[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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