because
they don't want you to come up with an answer, they want you to question the
whole utility vitality of the whole democratic process of alliances, of the news
media 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 create
divisions in NATO and use the refugee community as a way to undermine Europe
and to undermine the West." Is it possible that they haven't forgotten the lessons
of the past and we have?

p.8

Jeffrey: Let me, Jeff, before I answer that, I want just a moment. I do want to
suggest for this entire conversation that we put it in a context, because this entire
information debate, whether we're winning, losing, how to win, has to be seen I
think in a bigger debate. It occurred to me as I heard my colleague speaking a
moment 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 a
problem, and the fact is we have a pretty turbulent, untidy, complex election
process right now. That's us in the world, and we have some homework to do. The
second point is I think important, is when we finally get American foreign
policies right vis a vis China, vis a vis Russia, vis a vis ISIS, that will make this
conversation a lot easier, because I think in many circles, in many places around
the world, people think that America's in retreat and losing, and winning counts a
lot. 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, and
people say he's a nationalist, OK. People say he's an authoritarian, OK, but he is a
KGB man. Some of you know what that means, and some of you are too young to
know what that means.
I have Georgetown students who say, "Oh, you mean like the FBI, or something
like 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 East
Germany was the Stasi. Guess what they found a few years ago, 2009 to be
precise, in the Stasi archives by accident? They found out that a key moment
during the peace movement in West Germany, a West German policeman shot a
student protestor in the back of the head and it ignited protests throughout the
country. Guess what?
He was a Stasi KGB agent, shot him in the back of the head. All I'm saying is, we
proceed I think with a level of innocence and naivet that makes Vladimir Putin
lick 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 to
Ambassador, if you examine our moves in the last year with Syria and with Iran
how do we put out a cohesive message to whatever we would call the Islamic
world, given our relationship between what's happening in Syria and with Iran?
Ambassador Fernandez: Whether we intend to put one out or not, the message
has been received. The message that is received certainly in most of the Muslim
world, especially in the Sunni Arab Muslim world is the United States is weak, the
United States is in retreat, and the United States is either cynical or criminal, and

p.9

in the pocket of the Iranians. It was fascinating to watch the president a few days
ago do a very nice thing, a very good thing and go to a mosque in Baltimore and
show his solidarity with American Muslims.
In the Arab world when that happened, what people were talking about was
Aleppo, and Aleppo being cut off, and the advance of the Russians in Aleppo, and
it did not reflect well on US values or US foreign policy, or US tolerance. That
narrative, the narrative that we are both weak and duplicitous of course is
extraordinary helpful to the Islamic State. You talk about Iraq, the narrative of
the Islamic State and of the Salafi Jihadist is this.
The Americans went into Iraq to overthrow a Sunni Arab Muslim dictator, and
the Americans refuse to go in Syria to keep a non-Sunni Arab Muslim dictator in
power. So they see it, you can say this is conspiracy theory, you can say that this is
crazy, but they've drawn real conclusions from our actions. Jeff is absolutely
right, one of the problems we talk about in the information war is we divorce it
from foreign policy.
I call it public diplomacy magic pixie dust. If only we put some magic pixie dust
on this problem it will go away. If the foreign policy is lousy, no matter of silk is
going 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 a
democracy, getting back to the information war, to wage war against regimes for
which 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 the
information side than maybe some do. I agree with the Ambassador, you can't
lipstick on a pig, so if the policies aren't good, no matter what you do in
information it's not going to do all that well. But, I really do think we could be
doing more of this, we should be doing more of this, and even if we're not sure
what our foreign policy should be, we should be doing a better job of information
policy.
In Pakistan, when I was the OA director, very difficult country. It's a country
where over a long period of time the government, members of the government
have deliberately fanned the flames of anti-Americanism. Where the government
has deliberately support and given succor to the Taliban for complicated, weird
Pakistani reasons. They've supported a terrorist group living in their midst and
attacking the country next door, and it's now coming back to bite them. So it's a
really screwed up place.
When I came in, we decided to try to, not to try to do news broadcasting so much
in Pakistan, but to take it back more to the people to people level. Because there

