Republican Representative Will Hurd thinks there’s something missing from the congressional investigation into Russian election meddling: solutions for countering foreign disinformation campaigns.
“We’re not talking enough about disinformation and how we counter disinformation. That is where a broader conversation needs to be happening here in Congress. Because we do not have a strategy on dealing with disinformation from a nation state actor,” Hurd said.
It’s been ten months since the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have started their investigations into the alleged Russian interference and the U.S. intelligence community has long time ago identified disinformation as a key prong of Russia’s influence campaign against the election. Last month, representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google testified before congressional investigators on the efforts to exploit their platforms.
“I think the public hearings of the three social media companies was valuable to really understand how the Russians were trying to disrupt. I say we have to broaden the conversation. Were they trying to influence the campaign, our elections? Yes. But they were doing it to erode trust in our institutions. The question becomes — how do you counter that?” Hurd asked.
He believes that the already existing and less intrusive regulation of social media companies can keep official Moscow from interfering in future elections and does not support the Honest Ads Act introduced by bipartisan group of lawmakers after the revelations that Facebook sold roughly $100,000 in political advertisements to Russia-linked accounts.
“Rules like the Federal Election Regulation Act, McCain-Feingold — all the legislation and laws that govern political advertising should be applied uniformly to all mediums of advertising. So, I don’t support creating legislation when you already have tools to use and if you need to enforce it, we should enforce it properly,” Hurd said.
He adds that it was clear that there was a coordinated attempt by the Russian government to sow distrust in U.S. elections and to manipulate them. To Hurd, it’s just a matter of time before Putin makes his next move against the U.S., The Hill reports.
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