The US-backed regime change in Bangladesh provoked a strong reaction from Indians on social media, especially against those American pundits who gaslight that their government played no role whatsoever in this coup nor had any interests in removing its former Prime Minister. The RAND Corporation’s Derek Grossman and the Wilson Center’s Michael Kugelman, who are a senior defense analyst on the Indo-Pacific and the Director of the South Asia Institute respectively, are the top two figures in this regard.
What most of those Indians who’ve reacted to them probably don’t know though is that they’re government-funded. The RAND Corporation’s own website shows that the US Government (USG) provided over three-quarters of their $390 million budget last year with the Department of Defense being their largest donor. As for the Wilson Center, its website shows that they’re partially funded by Congress, which is why they submit yearly budget justifications to it.
The third page of this one here about last year’s budget reminds everyone that the Secretary of State himself is an ex officio member of their Board of Trustees among several other serving officials. Another interesting tidbit is where they mentioned in that same paragraph that there are also “nine members appointed by the President from outside public service and one member appointed by the President from within the Federal government.”
These candid disclosures mean that observers should regard the RAND Corporation and the Wilson Center as de facto arms of the American government with all that entails regarding their employees’ freedom of expression. While Grossman and Kugelman can in principle say whatever they want about whatever it might be, the reality is that they’re unlikely to bite the hand that literally helps feed them by contradicting the USG’s positions on sensitive matters, let alone implicating it in a foreign regime change.
It’s precisely due to the fact that these two entities and their employees are part of the USG for all practical intents and purposes that Russia designed them as “undesirable”, which banned their activities inside the country. India has close but increasingly troubled ties with the US so it won’t replicate its decades-long strategic partner’s policy, but its social media activists should be aware of all this when consuming whatever information warfare products those two top pundits produce.
Accordingly, it wouldn’t hurt if Indian media and influencers raised more awareness of the fact that Grossman and Kugelman should be considered unofficial representative of the USG due to their employers’ funding, especially the direct role that the USG plays in governing the Wilson Institute. It’s also worth mentioning in this connection that the former Secretaries of the Navy, Defense, Homeland Security, Transportation, and the Air Force are on the RAND Corporation’s Board of Trustees.
Social media activists can take the lead by contacting their media and influencers as well as sharing some of the cited reports from those two organization’s websites under their pundits’ posts, which can inform their audience of the USG’s influence over their work and reduce the chances that they’re misled. Grossman and Kugelman can’t block everyone in India, which has the world’s second-largest online population behind China, so this is the most effective way of promptly exposing their propaganda.