p.10

was such difficulty with drone attacks, if you report them as news, you're riling
people up. We decided to just go back to the people to people basis, to for
example, invite young Pakistani women journalists to come to the United States
for a year, travel around the country, meet people, and do whatever stories
seemed appropriate to explain our country to theirs.
To show that normal people in America have similar wishes, desires, dreams as
young Pakistanis do. To show what young Pakistani's lives are like when they
come to American universities, which many of them aspire to do. Even if you
can't solve the problems of foreign policy, I think there's important work that can
and should be done, and isn't being done at the level it should be done around the
world 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't
answer 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 too
poor to create good strategy?
Matt: OK, so I can combine my answers. Here we go. So the question earlier had
to do with can democracy, is democracy compatible with the information war and
fighting 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 the
foundation of these activities, and it's 1917 to 1948, and I'll tell you the working
title 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 was
catchier to just say Voice of America, it's also the public affairs officers, and all
that stuff. What I find in this early part of the Cold War, it was absolutely
compatible. What we did is we realized that public opinion matters, perceptions
matter. You had a Congressman, Carl Mundt, who said because of the lack of
information, and yet we were doing things to help the Europeans not least of
which 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." So
we created this peace-time environment of information that was compatible and
worked with and support with our foreign policy, and it was a foreign policy that
all that needed to be known, was that it needed to be known. It was something
that could stand on its own, there was no lipstick on a pig necessary, there was no
redirection, change of subject that was necessary.
You move on a couple years, and the USIA was created to streamline the State
Department so it could focus more on its foreign policies, to create a single

p.11

accountable place for these broad information programs which included libraries,
exchanges, posters, magazines, books, and then by the way, a relatively small, it
was less than a quarter of the budget, this broadcasting element.
That was part of a streamlining, of integrating the defense department and the
state department all together in 1953, and we've forgotten all that. So here we are
in these past 10, 20 years really, I would argue post early 1970s when I think we
had a shift from minds and wills, a struggle for minds and wills to boomers and
bombers, negotiations behind closed doors.
In 1972 Senator Fulbright who was attempting to abolish all of the radios, Radio
Free 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 war
relics." That was 1972. There was a shift. We haven't caught back up to the early
part 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 we
have a CEO, 2323 would split the organizations to one unaccountable to the
taxpayer organization with its own CEO, own board, the White House, Congress
doesn'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 my
job even exists anymore, it's to create a firewall, but if we have an empowered
CEO 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 is
we're getting to this point, the priority of news and information is not well
understood, you made the comment about the funding.
The BBG last year was authorized to spend $22 million in Russian language
programming. So when you compare the BBG budget to the Russian budget, $22
million versus a lot more in the Russian languages, it's a difficult thing. Plus when
you look at when we raise RT, you can't say Russia Today without Sputnik and
without a couple of other products. The BBG just for point of reference is not
authorized, funded, or oriented to combat, to compete, to engage in the same
space 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 remarkable
things, I think there are two fun things to do if you ever watch RT. Google the
speakers 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 RT
and I learned that the lack of badger rights in the United Kingdom is symbolic of
Western hypocrisy in Africa. That's a true story.
David: And when the Malaysian air jet was shot down over Ukraine, and the
world's media were reporting on increasing evidence that the missile that fired it

p.12

down was a Russian-made missile, and that it had come from a part of Ukraine
that was occupied by the Russian-backed rebels, what was RT reporting? Well
they had something new every news cycle. They said, "Oh, this is probably a CIA
plot." 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 point
was not to elucidate, the point was to confuse, to create smoke in the air so that
the clarity of the information that was coming out everywhere else would not be
so 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 wanting
to break into the space. So why are they beating us? We invented startups, we
invented 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 linear
spectrum, you have the far left and the far right. For RT they've bent it, so they
appeal to the far left and the far right simultaneously. It's actually quite clever, I
don'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't
feel that they're being satisfied, and a senior person at RT actually commented
that if the Western media was doing its job, RT wouldn't have a market. The
other 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 all
sorts of things out.
If you don't care what the truth is anymore, if the truth doesn't matter to you, you
can say anything. You can get plenty of attention for outrageous claims just
because they're outrageous. They might not last very long, over time your
credibility will be nothing, but you'll certainly get attention. RT has gotten
attention, I would argue however, they have not gotten much audience over all.
Moderator: Just a point of reference, RT has 300 million subscribers on YouTube
to 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 democracy
capable of waging an information war because the adversaries are doing things
that are against our rules of engagement?
David: On point number one, maybe the others want, on one I'll just say this. RT
has 300, I don't challenge your number, I know it's very high. Because they have
people who spend all day every day...

