[News] How social networks became a 'subsidiary' of the FBI and CIA

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/twitter-files-social-networks-subsidiary-fbi-cia-how>
How social networks became a 'subsidiary' of the FBI and CIA
Jonathan Cook - February 20, 2023
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

The Twitter Files have lifted the lid on a secret alliance between Silicon
Valley, intelligence agencies and the political establishment

The US <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> Congress last tried to
grapple with what the country’s ballooning security services were up to
nearly half a century ago.

In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from
complete, snapshot
<https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm>
of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National Security
Agency (NSA) operate.

In the aftermath of the Watergate
<https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal> scandal, the
congressional committee and other related investigations found that the
country’s intelligence services had sweeping surveillance powers and were
involved in a raft of illegal or unconstitutional acts.

They were covertly subverting and assassinating foreign leaders. They had
coopted hundreds of journalists and many media outlets around the world to
promote <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1tfkESPVY> false narratives.
They spied on and infiltrated political and civil rights groups. And they
manipulated the public discourse to protect and expand their powers.

In an unlikely turn of events, a billionaire has opened another window on
covert manipulations by the security services

Senator Frank Church himself warned
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAG1N4a84Dk> that the might of the
intelligence community could at any moment “be turned around on the
American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the
capability to monitor everything … There would be no place to hide.”

Since then, the technological possibilities to invade privacy have
dramatically increased
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/top-secret-america/2010/07/19/hidden-world-growing-beyond-control-2/>,
and the reach of the intelligence agencies, especially after 9/11
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/september-11-never-forget-justify-forever-war>,
has moved on in ways Church could never have foreseen.

This is why establishing a new Church Committee is long overdue. And
finally, in the most controversial of circumstances and for the most
partisan of reasons, some sort of revival may finally be about to happen.

A protracted battle last month within the Republican Party to elect Kevin
McCarthy
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/mccarthy-speaker-fight-friday/index.html>
as the new speaker of the House of Representatives forced him to cave to
the demands of his party’s right wing. Not least, he agreed
<https://thehill.com/homenews/3807584-house-gop-approves-resolution-to-create-panel-to-probe-weaponization-of-federal-government/>
to set up a committee on what is being called the "weaponisation"
<https://thehill.com/homenews/3807584-house-gop-approves-resolution-to-create-panel-to-probe-weaponization-of-federal-government/>
of
the federal government.

It held its first meeting last week. The panel said
<https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/1155459408/house-panel-on-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-will-hold-its-first-heari>
its task would be to look at "the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and
attacks on American civil liberties".

Earlier, in a speech to the House on the new committee, Republican
Representative Dan Bishop said <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFup_rj_X3k>
it was time to cut out the “rot” in the federal government: “We’re putting
the deep state on notice. We’re coming for you.”

Democrats are already decrying the committee as a tool that will be wielded
in the interests of Donald Trump
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump> and his supporters, saying the
Republican right wants to discredit
<https://time.com/6246720/house-republicans-weaponization-panel-democrats-debate/>
the security services and suggest malfeasance in the treatment of the
former president.
Snowballing powers

But while the committee will almost certainly end up being used to settle
political scores, it may still manage to shed light on some of the
terrifying new powers the security services have accrued since the Church
Committee’s report.

The degree to which those powers have snowballed should be obvious to all.
Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden a decade ago showed
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowden-nsa-surveillance-guardian-court-rules>
illegal mass surveillance at home and abroad by the NSA. And Julian
Assange’s transparency organisation Wikileaks published dossiers
<https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/> not only revealing US war crimes in Iraq
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iraq> and Afghanistan
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-moderate-possible>,
but a huge global hacking programme by the CIA.

