The Trump administration is targeting government officials who had been flagging foreign interference in U.S. elections, despite ongoing concerns that adversaries are stoking political and social divisions by spreading propaganda and disinformation online, current and former government officials said.

现任和前任政府官员表示，尽管人们一直担心对手通过在网上散布宣传和虚假信息来煽动政治和社会分裂，那些曾经警告外国干预美国选举的官员遭到了特朗普政府的针对。

The administration has already reassigned several dozen officials working on the issue at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forced out others at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, they said.

他们说，政府已将联邦调查局数十名负责该问题的官员调任，并迫使国土安全部下属的网络安全和基础设施安全局负责该问题的一些官员离职。

The cuts have focused on people who were not only combating false content online but also working on broader safeguards to protect elections from cyberattacks or other attempts to disrupt voting systems. In last year’s election, the teams tracked and publicized numerous influence operations from Russia, China and Iran to blunt their impact on unsuspecting voters.

这次裁员所针对的不仅是那些在网上打击虚假内容的人员，还包括从事更广泛保障工作，寻求保护选举免受网络攻击或其他破坏投票系统企图的人员。在去年的选举中，这些团队追踪并公布了来自俄罗斯、中国和伊朗的众多影响行动，以削弱它们对毫无戒心的选民的影响。

Experts are alarmed that the cuts could leave the United States defenseless against covert foreign influence operations and embolden foreign adversaries seeking to disrupt democratic governments.

专家们警告说，削减开支可能会使美国对外国的秘密影响行动失去防御能力，并使企图破坏各国民主政府的外国对手更加大胆。

Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, warned in a letter to President Trump that the cuts were comparable to shutting down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ahead of hurricane season.

亚利桑那州州务卿、民主党人阿德里安·丰特斯在给特朗普总统的一封信中警告说，这些人员裁减相当于在飓风季节前关闭国家海洋和大气管理局。

“This decision undermines Arizona’s election security,” he wrote, “at a time when our enemies around the world are using online tools to push their agendas and ideologies into our very homes.”

“这个决定破坏了亚利桑那州的选举安全，”他写道，“而此时我们在世界各地的敌人正利用网络工具，把他们的议程和意识形态推到我们的家中。”

Mr. Trump and other officials have said that in the guise of fighting misinformation and disinformation, the government had infringed on free speech rights of Americans. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at Department of Homeland Security, said that the cybersecurity agency “is undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis-, dis- and malinformation,” and that while that is continuing, personnel who had worked on those issues “have been placed on administrative leave.”

特朗普和其他官员表示，此前政府打着打击错误信息和虚假信息的幌子，侵犯了美国人的言论自由权利。国土安全部副部长特里西娅·麦克劳克林表示，该网络安全机构“正在评估其执行选举安全任务的情况，特别关注与错误、虚假和虚假信息有关的任何工作”，在评估工作继续进行的同时，此前负责这些问题的人员“已被行政休假”。

Acting on one of Mr. Trump’s first executive orders, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Feb. 5 shut down an F.B.I. task force that had been formed after Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election and reassigned several dozen officials and agents who had been involved, the officials said. The F.B.I. confirmed in a statement the agency “has fully complied” with Ms. Bondi’s directive to disband the task force.

这些官员说，根据特朗普的首批行政命令之一，司法部长帕姆·邦迪于2月5日关闭了联邦调查局在俄罗斯干预2016年总统大选后成立的特别工作组，并调整了数十名参与其中的官员和特工的岗位。联邦调查局在声明中证实，该机构“完全遵守”了邦迪关于解散特别工作组的指示。

CISA has also forced out more than a dozen officials who had been monitoring foreign influence operations targeting the nation’s elections. They were among the more than 130 positions eliminated in total at the agency, according to a department statement.

网络安全和基础设施安全局还迫使十几名官员下台，这些官员曾负责监督针对美国选举的外国影响行动。根据该部门的一份声明，他们包括在该机构总共被裁撤的130多个职位当中。

On Friday, an internal memorandum from the agency’s acting director, Bridget E. Bean, announced the suspension of funding for a program that coordinated election security on the federal, state and local levels.

