A chilling new report outlines how Russia, China and other authoritarian regimes have used weaknesses in campaign finance and financial reporting laws to launch attacks on the political processes in the United States and elsewhere.
The report, released last week by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, found that authoritarian regimes spent more than $300 million in the past decade on dozens of interference campaigns.
Among the foreign powers' methods of attack: government-funded disinformation; funneling money to campaigns through straw donors, nonprofits and shell companies; and providing in-kind donations to U.S. and other Western politicians.
Most of these incidents occurred in the past four years, researchers found.
The report comes as security experts focus on protecting the 2020 presidential race from a reprise of the efforts to hack election systems in 2016. And it includes numerous recommendations for U.S. policy makers, including passage of several pieces of legislation that were introduced in response to cybersecurity concerns raised four years ago.
While the focus has been on cybersecurity, these experts say Russia and China have also been exploiting financial loopholes that allow foreign money to seep into the American political system.
Examples of what the authors call "malign finance" include:
- Providing in-kind contributions to influence candidates and office holders. The most prominent effort involving the United States was President Trump's request for negative information from Ukraine on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family — the cause of Trump's impeachment. But U.S. law is not clear on whether getting dirt on a political opponent is a "thing of value" that constitutes a reportable contribution. What's needed, they argue, is a broader interpretation in U.S. campaign finance law — or a revision to the law — to clarify that a "thing of value" includes political information. The report calls closing this loophole "the single most urgent reform" that the authors recommend.
- Requiring campaigns to report contacts with foreign agents. The SHIELD Act, introduced and passed last year in the Democratic-controlled House on a party-line vote, would institute such requirements. The bill has not advanced in the GOP-controlled Senate.
- Outlaw secret shell companies and restrict U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. This is a key way that foreign money gets introduced into U.S. campaigns, the report states.
- Disclose foreign donors to nonprofits. Foreign powers hide donations by giving the money to a nonprofit that in turn provides it to a candidate or office holder while not having to disclose the source of the funds. Numerous legislative efforts to require disclosure of so-called dark money contributions have failed.
Other proposals include requiring disclosure of the source of funding for online political ads and requiring disclosure of foreign funding sources to U.S. media companies.
The authors say they hope exposing financial loopholes that allow foreign governments to interfere in our politics "will jumpstart a policy reform initiative to build resilience against this threat."
"There is no time to lose," they conclude. "Just like airplanes in the summer of 2001 and cyberattacks in the summer of 2016, the system is currently blinking red about incoming rubles and yuan."
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.