Notably, in what may be a sign of the power of the security agencies to
inflict retribution on those challenging their might, both Assange and
Snowden have suffered dire consequences.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/despite-twitter-culls-riyadhs-disinformation-network-still-going-strong>

Saudi Arabia's bot army flourishes as Twitter fails to tame the beast

Snowden has been forced into exile in Russia, one of the few jurisdictions
where he cannot be extradited
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/sep/13/edward-snowden-interview-whistleblowing-russia-ai-permanent-record>
to the US and locked away. Assange has been jailed as US authorities seek
his extradition
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/show-trial-julian-assange-book>,
so he can be disappeared into a maximum-security prison for the rest of his
life.

Now, in an unlikely turn of events, a billionaire has opened another window
on covert manipulations by the security services - this time in relation to
social media platforms and the US electoral process. The key players this
time are the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), set up by
former President George W Bush’s administration in the wake of the 9/11
attacks.

After he bought the social network Twitter last year, Elon Musk gave a
handful of independent journalists access to its corporate archives. In a
continuing series of investigations named the Twitter Files
<https://taibbi.substack.com/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter>, published
as long threads on the platform, these journalists have been making sense
of what was going on under Twitter’s previous owners.

The bottom line is that, after Trump’s election, US security agencies -
aided by political pressure, especially from the Democratic Party -
aggressively wormed their way into Twitter’s decision-making processes.
Other major social media platforms appear to have made similar
arrangements.
A 'nothingburger'?

The Twitter Files suggest a rapidly emerging but hidden partnership between
state intelligence services, Silicon Valley, and traditional media, to
manipulate the national conversation in the US - as well as much of the
rest of the world.

The parties in this alliance justify to each other their meddling in US
politics - concealed from public view - as a necessary response to the
rapid rise of a new populism
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/22/populism-concept-defines-our-age>.
Trump and his supporters had come to dominate the Republican Party, and a
populist left headed by Senator Bernie Sanders had made limited inroads
into the Democratic Party.

Social media attracted particular concern from the security services
because it was seen as the vehicle that had unleashed this wave of popular
discontent. According to a report
<https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/> in
the Intercept, one FBI official remarked last year that “subversive
information on social media could undermine support for the US government”.

The national security state, it seems, viewed an alliance with the Big Tech
private sector as an opportunity to protect the old guard of politics,
particularly in the Democratic Party. Figures such as President Joe Biden
and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were seen as a safe pair of hands,
positioned to preserve the legitimacy of a turbo-charged, neoliberal
capitalism, and the forever wars that have been the lifeblood of the
intelligence community.

[image: Elon Musk, the head of Twitter, is pictured in California on 24
January 2023 (AFP)]
Elon Musk, the head of Twitter, is pictured in California on 24 January
2023 (AFP)

This partnership has served all sides well. Silicon Valley has been the
career of choice for many liberals who believe that progress is best
pursued through technological means that depend on social stability
and political
consensus <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656>.
Populism and the polarisation it engenders naturally discomfort them.

And both the security services and more centrist politicians in the
Republican and Democratic parties understand that they are in the firing
line in populist politics for decades-long failures: a growing polarisation
of wealth between rich and poor, a creaking US economy
<https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/10/what-a-us-recession-would-mean-for-the-world>,
depleted or non-existent welfare services, the ability of the rich to buy
political influence, the constant loss of treasure and life in seemingly
pointless wars fought in far-off lands, and a media that rarely addresses
the concerns of ordinary people.

Rather than focusing on the real causes of growing anger and
anti-establishment sentiment, the security services offered politicians and
Silicon Valley a more comforting and convenient narrative. The populists -
on the right and left - were not articulating a frustration with a failing
US political and economic system. They were working to sow social discontent
<https://www.americanprogress.org/article/origins-russias-broad-political-assault-united-states/>
to advance the interests of Russia
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/russia>.

In practice, claims of 'Russian disinformation' simply served to further
polarise US politics

Or as the minutes of a DHS meeting last March recorded
<https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/>, the
new focus was on curbing “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between
the populace and the government”.