p.13

Moderator: Trolls?
David: ...putting videos up that have already drawn large viewerships from
anywhere on the Web. So they just take, I'm not going to say cat videos, but
things that have grabbed people's attention and throw them up there to drive
their numbers up in a way that will cause you to quote them. Some of that is just
churn.
Moderator: If I'm an investor, they're building market share to do whatever they
need 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 sense
is that they prioritize volume. Volume has value. We all know in our lives how
often have you seen somebody say something really stupid, an individual saying
something 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, know
that 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 no
reason 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 after
Tom Brokaw. Not Tom Brokaw, I'm sorry, Brian Williams. Went after Brian
Williams. Why isn't the media going after RT? There is a responsibility here, both
to 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 we
as Americans have a real natural distrust of the government engaging in our
domestic information sphere. That's the job of our media, but our media is simply
not doing that.
Moderator: Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Thank you, Jeff. Two points to this, first of all back to foreign policy. I
would like to see us have a thoughtful, robust foreign policy that pushes Russia
back 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 Eastern
Europe, he has a multi-faceted specific strategy.
A little bit different for Romania, a little bit different for Moldova, they acquire
media, they set up radio, television, digital. It's robust. The first point I want to
make is the moment we start pushing back and containing, it will make a
different sort of problem. Informationally I would like to do that too. In large

p.14

part, we run around Washington talking about what will Putin do next? And how
should we respond? It's a great parlor game.
I don't think he spends a lot of time in the Kremlin thinking, "What will the
Americans do next, and when they do it, how will I respond?" He is a kleptocratic
authoritarian ruler who is looting his country financially, spiritually, cultural.
Liberal democrats don't like him, but Russian nationalists should not like him
either. So not only would I like to push him back in terms of a foreign policy
objective, but we ought to be squeezing him constantly informationally, so that he
is on the defensive. Then it becomes a different conversation.
Moderator: Jeffrey, an old Arkansas expression we'll put you down as lukewarm
on Putin?
[laughter]
Jeffrey: I'm just trying to share.
Moderator: When I think about our message, our message of democracy, and I'm
a business guy, so to speak. I'm a professor of practice, I spent my life in the
business world. If someone said, "That's your job, sell democracy," and I grew up
in the Middle East for part of my life, I'd find a new job. I'd say it's like having a
Rubio moment, I just have to repeat the same line over and over and hope that
they listen.
How do we make a credible shot at convincing an indigenous people within an
indigenous 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 that
problem is that we are confused. The Bush administration, and I'm on record
criticizing some aspects of the Bush administration. The Bush administration had
a clear vision for the Middle East. It was that the solution was a liberal
democratic order. Maybe that was ridiculous, maybe that was too soon, maybe
that was overstated, but they had a vision. They had something.
You have to counter something with something. Right now we basically have a
void, a vacuum. I've spent most of my career in the Middle East, and in the Arab
world, and what the Arabs always joked about is that the Americans always had
this struggle between [Arabic], you know? Principles and Interests.
But our interests always won out on our principles. We were never faithful to our
principles, we never stood up to our principles, and what attracted them to us
was our principles, was what America is really like, not the ugly aspects of foreign
policy that they saw in the region. Rightly or wrongly interpreted that way. So we
have 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 self
confidence in the story. We have to be self-aware and humble enough to share

p.15

with the world that we haven't figured it all out, and if they watch our election
campaign they see we haven't figured it quite all out yet. But there's so many
examples from public diplomacy and broadcasting where we get it right, and I'll
give you one. When I was running RFE/RL we had an Afghan service, and a
bureau in Kabul.
I went, I had a meeting with some tribal leaders. Men, tunics, long beards. One of
them said to me, "You know Dr. Gedmin, we're a very religious, traditional, tribal
society. 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 our
prayer schedules to listen to your programming." True story.
You know what our most popular program at that time four years ago in
Afghanistan 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 investment
in the long game for a country like that.
Moderator: Are these a teachable moment here? How do we, and my next
question 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 out
when to add the democracy channel, but if we've got to get their hearts and
minds.
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 of
Governors had a difficult time with a strategy. I'm on record saying the strategic
plan that this agency has, Jell-O nailed to a wall has more consistency than the
strategic 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. We
don't do democracy promotion. In fact I hate that in support of freedom and
democracy is our tagline, and I hate that because who's democracy are we talking
about? Is it American? French? German? Italian? I don't know whose democracy
it is. It's these building blocks.
It's human security, it's health, rule of law, accountability, and for some of these
audiences, 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 space
markets, or those other difficult markets, they don't understand what
accountability is. They don't know what civil military relations are, they don't
know how the policemen should work, they don't know that their government
officials can be held accountable.
That's where we need to operate is in that space, and it's below there. So how do
we get there? I think now that we have the CEO we're aligning the forces and RFE