上周五，该局代理局长布里奇特·比恩在一份内部备忘录中宣布，暂停为一个协调联邦、州和地方层面选举安全的项目提供资金。

Even before Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Republicans on Capitol Hill had refused to renew the mandate for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, the most prominent government agency fighting propaganda from Russia and China. It shut down in December. Many of its staff of 125 have since been reassigned, while others have left or not had their contracts renewed, officials said.

甚至在特朗普重返白宫之前，国会山的共和党人就已经拒绝延长国务院全球参与中心的授权，该中心是打击俄罗斯和中国宣传的最著名的政府机构。它于去年12月关闭。官员们表示，该中心125名员工中的许多人已被调岗，其他人已经离职或没有续约。

In recent years, many Republicans have been skeptical of warnings about disinformation campaigns. They accused Democrats of demonizing political views with which they disagreed as “Russian propaganda,” and they viewed warnings about “disinformation” as a way to pressure social media companies to censor speech supporting Mr. Trump’s views.

近年来，许多共和党人对有关虚假宣传活动的警告持怀疑态度。他们指责民主党人将他们不同意的政治观点妖魔化为“俄罗斯的宣传”，认为民主党人对“虚假信息”的警告是向社交媒体公司施压的一种方式，要求其审查支持特朗普观点的言论。

In one of his first major foreign policy speeches as vice president, JD Vance said that the Biden administration had “bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.”

在担任副总统后的首次重要外交政策演讲中，JD·万斯表示，拜登政府“胁迫社交媒体公司审查所谓的错误信息”。

副总统JD·万斯周四在国会山与参议员会面后，离开参议院共和党党团午餐会。

Republican supporters of Mr. Trump had telegraphed many of the administration’s steps ahead of his election. But the breadth and speed of the efforts to abolish the teams put in place to fight malign activity online have surprised those involved, including engineers at companies like Google and Meta, who have for years regularly exchanged information with government officials, including during Mr. Trump’s first term.

特朗普政府的许多举措，共和党支持者们在大选之前就已经有所表示。但是，为打击网络恶意活动而设立的团队被裁撤的广度和速度让参与其中的人感到意外，其中包括谷歌和Meta等公司的工程师，他们多年来一直定期与政府官员交换信息，包括在特朗普的第一个任期内。

CISA has already removed a “Rumor v. Reality” page on its website, which had provided tips to dispel disinformation about the reliability of the voting process. The internal memorandum from Ms. Bean, first reported by Wired, said that the agency would also conduct a review to correct “any past activities identified as past misconduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech.” Some officials at the State Department have been told to stop using the word “disinformation” in memos, one official there said.

网络安全和基础设施安全局已经删除了其网站上的“谣言与真实”页面，该页面提供了一些提示，以消除有关投票过程可靠性的虚假信息。据《连线》(Wired)杂志最先报道的比恩内部备忘录，该机构还将进行审查，纠正“联邦政府过去认定的任何与审查受保护言论有关的不当行为”。国务院的一名官员表示，国务院的一些官员已被告知，不要在备忘录中使用“虚假信息”一词。

The new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has made repeated promises to depoliticize the spy agencies. American officials briefed on her plans say that will include a review of the work done by the office’s Foreign Malign Influence Center, which was established by Congress in 2022.

新任国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德一再承诺将间谍机构非政治化。了解她计划的联邦官员表示，这将包括对美国国会于2022年成立的外国恶性影响中心的工作进行审查。

司法部长帕姆·邦迪本月在椭圆形办公室主持被提名为国家情报总监的塔尔西·加巴德的就职宣誓。

That office, along with the F.B.I. and the cybersecurity agency, regularly disclosed foreign influence operations during last year’s presidential campaign, including one from Iran that targeted Mr. Trump, which officials said was trying to prevent his re-election. Many of the officials involved with the efforts to warn the public about foreign influence campaigns at the time emphasized that the work was nonpartisan, and that they had avoided calling out Americans who amplified foreign narratives because of the right to free speech.

