The Information War on U.S.-Israel Intelligence with Alex Goldenberg

0:01 Good afternoon and welcome to the Middle East Forums weekly podcast. My name is Lori Rean and on behalf of MEF I thank you all for joining today and for your continued support of our work. This afternoon we are joined by Alex Goldenberg, founder and principal of Silent Index LLC, a national security advisory and research constituency consultancy, excuse me, and a senior fellow at the Rutgers University Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, an affiliate at of NYU's Institute for the Study of Emerging Threats, and a member of the Advisory Board of American University's Aurora program. Alex will share his insights on US uh Israeli intelligence cooperation and the ways in which Iran, Russia, and China use various strategies to undermine public support for that relationship. Welcome, Alex, and thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. I hand the floor over to you.

0:49 Thank you so much, Lori, and uh thank you to the Middle East Forum for for having me. I've been uh a reader of uh MEF's content for for years. Um and it's a it's a pleasure to join this podcast. So the assessment I want to um lay out today is fairly simple. So let let me just get started. Uh the USIsrael partnership is a capability that our adversaries know that they can't replicate. And because they can't replicate it, they've spent decades trying to degrade the one thing that has let it function, which is the political consensus behind it, which I think we can all feel is unfortunately eroding quite rapidly. And the instrument that they keep reaching for over and over again is not just anti-Zionism, it's also anti-semitism, although there's not much of a distinction between the two. Uh used operationally to fracture that consensus. Now, I want to be careful here when I go through this presentation

1:51 because this isn't a single coordinated campaign. Rather, it is a confluence of uh campaigns. What we're actually looking at are four states. I mean, there are other state actors involved, but four main states that I'd like to isolate, Russia, Iran, China, and Qatar that have each derived at their own conclusion that anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are useful weapons against the United States. Their activities overlap to a great deal. And what separates them is just emphasis.

2:26 So, I'll walk you through each of them and then turn to what I think a serious response would look like. So, on February 28th, uh, Operation uh, Epic Fury, um, I eliminated Iran's Supreme Leader, the IRGC ground forces commanders, and the defense minister within minutes. More than 40 senior officials in multiple coordinated strikes. That same intelligence architecture also uh severely damaged uh Iran's primary enrichment facilities last June. And the point I really want to pull out here is this is about capability. Think for a second what that strike actually required. You had to find three separate leadership gatherings happening at the same time inside one of the most closed and security states on Earth and then hit all three of them. I'm sure many of us follow the conflict in Ukraine quite closely. Uh Putin has tried numerous

3:30 times um to carry out decapitation strikes against uh President Wimir Zalinski and failed. Um but what Russia saw and the Chinese uh and obviously the Iranians was that with in partnership with Israel, the United States can do that quite effectively. um and they certainly took note. So, put yourself in our adversaries [snorts] shoes for a moment. You can't really touch the capability itself, but you can absolutely touch through uh you know coordinated and authentic activity and disinformation campaigns, the political census that lets the United States use it. And as I go through the evidence, I'll sort it by where each of these actors tend to put its weight. Um this is an oversimplification because they all do you know many things quite effectively but you know Russia's very good at producing conspiratorial narratives. Uh Iran's very good at pushing out those narratives and giving

4:31 them amplification. Uh China and I I think you had some guests over the past few weeks in the past that have gotten into this. uh finance boots on the grounds in you know on universities in US city streets and Qatar for decades has been you know quietly buying up our institutions and I do want to be honest though um that these lines are pretty blurry and most of these actors do several of these things at once so the point here really isn't some neat division of lab uh of uh of of labor but it's that four uh rivals who you know agree on almost nothing have landed independently on the very same weapon and that is anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment. So let's start with Russia. Russia was in this business you know before there was even a Soviet uh the single most uh widely circulated anti-semitic text in history which um

5:35 influenced uh Adolf Hitler was the protocols of the elders of Zion which is a sarist forgery and the KGB later turned that whole approach into a system forged documents fake attributions coordinated campaigns they really built their entire disinformation strategy around the success of the protocols of the elders of Zion By the 1960s, Soviet active measures were already targeting this specific alliance. Uh, but the tools have changed a great deal since then. Since then, um, you know, right now they can leverage social media and generative AI to accelerate these operations with the click of a button. A lot of this, uh, you know, continuity runs through uh, personality. I'm sure many of of us on this call are aware of uh Alexander Dugan who is a veteran of the Soviet era anti-semitic movement uh Pamelot and whose 1997 foundations of geopolitics is reportedly required

6:39 reading uh once uh Russian uh military officials reach a certain senior rank and it specifically calls on Russian special services to uh encourage uh an ethnic, social, and racial conflict inside the United States of America. And you can see this doctrine playing out in operations right now, targeting multiple vulnerable communities, but definitely the Jewish community. The base, which is a neo-Nazi accelerationist network, uh, runs its recruitment out of St. Petersburg, Russia. There's a 2024 federal indictment laying out a $10 million covert uh Russia Today operation that was paying American influencers.

