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Washington, DC -- Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-VA), founder of the Congressional Task Force on Digital Citizenship, applauded amendments included in the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to confront the national security threat posed by disinformation, including her own which would require a new standing report on foreign campaigns to spread disinformation and undermine federal elections.

"Disinformation campaigns are a direct assault on our national security and have the power to undermine the integrity of our elections, erode public trust in our democratic institutions, and even impair our ability to manage crises like COVID-19,” said Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton. “I founded the Task Force on Digital Citizenship to help Americans recognize and learn how to confront the dangers of disinformation in their daily lives and to promote policies here in Congress that can mitigate and neutralize this threat. I’m proud of the important provisions that we’ve fought to include in this year’s NDAA that will help our defense community better respond to these types of attacks and hold accountable those who are responsible."

Amendments to the NDAA led by members of the Task Force would better equip our armed forces and the federal government to manage the dangers of disinformation and manipulated media, including:

• Requiring a biennial report from the Director of National Intelligence on foreign influence campaigns targeting U.S. federal elections. The report would include patterns, tools, and techniques employed by foreign influence campaigns, the use of disinformation and bot networks on different platforms, and who the intended targets of such campaigns are. The full text of this amendment, sponsored by Rep. Wexton and cosponsored by Task Force members Reps. Don Beyer (D-VA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) can be found here.

• Requiring reports to Congress on the defense and military implications of deepfake videos. The reports would include an assessment of the risks posed by machine-manipulated media such as deepfakes to our military and intelligence operations and detail how the Department of Defense could combat this threat and improve its detection capabilities. The full text of this amendment, sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke and cosponsored by Task Force members Reps. Wexton and Beyer can be found here.

• Instructing the new Steering Committee on Emerging Technology to establish a Deepfake Working Group to assess the national security implications of deepfake videos. The task force would identify the impacts of machine-manipulated media such as deepfakes on national security, assess the federal government’s abilities to detect and combat deepfakes, and evaluate the deepfake capabilities of foreign adversaries. The full text of this amendment, sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke and cosponsored by Task Force members Reps. Wexton and Beyer, as well as Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), can be found here.

Congresswoman Wexton founded the Congressional Task Force on Digital Citizenship in April 2020, which hosted a briefing earlier this month on safeguarding digital democracy with the German Marshall Fund. Wexton has also introduced legislation to incentivize new research into technology that would detect deepfakes and authored an amendment to help improve the public’s understanding and detection of deepfakes.

Wexton has held social media companies accountable for false information on their platforms, pressing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a Financial Services Committee hearing last year about their disinformation policies and his refusal to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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