Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare

TYRANTS ON TWITTER

Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare

David L. Sloss

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

© 2022 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sloss, David, author.

Title: Tyrants on Twitter : protecting democracies from information warfare / David L. Sloss.

Other titles: Stanford studies in law and politics.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2022. | Series: Stanford studies in law and politics | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021049970 (print) | LCCN 2021049971 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503628441 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503631151 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Social media—Political aspects—Western countries. | Social media—Government policy—Western countries. | Social media—Law and legislation—Western countries. | Information warfare—Political aspects. | Information warfare—Russia (Federation) | Information warfare—China. | Democracy—Western countries.

Classification: LCC HM742 .S588 2022 (print) | LCC HM742 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/1091821—dc23/eng/20211108

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021049970

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021049971

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STANFORD STUDIES IN LAW AND POLITICS

Edited by Keith J. Bybee

CONTENTS

Tables and Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

PART ONE – DIAGNOSIS

1. Information Warfare and Democratic Decay

2. Russian Information Warfare and U.S. Elections

3. Russian Influence Operations in Europe

4. China’s Global Information Operations

5. An Uneven Playing Field

PART TWO – PRESCRIPTION

6. A Proposal for Transnational Regulation

7. Policy Analysis: Weighing Costs and Benefits

8. The First Amendment

Glossary

Appendix: Proposed Statutory Text

Notes

Bibliography

Index

TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

Table 1 Democratization during the Cold War

Table 2 Shared links in French social media posts

Table 3 Media organizations on Facebook and Twitter

Table 4 Covid-19 cases and deaths (as of November 11, 2020)

Table 5 Democracies and autocracies, as of 2019

Table 6 Disclosure requirements to register a public account as a U.S. national

FIGURES

Figure 1 Democracy vs. autocracy after the Cold War

Figure 2 Democratic decay from 2010 to 2019

Figure 3 Information warfare Venn diagram

Figure 4 OSM activity and democratic decay in 53 liberal democracies

PREFACE

THIS BOOK ADDRESSES the problem of Chinese and Russian information warfare. I define the term information warfare as the use of social media by state agents to conduct foreign influence operations. The book proposes a new Alliance for Democracy so that democratic states can develop a coordinated, transnational approach to regulating social media to protect the integrity of their democratic political systems from the threat posed by Chinese and Russian information warfare.

I completed work on the initial manuscript for this project in November 2020. Then, on January 6, 2021, there was a riot at the Capitol in Washington, DC, unlike anything the United States had experienced since the Civil War.¹ The insurrectionists were not Chinese or Russian agents; they were U.S. citizens. Most of them came to the Capitol because they believed the Big Lie: the claim that Democrats engaged in massive electoral fraud to steal the 2020 presidential election from the rightful winner, Donald Trump. Social media clearly played a role in disseminating the Big Lie, but so did several legacy media networks, such as Fox News, Newsmax TV, and One America News Network (OANN). Given available data, it is impossible to measure the relative influence of social media versus legacy media in spreading the Big Lie. Nevertheless, one thing seems clear: the people primarily responsible for spreading the Big Lie were U.S. citizens, not Chinese or Russian agents. There is some evidence that foreign agents helped amplify the main narrative, but their contribution appears to have been fairly minor.²

In light of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, one might legitimately ask whether the book’s focus on Chinese and Russian information warfare is misplaced. One could argue that the primary threat to American democracy comes not from foreign influence operations but from domestic disinformation campaigns. Indeed, after the events of January 6, if someone asked me to rank the significance of various threats to American democracy, I would rank domestic disinformation higher, and foreign interference correspondingly lower, than I would have before January 6. Even so, there are two primary reasons why a book focusing on Chinese and Russian information warfare is still timely and important.

First, Chinese and Russian information warfare poses a threat to democracies around the world, not just in the United States. The book’s central argument is framed in terms of the global threat to democracy. Chapter 1 demonstrates that, on a global basis, democracy has been declining and authoritarianism has been gaining momentum since about 2010. Moreover, chapter 3 notes that, since 2014, Russia has conducted foreign influence operations in at least twenty-one countries that are members of NATO, the European Union (EU), or both. Meanwhile, as documented in chapter 4, Chinese technology companies are helping to strengthen autocratic control in several countries by exporting digital authoritarianism, and China is exploiting social media to conduct foreign influence operations in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan, to name but a few states. Furthermore, as of this writing (in May 2021), there is no evidence that domestic sources of disinformation have been sufficiently influential to spark events comparable to the January 6 riots in other leading Western democracies. Thus, from the perspective of the global struggle between democracy and autocracy, Chinese and Russian information warfare remains a topic of vital concern.