7:25 Uh planning documents that uh were referenced by the US State Department connected to an influence operation the Russians were running called the Doppelganger campaign. Um specifically named American Jews as a target. Um Dugan himself on February 28th um the day that uh Operation Epic Fury kicked off was boosting you know Iranian state media accounts and calling for a global insurrection against the United States uh and Israel.

8:00 So what you're seeing and you could see Dugan on stage in Mashad Iran um with American and Iranian anti-western figures. So I'm not inferring that this convergent for you. We can often see this, you know, right, you know, happening right out in the open. Um, earlier this year, Pamela Pesky and I uh published a piece in Qulette this March. Um, and the first thing to understand is these aren't, you know, fringe voices. Uh we wrote specifically about Candace Owens and Tunker Carlson. Um they have reach they can reach tens of millions of people. Um and I want to go through a few information operations that you know rear their ugly faces this year. Take the first one, the so-called Khazarian mafia. This is a Soviet era pseudo history essentially claiming that Ocanagi Jews descended from medieval

9:04 Khazar converts. It's been debunked academically and uh disisconfirmed genetically. And the entire purpose behind that operation is essentially to cut Jews off from any connection to the land of Israel. And it wasn't, you know, sitting um dormant before Owens got to it. Kremlin channels since 2022 have been selling the reason for the uh invasion of Ukraine uh as an effort to essentially bring down the Kazarian mafia. Then on March 1st, the day right after um the strikes when American attention to the conflict was at its absolute peak, Owens in front of millions of her followers said that you know Goyam must essentially always die uh at the you know behest of the Khazarian mafia. So again, we see Owen's trafficking uh narratives that originated and were amplified

10:09 uh in in Russia. Uh, the second narrative that originated in Moscow and was amplified by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is, you know, that um, Kabad Love Labovich was the reason for uh, this war and they coordinated the Iran conflict in order to destroy Alaka mosque and rebuild the temple. It's worth noting um what this rhetoric or how this rhetoric actually lands. A man hammered uh rammed his car into a Kabad in Brooklyn's headquarters earlier this year. The Bandi Beach massacre in December. Uh targeted a Kabad Khaneka celebration. And after Carlson's broadcast a few months ago, the NYPD uh put extra patrols on Jewish sites across the city. And then the third one is this outlandish conspiracy theory that Jews

11:13 worship this uh uh figure called Bal that sacrifices children. It sounds incredibly outlandish because it is. And that is a conspiracy theory again that Dugan who is interested in fracturing the West uh has been amplifying uh in essays and on Russia today uh leading up to Owens co-opting that narrative Iran is extremely um adept at um this type of content. What really sets Iran apart right now is their operational tempo. And for obvious reasons um Iran is, you know, the one at war since the strikes, their influence operations have escalated sharply. Um, and it's an asymmetric campaign and the main goal is to essentially pry at America's political fault lines and

12:17 drive up the domestic cost of staying in the fight. And the mechanics and um evidence of some of their influence operations are well documented. Um, and you can see, you know, in this one example, um, Iran's MSAFA Institute, which is a propaganda operation linked to Iran, has been running for years, hashtag campaigns on the anniversary of the, um, uh, [clears throat] USS Liberty incident um, for years. And we saw, you know, those talking points went from these Iranian influence operations through hashtag campaigns on platforms like X all the way to the floors of TurningPoint USA where young American activists were putting them directly to uh Jewish conservatives. And by the time it reaches an American conference like that, nothing about it looks foreign anymore, which is precisely the problem.