This strategy reached its zenith with “Russiagate”, years of evidence-free
hysteria promoted by the intelligence community and the Democratic Party.
The central claim was that Trump was only able to defeat his Democratic
rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election because of
collusion with Moscow, and Russian influence operations through social
media.

As in a game of whack-a-mole, any signs of misconduct or criminality by the
security services, or systemic failures by the US political class, were now
knocked down as “Russian disinformation”.

Snowden’s exile to Russia - the only choice left to him - was used
<https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-spies-say-snowden-is-working-with-russia-2014-5>
to discredit
<https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/irony-snowdens-russian-asylum-n118756>
his whistleblowing on the NSA. And the disclosures by Assange and Wikileaks
of war crimes and lawbreaking by the intelligence community were
effectively negated by a supposed collusion with “Russian hackers” in
revealing corruption
<https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-hillary-clinton-julian-assange-wikileaks-tool-for-russian-intelligence-2019-4>
in the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.

In practice, claims of “Russian disinformation” simply served to further
polarise US politics.

The key issues raised by the Twitter Files - of deep-state collusion with
the tech and media industries, election meddling, and narrative
manipulation and deflection - have been subsumed within, and obscured by,
political partisanship.

Interest in the Twitter Files has been largely confined to the right. In
knee-jerk fashion, Democrats have mostly dismissed
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BST9J0Z7ug> the revelations as a
“nothingburger”.
Climate of fear

Perhaps coincidentally, Musk has found himself transformed since his
takeover of Twitter from a darling of liberals - for his Tesla electric
cars - into a near-pariah. In October, the Biden administration denied
reports
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-not-true-that-there-is-national-security-review-elon-musk-2022-10-24/>
that it was considering a national security review of his businesses in the
face
<https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/biden-spokeswoman-unaware-of-talks-on-musk-security-review-1.1837240>
of Musk’s “increasingly Russia-friendly stance”. His status as the world’s
richest man has rapidly collapsed
<https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-breaks-world-record-for-largest-loss-of-personal-fortune-in-history-12784805>
alongside his reputation.

The irony is that the same security agencies that whipped up the
“Russiagate” hysteria are now exposed in the Twitter Files as perpetrating
the very interference of which they accused Moscow.

During the 2016 presidential election, Russia was said to have colluded
with Trump and assisted him by weaponising social media to sow discord and
manipulate the US electorate. A subsequent official inquiry
<https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/>
by Robert Mueller failed to stand up those allegations.

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the
world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a
Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of
its designer.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598824834334687236?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Instead, I believe the Twitter Files indicate that it was not Russia but
the FBI, DHS and CIA - the very agencies arguing that Russia threatened
political order in the US - that were aggressively and clandestinely
seeking to influence
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589031773769739> American public
opinion.

The Twitter Files suggest that it is the US security state, much more than
Russia, that poses the real menace to US democracy. The climate of fear
these agencies fuelled over supposed “Russian disinformation” not only
swayed public opinion, but gave the intelligence community even greater
leverage over social media networks and further licence to accumulate greater
powers <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857673665011718>.

State actors are increasingly in charge of deciding who is allowed to be
heard on social media - even Trump was banned while president - and what
can be said. Those decisions are often taken not to prevent a crime or
enforce laws, or even for the public good, but to tightly control political
discourse to marginalise serious criticism of the establishment.

The fact that the collusion between social media platforms and these
agencies has taken place in secret is itself an indication of the nefarious
nature of what's been going on.
Hidden pressure

The Twitter Files open a window on a phenomenon that appears to have been
playing out across all social networks.

Traditionally, liberals have defended social media’s use of censorship on
the grounds that these platforms are private companies that can do as they
please. Their behaviour supposedly does not constitute a violation of First
Amendment protections of free speech.

