The Trump administration is scrambling to respond to a global information war with adversaries like Russia, China and a battered but defiant Iranian government.
The information warfare around the conflict in Iran is just one instance in which administration officials appear increasingly worried that a growing number of anti-American narratives are taking root worldwide, according to current and former government officials.
The State Department ordered every American embassy and consulate this week to do more to push back against foreign influence campaigns, warning that they fueled hostility toward U.S. security interests.
The administration has also taken steps recently to restore some broadcasts of the government-funded news organizations Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after shutting them down last year.
The push amounts to a stark reversal for the Trump administration over false and deceptive content from foreign governments and others online.
After taking office in January 2025, administration officials dismantled government departments dedicated to fighting foreign influence operations. They did so in response to a political and legal campaign that claimed, without evidence, that officials in the Biden administration had conspired with social media giants like Facebook, Twitter (now X) and YouTube to censor Americans.
Those targeted included teams of disinformation experts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department, whose Global Engagement Center had exposed numerous covert disinformation efforts, including ones by Russia and China.
“The State Department is now admitting it might be a problem if foreign adversaries lie about us,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on Russian disinformation who became a target of the campaign.
Foreign influence campaigns have intensified since President Trump ordered the American military to attack Venezuela and seize its president, Nicolás Maduro, in January and join Israel in launching an air war against Iran on Feb. 28. Russia and China have viewed the conflicts with alarm and sought to portray the Trump administration as reckless.
Despite strikes that have decimated Iran’s political leadership and destroyed some of the country’s military capabilities, the Iranian government continues to pursue a propaganda campaign that has exploited domestic and international opposition to Mr. Trump’s war.
The State Department’s order to embassies and consulates, delivered in a widely disseminated diplomatic cable on Monday, had been in the works for months and predates the war in Iran. It comes when anti-American messages are proliferating abroad both online and in traditional media outlets because of the war. The department’s cable was reported earlier by The Guardian and confirmed by current and former officials with knowledge of its contents.
The cable warned that foreign adversaries wanted to sow division in the United States and among it allies while promoting alternative worldviews, the officials said. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
The cable was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio but drafted by the office of Sarah B. Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, the officials said. It was not classified as secret but was marked as “sensitive.” Ms. Rogers and other officials have sought to revive some of the department’s efforts to fight foreign disinformation, the officials said.
The department’s cable encouraged diplomats to deepen cooperation with the Pentagon’s information operations and suggested that American diplomats push back against false claims on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, who has hovered in and out of the administration’s orbit since leading an effort to slash government programs.
The cable noted that X’s Community Notes feature was an innovative tool to challenge “anti-American propaganda operations without compromising free speech or privacy.” Researchers have questioned the feature’s effectiveness, and X broadly remains a platform rife with false narratives, including accounts that amplify Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda and covert influence campaigns. X did not respond to a request for comment.
The State Department and government-funded news organizations like Voice of America have long been at the forefront of official American “soft power” efforts. The administration’s crusade against what officials called censorship by the Biden administration gutted many of those efforts, creating an opening for disinformation and propaganda that foreign adversaries have seized.
The fate of thousands of workers who were put on leave when Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty shut down is still being disputed in court, but their parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has resumed hiring contractors fluent in several languages in which Voice of America broadcasts, including Persian.
“This feels very reactive in a space that certainly requires a real strategy,” said Orna Blum, a former State Department diplomat who served as a public affairs officer in Brazil and Jamaica and worked in the Global Engagement Center.
She added that many of the administration’s actions, including the recent revocation of visas for foreign experts who track disinformation, had undermined how American policies and messaging were perceived globally.
“The U.S. government,” she said, “is not considered a reliable actor in the communication space now.”
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul.
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