2023-05-10 23:35:14
A new office will be created by Washington to oversee the work of other similar ones that “have sprung up like daisies,” says The Intercept, since the false idea of Russia’s meddling in the past US elections was spread.
The new instance will be called the Center of Influence for Malicious Foreigners or FMIC, according to what Ken Klippenstein wrote on that website, which became notorious by revealing the secret chats held by the then Brazilian prosecutor Sergio Moro to incriminate Lula, an investigation that served as the basis to collapse the causes against the leader of the PT.
Now The Intercept provides a comprehensive rundown of the proliferation of these surveillance centers, beginning with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ announcement of the creation of the FMIC during her testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the last Thursday, when he first mentioned the birth of that instance.
“Congress put into law that we should establish a Center of Evil Foreign Influence in the intelligence community; we’ve stood up for it,” Haines said, referring to legislation passed last year. “It encompasses our election threat work, essentially looking at foreign influence and election interference, but also deals with disinformation more generally.”
Within the federal government, there are several such offices, from the Pentagon’s Office of Perception and Influence Management to at least four organizations within the Department of Homeland Security, as well as some within the FBI and State Department, the website says. .
The FMIC was established on September 23 last year after Congress approved the funding, but its creation was publicly announced only after an investigation by The Intercept, the article clarifies.
Because it is located within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, the new body enjoys unique authority to rally support from all elements of the US intelligence community, and to monitor and combat so-called foreign influence efforts, such as disinformation campaigns.
The FMIC is authorized to counter foreign disinformation directed not only at US elections, but also at “public opinion within the United States” more generally, according to the law.
Haines also made it clear that the effort to counter disinformation has expanded beyond not just the election and Russia, but also other subjects portrayed in Washington as foreign “adversaries.”
The description of the head of Intelligence is enough to know what it is about.
“What we’ve been doing is trying to effectively support the Global Engagement Center and others across the US government to help them; to understand what are the plans and intentions of the key players in this space: China, Russia, Iran, etc,” The Intercept quoted.
The GEC (Global Engagement Center) is a State Department entity tasked with countering foreign disinformation by amplifying America’s own propaganda. Now, the creation of another similar center has been questioned by some in Congress.
“We want to make sure that this center enhances those efforts rather than duplicating or bogging them down in unnecessary red tape,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in January 2022, adding that there had been “ legitimate questions about how big such an organization should be and even where it would fit in.” Reached for comment, Warner’s office said the senator’s position has not changed, The Intercept revealed.
Also US Air Force Reserves intelligence officer Maj. Neill Perry echoed the concerns in a 2022 article published in a West Point-funded cyber defense magazine.
“The decision to create a new agency is perplexing for two reasons,” Perry wrote. “First, the FMIRC [Centro de Respuesta a Influencias Malignas Extranjeras, un nombre anterior para el FMIC] doubles the mission of the GEC. The GEC already produces assessments on influence operations, including a team of 30 data scientists who monitor the public information environment and share their analysis with the Department of State and interagency partners.
“Second, Congress failed to elaborate on how the FMIRC would work with the GEC. By passing this legislation, Congress did not eliminate the GEC or reduce its mission. The GEC not only continues to exist, but will soon be able to draw on greater resources,” he wrote.
“In May 2021, the Senate passed legislation that would double GEC’s annual budget,” Perry added. The GEC’s current budget is $12 million, and the State Department has requested a budget of $14 million for the upcoming fiscal year.
From its position at the top of the intelligence community, the FMIC has been designated as the US government’s primary authority for analyzing and integrating intelligence on foreign influence, according to a brief post on the ODNI website.
The FMIC’s acting director, Jeffrey K. Wichman, is a former CIA executive who previously served as chief of analysis for the agency’s Counterintelligence Mission Center.
“Expose Hoax in Defense of Liberty” is the center’s motto, says the ODNI website. Has access to “all intelligence held or believed to be related to IMF [información maligna extranjera]including electoral security.
The theme has been recurring after Russia was accused of trying to interfere in the 2016 elections through the use of bots y trolls to amplify falsehoods spread through social media, The Intercept’s investigation pointed out.
After the elections, the Law to Combat Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation was approved, which established the GEC of the Department of State.
Since then, government entities tasked with combating foreign disinformation have proliferated. In the fall of 2017, the FBI established the Foreign Influence Task Force. In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security established the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force, which in 2021 was updated to include a misinformation and misinformation team, as well as a Foreign Influence and Interference Branch, and last year, the Board of Disinformation Governance.
The rapid and disjointed creation of these entities led the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security to issue a report calling for a more coherent and unified strategy to counter disinformation.
Most recently, the Pentagon created the Office of Influence and Perception Management to oversee its various efforts against disinformation. As is often the case, no press releases accompanied the creation of the office and no references from the administration aside from this year’s budget request, which appears to be the only publicly available reference from the US government regarding the office.
According to The Intercept, efforts to counter disinformation have now become a cottage industry that critics say has grown out of proportion to the threat.
Taken from The Intercept
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