The reality exposed by the Twitter Files, however, is that the networks
have often been responding to hidden pressure, either directly from the
federal government or via its intelligence agencies, in restricting what
can be said. As the Files have repeatedly noted, Twitter, like other social
media, has come to function less as a private company and more as “a kind
of subsidiary <https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607379394204516354>
of the FBI”.

In 2017, at the height of the Russiagate panic, the FBI set up
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857548645318656> a Foreign
Influence Task Force whose numbers soon swelled to 80 agents. Its
ostensible job was to liaise with the various networks to stop alleged
foreign interference in elections.

[image: The FBI seal is seen outside its headquarters in Washington on 15
August 2022 (AFP)]
The FBI seal is seen outside its headquarters in Washington on 15 August
2022 (AFP)

Twitter executives were soon meeting and communicating with senior FBI
officials on a regular basis
<https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-executive-met-with-fbi-weekly-around-2020-election-documents-show/>,
while receiving an endless stream of demands for content takedowns to
prevent “Russian disinformation”. The CIA appears
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701415879311361> to have attended
meetings too, under the moniker
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701433780592641> of OGA or “other
government agency”. Although the task force’s remit was foreign influence,
it reportedly <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701438654386177>
became a “conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state
governments, even local police”.

Under growing pressure behind the scenes from the intelligence services,
and in public from politicians, the social networks reportedly started to
draw up secret blacklists, aided by information from the security services,
to limit the reach of accounts or stop topics trending. The effects were
often hard to miss, with Trump declaring
<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1022447980408983552> he would
investigate the practice in 2018.

In response, Twitter executives publicly denied that they practised “shadow
banning” - a term
<https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html>
for when posts or accounts are made difficult or impossible to find. In
fact, Twitter had simply invented a different phrase for the exact same
regime of speech suppression. They called
<https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601014175366402048> it “visibility
filtering”.

Rather than take on the Democratic Party ... Twitter followed 'a slavish
pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record'

Such censorship was used not only against suspected bot accounts, or those
peddling obvious misinformation. Even eminent public figures who had
authority to speak on a topic were secretly targeted if they challenged key
establishment narratives.

Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, for example, suffered from
“visibility filtering” during the Covid-19
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/covid> pandemic after he criticised
lockdowns for inflicting harm on children. He was put on a “trends blacklist
<https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601011428579717121>”.

Amid recent mass layoffs at Twitter, Middle East Eye was unable to contact
the company for comment on these and other allegations made in the Twitter
Files. The CIA had not replied by publication time, while the FBI sent a
response stating: “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show
nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing
federal government and private sector engagements … As evidenced in the
correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector
in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”

Other leading doctors who questioned government orthodoxy have also been
sidelined by Twitter, the Files found, often under direct pressure
<https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1612526697038897167> from the
White House or vaccine company lobbyists.

But the highest-profile casualty of the Twitter censorship regime was Trump
himself. He was banned on 8 January 2021, even though staff reportedly
agreed behind the scenes that they could not base such a decision
<https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602372771052367872> on any direct
violation of their rules.
Russian 'influence'

The fallout from Russiagate drew Twitter more deeply into the embrace of
the security services. In early 2018, a Republican representative, Devin
Nunes, submitted a classified memo
<https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16957588/nunes-memo-released-full-text-read-pdf-declassified>
to the House Intelligence Committee detailing alleged abuses by the FBI in
surveilling a figure connected to Trump.

The FBI allegedly relied on the so-called Steele dossier, which had been
partly financed by Clinton and the Democratic Party but was initially
presented by the media as an independent, intelligence-led inquiry
verifying collusion
<https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php>
between Trump’s team and Moscow.

News of the memo provoked a storm on social media among Trump supporters,
fuelling a viral hashtag: #ReleaseTheMemo
<https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935/>.
Nunes’s allegations were verified nearly two years later by a Department of
Justice inquiry <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589044428173312>.
Nonetheless, at the time, Democratic politicians and the media rushed to
ridicule the memo <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589047926226944>,
characterising any demand
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589051470381056> for its
publication as a “Russian influence operation”.

