Searchable Publication List

Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses

This RAND report draws on case studies of Russia, Iran, and ISIS to characterize modern political warfare and recommends reframing the U.S. response as integrated statecraft led by an enabled State Department, with deeper DoD–State integration, stronger MISO and intelligence capabilities, and persistent special operations presence in vulnerable regions.

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Countering Russian Social Media Influence

This RAND report frames Russian social media disinformation as a "disinformation chain" from Kremlin leadership through proxies and platforms to U.S. consumers, and argues that fragmented countermeasures across government, platforms, NGOs, and academia need to be replaced by clear norms, executive-legislative coordination, formal government-platform information sharing, greater platform transparency, and defensive measures prioritized over punitive ones.

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Tweeting Out Surveys to Pro-Ukraine Influencers: Exploring the Potential for Enlisting Support in the Information Fight Against Russia

This RAND survey of pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia Russian-language Twitter activists finds pro-Ukraine users already pushing back against Russian influence online and offline and open to outside training and support, pointing to a brand ambassador model for connecting influential activists with training, content, and coordinated counter-influence efforts.

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Russian Propaganda Hits Its MarkExperimentally Testing the Impact of Russian Propaganda and Counter-Interventions

We RAND randomized controlled trial using actual Russian propaganda finds that the content reliably elicits strong partisan reactions but that revealing its Russian source and showing a brief media literacy video reduce engagement—especially among Partisan Left and Partisan Right audiences—pointing to source-unmasking tools, generalized warnings, inoculation approaches, and scalable social media literacy as viable countermeasures.

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From Consensus to Conflict: Understanding Foreign Measures Targeting U.S. Elections

This RAND report places Russian information efforts in the long history of foreign interference in U.S. politics and argues for replacing the field's fragmented focus on content, networks, or consumers with a holistic approach that anticipates likely target groups and builds evidence-based preventive practices around them.

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Foreign Interference in the 2020 Election: Tools for Detecting Online Election Interference

This RAND report, the second in a series on foreign election interference, maps Twitter advocacy communities around the 2020 election and identifies likely interference through trolls and superconnector accounts that—while not definitively attributable—serve Russian interests and match Moscow's playbook of sowing division, with the authors recommending continued innovation in detection methods and public surfacing of threats, targets, and tactics.

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