Inside USAID with Sean Nottoli | Danube Politics

Sean Nottoli worked for the National Endowment for Democracy, via its International Republican Institute, for four years. Both were in turn funded by USAID.

At the time, Sean worked on projects including a study of attitudes to the US, Russian and China among Hungarians. Information later pitched to the Hungarian political parties. Elsewhere, he worked on an initiative that coached rising European politicians, with the aim of boosting NATO national spending to the 5 percent target figure.

What was it like to be at the coalface of influence operations on the European continent? And what will replace it? Is the US entirely out of the influence operations game? Or has it merely changed shape?

Danube Politics is a product of the Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank connecting the country to the Anglosphere and beyond on matters of geopolitics, trade and conservatism.