By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - U.S. diplomats should use social media platform X and partner with military psychological operations units in an effort to "counter foreign anti-American propaganda," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a cable reviewed by Reuters.
The cable, whose existence was first reported by The Guardian, was devoted to ways to expose foreign influence operations and falsehoods that "pose a direct threat to U.S. national security and fuel hostility toward American interests."
In a statement, the State Department said it would "continue to take an assertive stance on this pernicious issue" and that it would use "every tool in our diplomatic toolkit" while also protecting Americans' right to free expression.
The missive told diplomats to "coordinate with interagency partners as appropriate," singling out the Pentagon's Psychological Operations, formerly known as Military Information Support Operations (MISO).
The cable did not elaborate, but MISO and its successor have traditionally aimed to sway enemy soldiers on the battlefield. MISO was behind U.S. propaganda efforts against Islamic State in Syria, including an incident in which tens of thousands of graphic cartoon-style leaflets showing recruits being shoved into a meatgrinder were air-dropped over the group's area of operations in 2015.
Military psyop deployments have in the past led to friction with U.S. diplomats. Under the first Trump administration, the Pentagon's psyops teams used bogus social media accounts to spread doubts about China's COVID-19 vaccine over the objections of State Department officials, Reuters has previously reported.
The Pentagon did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Rubio's cable or the nature of its psyops units' potential collaboration with diplomats.
The cable also urged diplomats to elevate trustworthy information and expose fakes by making use of tools such as the crowdsourced commentary function - dubbed "community notes" - on Elon Musk's social media platform X, as well as other, unspecified artificial intelligence tools.
X and its owner, xAI, did not immediately reply to requests for comment. X has been routinely criticized for allowing disinformation to flourish after Musk gutted the site's moderation and safety teams following his 2022 takeover of what was then known as Twitter. X says the platform is designed to prioritize free speech, and that "community notes" are preferable to centralized moderation.
Musk is a powerful Trump ally and his site has become a key node for pro-Trump social media influencers. xAI was last month acquired by Musk's rocket company SpaceX ahead of what is expected to be a landmark Wall Street debut, one that places X and the defense contractor under the same corporate roof.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
