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Trump's four-year information war

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Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch. Photos: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty ImagesLast week's riot at the Capitol was many things, but perhaps chiefly it was the culmination of four years of information warfare waged against the country from within the Oval Office.Why it matters: A sprawling disinformation campaign led by President Trump — and buttressed by his allies in the media, online and in Congress — has severely destabilized the U.S. and makes further acts of violence and would-be insurrection a near certainty.The big picture: Transnational conflict and power plays increasingly take place online, in the form of hacking, digital spying and influence operations.Between the lines: The attack on the Capitol was a direct response to Trump's refusal — what historian Timothy Snyder has of the Trump presidency — to accept the free and fair election of Joe Biden.Undermining and delegitimizing his political opponents have been central to what is arguably — rivaled only by falsehoods about COVID-19 — the most damaging front of Trump's information war.Be smart: The Capitol siege made it viscerally clear that the U.S. is now fully caught in a self-cannibalizing cycle of information warfare that pits rival domestic political camps against one other. Context: This weakening of shared reality between Americans — and dissolution of a sense of common national purpose — has been decades in the making, as historian Daniel Rodgers explores in his book “.”Americans of different ideological persuasions increasingly live in separate communities, consume different — and antagonistic — news sources, and communicate on different social networks, with basic cultural signifiers even becoming intensely (and often demagogically) politicized.Yes, but: The Trump administration has overseen some key policy wins on beating back foreign informational and cyber warfare.The catch: You can’t “defend forward” when the call is coming from inside the house. The real and important work done during the last four years to combat online disinformation and on other important national security topics was overshadowed and undermined by the president himself.In China, President Xi Jinping has silenced Alibaba founder Jack Ma and launched an antitrust investigation into his company after the e-commerce tycoon publicly criticized state regulators. In the U.S., Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has President Donald Trump's accounts after the president used the platform to incite violence.The big picture: The juxtaposition of two almost perfectly inverse situations reveals how differently China and the U.S. have approached the management of tech giants and digital information.Big Tech companies are scrambling to take action to prevent Inauguration Day violence, taking matters into their own hands after the government was caught ill-prepared for last week's Capitol siege.What's happening: Major firms are taking a range of steps to stop their platforms from being used to plan, incite or carry out violent acts in Washington, D.C.In the weeks leading up to the November presidential election, Chinese dissidents across the U.S. and at least five other countries found their homes blockaded by dozens of angry and sometimes violent protesters accusing them, without evidence, of being spies for China.Why it matters: The protesters were mobilized through a disinformation ecosystem that overlaps with the one that led to violence in the U.S. Capitol last week. The harassment targeting the global Chinese diaspora was an early warning sign.Sign up for Mike Allen’s daily Axios AM and PM newsletters to get smarter, faster on the news that matters.

Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch. Photos: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty ImagesLast week's riot at the Capitol was many things, but perhaps chiefly it was the culmination of four years of information warfare waged against the country from within the Oval Office.Why it matters: A sprawling disinformation campaign led by President Trump — and buttressed by his allies in the media, online and in Congress — has severely destabilized the U.S. and makes further acts of violence and would-be insurrection a near certainty.The big picture: Transnational conflict and power plays increasingly take place...

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Zach Dorfman of the Aspen Institute

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Trump's four-year information war

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