p.16

for example and VOA have partnered on this current time program, and there's
some 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 seen
by about 2 million people in Russia every day, which a US network would love to
have a 2 million audience share for their news programming. Actually VOA is
being broadcast in Belarus, because they have a concern about Russia. I think
we're starting to get the alignment there, and we're getting the systems and the
gears 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 the
last four years has increased its audience 40 percent to almost 188 million people
watching, listening to, or reading Voice of America. Every week. Almost a quarter
of 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 largest
impact 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's
enormously impactful, and we do it by being a truthful broadcast. We do it by
staying out of the propaganda side, or we're not a spokesman for the
administration. For example, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel gave
his speech to the joint session of Congress, he wasn't exactly complimentary
about Barack Obama's efforts in the Iraq nuclear deal.
We ran it, live, with simultaneous translation in Farsi. Because we knew that that
was 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 on
everything." This is how you deal with a difficult issue, you debate it, you discuss
it.
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 a
lot of good things have happened in the last four years, and I think there's a lot
more we can do. Digital media is an enormous opportunity, most of that growth I
just mentioned, the 40 percent has actually been television. Moving from radio to
television.
Moderator: I'm going to ask for your summaries in a second, so I just want to
turn to Ambassador who's had his hand up. Please.
Ambassador Fernandez: I was going to say, we have also I think a tremendous
resource that most people, most of the general public is not aware of, we talked a
lot about broadcasting, and that is the work of public diplomacy officers at
American embassies and consulates overseas. These are the people that interact
with publics in foreign countries, often in the language of the country.

p.17

These are the people that administer our cultural exchange and scholarship
programs, and deal with the local media. These are people doing tremendous
work. We have lousy leadership at the high levels of government in this field as
far as I'm concerned, but the working level people, the young diplomats and
senior 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 a
summary, or talk about how we fix this. I put it as a roadmap to victory, but I'll
give you a swing thought before you launch into it. Chesterton, the British
historian said that people didn't love Rome because she was great, she was great
because they loved her. As I look around the world, despise our adversaries, I
think they love their countries.
David and I were talking about how fragmented our country is, I'm wondering do
we, 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, I
think it's an issue of understanding that the boundaries are gone, and that foreign
policy matters and that you can't pretend to be isolationists, pretend that this is
all Las Vegas. This is a global environment, and what happens here influences
elsewhere, and what happens there influences here, and we need to pay attention
to 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 also
want to echo what was just said, is that we have these public diplomacy officers
within the Foreign Service office, which is a subset of the Foreign Service, and the
hiring 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 and
while my agency needs more money, the tip of the spear, the people that are on
the ground are under resourced, overworked, not supported by the human
resource system, and I'll bet you that none of you know that. It would be
remarkable, 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 one
thing to have a foreign policy, it's another thing, what are we doing on the
ground, and how are we able to fix and get around the dysfunction?
Moderator: David?

p.18

David: How are we going to win the information war, or even start to get better at
it? Back in the '60s, John F Kennedy had as his chief information advisor a man
whose picture is in the Cronkite Museum over there, of Journalism. Edward R
Murrow. One of the finest journalists our country has ever produced, a really
smart 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 a
peace cold war dividend. I'm not suggesting we put it back in place, but we really
need to take this subject far more seriously than we do, that's the real headline
here. There's a lot we can have, there's a lot of impact we can have in this area if
we 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 an
extraordinary investment by our allies the British. They are the most respected
broadcasters on Earth, bar none, without any question, with an audience of 300
million 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 want
their communications problem because they're selling something that doesn't sell
very well.
That said, when you have the kinds of budgets that they have, I sure wouldn't
mind having some of the producers they've got, and the snazzy sets, and the
ability to have bureaus in lots of places that are well supplied. So I just think we
should, as a country, just take this a little more seriously. One more thought on
the broader area, I thought Martha Bayles book that a friend of Jeff's and mine
recently about the impact of public culture was instructive.
There was a time when American movies, which have always been popular and
still are around the world, were a tremendously positive force for the image of our
country 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't
appreciate. They don't export very well.
Parents around the world don't like their children being exposed to all the
violence. I don't know what the answer is there, because I'm not asking for
censorship, but I think that some conversations ought to go on in this country
about our public culture. Some thought ought to go into what we want, how we
want 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 to
go, and that is to say I think we do need something like USIA. We need an entity
in the US government whose job it is to do advocacy for the United States, and I
am unashamed to say that.