Second, from a U.S. perspective, the First Amendment imposes significant limitations on the government’s power to regulate domestic sources of disinformation.³ Hence, the Constitution severely constrains the range of potential regulatory responses to the problem of domestic disinformation on social media. In contrast, Russian and Chinese agents who conduct information warfare activities on U.S. social media platforms—and who are physically located in Russia and China, respectively—are not entitled to any First Amendment protections.⁴ Granted, the First Amendment imposes some limits on the government’s power to regulate speech on social media by Chinese and Russian agents, because the Constitution protects the right of U.S. listeners to receive that speech.⁵ Even so, the government has much greater leeway to regulate speech by foreign agents on U.S. social media platforms than it does to regulate speech by U.S. citizens on those same platforms. Part Two explains and defends a proposal for democratic states that are members of the proposed Alliance for Democracy to develop and implement a transnational regulatory system that would ban Chinese and Russian agents from U.S. social media platforms. (As explained in chapter 6, the proposed ban is subject to an exemption for benign state agents to protect the First Amendment rights of U.S. listeners to receive foreign speech.) Such a ban, if applied to domestic sources of disinformation in the United States, would clearly violate the First Amendment. However, as shown in chapter 8, the proposed ban is constitutionally defensible when applied to Chinese and Russian agents.

Two very different aspects of my own professional background shaped my thinking about the proposed transnational regulatory system. First, during the Cold War—before I became a law professor—I spent almost a decade in the U.S. government, where I worked on East-West arms control negotiations. During that time period, I developed substantial expertise in designing arms control verification systems. The proposed system for defending Western democracies from Chinese and Russian information warfare draws on my expertise in arms control verification systems. Second, during my academic career, I have developed substantial expertise in U.S. constitutional law. Accordingly, I designed the proposed transnational regulatory system to be consistent (or arguably consistent) with constitutional limitations on the government’s power to regulate speech.

Critics may argue that the proposed transnational regulatory system is flawed because it does not solve the useful idiot problem. Russian strategists refer to foreigners who unwittingly help advance Russia’s foreign policy goals as useful idiots. Donald Trump is a classic example of a useful idiot. By spreading the message that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by fraud, Trump helped advance Russia’s goal of undermining the faith of U.S. citizens in the integrity of American democracy. There is no credible evidence to support the fraud allegation. Nevertheless, a CBS News poll in December 2020 found that 82 percent of Trump’s supporters believed that Biden’s victory was illegitimate and tainted by fraud.⁶ That widespread belief clearly serves Russia’s foreign policy interests. However, neither Vladimir Putin nor his legions of cyber troops can claim primary credit for the successful disinformation campaign. To the contrary, Donald Trump, more than any other single individual, deserves the blame for persuading millions of Americans that the 2020 election was fraudulent.⁷

The useful idiot problem is a serious problem that merits a thoughtful policy response. My proposed transnational regulatory system does not solve that problem. However, it bears emphasis that no regulatory proposal can solve every problem. This book focuses on information warfare conducted by foreign cyber troops, not domestic disinformation. The useful idiot problem—as illustrated by Donald Trump’s effort to promote the Big Lie—falls outside the scope of my proposal because it fits in the category of domestic disinformation, not information warfare.

Implementation of the proposed ban on Chinese and Russian agents is not cost-free. The primary cost is that—to make the ban effective—members of the Alliance for Democracy would need to implement a social media registration system requiring citizens and nationals of Alliance member states to register their social media accounts with their home governments if they want to engage in public communication on social media.⁸ Reasonable people may disagree as to whether the benefits of the proposed transnational regulatory system outweigh the costs. The January 6 insurrection clearly alters that cost-benefit calculus by strengthening the argument in favor of the view that domestic disinformation is a much bigger threat to American democracy than foreign interference. People who believe that domestic disinformation is a major threat to American democracy, and that foreign interference is a minor threat, might well conclude that the costs of the proposed transnational regulatory system outweigh the benefits, because the proposed ban and registration system would do very little to address the problem of domestic disinformation. (The proposed registration system may provide a useful building block for designing a regulatory system that could help alleviate the threat of domestic disinformation, but the proposal developed in chapter 6 focuses primarily on the threat of information warfare.)

