A Fading American Voice, Rising Rivals
“The United States’ unrivaled dominance over the global information sphere after decades is beginning to fizzle out. This phenomenon is unfolding as the global information sphere is set to expand exponentially aided by the rise of artificial intelligence and the evolution of information warfare, and more importantly, as emerging powers are eager to capitalize on the sphere’s growth. A series of missteps on part of the US in a world being reshaped by disinformation, new or renewed interests and shifting strategic alignments is exposing its weak spots. Amid the crescendo of rivals China and Russia, Washington appears to fall back in making its voice heard.” Originally published Tuesday, August 26, 2025 on Eagle Intelligence Reports.
America is retreating in a global information war that it’s losing to better-prepared and well-financed adversaries. Partial reasons for America’s setbacks on the information battlefield involve its opponents’ deft use of new technology, their impressive foreign aid budgets, their substantial investment in sophisticated communications campaigns, and the chaos disrupting global and domestic media markets. The world is awash in disinformation, much of it aimed at America.
The U.S’s failure to clearly articulate the importance of its democratic values plays a huge role in its setbacks. Indeed, not long ago, many nations admired America as a beacon of free speech, democracy, and a free press.
A view of Voice of America (VOA) news service center headquarters in Washington. AFP
No more. In many quarters, the image of America resembles the arrogant, self-absorbed stereotype made popular by the 1958 political novel The Ugly American.
The Trump administration deserves a big part of the blame for the nation’s weakened battle lines in the war for the globe’s hearts and souls. However, Trump didn’t create the fractured American defense in the war by himself.
Democrats and Republicans from the late 1990s onward dismantled the widely admired information offense that played a substantial role in America’s defeat of the Nazi’s in World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The implications of the American retreat could be profound, accelerating China’s rise as a global power and diminishing America’s influence, particularly in the Global South, the Asian, African, and Latin American nations, where China and Russia are successfully vying with America for economic and strategic influence.
“America’s economic future is on the line here,” warns Thomas P. M. Barnett, a national security expert and author of America's New Map: Restoring Our Global Leadership in an Era of Climate Change and Demographic Collapse, a book that outlines how the nation can restore its global leadership in a world plagued by climate change and demographic collapse.
“Much of the world’s consumer growth will be concentrated across the countries 30 degrees northand south of the equator. Capitalizing on the political allegiance of that ascendant middle class will determine which superpower’s definition of global stability will reign supreme in the decades ahead.”
A plethora of political missteps pushed America into its current retreat. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates dates the beginning of the pullback to 1998, when Congress abolished the United States Information Agency (USIA), set up to promote America as a nation with constitutionally guaranteed freedoms coveted by the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, says Gates, no one replaced the USIA with coordinated strategic communications policies that rival America’s main adversaries.
“An example of the current dysfunction is we now have 14 Cabinet departments and 48 agencies that do strategic communications internationally, and nobody coordinates them. There’s no common messaging. There’s no lead of the ship,” Gates told newscaster Katie Couric in an interview last month.
“To avoid a military conflict with China”; Gates says, “these communications tools will be as important in the ongoing struggle with China as they were in the struggle with the Soviet Union.”
Instead of rising to the challenge, America is dismantling the communication tools it has mastered to promote its reputation.
“It’s hard to win if you unilaterally disarm,” says Ryan Crocker, a seasoned diplomat who chairs the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, a government-funded news operation that serves the Middle East and North Africa. Crocker says he doesn’t see how America will gain from the Trump-imposed budget cuts that shut down the Voice of America and threatens to terminate Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. “It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen,” says Crocker, who served as ambassador to six nations, often in times of war.
America created the Voice of America in 1942 to counter an effective disinformation campaign that colored news of the war in Europe.
“It wasn’t propaganda versus propaganda,” Crocker says. “I still remember that first broadcast: ‘This is the Voice of America. Every day at this time, we will bring you news of the war. Sometimes the news will be good for us, and sometimes it will be bad. But we will tell you the truth.’ That truth was our ultimately successful weapon in that war and against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.” As chair of the MBN, he says the broadcasting network doesn’t exist to push American propaganda; it exists to give the Arab-speaking world objective news of the Middle East, North Africa, and America.
“How it serves any interest of the U.S. to take us off the air I cannot fathom,” he says, “it serves the interest of our adversaries, both global, Russia and China, and regional, Iran.”