The heat was dialled up on Big Tech. Twitter’s own investigations could not
pinpoint any Russian involvement, suggesting that the hashtag
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589077906919432> was trending
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589080096350208> organically,
driven by VITs - Very Important Tweeters.

7.Nonetheless, national media in January and early February of 2018
denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical language, calling it a
“joke”: pic.twitter.com/IkTXRGrfaH <https://t.co/IkTXRGrfaH>
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589047926226944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

But Twitter executives were in no mood for a fight. Rather than take on the
Democratic Party - and most likely behind it the FBI, concerned by the
memo’s revelations - Twitter followed
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589110932869137> “a slavish pattern
of not challenging Russia claims on the record”, noted Matt Taibbi, one of
the journalists who worked on the Twitter Files.

Soon, Russia was being blamed
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589118826549278> by major media
outlets for any embarrassing hashtag that went viral, such as
#SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting and #GunControlNow. As the campaign of
Russiagate claims intensified, Twitter came under ever-greater pressure for
action. In 2017, it manually examined some 2,700 accounts flagged as
potentially suspicious. The vast majority were cleared. Twitter suspended
22 as possible Russian accounts, while a further 179 were found
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372365753499650> to have “possible
links” to those accounts.

Democratic politicians were incensed, apparently relying
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372367909363714> on intelligence
sources to support their claim that social media was overrun with Russian
bots. Twitter responded by setting up a “Russia task force” to investigate
further, but again found no evidence of a Russian influence campaign. All
it identified were a few lone-wolf posters spending
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372385932443648> limited money on
ads.

Nonetheless, Twitter was plunged into a PR crisis, with politicians and
establishment media accusing it of inertia. Congress threatened draconian
legislation that would starve Twitter of advertising revenue
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372412419280899>. Twitter’s
inability to find Russian influence accounts led to an indictment from
Politico <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372404903313408>: “Twitter
deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes.” Twitter’s original
investigation of the 2,700 accounts fuelled outlandish claims in the media
that a “new network <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610375673868156935>”
of Russian bots had been discovered.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-israel-facebook-hate-speech-silence-critics>

Social media giants allow hate speech against Russia but silence Israel's
critics

In the midst of this firestorm, Twitter suddenly changed tack, publicly
stating that it would remove content “at our sole discretion
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610376851377061888>” - but in truth it
was far worse than that. As Taibbi reported in one of the Twitter Files, it
was as the company decided
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610376851377061888> privately to
“off-board” anything “identified by the U.S. intelligence community as a
state-sponsored entity conducting cyber operations”.

Twitter increasingly found itself besieged. A Twitter File released
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029851146682368> last month argues
that a prominent online lobby called Hamilton 68 - with ties to the
intelligence community - perpetrated “a scam” about Russian disinformation.

The site elicited endless headlines in the US media after indicating it had
uncovered <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029823271350272> a
Russian influence campaign on social media, involving hundreds of users.
Media outlets published
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029921883656193> these claims as
proof that the social networks were overrun with Russian bots. Hamilton
68’s staff were even invited to testify
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029921883656193> before senior
congressional politicians.

Despite this furore, however, Hamilton 68 never made public the list of
bots it said it had unearthed
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029826614218752>. Internal Twitter
investigations revealed
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029849125060608> that almost all of
those on the list were ordinary users.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which hosted Hamilton 68 and its
successor Hamilton 2.0, issued a “fact sheet” in response to the Twitter
Files denying the allegations, and suggesting
<https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/fact-sheet-hamilton-68-dashboard-2017-2018/>
that its data had been “consistently misunderstood or misrepresented” by
the media and lawmakers, despite “extensive efforts to correct
misconceptions at the time”. The ASD noted that it never suggested all the
bots were Russian, but it was monitoring some that might have been.

