Pentagon installs military influencers in civilian roles

washingtonpost.com

42 points·dataflow··3 comments

Nothing new:

Spooks infiltrate Silicon Valley: Facebook is riddled with ex-CIA agents – including President’s briefer who now runs 'harmful content' team – so many ex-FBI work at Twitter they have Slack channel and Google is rife with ex-CIA - https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-11562433/Facebook-rid...

Facebook, Twitter stocked with ex-FBI, CIA officials in key posts - https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/facebook-twitter-stocked-with-...

Twitter Is Said to Have Struggled Over Revealing US Influence Campaign - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-milita...

Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign; Internal documents show Twitter whitelisted CENTCOM accounts that were then used to run its online influence campaign abroad. - https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-...

"We bring out the moderate voices. We amplify those. And in more detail, we detect and we flag if there is adversary, hostile, corrosive content in some open-source Web forum, [and] we engage with the Web administrators to show that this violates Web site provider policies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

Gouvernement using social networks to fight or do foreign influence campaign is not exactly the same thing. This is covert propaganda, or the government targeting its own citizen, in a domestic influence campaign. Much more problematic in its concept.

"Ex" FBI and CIA officials in key social media posts, and running "harmful content" teams, is covert, and targets US's own citizens, so yes, it is exactly the same thing. That's not even all of it, e.g.:

The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda - https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagon-and-cia-have-shaped-...

Or recruiting "former" intelligence officials to debunk and censor a true story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

And people outside the USA, such as myself, don't find it so easy to dismiss foreign influence campaigns, e.g.:

US-Funded NGOs and Former Officials Shaped The UK’s Online Safety Act - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/us-governnent-cutouts...

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