The U.S. has covertly destabilized nations. With Canada, it's being done in public

Former senior Canadian intelligence officials say Canada needs to be on the lookout for campaigns aimed at destabilizing the country amid U.S. President Donald Trump's escalating 51st state threats.

And they told CBC News that the most potent weapon wielded by the Trump administration to advance the cause of annexation would likely not be the intelligence agencies directed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

"I would regard Mr. Musk as a problem," said Ward Elcock, who headed CSIS for a decade including during the 9/11 attacks and also served as national security adviser. "I think that's on a number of fronts."

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has worked to destabilize many governments and nations in the past, using methods as mundane as corruption and as drastic as assassination, but the former spy chiefs say a campaign aimed at Canada would likely rely less on cloak-and-dagger tactics and more on social media — such as the Elon Musk-owned X platform.

"Is [Trump] trying to change political views in this country? If so, that's foreign interference," said Dick Fadden, who also headed CSIS and served as national security adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

"It's no more acceptable from the United States than it is from China or Russia or anybody else."

Neil Bisson is a former CSIS intelligence officer who is now director of the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network and teaches at the University of Ottawa's Professional Development Institute.

He says that in spite of visible signs of Canadian unity in the face of annexation threats, there are those who are vulnerable to the siren call, particularly among the young who feel economically disadvantaged.

"That would be one of the linchpins, one of the cracks in the armour that another country would be looking at trying to exploit," he told CBC News. "If you have individuals who are concerned about where their next meal is coming from or if they're going to get a roof over their head, that supersedes sovereignty."

He said those Canadians could be targeted by propaganda campaigns that sell American citizenship as the answer to their economic woes.

"And there will be individuals within Canada who could potentially be co-opted to push that narrative forward," said Bisson.

Trump administration officials have given numerous rationales for the tariffs against Canada, but Trump himself has said that he wants to use economic force to join Canada to the U.S. On Tuesday morning, he again said Canada could only avoid economic ruin through annexation.

"He intends clearly to try and destabilize our economy," said Elcock. "The reality is that if Canada is really impoverished, people may start to think about it. That's always the possibility — that not all Canadians are are going to be willing to endure economic deprivation. And so some may start to think about it as time goes along."

Fadden says governments and intelligence agencies have learned the hard way of the power of disinformation and propaganda channelled through social media.