Notably, Hamilton 68 was headed
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029809417584640> by a former senior
FBI official. Twitter executives did not publicly stand up to the media
pile-on <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029887809122304>, and found
themselves given the brush-off
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029906498949122> when they tried to
raise their concerns privately with reporters.
FBI 'belly button'

In a sign of how close the relationship between the FBI and Twitter had
grown, Twitter recruited
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604894334561660928> as legal
counsel James Baker, the FBI’s former top lawyer. Baker had been one of the
central figures in the efforts to paint a picture - again now discredited -
of collusion
<https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james-baker-a-familiar-figure-reemerges-with-the-release-of-the-twitter-files/>
between Trump and Moscow.

Plenty of others who left the FBI headed
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/>
straight to Twitter. They included Dawn Burton, the former deputy chief of
staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the Russiagate investigation.
She became Twitter’s director of strategy
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604894964961357824> in 2019.

Similar ties existed with the British security services. Twitter recruited
Gordon MacMillan as its top editorial adviser on the Middle East. It was a
part-time post, as he was serving at the same time in the British
military’s psychological
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit>
warfare unit, the 77th Brigade.

[image: James Baker, former deputy general counsel of Twitter, testifies at
a hearing before the House oversight and accountability committee in
Washington on 8 February 2023 (AFP)]
James Baker, former deputy general counsel of Twitter, testifies at a
hearing before the House oversight and accountability committee in
Washington on 8 February 2023 (AFP)

By 2020, as the pandemic unfolded, other government agencies saw their
chance to wage a parallel campaign against Twitter focused on China’s
supposed efforts to spread Covid-19 disinformation. An intelligence arm of
the State Department, the Global Engagement Center, using federal
government data, alleged that 250,000 Twitter accounts were amplifying
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394226226765824> “Chinese
propaganda”, once again to sow disorder. Those accounts included
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394226226765824> the Canadian
military and CNN.

Emails between Twitter executives show that they had their own views about
what the campaign hoped to achieve. State Department officials wanted to
“insert themselves” into the consortium of agencies, such as the FBI and
DHS, that were allowed to take down Twitter content
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394229553115136>.

It is telling that Twitter argued against State Department inclusion - and
in terms that contrasted strongly with their approach to the FBI and DHS.
State was viewed <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394244388388864>
by executives as more “political” and “Trumpy”.

As Twitter grew more supine, even senior US politicians tried to get in on
the act

In the end, it was suggested that the FBI would serve as the “belly button
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394266999881729>” through which
Silicon Valley would keep other government agencies informed. The result,
according to the Files, was that Twitter “was taking requests
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394278617878529> from every
conceivable government body”, and often in bulk
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394300277219329>. The platform
almost never said no to requests to delete accounts accused of being
Russian bots <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385>.

As Twitter grew more supine, even senior US politicians tried to get in on
the act. Adam Schiff, then head of the House Intelligence Committee, asked
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394284867436547> for a journalist
he did not like to be deplatformed. Though Twitter was reluctant to accede
to such requests, it “deamplified” some accounts
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932031142133761>.

As the 2020 election drew near, the flow of security-service demands became
a deluge <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394315938992129> that
threatened to overwhelm Twitter. Many were unrelated to foreign influence -
the FBI task force’s ostensible purpose. Instead, the submissions often
appear to have concerned
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701456920543234> domestic accounts.
They rarely detailed law-breaking or terror threats, presumably the FBI’s
main area of interest, but focused
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701454911483904> instead on much
less-well-defined violations of Twitter’s “terms of service”.

Often, accounts faced “digital execution” not because what was said was
verifiably disinformation, but because tweets crossed political red lines:
by noting <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701503850643456> a
neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine, or being too sympathetic to Venezuelan leader
Nicholas Maduro or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Laptop revelations

Once embedded in Big Tech, the security services reportedly used their
powers to covertly shape the national conversation around the 2020
presidential election.