p.19

We have a tremendous story to tell, we have things that we can be true to

ourselves about, and so I believe that having an entity whose job it is to do that
and only that, that is adequately resourced and that has access to the top of the
government, it has access like Edward R Murrow had, briefly in the 1950s and
early '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 if
we need anyone to talk about propaganda. I think we need to treat it, as I said in
my opening remarks, we need to treat it with the very same seriousness and
passion that our adversaries do.
Moderator: Just as an aside, Murrow was moved out of his job, eased out of it to
make way for Walter Cronkite, just the in the random, crazy way the world works
sometimes. 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 fact
we'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, Yale
University Press on American diplomacy and culture, it's a great book and it's
very instructive.
Because David's right we don't want censorship, but it may suggest some
thoughtfulness and restraint on our part. Not only is it that some cultures around
the world don't like the dreadful, gratuitous violence and dehumanization of
people, maybe some Americans want to give it a second thought too. It does have
some effect on who we are and how we project. The third and last thing I'd say is
raise 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 mind
stuff, 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. I
call it the "Yes, but" crowd. I moved back to the United States from London last
year. You go to a dinner in London with politicians, or business people, or culture
people, the dinners are mostly dominated by the "Yes, but" crowd.
You say, "He annexed Crimea!" Well, the Americans went into Iraq. "China is
corrupt." Well, Italy is corrupt too. It's this moral relativism that seeps in
everywhere. Of course we have problems, but not all problems or relationships
are equal and morally equivalent. The last thing I want to say is we have an
information challenge, we have a foreign policy challenge, but I think we have a
challenge 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't
tolerate hatred and violence that's being promoted. But I think we're right now a

p.20

little bit uncertain about those things. When we clear that up, it will help the rest
of the things quite a bit, I think.
Moderator: Stay for questions, but join me in congratulating and thanking this
panel.
[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 to
repeat 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 one
on specifically RFE/RL. You talked a lot about the English-language services of
RT or CCTV or even press in Iran, but there are other options in English. BBC
was mentioned. Specifically on the former Soviet Union, Russian media really
penetrates the former Soviet Union, so what are your ideas for a commercially
attractive truthful news service which there hasn't been one independent of the
Russian government since [inaudible 61:24].
Then specifically on radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, I feel that they're more and
more advocating in Washington policy decisions rather than broadcasting into
the region. Is that to justify funds for the organization, or is that an additional
mission of the organization? It just seems like that they're doing far more on
broadcasting 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 Jeff
also spent a lot of time on it. Here's the thought, one that I used to bat around
with people. Look, if Putin threw us out of all the radio and television stations
pretty much in Russia itself, Russia proper. But there's the area of Russian
speakers in what used to be the Soviet Union that is underserved and we should
reach with better programming.
That's why we did Natstashya Vrimya, Current Time, in partnership with RFE. It
is 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 to
find 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 best
sports clearances, live sports coverage that Russians just can't resist, and then on
that same station, there could be public affairs programming and news
programming, that might be done by the RFE Russian language service, by Voice

