While the Global Engagement Center’s budget allocation amounted to peanuts, it extracted a price many Americans were unwilling to pay: their freedom of expression.
Thanks for this very good article. Sarah. I learned some details I didn't know before.
In the interest of viewpoint diversity, I'm offering these other perspectives:
Statement of Walter Kimmage, former official from the GEC (Global Engagement Center), before Congress, October 23, detailing some of the threats from foreign intelligence services and other actors from Russia, China, and Iran, and the mission of the Global Engagement Center. Despite the actions of a Republican Congress against this Center, and many other actions against offices at universities such as Stanford, studying what we'd broadly call "disinformation", this doesn't look like "censorship" to me. I always recognize there's a danger of government overreach, but liberal democracies and open societies are vulnerable to the laundered falsehoods and manipulations of bad actors in authoritarian regimes. It looks to me like this is a "wicked problem" that liberal democracies need to solve together, if that's possible.
In addition, Anne Applebaum's scholarship and perspective in this area matter since she knows the politics, the players, many of the diplomats, and the cultures of countries like Russia, and Russia's allies of convenience, in sowing cynicism and nihilism in western Europe and the U.S. and elsewhere. Her recent book Autocracy Inc. describes how much of this network of autocracies works. Her recent Atlantic article gives a briefer account of how this particular kind of propaganda from Russia and elsewhere seeks to demoralize. It isn't necessary to get the citizens of western countries to believe outright lies but to increase distrust in their own systems of government and their own civic institutions.
As for the 2024 election in the U.S., there were of course the expected attempts to manipulate the outcome with falsehoods spread about both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The outcome itself, according to media analysists and scholars at this point, probably was affected not much by those attempts, but the longer term strategies from the autocracies is to continue to increase distrust in elections and democratic politics. The German publication DW gives a really helpful summary of attempts at disinformation and the U.S. Presidential election:
As for distrust in the "mainstream media" (Helen Lewis has suggested the term is no longer even appropriate since alternative media draws more viewers and readers), I'll continue to be the dissenter or "heterodox" one in this space. When we've reached the point where Joe Rogan's podcasts draw more listeners than anything like a reasonable news outlet, liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, or something else, I think we're in what Renee DiResta calls the "choose your own adventure epistemology" and everyone just finds what they want to believe anyway, to reinforce and amplify their existing beliefs. Recently, I came across an interview with journalist Matt Pearce in which he describes the enormous challenges facing journalism as a profession and media enterprises in general. He aptly calls what we're moving into as a kind of reversion to a "folk story society" ripe for subversion by demagogues, where actual sources of reliable information don't matter. I find his perspective quite in alignment with what Hannah Arendt described as the "annihilation of truth."
As for getting any accurate perspective on the GEC or anything else from Elon Musk, I'm highly dubious. I'll just close these comments by noting Musk's use of his platform as an overt political project supporting MAGA world, Trump, and either conservative or far-right parties in other countries. It's a constant stream of disinformation most days because I see it. Notably, also, three European leaders (of the UK, France, and Germany) have denounced Musk in recent days for his overt intervention in their politics and their elections.
Indeed, if only they'd stuck to their "foreign state" and "foreign audiences" mission! Something I omitted from the piece for length is Lea Gabrielle's testimony about a program they had to terminate because the contractor was disseminating disinformation targeting US citizens on behalf of the GEC -- just one example we know of.
Senator MERKLEY. So, in 2019, one of the reasons I was asking about how much is
done out of house is once you contract with outside groups, sometimes it is hard to keep control over exactly what they are doing. We had at least one case where I think things got a little out of hand with the Iran disinformation project and which they were putting out essentially disinformation rather than being the counter disinformation, including attacking and smearing some U.S. citizens.
And I know you cut off funding to them, or your predecessor did. I am not sure just when you came in. Can you just fill us in a little bit on that, and how are you developing strategies so we are not funding groups that actually are engaged in disinformation rather
than countering disinformation?
Ms. GABRIELLE. Thank you for raising that important issue. I was the special envoy and coordinator when that issue arose, and I will tell you that within hours of learning about the fact that one of our implementers had gone outside the scope of their agreement—it was never intended for them to be addressing U.S. domestic audiences. As soon as we found out that they had gone outside the scope of the agreement, I immediately suspended that particular project. And then we conducted an internal review and ultimately decided to end that contract—to end that agreement.
We did have some lessons learned from that. We have teams monitoring social media of our implementers. I have been very focused on implementing measures of effectiveness and monitoring and evaluation in all of our programs. We have an M&E team.
Absolutely wonderful. I am glad I had the time to check your other articles linked here, here and here... amazing work. I am so grateful for your "pen". 💛
Attention to this has not yet been addressed by the larger library community. I think we must to become whole and reliable in our affirmation of freedom of expression.
The Twitter Files work by Matt Taiibi has been ignored. I have submitted to write about them for the library literature but not yet gotten much interest.
I understand there's a lot of controversy and skepticism surrounding Taibbi and Twitter / X specifically, but many of the most important claims of jawboning are corroborated by government documents and other primary sources. I'm eager to see what The Daily Wire et al. v. State Department et al. case churns up that did not come out in Murthy v. Missouri. I suspect this will percolate into the library literature eventually (as in, a generation or more from now), but it's the biggest blind spot of #critlib from my perspective.
Thanks for this very good article. Sarah. I learned some details I didn't know before.
