The United States has bared plans to boost its cooperation with Italy to neutralize foreign state disinformation and propaganda.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Italian Vice President of the Council of Ministers Antonio Tajani formalized the agreement by signing a memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Capri, south of Rome.
The MOU shows the two countries’ commitment to bilateral and multilateral approaches to expanding partnerships against foreign disinformation while also upholding freedom of expression, the State Department said.
Emp hasizing foreign state disinformation as a national security threat that can exploit divisions within and among nations, the department also called the agreement “an important step” toward defending a fact-based global information exchange.
Under the MOU, the two sides will work on steps aligned with the five focus areas the State Department set under its Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation. The framework’s action areas include national strategies and policies; governance structures and institutions: human and technical capacity; civil society, independent media and academia; and multilateral engagement.