p.21

of America's language service, by Deutsche Vela's language service, and also by

local Russians who would work for the station that would be in a place outside
Russia.
If we did that, even though Putin is blocking broadcasts over the air, I think that
that stuff would get in. YouTube clips are everywhere in Russia. If you put
something compelling on, and you find ways to chop it up into bite sized bits and
put 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't
entirely know the answer to, but I was told by one engineer that it would be
perhaps possible to get a signal from Northeastern Estonia to St. Petersburg, the
second largest city in Russia if you put the right equipment up. I think we could
be doing so much more than we are, and I really think we should have responded
more 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's
closed us down, he Vladimir Putin, mostly in the inside game.
Because you know ostensibly he believes in rule of law I have to say
parenthetically, one of my claims to fame was seeing our operation decline inside
Russia because every partner you worked with if there's a piece of cheese out for
an hour the health inspector came, or the fire inspector, or the tax collector, they
made it impossible to do business there. Inside game very difficult, outside game
that's imaginative, that's vision, that's strategy. By the way, these things don't
cost 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 to
know, that's the cost of about four Apache helicopters, and they've got lots of
those things over at the Pentagon. That's about half of what PBS spends in New
York City. So if you believe in these things, hearts and minds, and we did 28
languages in 22 countries, OK, it's real money. But in context, a big rich country
like this, I think we could afford it.
David, your question they broadcast robustly, they're present as I said, 28
languages, 22 countries. They do have a presence in Washington, it is in part to
make sure that the funder, the US Congress knows that they're alive and kicking
because 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 called
the RFE Research Institute, it was in Munich, but it had a subsidiary in
Washington which was very significantly staffed, that was analysts. I think you're
right but I don't think it's a terrible thing.
Matt: So, can I add something, I'm on the board.

p.22

Moderator: Yes, please.

Matt: I'm going to be additive here, I'll work in reverse order. The presence of
RFE in DC I think has shifted slightly over these last just couple of years. The
presence 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 does
operate in English, but it's a subset, because it's not a core language just like VOA
does operate in English, but for most of the last 15 years there's been attempts to
abolish it or just minimize it, it's not the way to look at VOA and understand what
it 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 this
other point about OK, how do we collect something? How do we engage in this
Russian 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 we
can 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 quality
Russian-language programming not made by Russia. Because the beauty of the
Kremlin is that they're able to produce all this really, shiny great content. They
brought 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 in
two months, because they had diminished it. So I went out, let's all produce
something, and let's all put it into a pot and let's pull it out. So if we get 25
countries or 25 hours put in, we can pull out and have six hours each, something
like that.
So we started to ramp up some of the countries weren't sure what to do, they still
sort of froze, we started to move, and then there was a European Endowment for
Democracy project that kind of came up with the same thing. They call it the
Content 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 to
provide this quality content. State Department assisted us to get PBS content,
government funded content. How did we pull that in, because BBG is not funded
to do entertainment, so how do we pull in this other content? Netflix, our target
markets see Netflix going global as a great hurrah, because now, how do we
synchronize with that, and what's missing from that Netflix catalog that that
audience may want?

p.23

So the point is, we're starting to spin that up. There are activities that are
happening now, some US government, some private sector, but it is a complex
dynamic environment.
Moderator: Go to our next question? Please.
Audience Member: [inaudible 69:22] I want to know about psychological
operation information [inaudible 69:41]
Moderator: I'll try to paraphrase it, you probably got the question. He wanted to
know about Sky News, right?
Audience Member: Yes.
Moderator: How they...
Audience Member: [inaudible 69:55]
Moderator: To combat...
Audience Member: [inaudible 70:06]
Moderator: To combat ISIS?
Ambassador Fernandez: Yeah, that's an ISIS question. There are two questions
there, Sky News and an ISIS.
Audience Member: [inaudible 70:12]
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?
Audience Member: [inaudible 70:30]
Moderator: Propaganda.
Audience Member: Sky News is mostly based on English, I was wondering would
this 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 as
well, but I'm not sure...

p.24

Moderator: But are they doing what RT is doing? Is Sky News doing the same
thing, or is it a straight news...
David: It's a commercial news company. It's a profit-based, fact-based news
company.
Moderator: It's like CNN is what we're saying. You understand, it's like CNN, it's
not propaganda.
Ambassador Fernandez: Or NBC.
David: You may or may not like how they do it, or what you perceive to be their
underlying views, but they are a commercial company purporting to do news on a
fact-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 on
information, driven by the apathy of the [inaudible 71:46]. So 20 years ago we
could go to Paris and watch CNN and it wouldn't [inaudible 71:57], but it would
be truly international. [inaudible 72:03].
Moderator: I think the question is, is there a mirror relationship between what
has 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 correspondent
for 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 of
national security policy is really homeland security policy. Although, yes, there is
some 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 of
the Cold War, our country felt great, done, [inaudible 72:56], that's it. We don't
have to have 13 ABC News bureaus around the world anymore, because our
biggest problem is solved. Of course, how wrong that was? One of the reasons I
liked being director of Voice of America was, because it was publicly funded, I
was a private commercial journalist for most of my career, and I'm proud of the
work we did.
I think there's some great journalism, then comes the word but. But, Voice of
America 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 news
about humanity is, human beings are more interested in bad news than good
news. They're more likely to keep watching if things are blowing up or sad things
are happening, than they are if there's good news. It's just a fact about us.

