Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It

I’ve already mentioned that every bureau has an initial, but then every regional bureau also has an acronym: there’s EUR (European and Eurasian Affairs), NEA (Near Eastern Affairs), EAP (East Asian and Pacific Affairs), and SCA (South and Central Asian Affairs). On top of that, every functional bureau had an abbreviation:…

One of the things I’d noticed in government is that people who had never been in media, who had never written a story or produced one, who didn’t know about design or graphics, who didn’t understand audiences or what they liked, seemed to think it was easy to create content. People had the illusion that because they…

Diplomacy is an 18th-century profession, managed by a 19th-century bureaucracy, using 20th-century technology.

State was also a passive, risk-averse culture. There was safety in inaction. It was always easier and safer to say no than yes. A no never got you in trouble the way a yes could. It was the opposite of entrepreneurial. Consensus was prized above initiative. People did things the way they had been done before. At an early…

At State and elsewhere in Washington, there was a lot of admiring the problem. We’d look at an issue—say, the concern that the Mosul Dam in Iraq was about to collapse—and examine it from every possible angle. Then memos were written covering each theory of the case. New memos were then signed off on and circulated. Then…