WATCH: In SASC Hearing, Kelly Asks Defense Nominees about Impact of USAID Cuts and Fighting Russian and Chinese Disinformation

This week, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Vice Admiral Frank M. Bradley to lead the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and Lieutenant General Dagvin R.M. Anderson to lead U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Arizona Senator and Navy combat veteran Mark Kelly asked the nominees about U.S. efforts to counter Russia and China’s irregular warfare tactics, particularly disinformation, and the impact of new cuts to USAID and the State Department.  

Kelly raised concerns over how cuts to USAID could limit America’s ability to build trust with partner nations and counter adversaries like China and Russia: “One of my big concerns here is the impact that the cuts to USAID within the State Department is going to have on our ability to build some trust with partner nations. That’s a concern of mine. […] China, Russia are currently waging some irregular warfare campaigns against us and our allies and a lot of different places. PRC is using violence to impose their will in the Philippines and the Second Thomas Shoal, and Russia has a long history of using irregular warfare most recently in Ukraine.” 

Kelly further underlined the dangers of disinformation as a warfare tactic, particularly through Russia’s paramilitary Wagner group: “I traveled, it’s been about a year and a half now, but in the Sahel and, you know, just parts of Africa, where Wagner is pretty active, especially on social media, to exploit coups in Western Africa, commit human rights abuses. And when the Russians gain a foothold in these countries, they use a significant amount of disinformation to intimidate the local population, stifling opposing views while they claim to provide security.” 

Click here to download a video of Kelly’s remarks. See the transcript below: 

Sen. Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral Bradley, General Anderson, thank you for being here and for continuing to volunteer to serve our nation. SOCOM and AFRICOM both leverage economies of force principles, so applying limited resources for having an outsized impact. And this requires some careful planning and using the right assets against the right problem. Within this economy of force principle, how important our interagency partners like the Department of State for SOCOM’s and AFRICOM’s campaign plan? 

Admiral Bradley: Senator, I’ll start. Across the special operations community, our partnership with the integrated interagency, also our law enforcement federal and frankly, even our local law enforcement, partnerships have been critical to us over these last 25 years. And I see that is nothing but growing in the future. If confirmed as a SOCOM commander, the relationships that we have inside our integrated interagency, cultivating those and sustaining them, I think would be a would have to be a top priority. I can tell you that today the state of those relationships, for my current experience, is frankly a high watermark, certainly of my 34 years and I suspect even longer than that. 

Sen. Kelly: And General, do you share that view?  

General Anderson: Thank you, Senator. I agree that we have very limited resources and so we have to partner across all government agencies to maximize those resources and to find where we can complement each other. We provide the military piece of that, but to Admiral Bradley ‘s point, my entire career with special operations has been working with multiple different agencies in order to maximize that, whether that’s the FBI and using legal authorities in different parts of the world, working with our intelligence community, or with the State Department and others to make sure we leverage the full authorities and capabilities of our nation.  

Sen. Kelly: One of my big concerns here is the impact that the cuts to USAID within the State Department is going to have on our ability to build some trust with partner nations. That’s a concern of mine. I’m not going to put you on the spot here on that topic, but I think it is something that we that I hope the two of you think about. Admiral Bradley, China, Russia are currently waging some irregular warfare campaigns against us and our allies and a lot of different places. PRC is using violence to impose their will in the Philippines and the Second Thomas Shoal, and Russia has a long history of using irregular warfare most recently in Ukraine. 

Admiral Bradley: Senator, thank you. In my last three years, I’ve had the opportunity to be a member of the SOCOM board of directors and really watch our theater special operations commands who are responsible for operations for the joint soft community inside those areas and I can tell you that our principal advantage that the soft value proposition brings is understanding, an enhanced understanding of those insidious actions which are really preying on our alliance structure. Being able to illuminate that predatory activity gives our diplomats and our whole of government and our allies power to be able to stand against it and be resilient to it. That, in turn, strengthens our alliance and deepens our credibility when we want to partner and the build capacity there. 

Sen. Kelly: Right, well, thank you, and finally in my last minute here, General Anderson. I traveled, it’s been about a year and a half now, but in the Sahel and, you know, just parts of Africa, where Wagner is pretty active, especially on social media, to exploit coups in Western Africa, commit human rights abuses. And when the Russians gain a foothold in these countries, they use a significant amount of disinformation to intimidate the local population, stifling opposing views while they claim to provide security. So, general, how does Russia’s social media activity impact security and stability in Africa? 

General Anderson: Senator, I think that is one of Russia’s greatest weapons that they’re employing across the continent. One of the things they use quite often is disinformation. They play on historic grievances, historic colonial issues, fears of sovereignty, and they play that up into an anti-democratic anti-Western that then has impacts to US support. I believe that the Russian influence in the information operations were critical in turning populations against the French in the Sahel. I think it is very much not in our interest with what the Russians are doing in the information domain. 

Sen. Kelly: Not only in Africa, but if I could just take a couple more seconds, do you feel like we’re losing this information warfare with the Russians, Chinese, Iranians? 

General Anderson: Senator, to refer to what we discussed earlier, the truth is incredibly powerful. We have that still. We are still a very credible source of the information. We can, we need to leverage that. I think we need to be more aggressive about that in this domain, but I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily losing it but if we do not engage, we risk losing it. 

Sen. Kelly: Right. Thank you.