The Lawfare Podcast · The Lawfare Institute

Lawfare Archive: Tom Kent on the Dismantling of American Government Broadcasting

March 29, 2026·42 min·3 clips

The Soviets spent more jamming U.S. broadcasts than we spent creating them, revealing their perceived threat.

This Lawfare Archive episode, introduced by intern Marissa Wong in March 2026, revisits a March 2025 conversation between Benjamin Wittes and Tom Kent about President Trump's executive order to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Wong notes that a federal judge later ruled Kari Lake's appointment to run USAGM was unlawful, and fired employees were returning to work a year later. Kent explains his background as the AP's Moscow Bureau Chief and later president and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He breaks down the USAGM structure: Voice of America and Radio Marti are government agencies with civil servant employees, while Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks are private grantee organizations funded through Congressional appropriations. The executive order directed USAGM to reduce to the "statutory minimum." For VOA, this meant employees were placed on administrative leave and then received termination notices. The grantee organizations continued operating on remaining cash reserves but faced a timeline of only one to two months. Kent warns that even if funding is restored, the expertise loss from departing staff with rare language skills and regional knowledge may be irreversible. Kent details USAGM's Cold War significance, noting that the Soviet Union spent more on jamming Radio Free Europe broadcasts than the U.S. spent producing them. Soviet citizens would wrap radios in aluminum foil at their dachas trying to pick up signals through the jamming. He argues the current role is unchanged: providing independent news to populations in countries without press freedom, now through web, social media, satellite TV, and anti-censorship technology in addition to radio. Wittes raises the argument that an administration built on disinformation has a logical reason to shut down newsrooms that would contradict it. Kent acknowledges this but makes a strategic case: even from a purely military and economic standpoint, the ability to communicate with populations in 60-plus languages at a total cost of roughly $800 million per year is a force multiplier cheaper than a single advanced weapons system. Kent describes the reaction in Moscow as officially diplomatic but privately jubilant, with Russian commentators celebrating the end of broadcasts they spent decades trying to block. He notes that when the BBC stopped broadcasting in certain Middle Eastern languages, Chinese radio literally took over those frequencies. The conversation addresses whether USAGM could be replaced by a State Department or NSC communications apparatus. Kent concedes the current structure is not the only possible model but argues it should have been left operational while alternatives were developed. He identifies the fate of 10 imprisoned USAGM journalists in countries including Vietnam, Iran, Belarus, and Russia as his gravest concern. Wittes shares a personal anecdote about VOA's Ukrainian and Russian language services covering his protest projections onto the Russian embassy in Washington, illustrating how different language desks can micro-target distinct audiences with the same event. Kent responds that for Russian listeners, the deeper message is that an individual American can publicly protest without arrest, modeling a freedom that does not exist in their own country.

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