The Active Measures Newsletter Podcast

Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore discusses the threat of foreign malign influence to American elections, Trump administration cuts to federal programs to support local election officials, and the enduring value of civics education and critical thinking in an era of ubiquitous disinformation.  Hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson also highlight continued, bipartisan Congressional support for U.S. international broadcasting and the real-time case study of what happens when the United States lacks an international information apparatus amidst political disturbances in a country like Iran. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the first episode of the new year, Janis Sarts, Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence discusses the current information challenges facing the North Atlantic alliance, Russia's current use of these tools, and the transition from an ecosystem dominated by social media platforms to one dominated by artificial intelligence.  Hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson also highlight disinformation spilling out of the U.S. strike in Venezuela and the actions of the Trump administration to sanction EU counter-disinformation officials and researchers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In June of 1953, civil disturbances hit East Germany--and the Eisenhower administration faced a choice: make good on the rhetoric of 'liberation' or adopt a more restrained approach.  According to host Jim Ludes, President Eisenhower and his team adopted the latter approach, restraint, seeking to exploit the uprisings for advantage in the Cold War without encouraging anyone to take needless risks or discrediting the protests themselves by endorsing them from Washington.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special edition of the podcast, host Mark Jacobson revisits the classic work of Edward Bernays whose 1928 book, Propaganda, argued that democracy required managed perception and was effective precisely because it bypasses conscious reasoning. Bernays wrote at a time when newspapers were the dominant form of communication, when radio and film were still nascent, but the clear implications of his work for our current world of algorithmically controlled media are numerous.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been a dynamic year of growth for the Active Measures Newsletter Podcast.  With great guests and a ton of news, each week we've had more to talk about than time to do it.  So as the year winds down, hosts Mark Jacobson and Jim Ludes name their "final four"--the biggest stories from the Active Measures Newsletter in 2025.  Artificial Intelligence, Sabotage in Europe, America’s Unilateral Disarmament, and more contend for the biggest story of the year.  Mark and Jim have their pick.  What's yours? Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“They’re burning all the witches,” sang Taylor Swift on the album “reputation,” a lyric with meaning about modern-day witch hunts, cancel culture, and, in fact, disinformation. In this week’s episode of The Active Measures Newsletter Podcast, hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson break down the recent attack on Taylor Swift’s actual reputation and the self-harm done to America’s reputation by its new national security strategy.  Then, they welcome L. Gordon Crovitz, co-CEO of NewsGuard, for a great conversation about the current threat-landscape, America’s unilateral disarmament in this fight, the prospect for corralling social media and AI platforms, and the enduring value of good local news.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The terminology we use to describe new phenomena matters.  On this week's podcast, defense intellectual Frank Hoffman reviews Chinese, Russian, European, and--to the extent there is any--American writings about 'cognitive warfare.' For the uninitiated--this runs the gamut from traditional tools of influence to novel technologies, including chemical and directed energy weapons that can "alter peoples’ brains and thought processes. . . .” Co-hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson also discuss the latest news about CopyCop/Storm1516 and the latest recruiting ad for the 4th PsyOp Group.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

American social media is filled with high-strung posters, outrage-addicts, and partisan players.  It's a perfect avenue for amplifying division and most platforms let anyone play anonymously.  So it came as a shock to some this week when X turned on a new geolocation service and the overseas posting of active accounts--some with hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers--proved to originate from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.  In this special edition of the podcast, host Jim Ludes takes us back to 2017, when Russia's use of fake personas on social media first became obvious.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Naomi O’Leary, the Europe correspondent for The Irish Times, dives into the alarming tactics of Russian hybrid warfare, including incidents like severed pig heads outside French mosques. She details the recruitment of 'Telegram agents' for small-scale sabotage aimed at disrupting unity among Western states. The discussion spans various attacks across Europe, from arson to drone incursions, and highlights how these incidents are spun in Russian media to amplify narratives. O'Leary emphasizes the importance of investigative journalism amidst a U.S. media gap on these threats.

Journalists at Sky News created an elegant experiment to assess whether content on X in the United Kingdom had political bias. From a database of 90,000 posts created by 21,690 accounts collected over two weeks in May of 2025, they were able to observe ". . . a clear imbalance of content promoted on the platform, with right-wing voices dominating and the algorithm pushing posts to new users that don't align with their interests." Digital Investigations Journalists Kaitlin Tosh and Michelle Inez Simon join hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson to discuss their experiment and its findings.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.