Jessica Brandt
Policy Director - Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative
Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Jessica Brandt is policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Her research interests and recent publications focus on foreign interference, disinformation, digital authoritarianism and the implications of emerging technologies for liberal democracies.
Her work has been widely published and quoted in the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, Bloomberg, Vox, Slate, and Wired, among others. She was the lead author on “Linking Values and Strategy: How Democracies Can Offset Autocratic Advances,” the report of a bipartisan task force of 30 leading national security practitioners across parties and sub-disciplines, which developed national strategy for the United States in non-military domains of competition.
Jessica was previously head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, special adviser to the president of the Brookings Institution, and an international and global affairs fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her bachelor's from Johns Hopkins University and Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Jessica is a member of the advisory council of the American Ditchley Foundation and a David Rockefeller fellow of the Trilateral Commission. She was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Next Generation Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Affiliations:
American Ditchley Foundation, advisory council, member
Trilateral Commission, David Rockefeller Fellow
Jessica Brandt is policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Her research interests and recent publications focus on foreign interference, disinformation, digital authoritarianism and the implications of emerging technologies for liberal democracies.
Her work has been widely published and quoted in the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, Bloomberg, Vox, Slate, and Wired, among others. She was the lead author on “Linking Values and Strategy: How Democracies Can Offset Autocratic Advances,” the report of a bipartisan task force of 30 leading national security practitioners across parties and sub-disciplines, which developed national strategy for the United States in non-military domains of competition.
Jessica was previously head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, special adviser to the president of the Brookings Institution, and an international and global affairs fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her bachelor’s from Johns Hopkins University and Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Jessica is a member of the advisory council of the American Ditchley Foundation and a David Rockefeller fellow of the Trilateral Commission. She was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Next Generation Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Affiliations:
American Ditchley Foundation, advisory council, member
Trilateral Commission, David Rockefeller Fellow
[The lack of a comprehensive data privacy law in the U.S. puts the nation] out of step with its peers. I don’t know that it’s the panacea or only policy approach that can mitigate some of the harms that generative AI can pose, but it’s one that we absolutely need and that Congress should pursue.
Russia is very effective at building on sentiments that already exist. It’s fertile ground and they’re well-practised.
Washington really needs to resist the temptation to respond to information manipulation in kind because doing so can only undermine its own moral authority. Democracies depend on a healthy information space to thrive, so polluting that space will ultimately do more harm to ourselves than our competitors.
I think this case highlights how consequential researchers’ choices about collaboration can be and how important it is that the academic community develop codes of conduct to guide those choices.
Beijing has an interest in not letting nationalist sentiment get out of hand in a way that would undercut its foreign policy, in particular, its interest in easing tensions with Japan. What’s interesting in this case is that at least one senior figure, [former Global Times editor] Hu Xijin, came out right away to try to tamp down some of the fervour, and the foreign ministry and state media coverage have really played it quite straight.
Putin is an opportunist, and he's going to use [cyber and information operations] in combination with one another.
The phenomenon that we’re catching here is that search engines are working as they’re designed to — they’re supposed to surface the most fresh, recent, relevant news articles. But The New York Times or other credible, authoritative, independent sources are going to debunk a conspiracy theory like the Fort Detrick conspiracy once and they’re going to move on. And Beijing’s propaganda apparatus does not need to move on — they can churn out a vast array of content that hammers this theory over and over and over again.
The issue is that Chinese state media, which isn't really beholden to resource constraints or audience feedback, can churn out a large volume of propaganda on a conspiracy it wants to promote. The high volume of material makes it easier for Chinese publishers to take advantage of the way search works to promote fresh content.