At Detroit Econ Club, Barbara McQuade and Jocelyn Benson chat about disinformation, Russia

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade told an audience of metro Detroit business leaders and students Tuesday that she believes disinformation is now "the greatest threat to our national security" and dividing the nation into warring political tribes, but could be countered with greater regulation of the internet.

McQuade, who was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017 and is now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC News, spoke to several hundred at a lunch-hour meeting of the Detroit Economic Club about her recently published book “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.”

She was joined on stage by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who interviewed McQuade about the book and its reception so far.

Russia came up numerous times during the event, held in a MotorCity Casino banquet hall. There was discussion about the Russian disinformation playbook, on past Russian attempts at election interference and the sowing of discord, and why Benson believes Russia would want to interfere in this November's presidential election.

“In this election in 2024, Russia will have a greater incentive than ever before to interfere with our elections and our democracy," Benson said. “And they’ll do so through disinformation."

That incentive, Benson said, is Russian President Vladimir Putin's desire to succeed in his military invasion of Ukraine.

“His success in Ukraine will directly be affected by who is the leader of the free world — who is the president of the United States in January 2025," said Benson, who is Michigan's top elections official.

McQuade, who teaches a course on national security, said that not withstanding the disinformation threat posed by Russia, her greatest concern is disinformation that is already spewing from some Americans seeking to influence other Americans.

"The reason I called the book attack from within is because I see the threat that is most acute as the one that’s coming from within our own country — our own people — who are using lies and manipulation and deceit and misleading claims to fool us into surrendering our own power," she said. "So the goal of the book is to help identify the problem. To reveal the tactics. If we can name them and see them, I think we can be less likely to be deceived by them.”

In the book, McQuade puts much of the blame for disinformation on the far right and former President Donald Trump. She points to Trump's unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen and to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, which she considers a "coup" attempt.

Her book calls for new federal regulations to control the spread of misinformation, rein in anonymous "bots" on social media and curtail the use of algorithms that elevate online content aimed at generating outrage.

She also suggests that it is time to amend or repeal Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shields online hosting platforms from criminal and civil liability for content posted on their sites.

And the book bemoans the loss of the federal government's Disinformation Governance Board, which President Joe Biden launched in spring 2022 within the Department of Homeland Security. But within three weeks, the director had resigned and the board was dissolved amid criticism from Republicans and questions about whether the board would infringe on free speech rights.

The phrase “Ministry of Truth” — a reference to George Orwell's “1984” — repeatedly trended online in posts about the board.

McQuade told Benson on Tuesday that her book has been generating a mix of reactions. There are sizable crowds at her book events and people are asking thoughtful questions, she said.

But there has also been some negative feedback, she said: "There has been a real undercurrent of, like, haters."

These detractors mistakenly believe that she is advocating for censorship, McQuade said, when what she really seeks is reasonable regulation that preserves free speech while reining in dangerous disinformation.

“I don’t know if there’s a next book in me," she said. "But if there’s a next book, it’s about the irony of writing a book about disinformation, and then have people attack you online using disinformation.”

McQuade said she draws on a tactic she learned from Chelsea Clinton when addressing these individuals.

“When people say mean things to her, she is like extra nice to them, but corrects the record," McQuade said.

McQuade shared with the audience how some of the tactics and end goals for people who spread disinformation here is essentially what has happened in Russia: They try to convince the public that everyone is corrupt, that it's foolish to try and discern the truth and what really matters is just securing one's own wealth.

"And so you should pick the person who will best give you that prosperity," McQuade said of that disinformation-purveyor mindset. "And don’t worry about what they’re saying ... it’s all lies anyway. It’s all PR. And so I‘ve given up and I’m no longer invested in politics — I just worry about my own life and my own family and making money and I leave politics for the rest of us.

"I think that cynicism is something that is at work when people are trying to seize power from the people through misinformation."

In the book, McQuade admits to being duped at times by disinformation. She recounts falling for a fake tweet in summer 2020 that claimed NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs wouldn't play another game until the team changed its name to one that wasn't offensive to Native Americans. Only later did she realize the tweet wasn't genuine news, but rather sent from an account user named "SprotsCenter" and not ESPN's SportsCenter.

More:Ex-US attorney Barbara McQuade's new book sounds urgent alarm about disinformation

The book doesn't mention a later instance in which McQuade deleted one of her own tweets from October 2020 that backed the notion that foreign interference — namely Russian — was behind a series of news stories that appeared in the New York Post about the contents of a laptop that then-candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was said to have abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware.

The Post's stories concerned business dealings of the Bidens in Ukraine and China, as well as salacious content on Hunter Biden's personal life.

Social media platforms Facebook and Twitter initially blocked users from sharing the Post article, and few media outlets followed up on the allegations in the stories about shady business dealings.

Days later, a group of 51 former intelligence and national security officials issued a statement claiming the laptop emails had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." That statement would later be cited by Biden and the Biden campaign to dismiss the laptop story.

A couple days after the statement's release, and in reference to the statement, McQuade tweeted that, "Yes, the laptop is Russia."

Eventually, however, there was no evidence the Hunter Biden laptop story was connected to Russia. In July 2023, the website The College Fix wrote a story about McQuade's tweet that said the tweet was deleted the same day their story was published.

“I removed it because I’m not sure if it’s accurate anymore," McQuade told the Free Press on Tuesday when asked about it. "I think we don’t really know. We know that some of the content on the laptop was genuinely emails sent and received by Hunter Biden. I don’t think we know the origin of the laptop. He still contests whether it’s true. But because I don’t know whether I pushed a claim that may be inaccurate, I have removed it, because I don’t want to be someone who is pushing information that’s false."

The Free Press also asked McQuade whether strategies aimed at stopping online disinformation might ensnarl ideas that may at first seem unsubstantiated, but which, over time, could come to be more accepted.

For instance, speculation that COVID-19 was a man-made virus that escaped from a laboratory was once treated as disinformation on some social media platforms, but some researchers and government agencies have since deemed the scenario as plausible.

And arguments the prospect of NATO expansion into Ukraine could have provoked Russia's illegal February 2022 invasion of that country were often denounced as disinformation and Russian propaganda. But last year the head of NATO, Jans Stoltenberg, told a European Parliament committee that NATO expansion indeed was a reason why Putin invaded.

McQuade said the evolving nature of some facts "is why the solutions that I propose are more about process than about substance. Because I think if we regulate things like algorithms that social media companies use to push content design to outrage us ... that will clear away some of the outrage content, to focus on content that matters."

"I think facts are important," she added, "but there are processes in place that allow people to perpetuate false claims, and I think if we can fix those processes, we might improve the quality of the information.”

Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.