Double standards undercut efforts to counter foreign influence and leave Americans unprotected
Policymakers rightly focus on Chinese and Russian influence but ignore and even abet Israeli and Indian interference.
QUIZ: Guess which foreign governments are represented in the following true stories:
A foreign government covertly funds an organization in the United States to conduct what it calls “mass consciousness activities” to influence college campuses and push back against student protests critical of the foreign government’s behavior.
An intelligence officer of a foreign government runs a covert disinformation operation by creating a network that spreads conspiracy theories about the U.S. government and attacks critics of the government.
If you guessed China and Russia you would be wrong. The correct answers are (1) Israel and (2) India.
China and Russia are targets of concern
Policymakers rant about the “malign influence operations” of China and Russia. As they should. But they are silent when countries like Israel and India do the same. From the perspective of protecting Americans from malign foreign influence, isn’t such double standards wrong?
Foreign influence is a hot topic. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently charged Linda Sun, a former top advisor to New York’s governor, as an agent of the Chinese government, and obtained a conviction of Chinese dissident Shujun Wang for the same.
Earlier this month, DOJ announced the disruption of a Russian internet-based “foreign malign influence” campaign. Just a few days ago DOJ announced the conviction of four individuals for engaging in a conspiracy to act as agents of the Russian government. The State Department and other agencies routinely prioritize efforts to counter Russia malign influence activities and election interference efforts.
Congress too. Just this past week the House passed a bill to reauthorize the “Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund.” There is also a Countering Russian Influence Fund. These appear to be the only two country-specific efforts in the U.S. government.
To be clear, all the attention given to influence operations and transnational repression by China and Russia is merited, both for scale and scope. More is needed.
On Israel and India, policymakers look the other way.
But they are not the only governments doing it. Many influence ops go un-countered by the U.S. government. The question is whether policymakers are letting politics interfere with their duty to protect Americans.
Take college campuses. Chinese government influence on America’s college campuses is a real issue. There’s no shortage of attention on it from Congressional committees and commissions, think tanks, and human rights organizations.
Another government actively exerting influence on college campuses is Israel’s. The article referenced in example (1) above details an influence operation run by the Israeli minister of diaspora affairs which coordinates and funds a U.S.-based organization and student groups to promote the Israeli government’s view and attack its critics.
Is a Congress investigating this? No. In fact, a Congressional Committee is actually helping the Israeli government run the malign influence operation against American students. (!!!!) The article reported that House Republican lawmakers explicitly cited Israeli government-funded research done by this organization to interrogate university presidents who they claimed were not sufficiently cracking down on speech the Israeli government didn’t like. A former head of the Israeli diaspora affairs ministry even bragged that the hearings were the result of their influence op.
For its part, the Indian government’s malign influence operations in the United States include harassing and intimidating its critics, revoking visa status for “Indian-origin academics, activists, and journalists” who have criticized the Hindu majoritarian ideology of Prime Minister Modi’s party, spread disinformation about the Indian government’s critics, among other activities.
And of course there was the Indian intelligence service’s plot to assassinate a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil (it failed, but they succeeded in killing a person on Canadian soil), part of a wider campaign to go after critics of Modi’s government. In this case the Department of Justice did arrest and extradite a suspect. But the reaction from American politicians has been far more muted than it has been to Chinese acts of transnational repression. Why?
Double standards on campus influence
Many American universities host Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs). Reporting and research has revealed how these groups are overseen by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) and involved in incidents that promote CCP propaganda or seek to suppress criticism of the Chinese government.
But China is not the only country that uses student groups to exert influence on college campuses. Hillel International, the world’s largest Jewish campus organization, receives financial support from Mosaic United, a public benefit corporation that publicly discloses that it is supported by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. Mosaic’s chief executive has boasted how the organization has influenced opinion in favor of Israel on U.S. campuses.
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the overseas wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the fascist-inspired Hindu supremacist paramilitary aligned with Modi’s BJP, operates the Hindu Students Council (HSC) on many U.S. college campuses, raising questions about that it could be a vector of influence to promote the BJP’s exclusionary, nationalist Hindutva ideology.
If we’re worried about the foreign influence coming from CSSAs, shouldn’t we also be about Hillel and HSC?
Responsibility to protect Americans
I ask you to look through the lens of those affected. If a student group at a U.S. university is being pressured into silence by a foreign government, should Congress’ response depend on which foreign government is doing it?
If Americans are being targeted by a foreign government, they deserve to be protected by their government, period. Their protection should not be dependent on the political preferences of policymakers toward the countries doing the targeting.
And yet, that’s where we are. When China or Russia interfere in our political process, policymakers are up in arms. But when Israel or India interfere, policymakers are silent, except when they are abetting such interference.
That’s wrong. I think we need to fix this.