State Department Victim Of Extreme Sarcasm.

* Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said the U.S. Congress is lagging behind other nations in writing legislation that could help stop foreign disinformation campaigns.

"I would argue one of our great challenges legislatively [in the] United States Congress is both understanding and coming to grips with the impact of social media on our body politic, on our sense of ourselves, on our ability to focus," he said at the Halifax International Security Forum.

He called out China-owned Tik-Tok as being malevolent, siphoning off huge amounts of data to be used as a tool of state power.

"Getting my kids to stop looking at TikTok every day, every minute, is enormously challenging. It's engaging. I would even say addictive," he said.

The State Department is the lead agency in charge of countering disinformation issued by Russia via media platforms such as RT and Sputnik, but Coons...