More muscular misinformation campaigns critical of America populate the information landscape. “China is on the rise and winning while the U.S. is collapsing and losing allies,” says a recent video series, A Fractured America, aired on Chinese state media and spread around the world on popular news sites such as Al Jazeera, which Qatar, an American ally, controls.
The video series is part of a broader Chinese misinformation campaign. Although specific figures on China’s misinformation budgets are shrouded in secrecy, Secretary Gates, who also headed America’s Central Intelligence Agency, says China has invested billions in strategic communications.
“There isn’t a country in the world,” he says, “where you can’t get Chinese television, Chinese radio, Chinese social media, Chinese print media, you name it. And they spread their message all over the globe. We’re cutting everything back. Our voice will not be heard.”
In the United Arab Emirates, for example, China in 2004 spent $4 billion to launch CGTV, which streams news, dramas, and other shows with a Chinese and anti-American perspective.
The investment paid off. Merissa Khurma, a former director of Midde East Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center, says China is now more popular in nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa, a region that includes 450 million people.
Other players in the war also spend more than the U.S. on similar campaigns. Russia’s latest budget says it will invest $1.4 billion in state media and propaganda, mainly through its Russia Today (RT) operation, whose signs are ubiquitous in places such as Morocco.
In contrast, the Trump administration wants to shut down the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which had a comparatively smaller budget of $950 million. USAGM published its budget total before the Department of Government Efficiency shuttered most of its operations. The agency’s future is in doubt, and no one has articulated a strategy to replicate its work, which needed reform and improvement.
As America slashes foreign aid budgets, China is stepping in to fill the gaps in places such as Africa where it sees future opportunities to enhance its power and posture. Indeed, reputable polls suggest that America’s unpopularity is spreading beyond the Middle East, where many residents despise America for its support of Israel in the Gaza war.
A 2025 Pew Research Global Survey says America’s image has suffered in 24 nations, with nearly all reporting a negative view of the U.S. The share of people holding unfavorable views revealed pronounced increases in key allies in Europe and North America.
The poor showing undoubtedly reflected animosity toward the Trump administration’s tariffs, the U.S. shifting posture on the war in Ukraine, its cold shoulder towards NATO, and its hostile exchanges with Canada.
The chaos consuming America’s domestic media is a factor, too. Common editorial standards and practices once characterized the diverse news operations in the U.S. Now, thanks to the technological revolution in the media, independent operators such as Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor eager to increase his audience and online influence, provides an open microphone to controversial opponents of America.
A few weeks ago, he aired an exclusive interview with Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian. For 28 minutes, Reality Check, a non-partisan media watchdog, says Carlson allowed Pezeshkian, without challenge, to advance demonstrably false narratives about Iran’s nuclear program, the nation’s support of terrorism, and the false claim that the rogue Persian nation never issued a kill order on President Donald Trump. Iranian media capitalized on the claims of Pezeshkian, a reformist whom Israel had tried to assassinate a week earlier. Iranian propagandists gave the Carlson interview widespread coverage on numerous Iranian state-controlled news outlets. Reality Check, part of NewsGuard, the media credibility rating service, reports that Carlson’s interview drew 1.1 million views on YouTube and 2.2 million views on TikTok, the Chinese-backed website popular with young people around the world.
“Pezeshkian’s appearance on American media becomes proof of regime legitimacy,” Iran expert Farima Abo Alastar told Reality Check, handing Tehran a propaganda victory it couldn’t achieve through state media alone: Western validation of its peaceful intentions narrative.” Chinese state media also picked up Carlson’s interview and spread it around the globe.
Allowing a news influencer such as Carlson free rein to conduct interviews hostile to American interests is what the nation’s First Amendment, guaranteeing press freedom, is all about. But allowing such an exchange to be aired unchallenged will lead to a Waterloo in an information war.
—James O’Shea
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Substack, Five W’s + H here.
A note to readers: I’ve decided to occasionally collaborate with Eagle Intelligence Reports, a new media organization set up as a global platform specializing in insightful political and strategic analysis as well as exclusive international intelligence for decision-makers, researchers, and sophisticated audiences. EIR strives to be a credible benchmark for rigorous, unbiased geopolitical and strategic analysis free from media oversimplification, political noise, and ideological bias. EIR’s editor is Omar Al Qasim, an experienced print journalist. The organization is headquartered in Europe. I will continue to write about domestic issues in the U.S. too. The following port first ran on EIR’s website.