South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Huizenga Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on Covert Foreign Malign Influence Operations in America

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga delivered opening remarks at a hearing titled "Trojan Horses: Covert Foreign Malign Influence Operations in America".
 

We're here today because America's adversaries, China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and others, are conducting covert influence campaigns to shape American thought and society through lies and censorship. These countries have one shared goal: to weaken the United States of America. For communist regimes, information warfare is a core pillar of their ideology. Joseph Stalin once stated that propagandists are, quote, "engineers of the human soul, and the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks," close quote. Xi Jinping uses the phrase, quote, "engineers of the soul," close quote, to praise propagandists' key role in maintaining the Chinese Communist Party's power. These authoritarian regimes rely on lies and censorship.

Free societies use robust debate and transparency to determine the truth. The purpose of today's hearing is to learn the facts, to uncover how adversaries secretly fund radical groups and amplify propaganda in the United States to divide Americans. I want to be clear: people can hold sincerely held beliefs while also being secretly funded or amplified by adversaries. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. We, the people, deserve to know if speakers are being paid or amplified by America's adversaries, especially when determining how to debate the idea in its appropriate context. A person can also hold a legitimately held belief but unknowingly have their message artificially amplified solely to mislead the public by exaggerating support for those beliefs. Additionally, our adversaries can also spread lies while pretending to be American citizens. Anyone who is on social media has seen examples of this. In all of these situations, transparency is a key to ensuring Americans can engage in robust debate on issues facing our nation.

Public diplomacy and countering foreign propaganda efforts are core tenets of America's soft power toolbox. A key methodology is to tell the truth and unmask our adversaries' attempts to hide their lies, not through censorship. During the last administration, the Biden administration, the Global Engagement Center deviated from this bipartisan historical consensus by facilitating weaponized censorship of Americans. That was wrong, and a direct violation of our core American value of free speech. Thankfully, Secretary Rubio and congressional Republicans put an end to that awful chapter in American history. And instead of censorship, we need to promote more speech. 

We need to expose our adversaries' methods, funding, and messaging through public analysis and counter speech. A prominent example of these adversary efforts is Neville Roy Singham, who lives in China and uses his wealth, ironically earned by relying on capitalism and relationships with the CCP, to provide millions of dollars and personnel to extremist groups like CODEPINK, The People's Forum, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation to destabilize American society and promote communist ideology.
Some Americans knowingly joined forces with foreign adversaries as well. Just ask someone well known in Michigan, Hasan Piker, who last year joined a Chinese-choreographed junket while repeating Maoist talking points in his pre-cleared CCP state-run interviews. Conversely, others do so unwittingly. People like Singham and groups like CODEPINK and the growing communist propaganda in our country have become our adversaries' Trojan horses to sow division from within. I, alongside President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Rogers, see exposing foreign malign influence on American soil as a priority. I was proud to author last year's bipartisan State Department authorization provision that President Trump signed into law authorizing the Under Secretary to lead the synchronized and coordinated efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign information manipulation and malign activities. 

But more work remains. This body must authorize the Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs position to bolster our public diplomacy toolkit by providing strategic and truthful information and not censorship of the past. Thank you to our witnesses. I look forward to learning more about how foreign adversaries are secretly trying to undermine America, not just overseas, but right here at home.