13:14 uh once these things reach their tipping point, the providence is essentially doesn't matter anymore. Uh which is why the attribution work, you know, is really important early on in these Um, China, they supply the street infrastructure for a lot of these anti-Israel and anti-semitic um, uh, narratives and movements. Nevilleroy Singum, who I think was mentioned on this podcast before, is a tech entrepreneur who sold his company for almost a billion dollars and then moved to Shanghai. He's married to Jodie Evans of Code Pink, which is another anti-Israel organization, and he's funneled more than $20 million, it might be in the hundreds of millions, uh, into organizations like the People's Forum, Answer Coalition, and Codepink, his wife's organization. And per the New York Times and reporting um by the you know different institutions in the uh

14:16 public and private sector um these groups essentially act as conduits for messaging that lines up completely with the Chinese Communist Party. I testified on this network uh before the House Natural Resources Committee in December of 2024 um representing uh the NCRI um and it's the first uh you know time testimony Congress heard detailing how this funding structure operates and since then uh three committees have opened up investigations. Congress has subpoenaed Singum and as of this summer there's a federal grand jury in SDNY that's examining hundreds of millions of dollars in wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering uh across roughly uh $300 million that moved through this network over the past decade. No charges have been filed, but the direction of the inquiry is is clear and and promising.

15:14 I'm sure many of you are aware uh Qar's approach is institutional and the scale is worth uh slowing down on $7.7 billion at least to American universities since 1986 and the department of education's data which you know has said that Qar is the single largest foreign donor in US higher education Over a billion of that came uh last year alone. So roughly one in every five foreign donors on American campus is Qatari.

15:53 Foreign giving it to us universities over the past you know four years uh is you know matched you know by the previous 40 years combined. Um, I know that the Middle East Forum itself has documented serious Qatari leverage over uh Georgetown through the Qatara um and money that reaches not just to you know what gets taught in these schools but also who gets hired. The Qataris have also been targeting the media side with the same principle uh cultivation not co coercion. They've been for a decade hosting the Doha Forum which has been courting American media figures uh who are probably staying in lavish five-star hotels. Uh last time Tucker Carlson appeared there last year, he you know giggled as he announced that he was buying property in Qatar. Uh and notice that the same commentator who runs through uh all the Russian narrative material uh I uh highlighted

16:57 earlier in this presentation is now being cultivated in Qatar. Uh so these four efforts keep converging notably on the same handful of people. Now we have to ask ourselves why. My answer as an analyst is efficiency. uh one instrument, anti-semitism, uh does three jobs simultaneously. It delegitimizes Israel as a partner. It splits both American parties simultaneously, which we're all seeing right before our eyes. It feeds anti-interventionist narratives that tie America's hands abroad, which is highly advantageous to a China who seeks to take over Taiwan in the coming years.

17:46 And it's efficient for another reason because it exploits a vulnerability uh that's already there, an ancient vulnerability rather than having to build a new one. And the convergence itself is really the finding here because it's convergence without coordination. As I mentioned earlier, Russia and China don't really agree on anything ideologically. Um they coordinate poorly uh when they try to. Iran and Qatar often sit at the opposite sides of more than one regional fight, although the same side uh on a number of them. Um, and the fifth player that I didn't get into much detail with because we're running out of time are the, you know, this domestic commentary economy, the Tucker Carlson's, the Candace Owens, who likely join in for, sure, for ideological reasons, uh, but because this controversy drives engagement and the engagement drives revenue and the algorithms at these social media platforms reward all of it.

18:50 There is unfortunately a burgeoning attention economy where being an anti-semite is not only unfortunately politically expedient but also economically expedient. So I want to leave us off um here you know for two decades um organizations that mean well like the anti-defamation league the response to this type of hate that we've been has been awareness we need to raise awareness I think everyone on this call is aware that anti-semitism is a problem I saw this uh tweet go viral from a a influencer that fights back against anti-semitism over the past couple days.

19:43 So, I'm not going to I'll I'll I'll uh definitely credit her. But the problem is tolerance of anti-semitism. You know, anti-semitism has been uh you know, an acceptable cost of doing political business on both sides of the aisle. Now, um, what I propose and what I think we need, you know, we've been here before where, you know, foreign adversaries, especially during the Cold War, uh, back in the Reagan years, um, have attempted to engage in active measures to divide the country. Uh, and back in the Reagan years, at the height of the Cold War, he launched an active measures working group and made a practice of identifying Soviet and dragging it into light because it sounds cliche but some sunlight is the best antiseptic or disinfectant.