Chapter 7 presents a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of the proposed transnational regulatory system. The key point here is this: Given First Amendment constraints on regulating domestic sources of disinformation, and given that Chinese and Russian information warfare poses a threat to democracies around the world, it makes sense from a public policy perspective to think about Chinese and Russian information warfare as a problem that is distinct from the problem of domestic disinformation, and that warrants a different type of policy response. The fact that foreign agents often amplify narratives disseminated by domestic sources of disinformation⁹ does not alter the conclusion that domestic disinformation and foreign information warfare are analytically distinct problems that, although related, warrant separate treatment.

This book contributes to the scholarly and public policy debate by analyzing Chinese and Russian information warfare as a distinct threat to democratic governments, and by proposing and evaluating policy solutions tailored to that threat. Many readers will not be persuaded that my proposed policy solutions are the best possible solutions. Regardless, I hope that the book will help readers gain a better understanding of the threat posed by Chinese and Russian information warfare, and that it may prompt readers to develop their own ideas about how Western democracies can and should defend themselves against that threat.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NO PERSON IS AN ISLAND. I could not have written this book without the assistance of many helping hands. As an author, it is a pleasure to take this opportunity to thank the many people who contributed to the successful completion of this project. I can only hope that I am not offending anyone by failing to mention his/her name in this brief expression of thanks.

First, I want to thank Santa Clara University School of Law—especially Deans Lisa Kloppenberg and Anna Han—for providing financial support for my research, and also for nurturing an intellectual environment that encourages scholars to pursue serious research projects. I wrote large portions of the book while I was on sabbatical leave in fall 2020, generously funded by Santa Clara University.

I thank Elizabeth Edwards and Ellen Platt—both of whom are research librarians at the Law School—for superior research assistance. I am also indebted to several students who provided excellent research assistance over the course of this project: Katherine Blake, Jonathan Greene, Rory Hayes, Patrick Malone, and Sydney Yang. Additionally, I am grateful to my many colleagues at the Law School who have helped make Santa Clara such a stimulating intellectual environment, especially David Ball, Colleen Chien, Eric Goldman, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Brad Joondeph, Michelle Oberman, Gary Spitko, and David Yosifon.

In 2019, when the book was still in its early stages of development, I published two blog posts that helped me work out ideas that were later incorporated into the book: Could Russia Swing the Next Presidential Election?, The Hill, May 31, and Corporate Defenses to Information Warfare, Just Security, August 20. I thank the editors of those publications for helping me sharpen certain arguments, and for giving me the opportunity to disseminate ideas in a form that generated helpful feedback.

Numerous scholars provided valuable feedback on early drafts of certain chapters; in particular, I want to thank Ashutosh Bhagwat, Erica Frantz, Kyle Langvardt, Helen Norton, Jeremy Rabkin, Wayne Sandholtz, Joseph Thai, Alexander Tsesis, and Andrew Woods. The book is undoubtedly better than it would have been if I had not benefited from their constructive criticism. I also owe thanks to several scholars who generously took time to discuss ideas with me in a series of ongoing conversations, including Rohit Chopra, Rebecca Hamilton, Herb Lin, and Irina Raicu. I gained a more nuanced understanding of various problems as a result of those conversations.

I was fortunate to be able to present portions of the book at various conferences and workshops both before and during the pandemic. When the project was still in its earliest phase, and had not yet fully taken shape, I presented a draft at the Internet Law Works in Progress conference at Santa Clara University in spring 2019. I thank my colleague Eric Goldman for inviting me to present at that conference, and to all the scholars in attendance who provided me with valuable feedback. During that same time period, I also gave presentations for a workshop at Fordham University School of Law (hosted by my friend Martin Flaherty) and for a faculty workshop at Santa Clara Law. I received very helpful feedback from participants in both those workshops. These early presentations helped me refine my thinking and helped shape the future direction of my research.

As the book was nearing completion (in the midst of the pandemic), I was fortunate to be able to give presentations via Zoom to the Technology and Ethics Group at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University; the ACS Constitutional Law Scholars Forum (hosted by Eang Ngov, at Barry University); and a conference on Democracy and Information Warfare (hosted by Antje von Ungern-Sternberg at Trier University, and Thomas Burri at University of St. Gallen). In all cases, I received valuable comments from participants that helped me refine and sharpen my arguments.

I owe special thanks to my editors at Stanford University Press (SUP). Marcela Cristina Maxfield has supported the project since I first submitted a book proposal in spring 2020. Sunna Juhn, Gigi Mark, and Paul Tyler also provided excellent editorial assistance in later phases of the project. I am also very grateful to the two blind reviewers who—at SUP’s invitation—reviewed and commented on the entire manuscript. The final product is undoubtedly much improved, thanks to their very constructive comments.

