What are our programs?
Emerging Technologies: GEC’s Emerging Technologies team identifies tools and technologies, employed by foreign state or non-state actors, that are not fully developed or are not well known in the public sphere. The Emerging Technologies team monitors technological developments with a taxonomy of five key categories. In addition to recognizing, exposing, and increasing understanding of emerging threats, GEC provides suggestions for countermeasures. The Emerging Technologies team has produced over ten reports for a USG interagency audience. |
 Tech Demo Series: The GEC hosts the Tech Demo Series on a monthly basis with options to attend both virtually and in person. The demos allow private sector companies to introduce unique capabilities for countering propaganda and disinformation. The audience for these demos is composed of U.S. government counterparts and foreign partners. The demos create a forum for discussion, where this audience can articulate propaganda and disinformation challenges, and develop ideas for how the capabilities presented may be applied in a test case against these challenges. Since 2017, 106 companies in 79 tech demos have presented their capabilities to this audience of U.S. government counterparts and foreign partners. DEMONSTRATIONS |
 Tech Challenges: The GEC convenes intensive workshops with international partners to understand, assess, and find ways to implement effective tech solutions to foreign propaganda and disinformation. These one or two-day Tech Challenges are focused primarily on supporting foreign technologists. GEC and its foreign partners invite foreign-based technologists to demonstrate their capabilities in real time during the Tech Challenge. At the end of the Tech Challenges, selected promising technologies are awarded grants that align with the GEC mission and can provide measurable results. The GEC has hosted Tech Challenges in the UK, France, Taiwan, Kenya, and Eastern Europe. |
 Tech Testbed: The GEC solicits real challenges of the U.S. government (USG) to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation, and tests specific tools or technologies against a submitted proposal. Tests can combine existing capabilities or implement novel tech solutions for a rapid assessment of technologies that are employed against real operational challenges. The tests usually run six to eight weeks. The GEC stores test results on the Defeat Disinfo website and makes them available to USG and foreign partners in order to broaden awareness of technological solutions available commercially. |
 TET Talks: The GEC hosts TET Talks, a forum that convenes subject matter experts to discuss technologies, methods, tactics, and emerging threats related to counter propaganda and disinformation in the high technology space. The audience for these engagements includes U.S. government counterparts, foreign partners, and representatives from academia and think tanks. |
 Gaming: The GEC aims to use gaming as a tool to promote media literacy and inoculate vulnerable audiences against foreign propaganda and disinformation. The GEC leads the U.S. government with award-nominated counter-disinformation gaming solutions, for example, Harmony Square, which is available in 18 languages and has been played 400,000 times. The GEC’s newest game to inoculate against disinformation is Cat Park, which was launched in October 2022. Both games are based on “active inoculation” theory, pioneered by the University of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab. Much as vaccinations work by exposing subjects to an innocuous strain of a virus in order to trigger an immune response, empirical studies indicate that the controlled experience of disinformation through a game can build cognitive resistance to disinformation in the real world. This concept is also known as “prebunking.” Rather than simply waiting for lies to spread and then debunking them with a fact-check, the goal of Cat Park is to proactively educate about common disinformation techniques so that players are better prepared to spot fake news no matter what form it takes. |
 Silicon Valley Engagement: In December 2019, GEC established a Silicon Valley location to facilitate public-private coordination and broker constructive engagements between the U.S. government and the tech sector, academia, and research. The increased collaboration has resulted in identifying, exposing, and defending against foreign adversarial propaganda and disinformation. The engagement also reinforces interagency and international partner coordination with quarterly syncs with major companies. |
 Tech-Driven Operations: Information available upon request. |