20:37 Um, and what they wanted to essentially do is dismantle that muscle that the Soviets were flexing. And today uh there's no government there's no one in the government uh that owns this mission. Uh the global engagement center was unfortunately um you know gutted. Um so I think there is a real need to uh build um across the public and private sector uh a coordinated capability that pulls together analysts the social media platforms that should be compelled to uh you know work with this group um funders that are already doing pieces of this on their own and treating not just organized anti-semitic influence operation operations, but anti-American influence operations, influence operations that target other vulnerable communities the way that we would treat any other hostile intelligence activity. Map the network, establish act attribution, and then most

21:43 importantly, uh impose a cost. Right now, it is politically and I I mentioned economically advantageous to amplify and flirt with these foreign influence operations. And I think we need to get creative and start to play dirty and find ways to start raising the price of essentially being uh an anti-semite in Uh so to close, you know, February 28th uh really showed us what this partnership between the United States and Israel can do when the political will is there to use it. Uh our adversaries are worried about this intelligence partnership and because they can't degrade the capability they've spent decades degrading the will instead and they will continue to do so.

22:40 It's it's an influence operation. Uh but these operations uh can be countered. Um so I'll stop there. Uh thanks for um bearing with me and I'm happy to take any questions from participants who uh who join the call. Oh, thank you so much, Alex. That was really informative. There are a number of very good questions in the queue and so I'm going to try to tie some of them together in the in the final minutes that we have here. Um, you know, I was going to ask you about the demographics of who is being targeted by these um misinformation campaigns and um you've focused on Candace Owens and and Tucker Carlson. Um, but I haven't heard Hassan Piker's name for instance on the left.

23:26 So, somebody, you know, a couple people have asked um where where Bernie Sanders, the role of Bernie Sanders falls in this or the the role of the Democrat Socialists of America. Um, is there any evidence that any of them are working with these foreign networks? What are your what are your insights on That's a great question. Um, I know the United States is uh investigating uh Hassan [ __ ] and groups like the people's forum uh answer coalition for uh their nexus to Roy Neville Singum who is connected to, you know, potentially connected to a Chinese uh influence Um I have not seen any evidence of direct uh uh you know funding um of you know from uh foreign countries to the DSA. But certainly organizations around the DSA seem to have warm relationships with adversarial countries like Cuba, uh China, and Venezuela. I

24:31 know Hassan [ __ ] is under investigation for uh taking a trip uh to Cuba and staying at a five-star hotel and you know then amplifying propaganda that is uh you know useful to uh countries like Cuba, China and and Russia. Um so there's certainly um a lot there that needs to be uh discussed and investigated. You know, look, Hassan [ __ ] months ago took a field trip to China and fawned over the little red book that his CCP handlers gave him.

25:06 This is a guy who we all know said America deserved 9/11, has advocated for political violence. And you know, my question to Bernie Sanders is, look, I understand he has a lot of followers. How many of them are authentic? B or A and B, you know, is is this something that we really want to tolerate in the United States of America. Um, so I I know I focused on Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson primarily in this presentation. Um, but uh, foreign adversaries are definitely attempting to cultivate influential actors and build essentially an ecosystem it can influence in the United States. there's direct evidence that China and uh the Iranians are doing this.

25:51 So, someone asked um about um what who's influencing politicians in this regard and uh you know, how are the politicians being influenced that were formerly um supportive of Israel that are now turning against Israel voting on the Massie bill for instance? But, you know, I'm I'd like to sort of extend that um and ask what politicians should be doing to address the issue. Um, yeah, clearly they're they're being influenced, but there should be a desire, I think, to to police some of this. And in one of the articles that's that your silent index had posted that I looked at uh a day or so ago, you you I'm going to read you a quote. Anthropic has posted a role for a technical influence operations threat investigator at a salary of up to $290,000 with experience in an Iranian origin campaigns listed as a qualification. The posting reflects an emerging industry recognition that AI enabled influence operations have become a primary threat category requiring dedicated resources. So that's anthropic which is a private company that's doing

26:53 its own policing. Um, but does does the government have a role that it can play to curb these nefarious actors from inculcating American minds and innocent news consumers? You know, can does Congress can it regulate AI in a way that could curb this? Or should there be a law requiring private cap uh companies to do so the way Anthropic seems to be doing? And, you know, could President Trump issue an executive order despite the fact that it could be overturned down the road? we're at war right now and I think it's important that we try to maintain a strong USIsrael relationship. So, anything that he could do? What are your thoughts on that?