I never would have launched this project without the encouragement and assistance of Dominic Booth. In summer 2018, Dominic was taking a break before starting his first year of law school. He asked me whether I was working on any research projects that might benefit from his assistance. I was very interested in learning more about Russia’s use of social media to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. At that time, I knew a lot about U.S.-Russian relations (based partly on my prior government experience), but I knew nothing about social media. In summer 2018, Dominic educated me about social media technology. That education provided a springboard that enabled me to pursue the rest of the project. Dominic also helped me think through my ideas about social media regulation, which ultimately developed into the proposal in chapter 6. I am extremely grateful for his substantial intellectual contribution to this project.

Finally, I owe special thanks to my beloved wife, Heidi Sloss. She is an ongoing source of support and encouragement for all of my professional endeavors. Writing a book is a long, slow, laborious process. Heidi has been with me on every step of that journey. She makes me a better person, which hopefully also makes me a better scholar. Thank you.

PART ONE

DIAGNOSIS

CHAPTER ONE

INFORMATION WARFARE AND DEMOCRATIC DECAY

ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS the price of liberty. These famous words, often incorrectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson, may seem appropriate in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.¹ But they are equally appropriate for a book about information warfare and social media. In the midst of the pandemic, many people mistakenly believed that a mandate to wear masks was an unwarranted infringement of individual liberty. In fact, such a mandate is an example of the vigilance that is necessary to preserve our lives, without which there can be no liberty.

Similarly, in the modern era of social media, many techno-utopians mistakenly believe that any government regulation of social media is an unwarranted infringement of individual liberty. In fact, such regulation is necessary to protect our body politic from the threat posed by Russian and Chinese information warfare. Let us be clear: Liberal democracy is under attack, not just in the United States but around the world. As of 2019: For the first time since 2001, there are more autocracies than democracies in the world.² To protect our cherished liberties, we need to protect democracies from Chinese and Russian cyber troops because democratic self-government is the foundation of individual liberty. The big technology companies are not up to the task. We need government regulation so that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies do not continue to function as Trojan horses, allowing the virus of information warfare to infect and ultimately subvert liberal democracy.

In the current geopolitical and technological environment, proponents of liberal democracy and liberal internationalism—and I openly declare myself a proponent of both—confront a difficult choice. Advocates of liberal democracy are committed to freedom of expression, with minimal government controls. Advocates of liberal internationalism are committed to reducing barriers to transnational flows of people, goods, and information. Russia and China are working to upend the Western liberal order by turning Western virtues of openness . . . into vulnerabilities to be exploited.³ Unfortunately, their strategy is working because democratic governments have failed to regulate social media to protect democracy. If we want to preserve both liberal democracy and liberal internationalism, Western democracies must restrict the ability of Chinese and Russian cyber troops to exploit social media to conduct information warfare.

Until now, democratic governments have given social media companies carte blanche to decide who is entitled to create and operate accounts on their platforms. The companies have adopted open-door policies, allowing almost all people from all countries to create social media accounts. Consequently, Chinese and Russian cyber troops have developed an active presence on U.S. social media platforms. Russia has taken advantage of U.S. social media platforms to interfere with democratic elections and to erode faith in democratic institutions.⁴ China has exploited U.S. social media platforms to disseminate foreign propaganda extolling the virtues of its authoritarian system and highlighting the flaws of liberal democracy.⁵ By granting Chinese and Russian agents unrestricted access to U.S. social media platforms, democratic governments are inadvertently making a significant, albeit indirect, contribution to the worldwide erosion of liberal democratic norms.

For the foreseeable future, the world will be divided between democratic and authoritarian states. The United States will continue to be the most powerful country in the democratic camp. China and Russia will be the most powerful countries in the authoritarian camp. The United States and its allies will engage in geopolitical competition with China and Russia in both military and economic domains. However, the present era differs from the Cold War in several respects. Most importantly, for the purposes of this book, due to the spread of information technology, the domain of information operations has become a much more significant battleground in the broader geopolitical landscape. As one commentator noted: The new great-power competition won’t necessarily take place on battlefields . . . it will happen on smartphones, computers, and other connected devices and on the digital infrastructure that supports them.⁶