p.25

It's very challenging to get something on the air in a network news program
which is commercial that is good news. You could do it, but it's harder. I used to
love that at VOA or when I was diplomat in Afghanistan a public broadcaster
could decide that the opening of 20 health clinics today is just as big a story as
that 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 Afghan
people and they want to know about it.
You have it depends what model your journalism is, and what drives it. The profit
motive, I believe in there being commercial journalism Most of my life I was a
commercial journalist and we did some great work, and I think we informed a lot
of people, entertained and informed people about what's going around, and I still
very strongly believe in that model.
But I like a mix, and I like to see some public broadcasting, and I think that Voice
of America in many of the markets where we're strong provides news that is the
news judgements are based around what do we actually think matters to these
people. Not that will keep them transfixed, necessarily, but that will matter to
them over the longer term. In some ways it's kind of nice to be able to have the
luxury of making judgements along those lines.
Moderator: I'll use my privilege to say we criticize the media, but the truth and
the fact is that it was private media, those glory days, or they had been recently
private. I worked for Forbes all my life, and I can assure you, if Malcom Forbes
wanted to write good news, he wrote good news, but he didn't answer to
shareholders. It's the transformation to public companies that has naturally
changed the shape of the media. So what I'm saying is, we're not blaming the
media, 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 the
information, it doesn't come up. One thing that I think it's useful to know is that
all the BBG entities, RFE, and VOA now that they're under the roof, the job is to
go out of business.
Where the private media is deemed to be doing an adequate job, it is to go. Now
David has a different view of this, but in the authorizing legislation, there is this
non-compete. Now it should be changed, but this was the fundamental idea, is
that 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.

p.26

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 broadcast
in 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 the
middle.
Audience Member: [inaudible 76:51] welcoming the Syrian refugees [inaudible
77:05]?
Ambassador Fernandez: I don't think it's much of a factor. I think it's more has to
do with domestic foreign policy. Look at me, I'm so fuzzy, and nice, and
everything 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 that
it 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 it
appropriate for the public, a democracy, to put out misleading or false
information 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 II
and the Nazis have a ministry of propaganda. I'm a Roman Catholic and for many
years the Catholic Church had the Office of the Propaganda, that propagated the
faith, 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 your
question 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 who
followed our programs there, they were giggling the whole time, and I finally said,
"Why are you laughing?"

p.27

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 always
turns 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 call
them Daesh, and most people can't even pronounce it, it sounds like they're
saying Dash or Dish, I don't think people who don't really know Arabic shouldn't
say words in Arabic that way. Look, the Islamic State is imbued and saturated
with 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 has
a history of Takfiri Salafi Jihadism, which has a past. It doesn't come from
nowhere, and so let's call them what they call themselves, and then let's prove
them 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, and
challenge them on the words that they use, because they say, and they can back it
up, 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 kind
of ideological, political, religious challenge of it which is connected to Islam is
something 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 that
are very much anti-US have armies of hackers that are [inaudible 81:29]. The
private 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 be
looked at more seriously inaudible 81:49] shareholders?
Matt: I'm not aware of US corporate media being self-censoring because of the
fear of hackers, or denial of service attacks, I'm not aware of any of that coming
up.
Moderator: Please?

p.28

Audience Member: Back to about an hour ago, we talked with you and we talked
about 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 woefully
uninformed about civics, and then we see it in college young people don't know
basic 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 opposed
to the sick pornography of violence that David [inaudible 82:58]?
Ambassador Fernandez: I think you raise an interesting question when we use
words 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 exists
in 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 of
radicalization in our country." But, there is, and I'm a person who's a refugee, and
a person who's a migrant, I was not born in the United States, but the American
ideal has power. When I see 'Glory,' have you ever seen Glory? I cried like a baby
at the end of that movie.
It has power to influence people, to inspire people, and we do ourselves a
disservice when we don't give people those tools. Like I said, when I was in
Europe I was shocked because I asked these Europeans, "If you're a Dane, or a
German, what can a young Muslim aspire to, what are the national symbols, what
are the things that move you?" And this one person from Scandinavia said, "Well
we can't talk about those things because in our country national symbols and
concepts are part of the far right."
I was taken aback, I thought if how are you going to counter something with
nothing? So you need to educate people up in a positive way, let them not be
ignorant.
Moderator: Question here?
Audience Member: My name is Ciara, I'm from Palestine, and I admire very
much 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 attracting
mostly youth, because they attract them from the religious part of them, and I
believe that they have a lot of passion, religious, they're using religion and the
power 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 them
from influencing the youth by using their, by blinding them with their passions
[inaudible 85:55]?

