Today, I submitted written testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs.
Chairman Diaz-Balart, Ranking Member Frankel, and Members of the Subcommittee:
My name is Luke Hogg. I am a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank focused on promoting innovation, strengthening governance, and advancing national security. I respectfully urge the Subcommittee to provide not less than $60 million for the Open Technology Fund (OTF) in fiscal year 2027 so it can continue supporting technologies that help people living under authoritarian censorship and surveillance reach the free and open internet securely. I also respectfully request report language directing the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to submit to Congress, and make public, a consolidated report on federal public-information and internet-freedom programs. That report should identify the populations served, the tools and methods employed, the measurable outcomes of those programs, and how agencies are using modern technologies to expand access to reliable information in closed or highly restricted media environments. Congress should also require a detailed operating plan and advance notice before funding designated for OTF is paused, transferred, consolidated, or otherwise materially altered.
The case for this request is stronger today than it was during the FY2026 appropriations cycle because OTF is entering FY2027 after a materially lower enacted baseline and amid extraordinary uncertainty about the future of USAGM itself. In the final FY2026 Explanatory Statement, Congress designated $40.5 million for OTF. That matters. A $60 million FY2027 request is not a request to indulge a program that has already been overfunded. It is a request to restore and expand support for one of the few parts of the U.S. international communications architecture that is plainly built for the realities of modern communications and focused on digital censorship, surveillance, and internet shutdowns.
That budget question cannot be separated from the broader political context. In March 2025, Executive Order 14238 directed USAGM to eliminate non-statutory components and functions to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law and reduce statutory functions and personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law. USAGM subsequently reported in its FY2025 Agency Financial Report that it transitioned to a statutory minimum posture during the latter portion of the fiscal year. The administration’s FY2026 budget then requested $153 million to support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations, and the FY2027 Budget Appendix would move international communications activities into a new State Department account funded at $238 million while giving the Secretary of State broad authority to allocate, transfer, consolidate, or otherwise make those funds available, explicitly stating that nothing in that authority requires the continued funding of any specific grantee at historical levels. While I strongly support this broader reorganization of USAGM, this is exactly the sort of moment in which Congress should be more explicit about protecting high-performing programs, not less.
OTF is especially deserving of that protection because it is not simply another broadcaster or legacy institution seeking to preserve old habits. Congress gave OTF a distinct statutory mission in 2021: to promote unrestricted access to uncensored information online for individuals, especially journalists, in repressive environments, including through tools that circumvent censorship and support secure communications. The governing statute also directs OTF to help equip USG itself with internet-freedom technologies, coordinate with State Department and other federal internet-freedom programs, undergo independent technical review and security-focused due diligence, and remain subject to oversight and federal audit authorities. Congress did not create OTF as a decorative appendage to the existing system. It created OTF because digital authoritarianism requires a different toolkit than traditional broadcasting platforms.
The evidence suggests OTF is performing that mission at a meaningful scale. USAGM reported in its FY2024 Agency Financial Report that OTF-supported circumvention tools regularly served as many as 46 million monthly active users in FY2024, a 400 percent increase from 2021 levels, and that those tools unlock audiences for independent media operating in closed spaces. USAGM’s own OTF materials also state that more than 2 billion people use OTF-supported technology daily. Just as important, OTF’s value is not limited to end-user VPN access. USAGM states that OTF provides network support that helps make federal websites and applications more secure and resistant to censorship, provides secure tip lines for sources, and deploys leading internet-freedom technologies so audiences can continue accessing content on the open web despite rising censorship pressure. In highly censored environments, truthful content is only as useful as the means available to reach it safely. OTF increasingly supplies those means.
OTF is also unusually cost-effective. OTF states that its Surge and Sustain Fund supports large-scale circumvention tools at an average cost of $0.07 per user per month, or less than $1 per user per year, in highly repressive environments such as China, Iran, and Russia. At the same time, USAGM’s FY2024 Agency Financial Report shows that OTF is doing more than subsidizing basic access tools. In FY2024, OTF supported projects using generative AI for censorship detection and circumvention, funded Geneva to automate the discovery of censorship-evasion strategies, advanced the Messaging Layer Security standard for private messaging, and backed tools that can operate with little to no connectivity during internet shutdowns. This is exactly the kind of adaptive, technically literate work Congress should want to preserve as authoritarian governments become more sophisticated in blocking websites, removing apps, throttling traffic, monitoring users, and cutting connectivity altogether.
One of OTF’s core strengths is that it is not just funding closed, proprietary products; it is deliberately investing in an open-source ecosystem that can be inspected, improved, localized, and sustained over time. OTF’s own guidance for the Internet Freedom Fund specifically prioritizes “new, open-source circumvention technologies” and improvements to existing open-source internet-freedom tools, while its FOSS Sustainability Fund is dedicated to the long-term maintenance, security, and resilience of free and open source software that underpins anti-censorship and privacy technologies. OTF also says it follows a model of open philanthropy and governance, grounded in the view that the strongest internet-freedom tools are built openly and collaboratively. That open-source orientation matters for policy as well as for technology: it makes tools easier to audit for security flaws, reduces dependence on any single vendor, strengthens interoperability across the broader digital-security ecosystem, and helps ensure that the infrastructure supporting internet freedom remains durable even when individual projects or funding streams change.
For these reasons, Congress should treat OTF as the exception. USAGM is in need of serious reform and fiscal cuts, but OTF is one of the strongest arguments for a targeted rather than indiscriminate approach. The United States still needs a serious strategy for reaching audiences in closed societies and OTF is one of the clearest places to invest. The Subcommittee should therefore provide at least $60 million for OTF in FY2027, require a serious public accounting of federal public-information and internet-freedom programs, and preserve strong consultation and notification requirements before OTF funds are paused, transferred, consolidated, or otherwise materially altered. That would not be a defense of the status quo. It would be a targeted investment in one of the few federal programs built expressly for the digital age: open, auditable, low-cost technologies that help people circumvent censorship, communicate securely, and reach independent reporting under the hardest conditions in the world.
