Rep. Thomas Massie Introduces Bill to Repeal Smith-Mundt Modernization Act

A Renewed Debate Over Government-Funded Media and Domestic Propaganda

October 2025 — Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) has introduced legislation aimed at reversing a controversial 2013 law that lifted restrictions on the domestic distribution of U.S. government-produced foreign media content. The bill, HR 5704, has reignited a long-standing debate about propaganda, transparency, and the role of government-funded media. For a deeper analysis of the privacy implications, see The Smith-Mundt Act and the Hidden Door to Domestic Propaganda.

What is HR 5704?

On October 8, 2025, Rep. Massie introduced HR 5704, titled "Repeal the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2013," seeking to prohibit the domestic dissemination of federally funded propaganda by the State Department and the United States Agency for Global Media. The bill would reverse provisions included in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that lifted a decades-old ban on distributing State Department and U.S. Agency for Global Media content within the United States.

"The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act opened the door for taxpayer-funded propaganda to be used against the American people," Massie stated in announcing the legislation. The bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) and has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Understanding the Original Smith-Mundt Act of 1948

The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. The Act was developed to regulate broadcasting of programs for foreign audiences produced under the guidance of the State Department, and it prohibited domestic dissemination of materials produced by such programs.

The original act authorized the U.S. government to promote a better understanding of the United States among peoples of the world and to increase mutual understanding between Americans and people from other countries. It established programs like Voice of America and provided the statutory foundation for cultural and educational exchange programs, including the Fulbright Program.

The domestic dissemination ban was strengthened over the years. In 1972, Senator J. William Fulbright successfully amended the Act, arguing that America's international broadcasting should take its rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics. In 1985, Senator Edward Zorinsky declared that the U.S. Information Agency would be no different than an organ of Soviet propaganda if its products were available domestically.

The 2013 Smith-Mundt Modernization Act

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was introduced by Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry and Democratic Congressman Adam Smith as a bipartisan effort. It was incorporated into the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Obama in January 2013, and went into effect on July 2, 2013. (For more on how the NDAA intersects with surveillance and whistleblower protections, see Connections Between the Espionage Act, NDAA, and Other Key Legislation.)

The modernization allowed the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the media organizations it supports to make their content available in broadcast quality upon request within the United States. Proponents argued the change was necessary because:

• The internet had made enforcing domestic distribution restrictions technologically impossible, as content was already accessible online
• The reform would increase transparency by allowing Americans to see what their tax dollars were funding
• It could create revenue streams by allowing U.S. cable and radio stations to purchase this content

Important clarifications about what the act did and did not do:

The U.S. Agency for Global Media clarified that the agency is not authorized to begin broadcasting or create programming specifically for U.S. audiences, and continues to focus on overseas audiences. The act only applies to the State Department and Broadcasting Board of Governors (now USAGM) — not the Defense Department or other government agencies.

Fact-checkers have emphasized that the act did not apply to private news corporations, did not make it legal for media outlets to lie, and did not repeal the entire Smith-Mundt Act — it only amended the domestic dissemination ban.

Mike Benz and the Joe Rogan Interview

The renewed attention to the Smith-Mundt Act comes partly from recent discussions on popular platforms. Mike Benz, a former Trump administration State Department official who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience in February 2025 to discuss the act's history and implications.

During the interview, Benz explained that the Smith-Mundt Act was designed to allow covert political warfare and propaganda operations abroad while creating a firewall to prevent these tactics from being used against American citizens. He argued that the 2013 repeal of domestic dissemination restrictions opened the door for influence operations to be used domestically under the guise of foreign policy efforts.

Benz has been cited by congressional committees investigating government censorship and has become a prominent voice in Republican criticism of what he calls the "censorship industrial complex". However, his background has been the subject of scrutiny. NBC News reported in 2023 that Benz appeared to have been a pseudonymous alt-right content creator before his government service, though Benz characterized his involvement in controversial forums as part of a limited "deradicalization project".

Press Freedom and Government Information Control

The Smith-Mundt debate exists within a broader context of tensions between government control of information and press freedom. Recent developments illustrate these ongoing challenges:

Pentagon Press Restrictions and the First Amendment examines how Defense Department policies requiring journalists to sign pledges restricting their reporting activities have faced unprecedented opposition from virtually all major news organizations—highlighting the constitutional boundaries on government attempts to control media access and information flow.

The threats to press freedom extend beyond policy restrictions to technological surveillance. Journalists and civil society members face sophisticated targeting through commercial spyware, as detailed in WhatsApp Disrupts Spyware Campaign Targeting Journalists, The Pegasus Scandal in Jordan, and the EU Media Freedom Act analysis which explores the paradox of legislation designed to protect press freedom that simultaneously creates pathways for journalist detention.

These challenges underscore why transparency in government communications and robust protections for independent journalism remain critical to democratic accountability.

