CUTTING BACK WITH A COST

Tillerson Spent $0 of $120 Million to Counter Election Meddling

The State Department’s center to counter Russian disinformation has no analysts who speak Russian.

The State Department was allocated $120 million in late 2016 to “counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections”—and has yet to spend any of that money, according to The New York Times. None of the department’s 23 analysts at the Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with addressing Russia’s disinformation campaign, speaks Russian—and the hiring freeze imposed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has “hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts.” According to the Times, many of the center’s leaders are also working in “temporary assignments” due to Tillerson’s halting of promotions, a step toward drastically shrinking the department. Congress also directed the Pentagon to give the State Department $60 million “to counter anti-democratic propaganda by Russia and China” at the end of Obama’s second term, but Tillerson took seven months to decide to take the money and took only $40 million of the allocated funds in the following fiscal year. The Times report comes after the secretary told Fox News in February that Russia’s disinformation campaign is “difficult to pre-empt” and “If it’s their intention to interfere, they’re going to find ways to do that.”