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In the first months of the pandemic, the U.S. Army failed to warn most soldiers about Chinese and Russian coronavirus disinformation, according to a survey conducted last year and obtained by Foreign Policy.A survey conducted in late May 2020, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, indicated the vast majority of U.S. Army soldiers and civilian employees—around 87 percent—had not received any information from their units about adversarial propaganda about the virus.The study, entitled the “Army COVID-19 Campaign Plan,” came at the direction of senior Army leadership, who held outsized fears of Chinese and Russian propaganda impacting U.S. military readiness and recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 5,400 people took part in the online survey. Just over half were civilian employees with the rest drawn from different components of the Army.
