“Disinformation”

When the US State Department launched its Iran Disinformation Project in the autumn of 2018, it was hailed as a new weapon in the war on hostile foreign propaganda. Staffed by diaspora Iranians and handed an initial $1.5 million of public funding, the online operation was designed to neutralise Iranian “lies” about the West with “real-time counter narratives and truth-telling”. Moreover, it would achieve this by amplifying the voices and actions of “courageous Iranians who reveal the regime for the evil it truly is”. This, at least, was the grand idea.

Recently, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced the creation of a new office within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI): The Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC). It would encompass “election threat work, essentially looking at foreign influence and interference in elections, but it also deals with disinformation more generally.” Legislation creating the center was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2022.

Although its work nominally deals with disinformation targeting U.S. elections and public opinion within the United States, there are at least two questions that need to be asked: First, is this office essential or duplicative of other ongoing efforts? Second, is this even appropriate work in which the federal government should be engaged?

IN A previous article, I described how raison d’État – the doctrine by which the State acts in its own interests and ignores constraints of law or natural right – frequently comes in a benevolent guise. Segments of the population are conceived of as vulnerable, and the State exerts a ‘power of care’ to improve their well-being. This ultimately serves the purpose of securing their loyalty in the absence of a theological justification for ruling.

Ottawa Police Service stop broadcasting the trial of Detective Helen Grus – despite (or perhaps because of) intense public interest in Canada and worldwide.

Since September 2022, every appearance by Detective Grus before the Internal Trials Officer has been publicly broadcast on the Internet via MicroSoft Teams – but Ottawa Police have now arbitrarily decided to prevent citizens and journalists outside Ottawa from witnessing the upcoming April 28, 2023 motions hearing online.

What are they hiding?

The Biden regime’s abortive Disinformation Governance Board was a sinister initiative from the beginning. The board’s chief public proponents, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the board’s head, Nina Jankowicz, set off alarm bells when they were never entirely forthright or clear about what the board intended to do. Even now, long after the whole thing went sideways on them when they discovered, to their dismay, that many Americans still valued the freedom of speech, they’re trying to cover their tracks

Researchers found that on Twitter, members of Canada’s far left joined those on the far right in embracing pro-Russian messages created by a two-year Russian influence campaign.

While the torrent of leaks about possible interference by China in Canadian politics seems to have ebbed, the uproar over them continues and the federal government presented a budget this week containing some measures it hopes will deal with such meddling.

The budget sets aside 13.5 million Canadian dollars to establish a National Counter-Foreign Interference Office, and it will give the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 50 million dollars to counter harassment of Canadian immigrants by their authoritarian home countries.

Note that this study was government funded.

Journalist and author Matt Taibbi noted the U.S. government’s role in creating a “new cottage industry” of “disinformation labs” ostensibly combatting fraudulent online propaganda in the interest of national security in his latest Twitter Files report published Thursday.

In one video, a news anchor with perfectly combed dark hair and a stubbly beard outlined what he saw as the United States’ shameful lack of action against gun violence.

In another video, a female news anchor heralded China’s role in geopolitical relations at an international summit meeting.

Combine AI with Deepfake tech. Oh boy.