[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 84 (Tuesday, May 16, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2970-S2971]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as we know here in Washington,
politics is a battlefield as much as it is a debating society. On this
battlefield, a new form of political weapon has emerged, one for which
the American political system was not well prepared. As Democrats, I
can say from our side, we were virtually blind to this weapon in the
last election. For my 167th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, I am here to
discuss this new political weapon: systematic fake news.
[[Page S2971]]
Fake news does not just fall like rain from heaven. In its most
dangerous form, fake news is weaponized for effect--usually, political
effect.
Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia made weaponized fake news a core
element of its political manipulation throughout the former Soviet
Union and the modern European Union, revving up public ire over rapes
that never happened, for instance; planting fake material in
politicians' laptops and social media that can then be ``exposed,'' and
broadcasting false political propaganda. This phenomenon has been
documented in Chairman Graham's recent hearing in our Crime and
Terrorism Judiciary Subcommittee, featuring, among other sources, the
Center for Strategic and International Studies' ``Kremlin Playbook,''
and it has been documented throughout the proceedings of this year's
McCain Institute Sedona Forum. Because of this history of political
manipulation, the Putin regime's interference in the 2016 U.S.
Presidential election ought to be a wakeup call for America.
Weaponized fake news requires a delivery system, and here is where
this connects to climate change. In America, we are particularly
vulnerable to such election interference because a robust delivery
system for weaponized fake news already exists. Putin doesn't need to
build a fake news delivery system in America. The fossil fuel industry
already did. Climate denial was the original fake news. They have been
at it awhile.
A decade ago, a peer-reviewed academic study of the climate denial
apparatus described how this works. The fossil fuel industry sets up an
array of ``environmental skeptics.'' But of course they are not just
skeptics; they in reality ``are predominantly agents of conservative
think tanks.'' These think tanks, in turn, have the ``essential role''
of providing what the report calls ``political insulation for
industry,'' including ``for companies such as ExxonMobil''. Again
quoting this report, the ``defining feature'' of this apparatus is the
``denial of the authenticity of environmental problems.'' Collectively,
this climate denial apparatus creates for the fossil fuel industry ``a
full scale counter movement'' against environmental science. Concluding
in the report, ``Its major tactic is to manufacture uncertainty.''
The Center for Strategic and International Studies' ``Kremlin
Playbook'' report, by comparison, describes Russia's fake news tactic
as ``to disseminate erroneous information that fosters public
confusion.'' To manufacture uncertainty, ``to disseminate erroneous
information that fosters public confusion''--do you see the similarity?
If we collapse into fewer words these decade-old findings about the
fossil fuel industry climate denial apparatus, here is what you have:
front groups who disguise the identity of the real actors and pump out
fake news--in their case, the fake news of climate denial.
The tactics and methods of climate science denial are the tactics and
methods of weaponized fake news: false front organizations, hidden
funding sources, controllable means of communication, mimicry of
legitimate groups, personal disparagement of opponents, relentless
repetition of lies, and shameless persistence when debunked. You could
say that the fake news propagation we face today in America
metastasized from climate denial. Climate denial was the original
``School for Scoundrels'' in these fake news techniques.
To put financial scale to this, Putin's Russia has a $200 billion
annual budget. With that, they funded a significant weaponized fake
news effort to influence our Presidential election. But the fossil fuel
industry has a $2 trillion annual budget. The fossil fuel industry
fights to protect an annual subsidy in the United States estimated by
the International Monetary Fund to be $700 billion. With stakes like
that, the climate denial delivery system the fossil fuel industry could
profitably set up in the United States can be very robust and complex,
and it is.
Fake news, dark money, and hidden political spending have been the
fossil fuel industry's primary political weapons. This creates the
problem. Once a fake news delivery system is in place, that system will
not necessarily differentiate between different types or sources of
fake news. Once that road is open, anyone can travel it with any fake
news cargo. The same fake news delivery system that will distribute
fake news designed to manipulate American politics for the fossil fuel
industry can just as effectively distribute fake news designed to
manipulate American elections for Russia or China or Iran. The fake
news delivery system is not restricted to any one payload.
The fossil fuel industry also fought hard to create the dark money
political spending apparatus that now despoils American politics. They
lobbied the Supreme Court for the wretched Citizens United decision.
They saw it coming and they were swift at the mark, and they have
stopped any effort in Congress at political spending disclosure. They
need and depend on dark money to buy influence in Congress.
Here, the problem is the same. Once you tolerate a dark money
political spending apparatus in American politics, that dark money
apparatus will be just as good at hiding the hand of Vladimir Putin or
China or Iran as it is at hiding the hand of the fossil fuel industry.
Darkness is darkness, whether it is Charles and David Koch or Vladimir
Putin operating in that darkness.
The dangers of fake news, dark money, climate science denial, and
foreign interference in our elections are thus all tied together, and
they call for an American response. Politics is a battlefield, and dark
money and fake news are now assets for our Nation's enemies.
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