Hostile foreign influence campaigns take several different forms, including:

1. Efforts to influence the political process through lobbyists or by cultivating relationships with influential political, business or academic leaders.
   Efforts to steal technology from U.S. companies or government or academic institutions.


2. The use of sophisticated online tools and tactics in a coordinated manner to advance a foreign country’s interests, such as by influencing our domestic political discourse, seeking to polarise our society or undermining our democratic political processes.


3. Cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare operations.


4. The funding of academic programs and institutions to influence students and faculty to be more favorably disposed to regimes that are actively hostile to freedom and democracy.

China and Russia are the most active and most dangerous sponsors of these campaigns. Both countries have poured billions of dollars into funding U.S. universities, stealing technology and conducting sophisticated social media disinformation campaigns.