27:28 Yeah, I think based on some some comments from folks at the National Security Council and um some uh uh RFIs or requests for information that are coming out of DoD. Uh it does seem like there is some funding moving towards the identification and countering of foreign influence operations. I think um it was probably a mistake early on in uh President Trump's uh second term to you know half-hazardly uh uh gut the global engagement center which again you know had a big job that it probably wasn't doing to uh its full capacity um but it left us kind of blindsided especially in wartime and I think there needs to be a greater emphasis in coordinating with uh the government, with AI companies, with social media platforms, with nonprofits that uh care about the safety and security of not just the Jewish people,

28:30 but also the United States of America to build some sort of consortium or working group to counter foreign malign So, um, we're almost out of we're basically out of time, Alex, but but somebody asked a question that I'm curious about as well, which is, um, are we doing the same thing in Russia and China and Iran? Are we fermenting internal dissension for our our own national security interests? I'm sure we are. Um I I know uh without um going into too much detail uh yeah I I think the United States is engaging in influence operations in uh foreign countries uh especially during wartime.

29:22 Um, I know that, uh, the Iranians were, you know, the subject of, uh, you know, influence operations to, you know, potentially, uh, create some political turmoil, uh, in Iran. Um, I think we are well equipped to, uh, amplify, you know, foreign influence operations, but we're less equipped to identify foreign influence operations impacting the hearts and minds of, uh, of Americans. Um, so since we have a number of questions, I'm going to continue asking some of them for those that wish to stay on if that's okay with you, Alex.

29:59 Um, so, uh, someone asked about whether there's other actors that are that, you know, you said that that we only were going to have time to discuss these four. Is Turkey or are there other countries that are playing a role in this as well? Yeah, Turkey and Erdogan have um uh uh engaged in, you know, anti-Israel influence operations across social media platforms. It's it's not uncommon to see, you know, Turkish uh bot networks um you know, fermenting um you know uh division and anti-semitic hate across social media platforms, not just targeting uh the United States, but also targeting uh the Arab populations across the Middle East as well. But that's a great question.

30:49 Yeah. Um, and then [clears throat] I'm sure everybody would like to hear an answer, although I'm not sure that that you are able to provide the answer to this next question, but how can Israel disprove what 20 international people say, what that happened to them when they are they were intercepted by Israel during their Gaza activism? I I mean I think that what they're just saying is that this massive information campaign, how do we bring the truth out when when people are being bombarded by lie after lie after lie, whether it's genocide, apartheid, starvation, etc. It's a good question. Um I think and I I wish I had um some some lawyers on the call. I do think an effective way to push back against um some of these anti-semitic um lies is through lawfare. Um people are just lying [snorts] and not facing the consequences.

31:46 Um and I think especially if I mean I think many times these lies cross the threshold to incitement. Um, if you're constantly accusing Israel of committing a genocide even though it does not fit the legal definition of a genocide and then individuals, you know, in the United States are attacked by a terrorist who is acting because he believes a genocide is happening because the social media eos social media ecosystem is, you know, inundating his feed with that. I think you know it may be time to get creative and um start to leverage lawfare. I know some are already doing this um to you know essentially create economic and legal cost for individuals who are um you know uh amplifying uh things that you know simply aren't true and can lead to you know st stochcastic violence against the Jewish people.

32:50 Um, [clears throat] I'm a big proponent of lawfare. [cough] Excuse me. So, I I like that idea. Um, and then the final question I'm going to ask you is what is um does CARE or other US Muslim organizations do they have a role in helping to amplify all of these lies, all this misinformation? Um, I'm not too Look, I'm familiar with CARE and and the Holyland Foundation um it's not an organization that's front and center um on my radar uh now what I can say about them is you know they do um you know support individuals that openly support terrorism and also support um you know political campaigns whose uh you know uh who and the individuals running in those campaigns are you know anti-semitic uh themselves uh and I think they offer you know legal legal assistance uh to many anti-Israel and anti-semitic

33:52 um activists. But um I I don't know the extent of their role in amplifying some of this uh some of the influence operations that you know we discussed uh today on this call. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining today, Alex. It was very informative, very uh very important and a lot of people are asking whether this will be available uh for viewing to share with others and it is being recorded. We will be sending the recording out in our newsletter later today and it will be available on our on our YouTube channel as well. So please go to YouTube and thank you all for wanting to share it for joining this afternoon as well. Alex, it was a pleasure. Thank you for joining. Um thank you. I hope to see you all on Wednesday at 3 PM with Israel Insider with Alex uh with Alex with um Alex Perry. I mean I'm sorry. Oh gosh, Ashley Perry. I've got Alex here. Thank you