Please Note: Due to concerns related to the Coronavirus, Public Affairs Week has been cancelled.
In conventional military and economic terms, Russia today is a regional power, not a superpower. To offset those weaknesses, President Vladimir Putin and his generals have marshaled a remarkable set of “asymmetric” tools as they seek to undermine the credibility of Western democracy and the trans-Atlantic alliance. The Kremlin began waging information warfare more than a decade ago in the former Soviet states.
Until the 2016 US elections, many analysts–including our own intelligence community–considered the United States and Western Europe invulnerable. Our democracies were too mature, our citizens too sophisticated, our media too diverse and too skeptical to be manipulated this way. We were wrong. Americans are now well aware of the power of Moscow’s troll farms and hack and hype capabilities to polarize political debate and undermine candidates. But Russia’s influence campaigns go far beyond cyber. In Europe, Moscow is financing far-right and far-left political parties, leaders, NGOs, and think tanks with a goal of further dividing societies and electing more anti-EU and pro-Russian governments.
Why is Putin’s Russia so determined to undermine Western democracy and the Western alliance? How have its information warfare tactics evolved in recent years? Are we better prepared today to recognize and resist? Should democratic governments respond in kind? Russia isn’t the only country with hackers on the payroll and a Twitter account. Who else and what else do we need to be watching out for in the 2020 elections? Jessica Brandt will discuss her work tracking Russia’s influence operations and what democracies must do to protect themselves.
Dr. Carla Robbins, Clinical Professor and Faculty Director of the Master in International Affairs, is a nationally known journalist and foreign policy commentator. She is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served for six years as Deputy Editorial Page Editor and Assistant Editorial Page Editor at The New York Times.
Before that, she spent 13 years in Washington covering diplomacy and national security for The Wall Street Journal. At the Journal she also shared in two Pulitzer prizes: the 2000 Prize for National Reporting on the Post-Cold War defense budget and the 1999 Prize for International Reporting on the Russian financial crisis.
This event is open to Marxe students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
All others are required to RSVP, as we only have limited number of seats available.
General contact info and for RSVP: mspia.events@baruch.cuny.edu
Discussions will be held each evening from 6 p.m. to 7:15 p.m., which will include questions from the floor, in Rroom 14-220, Baruch College, Newman Vertical Campus, 55 Lexington Avenue.
Jessica Brandt is the head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
