Reputational Security: The Imperative to Reinvest in America’s Strategic Communications Capabilities

This report was commissioned for the December 2022 Gates Forum, which aimed to answer a single overarching question: what concrete actions can the United States take to reimagine its strategic communications capabilities in an era of intensifying great power competition with China and Russia? This top-line synthesis report distills insights from seven background papers prepared for the Forum to help conferees: (i) assess lessons learned from America’s historical practice of international broadcasting and public diplomacy; (ii) understand blindspots and opportunities for the U.S. in light of the strategic communications’ playbooks used by one of our closest allies, Japan, and our fiercest competitors, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC); and (iii) weigh the relative merits of policy options to strengthen U.S. strategic communications in future.

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