In the interest of viewpoint diversity, I'm offering these other perspectives:
Statement of Walter Kimmage, former official from the GEC (Global Engagement Center), before Congress, October 23, detailing some of the threats from foreign intelligence services and other actors from Russia, China, and Iran, and the mission of the Global Engagement Center. Despite the actions of a Republican Congress against this Center, and many other actions against offices at universities such as Stanford, studying what we'd broadly call "disinformation", this doesn't look like "censorship" to me. I always recognize there's a danger of government overreach, but liberal democracies and open societies are vulnerable to the laundered falsehoods and manipulations of bad actors in authoritarian regimes. It looks to me like this is a "wicked problem" that liberal democracies need to solve together, if that's possible.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA17/20231025/116506/HMTG-118-FA17-Wstate-KimmageD-20231025.pdf
In addition, Anne Applebaum's scholarship and perspective in this area matter since she knows the politics, the players, many of the diplomats, and the cultures of countries like Russia, and Russia's allies of convenience, in sowing cynicism and nihilism in western Europe and the U.S. and elsewhere. Her recent book Autocracy Inc. describes how much of this network of autocracies works. Her recent Atlantic article gives a briefer account of how this particular kind of propaganda from Russia and elsewhere seeks to demoralize. It isn't necessary to get the citizens of western countries to believe outright lies but to increase distrust in their own systems of government and their own civic institutions.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/
As for the 2024 election in the U.S., there were of course the expected attempts to manipulate the outcome with falsehoods spread about both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The outcome itself, according to media analysists and scholars at this point, probably was affected not much by those attempts, but the longer term strategies from the autocracies is to continue to increase distrust in elections and democratic politics. The German publication DW gives a really helpful summary of attempts at disinformation and the U.S. Presidential election:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-what-role-did-disinformation-play-in-the-us-election/a-70729575
As for distrust in the "mainstream media" (Helen Lewis has suggested the term is no longer even appropriate since alternative media draws more viewers and readers), I'll continue to be the dissenter or "heterodox" one in this space. When we've reached the point where Joe Rogan's podcasts draw more listeners than anything like a reasonable news outlet, liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, or something else, I think we're in what Renee DiResta calls the "choose your own adventure epistemology" and everyone just finds what they want to believe anyway, to reinforce and amplify their existing beliefs. Recently, I came across an interview with journalist Matt Pearce in which he describes the enormous challenges facing journalism as a profession and media enterprises in general. He aptly calls what we're moving into as a kind of reversion to a "folk story society" ripe for subversion by demagogues, where actual sources of reliable information don't matter. I find his perspective quite in alignment with what Hannah Arendt described as the "annihilation of truth."
https://mattdpearce.substack.com/p/journalisms-fight-for-survival-in?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
As for getting any accurate perspective on the GEC or anything else from Elon Musk, I'm highly dubious. I'll just close these comments by noting Musk's use of his platform as an overt political project supporting MAGA world, Trump, and either conservative or far-right parties in other countries. It's a constant stream of disinformation most days because I see it. Notably, also, three European leaders (of the UK, France, and Germany) have denounced Musk in recent days for his overt intervention in their politics and their elections.
Indeed, if only they'd stuck to their "foreign state" and "foreign audiences" mission! Something I omitted from the piece for length is Lea Gabrielle's testimony about a program they had to terminate because the contractor was disseminating disinformation targeting US citizens on behalf of the GEC -- just one example we know of.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-116shrg41862/pdf/CHRG-116shrg41862.pdf
Senator MERKLEY. So, in 2019, one of the reasons I was asking about how much is
done out of house is once you contract with outside groups, sometimes it is hard to keep control over exactly what they are doing. We had at least one case where I think things got a little out of hand with the Iran disinformation project and which they were putting out essentially disinformation rather than being the counter disinformation, including attacking and smearing some U.S. citizens.
And I know you cut off funding to them, or your predecessor did. I am not sure just when you came in. Can you just fill us in a little bit on that, and how are you developing strategies so we are not funding groups that actually are engaged in disinformation rather
than countering disinformation?
Ms. GABRIELLE. Thank you for raising that important issue. I was the special envoy and coordinator when that issue arose, and I will tell you that within hours of learning about the fact that one of our implementers had gone outside the scope of their agreement—it was never intended for them to be addressing U.S. domestic audiences. As soon as we found out that they had gone outside the scope of the agreement, I immediately suspended that particular project. And then we conducted an internal review and ultimately decided to end that contract—to end that agreement.
We did have some lessons learned from that. We have teams monitoring social media of our implementers. I have been very focused on implementing measures of effectiveness and monitoring and evaluation in all of our programs. We have an M&E team.
Nice overview, Sarah. There should be more in the library literature on this issue.
Absolutely wonderful. I am glad I had the time to check your other articles linked here, here and here... amazing work. I am so grateful for your "pen". 💛
Attention to this has not yet been addressed by the larger library community. I think we must to become whole and reliable in our affirmation of freedom of expression.
The Twitter Files work by Matt Taiibi has been ignored. I have submitted to write about them for the library literature but not yet gotten much interest.
I understand there's a lot of controversy and skepticism surrounding Taibbi and Twitter / X specifically, but many of the most important claims of jawboning are corroborated by government documents and other primary sources. I'm eager to see what The Daily Wire et al. v. State Department et al. case churns up that did not come out in Murthy v. Missouri. I suspect this will percolate into the library literature eventually (as in, a generation or more from now), but it's the biggest blind spot of #critlib from my perspective.