Silencing America’s voice overseas undermines national security
My op-ed at The Hill on what USAGM did in addition to sending electrons abroad
On Friday, March 14, 2025, the administration effectively shut down the US Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America. This was followed immediately by defunding Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. The decision to do so, I wrote in an op-ed published today at The Hill, was a gift to Russia, China, Iran, and other “countries to ply lies and deception unfettered to establish their spheres of influence and turn people against the U.S. and its interests, society and future.”
Two days later, I wrote an email to a national security-focused listserv, pointing out that USAGM’s network did much more than merely send electrons abroad. Someone on that list suggested I transform that into an op-ed, which I sent to The Hill the next day.
Here is the op-ed: Silencing America’s voice overseas undermines national security.
It didn’t take rocket science to know there would be smiles in Moscow with the “silencing of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty in Russia and in Moscow’s imperial territories, which Moscow has subjugated and is trying to subjugate” or that there would be “laughter at the headquarters of RT” and in Budapest. Nor should anyone with an inkling of concern about US national security be surprised at Beijing’s pleasure with the decision. The latter would be embraced by anyone with a deep financial interest in keeping the Chinese government happy. For anyone embracing Putin or Kim Jong Un, silencing USAGM is a friendly removal of a thorn poking those leaders.
In writing this op-ed, I aimed to expand the discussions about the agency from the expected recitation of audience numbers and personal interest stories to highlighting other critical values the agency and its networks provided to its audiences.
Why did the administration take this action when Project 2025 told them to keep it? Trump already nominated a CEO and lined up Kari Lake as VOA Director. I guarantee it was because of disinformation about the agency’s operations and the underlying legislation, the Smith-Mundt Act. The disinformation (and misinformation) rely on fantastical and demonstrably false claims, which were repeated and expounded on for nearly 3 hours on a recent Joe Rogan podcast by Mike Benz, who has Musk’s ear and others near the President. See this tweet from yesterday. I cannot give Benz the benefit of the doubt if I consider him a responsible adult who can do actual research, so I will call his statements on the Smith-Mundt Act, including the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, what they are: lies. Ironically, and not surprisingly, USAGM, which counters disinformation, corrects misinformation, and fills information gaps, was shut down primarily due to disinformation. The agency’s real work and fundamental purpose are often ignored and misunderstood.
I am well aware of the Smith-Mundt Act’s purpose, the debates at the time, and its evolution. For more on this, see my post “Fulbrights’s Knee-capping of US Global Engagement, Part 2.” I’m also well aware of the purpose and function of the Modernization Act, which I helped cause, helped write, and which was introduced by the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. What people like Benz conflate with Smith-Mundt is Citizens United, the increased leverage (not mere “use”) of social media, and the increasing partisanship of the press. The irony here is people like Benz rely on bogeymen, their extremist media, and, perhaps most importantly, anyone and anything who corrects their lies and deceptions. That these reactions have absolutely nothing to do with the Smith-Mundt Act is wholly irrelevant.
I closed the op-ed by reminding readers that the organization was, in fact, a national security agency and a cost-effective one at that.
In reality, the U.S. Agency for Global Media is a cost-effective asset, providing a greater range and more enduring impact than a single F-35. Its networks disrupt adversaries and contribute to our national security.
By ending this connection to hundreds of millions and silencing the agency’s journalistic scrutiny of countries impacting our national security, the U.S. has effectively isolated itself.
Read the op-ed and share your thoughts here or across your networks.
The future of these networks is worth discussing. The Voice of America has suffered significant damage. Even if the lights are turned back on, we’ll see a significantly reduced operation that, even if proper journalism standards are upheld, would delve into a fraction of the stories in a fraction of the locations it did until the end of last week. Operations and expenditures would be significantly curtailed, including ending contracts with wire services that bolstered USAGM’s reporting. VOA’s important function of serving as the Washington Bureau, for example, for foreign news organizations, will likely also be curtailed unless someone in DC realizes how that can be exploited, in which case the client will end the relationship. And so it will go, if VOA comes back.
There is a high probability that Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty will resume operations. RFE/RL, like RFA and MBN, were not shut down; they were “merely” defunded. As independent, non-governmental organizations, these networks can receive and use outside funding. RFE/RL will receive funding from European sources to continue its well-regarded and respected work. The number of language services will undoubtedly be reduced. The greater independence of the creative and proud RFE/RL could result in its expansion in other places and languages. The most depressing thought about what has happened is the US government, including a particular intelligence agency, could work against the network in favor of Putin, a profoundly ironic flip if you know the history of RFE and RL (and the forgotten and shortlived Radio Free Asia launched in 1951, before RL).
There is also a good chance Radio Free Asia will see this as a bump in the road. They continue to post on their website. Also, an independent, non-governmental organization, they, too, can receive outside funding. I will not predict this, but it will not be a surprise if Falun Gong-related funding reaches RFA.
I am confident that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks are dead and will be completely liquidated. OCB was creative, and I continue to use some of their programs as positive examples of what can and should be done. Regardless, both are done.
The Open Technology Fund was created as a separate entity in 2017 partly as a response to the Trump administration. Before that, it was a program run by RFA. Though RFA’s leadership of the program had severe problems (I checked the box “I suspect fraud” on a GAO questionnaire as a BBG Governor; I did cause a halt of funding to OTF until an oversight system was in place, which was dismantled after I left the board; I did object to RFA’s false assertions and obfuscations that the color of money changed when it moved from BBG to RFA so they didn’t have to follow rules to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars; RFA’s OTF funded a program that touted itself as “Wikileaks 2.0” and RFA’s claimed it was worthwhile based on what this program accomplished in countries that were very much not in RFA’s operating areas nor the BBG’s or the US Government’s interest…), the program had tremendous value and even more potential. I doubt it will live. Others will step into the gap in some cases, but in others, targeting countries like Iran, North Korea, and China to provide specialized VPN services and deploy content behind those firewalls may go by the wayside. In the past, USAGM’s internet freedom efforts, including but not limited to OTF, faced competition in Congress from USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. USAID is, as we know, gone; I haven’t a clue what, if anything, DRL is doing these days, and Congress is AWOL.
Whether VOA returns as an independent, non-government agency is unknown. I can see an effort to do that get thwarted by the government’s claim on the brand. As I’ve written before, the State Department, which owned VOA starting in September 1945, began looking into privatizing the broadcasting operation the next month, with serious steps in that direction starting in November 1945. They continued to pursue that option into 1947. However, Congress wanted it in the “lap” of the Secretary of State. The idea was again raised in earnest in 1977, only to fail again. Then was a vastly different time than today or the early cold war years. In the short term, I don’t see anything happening. But I’m well outside the loop these days. And happily so.
After my PhD defense, I’ll return for the relatively short sprint to finish the book on the origin and evolution of the Smith-Mundt Act. However, I feel that the book will now be even more of a mere curiosity than a possible guide to understanding our past to plot our future.
Unilateral disarmament against brutal enemies