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. 

 Amid the crescendo of rivals China and Russia, Washington appears to fall back in making its voice heard 

After Congress rolled back $9 billion in public media funding and foreign aid through the passage of US President Donald Trump’s rescission package last month, America is marking its retreat in a global information war and preparing to lose to well-prepared and -financed adversaries.

Partial reasons for the nation’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 US’s failure to clearly articulate the importance of its democratic values plays a huge role, too. Not long ago, many nations admired America as a beacon of free speech, democracy, and a free press. No more. In many quarters, the image of America now resembles the arrogant, self-absorbed stereotype made popular by the 1958 political novel “The Ugly American.”

In many quarters, the image of America now resembles the arrogant, self-absorbed stereotype

The Collapse of America’s Information Dominance

Though the Trump administration deserves much blame for the nation’s weakened battle lines in the war for the globe’s hearts and souls, he alone didn’t create the fractured American defense in the information war. Democrats and Republicans from the late 1990s onwards 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. A plethora of political missteps pushed America into its current retreat.

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates traces 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.  

Drivers Behind the Decline

“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 the journalist Katie Couric in an interview last month. Instead of rising to the challenge, America is dismantling the communication tools it had mastered to promote its reputation.

Instead of rising to the challenge, America is dismantling the communication tools it had 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 aided 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 an ambassador to six nations, often in times of war.

The Rise of Competitors – China and Russia

America created the Voice of America (VOA) in 1942 to counter an effective disinformation campaign that colored news of the war in Europe. In an interview, Crocker outlined how the VOA wasn’t our propaganda versus their propaganda. “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 US 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 US 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, former Secretary Gates, who also headed America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), says China has invested as much as $7 billion 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 as 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 CGTN, 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 US 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.

China is now more popular in nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa, a region that includes 450 million people

In contrast, the Trump administration wants to shut down the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), 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 US. The share of people holding unfavorable views revealed pronounced increases in key allies in Europe and North America. The poor showing undoubtedly reflected animosity towards the Trump administration’s tariffs, US’s shifting posture on the war in Ukraine, its cold shoulder to NATO, and its hostile exchanges with Canada.  

The poor showing undoubtedly reflected animosity towards the Trump administration’s tariffs, US’s shifting posture on the war in Ukraine, its cold shoulder to NATO, and its hostile exchanges with Canada

America’s Domestic Challenges in the Era of Open Media

The chaos consuming America’s domestic media is a factor, too. Common editorial standards and practices once characterized the diverse news operations in the US. Now, thanks to the technological revolution that destroyed the media’s traditional business model, 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 seized upon the claims of Pezeshkian, a reformist whom Israel had tried to assassinate a week earlier. They gave the 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, adding that it handed Tehran a propaganda victory it couldn’t have achieved 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.

America’s Future on the Line

“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.”

“America’s economic future is on the line here,” warns Thomas P.M. Barnett, an American military geostrategist and international security expert as well as the author of “America’s New Map,” a book that outlines how the US can restore its global leadership in a world plagued by climate change and demographic collapse. 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.

“Much of the world’s consumer growth will be concentrated across the countries 30 degrees north and 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.”

Ultimately, allowing a media influencer free rein to conduct interviews hostile to American interests is what the nation’s First Amendment, guaranteeing press freedom, is all about. But isn’t allowing such an exchange to be aired unchallenged, paving the way for a sure defeat in an information war?