The Current Media Landscape

The U.S. Agency for Global Media operates several broadcasting entities:

• Voice of America
• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
• Radio Free Asia
• Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí)
• Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV & Radio Sawa)

These networks are legally mandated to present accurate and objective news and information, broadcasting in 64 languages to audiences in more than 100 countries where it is often difficult to receive locally-produced, uncensored programming. They are frequently cited by major media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN for their reporting.

Arguments For and Against Repeal

Those supporting repeal argue:

• Government-funded content should not be distributed domestically as it could be used for propaganda
• The original prohibition protected Americans from government influence operations
• Transparency can be achieved through other means without allowing domestic distribution

Those opposing repeal argue:

• Americans should be able to access information their tax dollars fund, increasing government transparency
• The content is already accessible online due to technological realities, making the ban unenforceable
• These broadcasts follow strict journalistic standards and serve populations denied access to free media
• Modern safeguards prevent the content from being used for domestic political purposes

The Broader Context: Modern Information Operations

The debate over the Smith-Mundt Act exists within a larger landscape of information operations and influence campaigns. Understanding these connections helps illuminate why transparency in government communications matters more than ever.

Domestic Influence Through Social Media

The concerns about government-produced propaganda take on new dimensions when considering modern social media influence operations. The White House Influencer Pipeline details how administrations have leveraged social media creators to amplify government messaging—raising questions about the line between public outreach and propaganda, and whether existing disclosure requirements adequately inform the public about coordinated influence campaigns.

Foreign Propaganda in AI Systems

The information integrity challenges extend beyond traditional media. Recent research has revealed that major AI language models are absorbing and reproducing propaganda narratives. The Hidden Influence: How Chinese Propaganda Infiltrates Leading AI Models examines how training data contamination leads AI systems to parrot state-sponsored narratives, while The Dragon's AI Engine explores China's systematic approach to using AI infrastructure for propaganda dissemination.

The Role of Whistleblowers and Transparency Advocates

When government propaganda operations cross ethical or legal lines, whistleblowers play a critical role in exposing these activities to public scrutiny. Whistleblowing in the Digital Age examines how organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU, along with journalists like Glenn Greenwald, support individuals who risk their careers to reveal government surveillance and influence operations—including the very programs that the Smith-Mundt Act was originally designed to keep separate from domestic audiences.

5th Generation Warfare: The AI-Powered Information Battlefield

The debate over the Smith-Mundt Act takes on heightened urgency when viewed through the lens of 5th generation warfare—a new paradigm where the battlefield is the human mind, and the weapons are information, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Understanding this evolution is critical to grasping why domestic propaganda safeguards matter more than ever.

From Cold War Psyops to Digital Manipulation

Traditional psychological operations have been dramatically transformed by technology. The Silent War: Psychological Operations from the KGB to TikTok traces how Soviet-era "active measures" have evolved into sophisticated, multi-platform campaigns that exploit social media algorithms and AI capabilities. What once required infiltrating newspapers and radio stations can now be accomplished with bot armies, deepfakes, and coordinated amplification strategies operating at unprecedented scale.

Former KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov warned that 85% of Soviet intelligence resources were devoted to psychological warfare aimed at demoralizing populations and changing their perception of reality. Today's digital operations achieve similar goals more efficiently, targeting specific demographics with personalized propaganda that appears to come from trusted sources within their own communities.

The Multi-Platform Manipulation Machine

The Ghost in the Machine: Unpacking Psyops and 5th-Gen Warfare in the AI Era reveals the sophisticated ecosystem of modern information warfare. Between June 2024 and May 2025, researchers tracked over 11 million posts and comments across ten social media platforms, identifying coordinated influence campaigns that employ distinct strategies for different audiences:

• Broad Amplification Networks: Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) are used primarily for rapid, high-volume distribution, with pro-Russian actors relying heavily on simple reposts (87.8% of all reposts) to fabricate popularity and evade content moderation.
• Narrative Framing Centers: Russian-leaning platforms like Telegram, VK, and Odnoklassniki serve as origin points for complex, lengthy narratives—often over 8,000 characters—that pose significant challenges for fact-checking and counter-argumentation.
• Video-Based Persuasion: YouTube and TikTok facilitate longer, narrative-building content with high engagement rates. TikTok notably shifted messaging around US elections from nuclear threat warnings to promoting potential Trump-Putin partnerships and attacking "deep-state" NATO policies.

Research indicates that approximately 7.9% of tracked interactions show statistical signs of coordination, with Kremlin-aligned messaging bursts appearing roughly twice as frequent as pro-Western ones and three times as frequent for posts appearing across multiple platforms—evidence of tightly synchronized operations.

