WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) questioned Wess Mitchell, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, on what additional sanctions might be needed in order to more effectively counter Russian disinformation, cyberattacks, propaganda and other activities. Portman also urged the Department of State to ully utilize the Global Engagement Center, which was tasked with leading U.S. government efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from countries like Russia and China by legislation Senators Portman and Murphy successfully passed in 2016. The Assistant Secretary also agreed with Portman that the aim of Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts is to divide and weaken American society, and that the issue of continued Russian aggression must rise above partisan politics.
Excerpts of his questioning can be found below and a video can be found here:
Portman: “Thank you Mr. Chairman, and let me start by reiterating what the Chair and Ranking Member both said about both of you. I’m glad you’re there, and I thought that you gave us a sober but very thoughtful and fact-based presentation today. My questions to you are really about why, given all of the things that we are doing, including sanctions, are we not making better progress? Let me start by saying I appreciate that a couple of weeks ago the secretary was able to make clear the findings of the investigation into the Russian involvement in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and I think that’s the sort of thing where we need to be frank and be clear-eyed, and we need to hold Russia accountable. I appreciate the fact that triggered some of the sanctions we’ve talked about today, but there’s so much more. We talked about what’s going on on the eastern border of Ukraine. The question was just raised about how we continue to feel about Crimea, you talked about espionage, cyberattacks, disinformation, propaganda campaigns. You talked about the active Russian evasion of the North Korean sanctions. The influence operations at Facebook does foment destabilization. It’s not about right or left politics, and I think that you make a good point that when we break it down on a partisan basis here in this body and in this country, that only comes to help Russia, not us. I hope that we in this committee have been able to avoid that and will continue to. Today Microsoft announced that it thwarted Russian-backed cyberattacks, as an example, on the IRI, the International Republican Institute, and also on the Hudson Institute. So this is ongoing, even as we talk here today.
“I think sanctions are necessary. You talked about how firms that are sanctioned or impacted including, you said, ‘on average a firm would lose one-third of its employees if it was sanctioned, the ruble has been devalued’ but it’s obviously not working the way we would like it to. I’m not saying it doesn’t have an impact, and again, I think it’s necessary. So my question to you really is, what would be more effective? What, either additional sanction pressure or non-sanction pressures do you think would be most effective in countering what is going on? Specifically, I’d like you, Secretary Mitchell, to talk a little bit about the Global Engagement Center. There was talk about a new fusion center, I’m not necessarily against that, but we just set up this Global Engagement Center. Senator Murphy and I spent a lot of time on legislation over the years working on this. The idea there was to, at least with regard to push back on the disinformation and propaganda, be able on an interagency basis to be able to have better coordination and be more effective in pushing back. We have, frankly, much less resources than the Russians use every day here in Washington, D.C. even. But could you talk a little about that or other ways we could deal with that is obviously a continuing problem with Russia?”
The Honorable Wess Mitchell, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs: “Thank you for those questions, senator. Let me just respond in brief to the three things you’ve asked. On the first part, I’m not sure I would characterize the efforts that we’ve made quite the way that you have in terms of impact. I think the chilling effect on the Russian economy and certainly key sectors has been significant and measurable. Since 2013, foreign direct investment in Russia has fallen by 80 percent, which is a pretty stunning number. You know, at this point we’re looking at an impact through the chilling effect of use of 231 from CATSA of 8 to 10 billion dollars in foreclosed arms deals. I think your broader point on Putin and his view of the United States not having a partisan axe to grind is apt. I don’t think that Putin is a student of Jefferson or Adams, I think he’s a student of Haushofer. I think it’s about geopolitics. I think the Microsoft revelations from yesterday show that, the Facebook expulsion shows that very clearly, that the groups in question were fomenting violence from a fringe left perspective, so I think that we have to understand that we have a competitor who sees this as strategic competition and his interest is in dividing us internally. It’s a strategy of chaos for strategic effect and so I think it’s incumbent on us to not politicize and make it partisan.
“In terms of GEC, we’ve worked very closely with GEC. As you probably know, the department has put $20 million of our own resources toward this effort. In the period when we’re waiting on the additional funds we’re really looking forward to seeing our colleagues at the Department of Defense move the additional $40 million so that we can see the GEC up and running in the way it was intended in the areas related to Russian disinformation.”
Portman: “Do you feel like you have the right staff on board at GEC to be able to punch back?”
Assistant Secretary Mitchell: “I do. I think we have a very talented staff, some very capable and knowledgeable Russia hands. We also work very closely with them from our bureau, in fact when our colleagues in Russia were PNG and came back, we made excellent use of the talent base to temporarily plus up in some of those areas. I mentioned the capacities that we’ve created at EUR including the SARMA role. SARMA is the acronym for this person’s role, it’s also the acronym for a Russian missile, so I think it makes the point very clearly that we take the problem seriously.”
Portman: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just think in general the measurements we’re using, again, I appreciate all the hard work you’re doing, are the impact on the ruble, the impact on the economy, the impact on direct foreign investment. Those are interesting measurements and obviously they’re having an impact. The question is what are the consequences of that as to Russian behavior in regard to, again their both overt and covert espionage, disinformation, propaganda, avoiding sanctions and so on? That’s the question I have, can we see a measurable result in terms of the actual problems that we hope to be able to address?”
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