The DISRUPT Act Demands a New U.S. Political Warfare Service
The 2025 Defending International Security by Restricting Unlawful Partnerships and Tactics (DISRUPT) Act represents Congress’s most ambitious bipartisan initiative to counter the coordinated challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
By mandating an interagency plan to “disrupt, frustrate, and constrain” adversary cooperation, the Act implicitly acknowledges that the United States is engaged in a global contest of systems, one that cannot be won through traditional deterrence alone.
Effective implementation of the DISRUPT Act requires the creation of a Political Warfare Service 2.0 (PWS 2.0), following in the footsteps of World War II’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), to operationalize interagency political and irregular warfare strategy.
Only such an institution can provide the organizational agility, unity of effort, and strategic imagination necessary to meet the integrated threats of the 21st century.
The DISRUPT Act: Congress’s Call to Strategic Arms
Introduced by Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Delegate James Moylan (R-GU), and supported in the Senate by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and David McCormick (R-PA), the DISRUPT Act (full text) was attached to the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The bill directs the Secretaries of State, Defense (War), Commerce, and Treasury, along with the Directors of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to establish task forces and a coordinated strategy to address what the legislation terms “adversary alignment.”
Congress explicitly identifies a pattern of deepening cooperation among authoritarian regimes, such as arms transfers from North Korea to Russia, Chinese dual-use technology exports, Iranian missile proliferation, and joint disinformation campaigns. These are all designed to erode U.S. and allied influence.
The Act warns that conflict with any one of these adversaries could cascade into multiple simultaneous theaters, overwhelming America’s current command structures and planning tools.
The Strategic Challenge: The Dark Quad and the New Convergence
For the first time since 1945, the United States faces not a single peer competitor, but a coalition of revisionist powers united by a shared goal of undermining the liberal international order.
This emerging “Dark Quad” of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (CRInK) combines industrial capacity, military technology, and information operations in ways that threaten to create a seamless global front of authoritarian influence. The RAND Corporation’s 2018 An American Way of Political Warfare warned that adversaries have mastered the art of operating in the “gray zone,” where political subversion, economic coercion, cyber intrusion, and proxy warfare converge. The CRInK network represents the institutionalization of that gray-zone model on a global scale.
The Missing Institution: Toward a Political Warfare Service 2.0
The United States once possessed such an instrument. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), founded in 1942 under Major General William J. Donovan, integrated intelligence, covert action, resistance support, psychological operations, and unconventional warfare into a single strategic entity.
It provided President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with both global situational awareness and an agile means of shaping events behind enemy lines. A Political Warfare Service 2.0 (PWS 2.0) or Office of Strategic Disruption (OSD) would fill this void, uniting the existing fragments of America’s irregular and political warfare capabilities into an integrated command for strategic competition and gray-zone campaigning.
Operationalizing the DISRUPT Act
The DISRUPT Act mandates reports and task forces, but to move from assessment to action, Congress and the executive branch must institutionalize mechanisms of coordination and execution. A PWS 2.0 would provide five essential functions: strategic fusion, global campaign design, digital modernization, allied integration, and institutional education.
This structure would transform the DISRUPT Act’s intent into an enduring capability.
Building the Policy Foundation: A Modern NSDD for Irregular Warfare
Implementation of PWS 2.0 requires presidential authority and leadership. The White House should issue a new National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) on Irregular and Political Warfare, modeled on President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 NSDD-32, which codified Cold War political warfare strategy.
Such a directive should define irregular and political warfare as essential missions, establish interagency roles, empower a PWS 2.0, and institutionalize metrics for gray-zone success. George Kennan’s 1948 memorandum on the Inauguration of Political Warfare should be updated for the 21st Century.
Institutional and Cultural Resistance
The most formidable obstacles are bureaucratic, not conceptual. Agencies guard their authorities jealously; interagency initiatives often dissolve into turf disputes. Overcoming this resistance requires presidential leadership and congressional mandate. A PWS 2.0 should report jointly to the NSC and DNI, ensuring strategic alignment and operational flexibility.
Implications for the Indo-Pacific and Beyond
The logic of the DISRUPT Act extends naturally to the Asia-Indo-Pacific, where the fates of Korea and Taiwan are increasingly intertwined. China’s alignment with Russia and North Korea threatens to link the Eurasian and Pacific theaters into a single front.
A Political Warfare Service would allow the United States to synchronize efforts across these regions by integrating deterrence in Northeast Asia with global information and economic campaigns.
Recommendations
Establish a Political Warfare Service (PWS 2.0) modeled on the OSS.
Issue a Presidential NSDD on Political and Irregular Warfare and update George Kennan’s 1948 memo.
Digitize strategic planning with AI-enabled tools.
Institutionalize education through a National Political Warfare Center.
Integrate allies into the DISRUPT framework.
Campaign in the gray zone to defeat CRInK malign activities..
What’s in a Name?
Critics will assail the Political Warfare Service. Rightly so. We have a proliferation of names for every phenomenon, and every institution, organization, and agency to address the phenomena.
This causes definition and terminology paralysis, preventing the intellectual rigor necessary to effectively address national security challenges, as more time is spent naming challenges than acquiring the deep knowledge and understanding required to address them.
It doesn’t matter what name is used. What is necessary is to operationalize the DISRUPT Act with a strategy and an interagency organization that can campaign to disrupt the Dark Quad or CRInK in support of U.S. national security objectives.
The name does not matter. The strategy and our nation’s ability to campaign in the gray zone do.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Initiative
The DISRUPT Act is more than a policy proposal; it is a recognition that the United States is once again engaged in a world-spanning contest of wills. The convergence of authoritarian powers demands institutional transformation.
Just as General Donovan’s OSS provided the blueprint for contributing to victory in the last systemic struggle, a Political Warfare Service 2.0 must now provide the architecture for this one.
About the Author: David Maxwell
David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.
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