AI as Force Multiplier: Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, and Synthetic Media

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the information warfare landscape, providing capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction during the original Smith-Mundt debate:

• Accelerated Content Generation: AI enables near-instantaneous creation and deployment of misleading videos, audio, images, and text. Adversaries can exploit political events and crises in real-time, using generative AI agent swarms to tailor, schedule, and amplify content with minimal human intervention.
• Deepfakes and Synthetic Personas: While early deepfakes were crude, the technology has advanced rapidly. Pro-Kremlin actors have deployed deepfake videos depicting Western leaders in compromising situations. State-owned news agencies routinely use AI-generated images paired with sensational headlines, which are then amplified across platform ecosystems. Fake personas with AI-generated profile pictures create believable interactions with real users, building trust before disseminating propaganda.
• Voice Cloning and Audio Manipulation: Modern AI can clone voices from small audio samples, enabling the creation of fake audio recordings of public figures making statements they never made—a capability with profound implications for election integrity and diplomatic relations.
• CGI and Video Manipulation: Advanced computer-generated imagery allows for the creation of entirely fabricated events or the seamless alteration of real footage. Manipulated videos, such as those falsely claiming Soviet soldier portraits were displayed on Berlin billboards, circulate rapidly before fact-checkers can respond.

The Influencer Pipeline: Weaponizing Trusted Voices

One of the most insidious modern tactics involves co-opting influencers—often without their full knowledge. In 2024, a Tennessee media company was indicted for receiving $10 million from Russian state media to pay prominent right-wing influencers approximately $400,000 per month for four videos—an extraordinary rate of about $100,000 per video. While the influencers claimed ignorance, the operation demonstrated how trusted domestic voices can be leveraged to amplify foreign propaganda narratives to audiences who would reject the same messages from obvious foreign sources.

This tactic represents a sophisticated evolution beyond traditional propaganda: rather than creating obviously foreign content, adversaries identify existing ideological divisions within target societies and fund voices that already resonate with specific audiences, creating the illusion of organic domestic discourse while actually advancing foreign strategic objectives.

The Psychological Operations Infrastructure

The modern psyops landscape extends far beyond foreign adversaries. Every branch of the U.S. military maintains dedicated psychological operations units, collectively employing thousands of personnel trained to influence foreign populations and shape the information environment. The Army's 4th and 8th Psychological Operations Groups, the Air Force's EC-130J Commando Solo aircraft broadcasting platforms, Navy's Network Warfare Command, and the Marine Corps' newly established Military Information Support Operations specialty all represent a vast infrastructure for information warfare.

While U.S. law prohibits PSYOP forces from targeting domestic audiences, a leaked 2003 Pentagon memo acknowledged that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa"—a reality that has only intensified in the internet age. This blurring of the foreign-domestic information boundary is precisely what the original Smith-Mundt Act's firewall was designed to prevent.

The Convergence Crisis

These parallel information warfare efforts—whether from government-funded broadcasters operating domestically under the 2013 Smith-Mundt Modernization, social media influence operations coordinated across platforms, AI training data manipulation, deepfakes and synthetic media, or the co-option of influencers—represent a converging threat to information integrity. The original Smith-Mundt Act's firewall between foreign propaganda operations and domestic audiences reflected an understanding that governments possess unique capabilities to shape narratives at scale. In the AI era, those capabilities have been exponentially amplified, while the barriers preventing their domestic use have been substantially weakened.

The scale of modern information warfare is staggering. Research estimates that tens of thousands of AI-powered bot accounts are active daily on platforms like X, generating human-like text, creating realistic profile pictures, and engaging with both bots and humans. Between 2023 and 2024, over 330 state-sponsored Chinese cyber operations were detected. Phishing attacks increased by 4,151% since ChatGPT's release. The line between information and weapon has irreversibly blurred.

This convergence underscores the importance of transparency and disclosure in all forms of government communication, and raises fundamental questions about whether the 2013 amendments adequately protect Americans from sophisticated, AI-enabled influence operations in an era of 5th generation warfare where the battlefield is the human mind and victory is measured in shaped perceptions, eroded trust, and manipulated consensus.

The Path Forward

HR 5704 has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Like most legislation, it faces an uncertain path, as the majority of bills introduced never advance beyond committee.

The debate over the Smith-Mundt Act touches on fundamental questions about transparency, propaganda, free speech, and the proper role of government in the information ecosystem. As technology continues to evolve and the line between foreign and domestic audiences becomes increasingly blurred, these questions are likely to remain contentious.

What's clear is that this decades-old tension between enabling effective public diplomacy abroad and protecting against government propaganda at home continues to generate passionate debate across the political spectrum. The ultimate fate of Rep. Massie's bill will depend on whether lawmakers believe the current system adequately protects Americans while serving legitimate foreign policy and transparency objectives—particularly in an age where AI, deepfakes, and coordinated influence operations have fundamentally transformed the nature of information warfare.

This article presents factual information about HR 5704 and the Smith-Mundt Act debate. For updates on the bill's status, visit Congress.gov. For information about U.S. international broadcasting, visit USAGM.gov.