UNILTERAL DISRMAMENT What Just Happened? Dismantling the Intelligence Community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center

By David Salvo

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently announced that the functions of the intelligence community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) would be reduced and absorbed into other parts of the U.S. intelligence community. In doing so, Gabbard has dismantled the last remaining U.S. federal government organ dedicated to tracking and analyzing State-sponsored efforts to interfere in U.S. institutions, elections, and society. After the Trump administration shut down related units at the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and Department of Justice earlier this year, Gabbard’s announcement is a particular blow to U.S. national security and a gift to America’s adversaries, who have no interest in slowing down malign influence operations that harm U.S. national interests.

In the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the FMIC meticulously documented State-sponsored threats, particularly from China, Iran, and Russia, that targeted candidates and the electoral process itself. It also made public the process by which the executive branch would notify key stakeholders, including the American public, of threats to the election. The FMIC posted regular notifications to the American public, outlining the tactics, techniques, and procedures that State-sponsored actors used to influence the American public surreptitiously. The center highlighted specific instances of deepfake videos that sought to undermine confidence in the integrity of the electoral process, such as a Russian State-sponsored viral clip that purported to show mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania being destroyed. FMIC’s transparency contributed to bipartisan efforts to quickly debunk the video.

The FMIC and Gabbard’s predecessor as DNI, Avril Haines, also publicly outlined the objectives that China, Iran, and Russia apparently had for conducting interference operations against the United States. This helped to shed light on similarities and differences in the three countries’ strategies, including their preferred presidential candidate(s).

To its credit, the FMIC didn’t fixate on one threat actor (say, Russia). Nor did it only fixate on attempts to help then-former President Donald Trump and undermine his Democratic opponents, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, as “Russia hoax” conspiracists claim the intelligence community did during the 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, the FMIC went to great lengths to explain how some actors, notably Iran, clearly wanted to undermine Trump’s candidacy.