Currently, U.S. social media platforms—primarily Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram—are critical battlefields in the ongoing competition between democratic and authoritarian states. Russian citizens use VK to communicate with each other via social media, but Russian agents exploit U.S. social media platforms to conduct information warfare in foreign countries. Chinese citizens use Sina Weibo and other platforms to communicate with each other, but Chinese cyber troops often use U.S. social media platforms to disseminate foreign propaganda. (Chinese agents also use WeChat, a Chinese platform, for this purpose.⁷) The power of democratic governments to regulate social media could potentially give liberal democracies a major strategic advantage in the information warfare domain. Until now, Western democracies have squandered that advantage by granting Chinese and Russian agents unrestricted access to U.S. social media platforms. Those platforms are some of the most powerful weapons available in the modern information warfare arsenal. Chinese and Russian cyber troops are deploying those weapons with great effect to undermine liberal democratic norms. U.S. technology companies are effectively subsidizing their information warfare activities by granting them access to U.S. social media platforms.

Aside from the development of information technology, there is an additional reason why information operations have greater strategic significance today than during the Cold War. The West will not defeat China militarily for the same reasons that we did not defeat the Soviet Union militarily: armed conflict is too dangerous and costly. The United States and its allies won the Cold War economically because it became painfully obvious to people and governments throughout the world—including people and governments within the Warsaw Pact—that the Soviet system was an economic disaster. In contrast, China is an economic success story. Between 2000 and 2018, China’s share of global GDP increased from about 3 percent to about 14 percent. During that same period, the U.S. share of global GDP decreased from about 26 percent to about 21 percent.⁸ Hence, the United States is unlikely to outperform China economically for the foreseeable future.

Since Western democracies cannot defeat China or Russia militarily, or outperform China economically, we must compete effectively in the information operations domain to score geopolitical gains. To reiterate, the global dominance of U.S. social media platforms and the power of democratic governments to regulate those platforms could potentially give democratic states a major strategic advantage in information warfare. This book contends that the United States and its allies should exploit that advantage by banning Chinese and Russian agents from U.S. social media platforms. (The proposed ban would be subject to an exemption for benign state agents.) An effective ban would help protect liberal democracies and liberal internationalism from the threat posed by information warfare. In short, although my proposal is somewhat paradoxical, I contend that we should adopt seemingly illiberal policies to preserve the values of liberalism.

The current laissez-faire approach to regulating social media is not working. The policy of permitting Chinese and Russian agents to maintain an active presence on U.S. social media platforms creates substantial costs that far outweigh any purported benefits. The primary costs are the erosion of faith in democratic institutions in established democracies and the steady spread of authoritarian governance models to an increasing number of countries. The primary ostensible benefit of the laissez-faire approach relates to a utopian dream of an unregulated internet. That utopian dream may have seemed plausible in the 1990s.⁹ Indeed, as recently as 2011, when political protests fueled by social media unseated several Arab dictators, many people believed that social media would contribute to increasing democratization.¹⁰ Today, however, it has become clear that the failure to regulate social media is creating a nightmare that is starkly at odds with libertarian ideals. Internet libertarians envision a world in which an unregulated internet expands the sphere of individual freedom. Unfortunately, though, the laissez-faire approach makes the world less free.¹¹

The laissez-faire approach is also inconsistent with foundational principles of democratic self-governance. The constitutions of modern liberal democracies establish a system of representative democracy. The core idea of representative democracy is that We the People govern ourselves by electing legislators who enact the laws that regulate our conduct. In the modern era, many citizens of democratic countries spend a significant portion of their waking hours on social media. Insofar as we live our lives on social media, we are not governed by laws enacted by our elected representatives. To the contrary, we are governed by rules—which are functionally equivalent to laws—promulgated by the private companies that effectively govern social media platforms.¹² As one commentator observed, An enormous amount of political speech now transpires on a platform used by 1.73 billion people a day, and whose rules about speech are ultimately decided and enforced by a single person: Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.¹³ Private social media companies are not accountable to the people; we did not elect Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to enact the laws regulating our conduct on social media. If the citizens of Western democracies want a governance system for social media that is consistent with the core principles of representative democracy, we need laws enacted by our elected representatives to supplement the rules promulgated by private companies.

THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC DECAY

For many years, political scientists have debated about how best to classify countries into regime types. One very helpful classification system—the regimes of the world, or RoW system—divides countries into four groups: liberal democracies, electoral democracies, electoral autocracies, and closed autocracies.¹⁴ "In closed autocracies, the chief executive is either not subjected to elections or there is no meaningful, de-facto competition in elections. In contrast, electoral autocracies hold de-facto multiparty elections . . . but they fall short of democratic standards due to significant irregularities, limitations on party competition or other violations of . . . institutional requisites for democracies." Electoral democracies are countries that not only "hold de-facto free and fair multiparty elections, but also . . . achieve a sufficient level of institutional guarantees of democracy such as freedom of association, suffrage, clean elections, an elected executive, and freedom of expression. Finally, under the RoW system, a liberal democracy is, in addition, characterized by its having effective legislative and judicial oversight of the executive as well as protection of individual liberties and the rule of law."¹⁵

TABLE 1. Democratization during the Cold War. Source: V-Dem database.

