On March 30, Defense One published an excellent article by the Council on Strategic Risks’ Natasha Bajema and Christine Parthemore on COVID-19 disinformation campaigns, and how the U.S. could most effectively combat them. Below is a short excerpt from the article. For the full piece, click here.

How to Counter China’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaign
Beijing is using lies to undermine America’s standing; the U.S. should fight back with science and truth.

Whether we like it or not, the United States is engaged on a new battlefield defined by the “speed, spread, and accessibility of information,” as P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking write in their prescient book, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media. But our government does not appear to have received the memo. As a result, we’re losing the global war over the narrative about COVID-19 in the midst of a global pandemic. And there is much more at stake than words.

Within weeks of discovering the novel coronavirus late last year, the Chinese government began to spin powerful narratives to deflect its responsibility and disguise its accountability for the outbreak, covering up information that might lead to Patient Zero and the source of the novel pathogen, and presenting itself as the global model and potential international partner for effectively responding to the outbreak—a role the United States might have typically held in the past. 

Click here for more.