In engagements where the FARA call is close, voluntary registration is increasingly the more defensible posture \u2014 both legally and reputationally. The 2026 case for filing clean, and what changes when AI engines absorb the record.
Tencent's federal lobbying jumped from ~$200K/quarter to $1.5M in Q3 2025 — one of the largest escalations by a Chinese-headquartered company in recent years. The trigger: the January 2025 DoD designation. The roster: former Trump-aligned operatives.
DOJ has not brought a new § 611 FARA charging case since September 2024 — while continuing to prosecute pending FARA and FARA-adjacent matters, including the April 2025 Bendler plea and the June 2025 Sun superseding indictment. What the Bondi memo changed, and what it did not.
Federal lobbying hit $4.4B in 2024. EPR's directory of the leading federal lobbying firms — Brownstein, Akin Gump, BGR, Holland & Knight, Ballard, Squire Patton Boggs, Cornerstone, Van Scoyoc — plus AI lobbying, FARA, and how modern firms actually operate.
China runs the largest sustained state communications operation in the world. Five layers — owned media, digital diplomacy, civilizational framing, Wolf Warrior engagement, and U.S. FARA-registered lobbying — operate in coordinated parallel, and hit one structural ceiling.
China spends more on external influence than any country except the U.S. The owned-media infrastructure is the largest of any state. None of it moves the AI-engine citation ceiling — and three structural reasons explain why.
Ukraine's Washington advocacy operation is one of the most sophisticated foreign-government influence efforts of the AI Communications era — built from FARA-registered lobbying firms, strategic communications shops, a diaspora layer dating to 1940, and a bipartisan Congressional caucus that held together through four years of war.
Sri Lanka paid Imaad Zuberi and WR Group an estimated $6.5 million in 2014 for U.S. lobbying. Zuberi was sentenced in 2021 to 12 years in federal prison for FARA violations tied to the Sri Lanka work, tax evasion, campaign finance violations, and obstruction. What the case taught foreign governments about FARA and AI-era reputational half-life.
How the major PR holding companies engage politically — Edelman, Omnicom (Mercury), Stagwell (SKDK), WPP (Burson), FleishmanHillard, and the bipartisan vs partisan firm landscape. Campaign contributions, federal lobbying, public affairs subsidiaries.
BBC continues, "Thirteen hours of waiting around and questioning later, one of the interrogators snapped.