Perhaps the biggest single disclosure so far - confirming suspicions on the
right - is that social media and state security agencies played a role in
suppressing the so-called Hunter Biden laptop story
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856> weeks
before the 2020 election.

In the run-up to the vote, the FBI task force prepared the ground by
claiming to Silicon Valley executives that Russia would try
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604892289800605697> to “dump”
hacked information to damage the Democratic candidate for president, Biden.
This was supposedly a rerun of the 2016 election, when publication of
internal emails from the Democratic Party harmed the then-candidate,
Hillary Clinton.

After Trump’s election, much of the Russiagate narrative grew out of
evidence-free claims by the security services that those embarrassing
emails, indicating
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/russia-hackers-democratic-national-committee-email-leak>
political corruption among the Democratic Party leadership, were hacked by
Russia.

1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7

The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about
Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New
York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Evidence suggesting a different explanation - that the emails were leaked
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4785866/Report-claims-hacked-DNC-emails-leak-not-hack.html>
by a disgruntled insider - was widely ignored. The furore provoked by the
story obscured the fact that the emails, and their damning revelations
about the Democratic Party, were all too real.

Based on the warnings from the intelligence community, social media
platforms hurriedly blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story, which alleged
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10475335/Former-diplomat-Kiev-warned-State-Department-Hunter-Bidens-business-dealing-Ukraine.html>
problematic ties
<https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/hunter-biden-investigation-federal-prosecutors-weighing-charges/index.html>
between the Biden family and foreign officials in Ukraine. Joe Biden’s
officials denied
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lashes-out-new-york-post-429486>
any wrongdoing by the then-presidential candidate, while Hunter himself was
evasive <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ksa9z2kIrw> about whether the
laptop belonged to him. The story, which was broken by the right-wing New
York Post, was immediately declared
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276>
a Russian influence operation by dozens of former intelligence officials.

But in truth, the FBI knew nearly a year before the story became public
that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden and that the information it
contained was not likely forged or hacked. A Delaware computer store owner
asked by Hunter Biden to repair his laptop had reported his concerns to the
FBI. The agency had even subpoenaed the device
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604902464741785602>.

The social networks took the unprecedented step of blocking attempts to
share the story on their platforms, which might have impacted the outcome
of the 2020 election

This chain of events raises questions over whether the FBI decided to
pre-empt the impacts of the laptop story, which threatened Joe Biden’s
electoral chances in 2020, before the right-wing press could publish. It
appears that they manipulated the media, including social networks, into
assuming that any story harming Biden before the election was Russian
disinformation.

Big Tech had other reasons at the time to believe the story was likely
true. The New York Post had carried out the usual verification checks.
Other reporters soon confirmed
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604903049339604994> that the
information had come from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Nonetheless, Twitter hurriedly accepted the claim that the story violated
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604904052126404608> its policy
against publishing hacked material, echoing
<https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604904052126404608> the FBI’s
claim that it was Russian disinformation. Others, such as Mark Zuckerberg
at Facebook, accepted <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhHroQvtXa0> the
FBI’s claims on trust too, as he later admitted.

The social networks took the unprecedented step of blocking attempts to
share the story on their platforms, which might have impacted the outcome
of the 2020 election - something viewed by much of the Republican right as
a crime against democracy, and by many Democratic Party supporters as an
unfortunate necessity to defend
<https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1560373641556021248> the democratic
order.
Psychological warfare

The collusion between social media platforms and the US security state over
Russiagate was no aberration. According to the Files, Twitter gave the
Pentagon special dispensation, in violation of its own policies, to set up
accounts <https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765> to carry
out “online psychological influence ops”.

Twitter assisted the military in “whitelisting” 52 fake Arabic-language
accounts <https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294744833343488> to
“amplify certain messages”. These accounts promoted US military objectives
in the Middle East, including messages attacking Iran
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran>, supporting the Saudi-led
war in Yemen <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/yemen>, and claiming
that US drone strikes
<https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605295735553118245> hit only
terrorists.