p.29

Ambassador Fernandez; First of all, that's a very good question. First of all one of
the things about the ISIS message, it's not about one thing, it's a multi-faceted
message. For example, we've talked about religion, and certainly religion is a part
of their message, but it's also an appeal to violence, it's an appeal to a Utopian
future, it's a tailored message for different people.
So a message that they want to send to, for example, a young woman in the
United States is a different message than they're going to send to a Tunisian
living in a slum outside of Tunis. So they tailor their message to their local
audience, to the people they're talking to. There's a problem with ISIS which is
this. It's part of a larger phenomenon.
In the Sunni Arab Muslim world, which is the part I know best, there has been for
decades 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 and
tuxedoes, 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 a
certain direction, and promoted intolerance and extremism. ISIS is the bitter
fruit of decades of investment in that type of world view. The tragedy is, and you
mentioned it in the beginning of your remarks, is to this day there are Arabs and
Muslims, Muslims and Seer Muslims, secularists, liberals, people of all sorts who
are fighting that fight, but they are political and economic orphans.
They don't have television stations, they don't have publishing houses, they don't
have voice, they have voices, but their voices are not like some whacky sheik
saying some stupid thing. If you look at the stuff we have on memory, we often
find people saying ridiculous things. There are people saying good things, and
positive things, but they don't have the clout and the podium that the crazies
often do.
Moderator: Please? I'm like an air traffic controller on Thanksgiving Wednesday
here.
[laughter]
Audience Member: [inaudible 88:26] technological advantage in [inaudible
88:32] 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 the
message?
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't
you tackle the source itself, which most of us actually know where the source of
the ideology is? So how do you frame the message differently, and still stay in the
frames of political correctness of the West?

p.30

David: Jeff, do you want to start?

Jeffrey: First of all, I want to reiterate, I don't think we want to go to messaging,
or propaganda, or psy-ops, there's a place and time in the Pentagon where you're
fighting a war where you have specific requirements. But we're talking about
public diplomacy and we're talking about broadcasting, and I think I speak for
everybody, we want accurate, reliable, verifiable, truthful information because it
means credibility. It's constant with our values, and it wins in the end.
The other thing I would say, and of course ISIS is different from Russia, and
Russia is different from China, but another thing I want to say is we have, you
think, what is this expression, If you don't know where you're going, any road will
do? We have an idea where we're going. I'm reverting some of the things that
David said at the top of the program. There is a need no matter who does it or
how you divvy it up.
There is a need to talk to the world about the United States of America in an
accurate, reliable, truthful sort of way, and commercial media and social media
doesn't get it done. It does some of it, but it's incomplete for reasons David said,
and I'll even say we're so slaves to marketing. Go to YouTube, how many pictures
and images do we need of cats putting up toilet seats, right? But that trumps
everything else, those are numbers, baby!
We need a public outlet that helps to communicate in all our complexity and
contradiction, us America in the world. Second of all, we need to communicate
about our policies. Responsibly, intelligently, not propagandistically to engage
people in discussion about what they're all about, and third we need to support, I
think, democratic aspirants around the world with civil society.
Because it's the right thing to do, but in the long term, they will be more peaceful,
more prosperous, and better partners. So what am I saying? Propaganda no,
long-term yes, and basically in a lot of ways keep it simple. You're trying to do
sensible, accurate, reliable journalism in service of a purpose.
Moderator: We have run out of time. But we haven't run out of ideas, so if you
want to run up to the front and say a few questions, I'm sure we'd be able to take
them. But join me in thanking this wonderful panel for a rousing discussion.
[applause]
Moderator: And to recognize Ambassador Volker for making all this happen.
Thank you.
Ambassador Volker: And please join me in thanking eff Cunningham for doing a
super job of moderating.
[applause]

p.31

Moderator: While I'm at it, in this room I'll be interviewing Senator John McCain
a 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, thank
you.
[background noise]

Transcription by CastingWords