Classification of countries in accordance with the RoW system is codified in the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) database with the v2x_regime variable.¹⁶ The data in table 1 is derived from the V-Dem database. Table 1 shows that there was a strong trend of democratization during the Cold War, especially between 1980 and 1990. Between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of countries in the world that qualified as democracies (including both liberal and electoral democracies) increased from 19 to 34 percent, while the percentage of autocracies (including both closed and electoral autocracies) decreased from 81 to 66 percent. During the same period, the percentage of liberal democracies increased from 10 to 17 percent, while the percentage of closed autocracies decreased from 52 to 36 percent. In short, during the Cold War, democracy was on the rise and autocracy was in decline.

These trends accelerated during the early years of the post–Cold War period. As illustrated in figure 1, the percentage of democracies in the world increased from 38 percent in 1991 to 54 percent in 2007, while the percentage of autocracies decreased from 62 percent in 1991 to 46 percent in 2007. Similarly, the percentage of liberal democracies increased from 18 percent in 1991 to 25 percent in 2007, and the percentage of closed autocracies declined from 34 percent in 1991 to just 12 percent in 2011. For more than a decade, Francis Fukuyama’s optimistic prediction that all states would become democracies appeared to be prophetic.¹⁷

Unfortunately, we have witnessed a trend of increasing autocratization over the past decade. As shown in figure 1, the percentage of liberal democracies has been declining since 2011 and the percentage of closed autocracies has been growing since 2015. The total percentage of democracies in the world dropped sharply between 2017 and 2019, while the percentage of autocracies registered a sharp increase during that period.

Figure 2 depicts the number of states that shifted between categories in the period from 2010 to 2019. Overall, 33 states experienced democratic decay during this period, including 10 states that dropped from liberal to electoral democracies, 18 states that dropped from electoral democracies to electoral autocracies, and 5 states that dropped from electoral to closed autocracies. During the same period, only 13 states registered democratic gains, including 5 states that improved from closed to electoral autocracies, 6 states that improved from electoral autocracies to electoral democracies, 1 state (Barbados) that improved from an electoral to a liberal democracy, and 1 state (Tunisia) that was transformed from an electoral autocracy to a liberal democracy.

FIGURE 1. Democracy vs. autocracy after the Cold War. Source: V-Dem database.

FIGURE 2. Democratic decay from 2010 to 2019. Source: V-Dem database.

Hungary, India, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey—to name some of the most prominent examples—all experienced significant democratic decay in the past decade.¹⁸ Hungary, under the leadership of Viktor Orbán, is now firmly in the authoritarian camp, as are Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte. In its most recent report, published in 2021, V-Dem downgraded India from an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy.¹⁹ Brazil, under Jair Bolsonaro, is moving dangerously in that direction. The quality of democratic governance has degraded significantly in numerous other countries as well.

The stakes in the geopolitical competition between autocracy and democracy are exceptionally high. This is not a contest about which country can claim the title of the most powerful nation in the world. The fundamental question is whether the citizens of Brazil, Hungary, India, and dozens of other states will have the opportunity to participate in democratic governments that respect individual freedom. The phenomenon of democratic decay means that hundreds of millions of people around the world are living in countries where the political space available for individual freedom is steadily shrinking, and governments are committing ever more egregious violations of fundamental human rights.

THE PROBLEM OF INFORMATION WARFARE

This book is concerned with threats to liberal democracy. Broadly speaking, we can divide those threats into foreign and domestic threats. Although chapter 5 touches upon domestic threats, the book as a whole focuses primarily on foreign threats. My choice to focus on foreign threats is not meant to imply that domestic threats are less important. To the contrary, I generally agree with those who argue that the project of saving liberal democracy must begin at home.²⁰ Nevertheless, foreign threats present a distinct set of problems that merit separate treatment.

With respect to social media, in particular, there are two reasons to focus on foreign threats to democracy rather than domestic threats. First, foreigners do not have the same rights as citizens to participate in democratic self-government because they are not members of our political community. Second, the First Amendment