该办公室与联邦调查局和网络安全机构一起，在去年的总统竞选期间定期披露外国影响行动，其中包括伊朗针对特朗普的行动，官员们称这是在试图阻止特朗普连任。当时，许多参与向公众发出有关外国影响力运动警告的官员强调，这项工作是无党派的，出于言论自由权的考虑，他们避免指责放大外国言论的美国人。

A recent report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish research organization in Washington, credited the government effort for blunting the impact of foreign influence ahead of November’s election by informing voters, for example, that numerous videos being spread online were created by Russia and showed fake people.

华盛顿的鹰派研究机构捍卫民主基金会最近发布的一份报告称赞政府在11月大选前削弱外国影响的努力，比如告知选民，网上流传的大量视频是俄罗斯制作的，里面显示的人是假的。

“The U.S. government should continue to treat foreign malign influence as a national security issue,” the report said, calling for the agencies to receive “the proper funding to continue their work.”

“美国政府应继续将外国恶意影响视为国家安全问题，”报告称，并呼吁这些机构获得“适当的资金，以继续开展工作”。

Instead, the new administration has followed the recommendations of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for restructuring the federal government from which Mr. Trump sought to distance himself during the presidential campaign and has now embraced.

与此相反，新政府遵循了保守派重组联邦政府的蓝图“2025计划”的建议，特朗普在总统竞选期间试图与该计划保持距离，现在却开始接受。

Project 2025 called for the closing of the election security unit at CISA, as well as the F.B.I.’s task force. Republicans in Congress and several states have also waged a legal and political campaign against what they claimed was a sweeping “censorship industrial complex” under the Biden administration.

2025计划要求关闭网络安全和基础设施安全局的选举安全部门，以及联邦调查局的相关特别工作组。国会和几个州的共和党人也发起了一场法律和政治运动，反对他们所称的拜登政府领导下的全面“审查产业综合体”。

“I think that they may have drunk their own Kool-Aid in terms of believing that there is this kind of censorship industrial complex that all these people were involved in,” Lawrence Norden, a vice president at the progressive Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said, referring to the officials now shutting down the teams. “I’m not sure that they fully understand who everybody is and what they do.”

“我认为，他们可能是喝了自己炮制的迷汤，相信所有这些人都参与了这种审查产业综合体，”纽约大学法学院进步派机构布伦南司法中心副主任劳伦斯·诺顿说。他指的是现在撤销这些团队的官员们。“我不确定他们是否完全了解每个人的身份以及他们的工作。”

Lance Hunter, a professor at Augusta University in Georgia, said that eliminating defenses against foreign influence campaigns would leave the United States more vulnerable to them.

乔治亚州奥古斯塔大学教授兰斯·亨特说，取消针对外国影响运动的防御措施，会让美国更容易受到这些活动的影响。

“Foreign influence operations are often conducted to attempt to increase the appearance of government ineffectiveness and instability in the country,” he said. “They are also carried out to disrupt elections and increase division and polarization in the country.”

“外国施加影响的行动通常是为了加深我国政府无能和国家不稳定的印象，”他说。“他们还破坏选举，加剧我国的分裂和极化。”

During his visit to Europe last week, however, Mr. Vance belittled the idea that a foreign adversary like Russia could sway an election in a strong democratic nation, referring to accusations that resulted in Romania overturning the first round of voting in its election.

然而，在上周访问欧洲期间，万斯驳斥了俄罗斯这样的外国对手会影响一个强大民主国家选举的说法，他提到了导致罗马尼亚推翻第一轮选举投票的指控。

“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousands of dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country,” Mr. Vance said, “then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

万斯说，“如果你的民主可以被外国几十万美元的数字广告摧毁，那么它本来就不是很强大。”