Federal 'censorship nerve center' likely to shutter, but State would 'realign' staff for same work

The State Department is planning to change how it engages with the globe as it braces for unified Republican government that promises to gut the so-called censorship-industrial complex, the subject of a four-part Just the News series this fall.

But like the evolution of the broader global public-private partnership to label, throttle, remove and defund purported misinformation, disinformation and "true but inconvenient" malinformation (MDM) on tech platforms, State's change may only be in name.

State told Congress its Global Engagement Center is "substantially likely" to shut down on Festivus, according to a notice the agency gave the court overseeing the year-old outsourced-censorship lawsuit by The Daily Wire and The Federalist alleging State and GEC funded feats of strength to starve the conservative publishers of ad revenue.

The center was created in 2016 with a stated mission to "direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations."

House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep Rep. Darrell Issa, who repeatedly aired his grievances against State this fall for alleged politicization, took the department at its word about plans to shutter the center. 

"Good riddance," the California Republican wrote on X.

"This is a good start," the GOP-led House Small Business Committee, which released its own takedown of GEC, wrote on X. It's ready to work with President-elect Trump "to expose and defund the rest of the taxpayer funded Censorship-Industrial Complex."

"Great, they were one of the worst First Amendment offenders!" X owner Elon Musk responded to the news.

"Defendants are conferring with Plaintiffs about the implications of these developments for this litigation," State told U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle on Monday in a separate filing opposing the conservative publishers' motion for an extension on their time to respond to the government's interrogatories, or written questions, in the legal discovery process.

Kernodle approved a shorter extension than the publishers wanted, ruling Tuesday they now had until Jan. 6 to answer the interrogatories.

The department's notice to Kernodle implied little was changing in GEC's work, however. It plans to "realign the Center’s staff and funding to other Department offices and bureaus for foreign information manipulation and interference activities" in the event lawmakers don't change its Dec. 23 statutory termination date, eight years to the day after GEC was created.

That's similar to how Stanford University described the evolution of its Stanford Internet Observatory, which co-led the Department of Homeland Security-conceived Election Integrity Partnership to mass-report alleged misinformation in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. 

Just the News first brought wide attention to the work of EIP, whose federal participants included GEC, and was itself targeted for suppression in EIP's ticketing system.

SIO announced this spring, under a crush of lawsuits, congressional subpoenas and top staff exits, that it "finished its work after" the 2022 cycle and would not monitor elections again. Stanford denied SIO was "winding down" and named several functions that would continue "under new leadership," especially child-related, but didn't mention MDM as such.

The department gave Just the News a less dour statement when asked what's actually changing, if anything, in the work done by GEC staff after the entity shutters.

"While we are disappointed" the National Defense Authorization Act renewal text "released over the weekend does not include a multiyear extension" of GEC, State is "hopeful that Congress extends this important mandate through other means," it said.

"The bottom line is we need to ensure that the capability to identify and counter foreign disinformation overseas is maintained," State said. "As our adversaries continue to ramp up their efforts globally, it’s counterintuitive – and dangerous – to weaken or worse yet, dismantle the United States’ leadership in this critical mission."

The statement contradicts the court filing, however, by saying the "termination date" is Dec. 24.  State didn't answer a followup question about the discrepancy.

Americans may have first heard of GEC, an "interagency partnership" hosted by State, in the early days of COVID-19 pandemic.

It claimed Russia was trying to create a false picture of its COVID response capabilities to hide the country's "fundamental weakness across almost all measures of national power" and spreading supposed conspiracy theories such as SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab and COVID vaccine development was simply a ploy for pharmaceutical profits.

But GEC's activities go far beyond easy international villains and allegedly target American speech, finally getting it sued by conservative publishers as well as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for conflicting with state law requiring social media content neutrality.

It funded anti-populist internet games abroad, a campaign against Iranian antiwar activists and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, an EIP principal. State's U.S. Agency for International Development also wrote a "Disinformation Primer" targeting gamers, advertisers and memes.

Twitter Files records show the company's executives mocked GEC's "unverified accusations that can't be replicated" and said it widely misidentified ordinary users, including Americans and CNN employees, as foreign malicious actors. They also said DFRL made similar errors.

The suit stems from GEC's funding of the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard, which pressure advertisers to boycott primarily conservative outlets. NewsGuard also did work for the Department of Defense and U.S. Cyber Command.

State heavily redacted Freedom of Information Act productions on GEC's internal conversations on how to respond to reporters asking about that funding, even blacking out officials' names.

The Federalist senior legal correspondent Margot Cleveland, who fittingly broke the news Monday night, said she could not find the congressional notice State mentioned, though Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky, who profiled GEC for his "Disinformation Inc." series, said Tuesday he had confirmed congressional notice.

Former Trump administration State official Mike Benz, who leads the anti-censorship Foundation for Freedom Online, noted he discussed the "censorship nerve center" that is GEC on podcaster Joe Rogan's show last week. 

Cryptocurrency exchange founder Tyler Winklevoss, famous for accusing Mark Zuckerberg of stealing his and his twin brother's idea for what became Facebook, urged followers to listen to Benz's full episode with Rogan.

X users speculated GEC's work was merely becoming less accountable to the public through its planned formal dissolution. 

"We need to closely track the employees and monitor where they are reassigned" in the event GEC is already operating "under a different guise," one said.