By May 2020, Twitter had detected dozens more accounts the Pentagon had not
disclosed that tweeted
<https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605299620393156609> in Russian and
Arabic on topics such as Syria
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria> and the Islamic State
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/islamic-state>. According
<https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605296971408986131> to Lee Fang, one of
the journalists who worked on the Twitter Files: “Many emails from
throughout 2020 show that high-level Twitter executives were well aware of
[the Department of Defense’s] vast network of fake accounts & covert
propaganda and did not suspend the accounts.”

[image: The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense
(AFP)]
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense (AFP)

Other research has exposed an extensive Pentagon propaganda network
<https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford_internet_observatory_report_unheard_voice.pdf>
on other social media apps, such as Facebook and Telegram.

Twitter’s indulgence of these covert Pentagon accounts contrasts strongly
with its handling of media and individuals accused of being affiliated with
countries considered by the US government as enemy states. They are
prominently labelled as such, including western dissident journalists and
academics alleged to have worked <https://twitter.com/georgegalloway> with
Russian, Chinese, Iranian or Venezuelan outlets
<https://twitter.com/tracking_power>.

According to research by the media watchdog group FAIR, Twitter continues
to conceal the state affiliations of accounts funded by the US government,
including those advancing its propaganda aims in Ukraine and elsewhere.
FAIR could find no examples of accounts identified
<https://fair.org/home/under-musk-twitter-continues-to-promote-us-propaganda-networks/>
as “United States state-affiliated media”, nor any labelled as such in
Britain or Canada.

The group concluded: “Twitter enables US propaganda outlets to maintain the
pretense of independence on the platform, a tacit endorsement of US soft
power and influence operations … Twitter is serving as an active
participant in an ongoing information war.”
Thick pall of secrecy

After the Twitter Files began dropping in December, the FBI responded not
by addressing the veracity of the documents, but by playing the same game
as before. It accused the journalists involved of spreading “conspiracy
theories” and “misinformation” intended
<https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701401299914753> to “discredit the
agency”.

Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of the Democratic Party establishment,
continues to blame <https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1614648929114640384>
Russian disinformation for her country’s woes.

The truth is that both the security services and the political
establishment have far too much invested in their current, secret
arrangements with the social networks to agree to change.

And the pressure to do so is not likely to increase while the US continues
to lurch from crisis to crisis: from the “war on terror”, to the Trump
presidency, to the Covid-19 pandemic, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-us-invasion-paved-how>.
All of these crises - in their different ways, it should be noted - are the
legacy of policy decisions taken by the very same actors now rebuffing
scrutiny and oversight.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/middle-east-digital-authoritarianism-permeated-how>

How digital authoritarianism has permeated the Middle East

These crises provide the pretext not only for inaction but for ever-closer,
tighter policing of the digital public square by the state - and not
transparently, but under a thick pall of secrecy.

As Church warned nearly half a century ago, the biggest threat the US faces
is the possibility that its security agencies will turn their enormous
powers inwards, against the American public. And that process is exactly
what the Twitter Files document.

They show that the intelligence community has come to redefine its primary
role - protecting the American public from foreign threats - to include the
American public itself as part of that threat.

In 2021, one of the Biden administration’s first priorities was to unveil a
National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. It described
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf>
the loss of faith in government and extreme polarisation as “fueled by a
crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social
media platforms”.

The rise in dissatisfaction among the US citizenry is not the fault of a
failed political leadership or an overweening deep state, it seems.
Instead, that same failed establishment views the popular backlash - and
electoral discontent - in self-serving terms only, as proof of foreign
meddling.

In the Twitter Files, Musk has thrown open a small window to show a little
of what has been going on behind closed doors. But even that window will
shut again soon enough. And then the dark will return - unless the public
demands its right to know more.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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