that’s a reflection of society

Sure, and people like quick solutions to problems and largely don’t think about long-term consequences. And then they’re all “surprised pikachu” when that thing inevitably morphs into something they don’t like.

The government must have deep surveillance capabilities in such a situation.

Sure… in wartime. Outside of wartime, it’s totally reasonable to have serious limitations on the government’s power here.

the lack of competitive elections beyond two parties. This is on some level the responsibility of US citizens and not a “black box” model of government.

Agreed with the first part.

The second part is a bit sticky though, because even if a majority of citizens support a specific change, if their representatives don’t, their SOL. For example, in my state, a majority of the populace wanted to expand legalization of marijuana, but the legislature shot it down, even after a passed ballot initiative that should have been legally binding. The root of this problem is the two-party system, since people are willing to vote for the “lesser of two evils,” which doesn’t communicate their support for some policies from the other party.

What I do know is that you don’t need an imminent threat of a physical invasion to limit the influence of much larger countries on your political environment.

Sure, but you need something to justify that level of interference. In the US, we have a concept of an “enemy of the state,” which is what we used to justify the TikTok ban. I think that was overreach personally (China isn’t an active threat, and TikTok is far enough removed from China to be less of an issue), but I accept the premise for that. Our “enemies of the state” is a legally defined list, which includes: China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea, and a handful of others.

That was certainly the case for Ukraine, but I’m not so sure about Albania, as they have even less reason to consider China an “enemy” as the US, and I think that’s already shaky at best (why are we doing so much business w/ our enemy? How is an enemy one of our biggest trading partners?).

You don’t want the CCP promoting political movements that they have bribed or see as being more beneficial to their interests.

Sure, but there’s a big difference between censorship and counter-propaganda. The Albanian and US governments could instead correct misinformation instead of banning media orgs they don’t have control over.

Perhaps dealing with an invasion for a decade plus made me a bit paranoid, but I do support the government being able to regulate the ability of foreign social media/services to influence local politics and spread misinformation and propaganda.

You need to be very careful about this, because this is exactly the same strategies taken by authoritarian regimes, like Nazi Germany. Again, to be clear, I’m not calling Ukraine fascist (that’s Russian propaganda, and Russia is absolutely fascist), I’m saying this type of policy is used by fascists.

If you control the media, you control the people and can get away with anything. That’s why I’m so against government censorship. I’d much rather have Russians interfering w/ our media than have my country dictate what speech is acceptable. To quote Rage Against the Machine:

Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?

Controlling social media is controlling the present. Rip that out by the roots and put serious controls around anything that looks like it. Transparency is generally the best policy, so work with journalists to expose the propaganda for what it is instead of trying to silence it.