The Twitter Files Part XVII Unrolled
New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists
Note that Taibbi accidentally skips 24 and 29. You can find all the Twitter Files unrolled here.
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
1. TWITTER FILES #17
New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
1.3K Reposts · 2.39K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
2. On June 8, 2021, an analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab wrote to Twitter:
“Hi guys. Attached you will find… around 40k twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behavior… and Hindu nationalism more broadly.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
148 Reposts · 577 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
3. DFRLab said it suspected 40,000 accounts of being “paid employees or possibly volunteers” of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
But the list was full of ordinary Americans, many with no connection to India and no clue about Indian politics. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
158 Reposts · 588 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
4. “I have no connection to any Hindu folks... Just a Reagan Republican here in CT,” replied “Bobby Hailstone.”
“A Hindu nationalist? I’ve never even been out of this country. Let alone the state of NJ,” said “Lady_DI816.”
“These people are insane!” said “Krista Woods.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
110 Reposts · 559 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
5. Twitter agreed, one reason many of the accounts remain active. “Thanks, Andy,” replied Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. “I spot-checked a number of these accounts, and virtually all appear to be real people.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
83 Reposts · 494 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
6. Here’s the list. Are you on it?
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
128 Reposts · 469 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
7. DFRLab is funded by the U.S. Government, specifically the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
Director Graham Brookie denies DFRLab it uses tax money to track Americans, saying its GEC grants have "an exclusively international focus.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
111 Reposts · 488 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
8. But Americans on DFR’s list, like Marysel Urbanik, are unconvinced its focus is “exclusively international.”
“This is un-American,” says Urbanik, who immigrated from Castro’s Cuba. “They do this in places that don’t believe in free speech.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
108 Reposts · 506 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
9. The Global Engagement Center is usually listed as a State Department entity.
It's not.
Created in Obama’s last year, GEC is an interagency group “within” State, whose initial partners included FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA, DARPA, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and others.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
193 Reposts · 560 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
10. GEC’s mandate: “To recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign... disinformation.”
On the surface, it’s the same mission the United States Information Agency (USIA) fulfilled for decades, with a catch. USIA focused on foreign “disinfo.”
GEC’s focus is wider.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
106 Reposts · 460 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
11. “It’s an incubator for the domestic disinformation complex,” says a former intelligence source. “All the shit we pulled in other countries since the Cold War, some morons decided to bring home.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
165 Reposts · 576 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
12.GEC could have avoided controversy by focusing on exposing/answering “disinformation” with research and a more public approach, as USIA did. Instead, it funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious – and idiotic – new form of blacklisting.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
108 Reposts · 478 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
13.Here GEC asks Twitter to review 499 accounts as “foreign” disinformation, for reasons that include using Signal to communicate and tweeting the hashtag, #IraniansDebateWithBiden.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
93 Reposts · 423 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
14. Here are 5500 names GEC told Twitter it believed were “Chinese… accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation.” It takes about negative ten seconds to find non-Chinese figures: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u…
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
95 Reposts · 424 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
15. GEC’s “Chinese” list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad. “Not exactly Anderson’s besties, but CNN assets if you will,” quipped Twitter’s Patrick Conlon.
"A total crock,” added Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
99 Reposts · 428 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
16.GEC passed some good information to Twitter, but mostly not. The root problem was exemplified by a much-circulated 2020 report, “Russian Pillars of Disinformation and Propaganda.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
87 Reposts · 414 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
17.This GEC report was contradictory. On one hand, it offered reasoned evidence that a specific outlet like the “Strategic Culture Foundation” was partnered with the Russian Foreign Ministry, which would make it a true "proxy site."
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
77 Reposts · 379 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
18.The same report advanced a far lazier idea.
Along with state actors, groups that “generate their own momentum” should also be seen as parts of a propaganda “ecosystem."
Independence, GEC said, should not “confuse those trying to discern the truth.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
80 Reposts · 380 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
19. The “ecosystem” is not a new concept. It’s been with us since Salem: guilt by association.
As one Twitter exec put it: “‘If you retweet a news source linked to Russia, you become Russia-linked,’ does not exactly resonate as a sound research approach.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
96 Reposts · 433 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
20.GEC sent Twitter a series of reports on a series of topics, often employing the “ecosystem” concept.
Its report on France “attributes membership in the yellow vest movement as being Russia-aligned,” is how Twitter’s Aaron Rodericks put it.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
85 Reposts · 375 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
21.GEC’s report on China was “more entertainment value than anything,” said Rodericks. “It equates anything pro-China, but also anything against China in Italy, as part of Russia's strategy.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
70 Reposts · 359 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
22. Twitter staffers had professionalism. They tended to look at least once before declaring a thing foreign disinformation. This made them a tough crowd for GEC.
Fortunately, there's an easier mark: the news media.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
72 Reposts · 404 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
23.GEC’s game: create an alarmist report, send it to the slower animals in journalism’s herd, and wait as reporters bang on Twitter’s door, demanding to know why this or that “ecosystem” isn’t obliterated.
Twitter emails ooze frustration at such queries. UGGG! reads one.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
106 Reposts · 408 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
25.Twitter disagreed with GEC’s alert about Russian “disinfo” in South America, which appeared to confused cause and effect.
As Rodericks put it, “I believe what they mean is: ‘there was a surge in accounts that agreed with Moscow-aligned narratives' = Moscow controlled.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
67 Reposts · 346 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
26. Roth noted Bret Schafer of the Alliance for Securing Democracy was quoted in Frenkel’s story and said: “Seems like ASD are back at their old tricks.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
62 Reposts · 337 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
27. Roth was referring to the fact that the ASD created Hamilton 68, another guilt-by-association scheme detailed in Twitter Files #15. The Hamilton “dashboard” claimed to track accounts linked to “Russian influence activities,” but the list was largely made up of Americans.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
77 Reposts · 359 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
28. The Hamilton 68 dashboard creator, J.M. Berger, was on the GEC payroll until June of 2017, just before the dashboard’s launch. Hamilton claimed the list was “the fruit of more than three years of observation.”
Berger “unequivocally” denies working on Hamilton for GEC.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
76 Reposts · 351 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
30. The Hamilton 68 dashboard employed digital alchemy to create streams of headlines tying Americans to “foreign” disinformation.
The “ecosystem” reports GEC and many "disinformation" laboratories feed reporters are often just subtler versions of the same thing.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
80 Reposts · 361 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
31. In a crucial in-house Q&A in mid-2017, Roth was asked if it was possible to detect “Russian fingerprints” using Twitter’s public data. Though “you can make inferences,” he said, “in short, no.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
61 Reposts · 332 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
32. Twitter therefore knew from the first days of the “foreign interference” mania that the media zone was flooded with bad actors playing up cyber-threats for political or financial reasons, GEC included.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
77 Reposts · 372 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
33. “GEC has doubled their budget by aggressively overstating threats through unverified accusations that can't be replicated either by external academics or by Twitter,” wrote Rodericks.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
71 Reposts · 356 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
34.The same is true of New Knowledge, the scandal-plagued company staffed by former NSA officials that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) hired to do “expert” assessments of the initial batches of “suspect” Facebook and Twitter accounts.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
58 Reposts · 244 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
35. When Twitter saw New Knowledge and its reporter-worshipped “disinformation” gurus like Jonathon Morgan and Renee DiResta were making analytical leaps they felt were impossible, they knew something was off.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
44 Reposts · 234 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
36. After Politico cited a New Knowledge report to the SSCI as evidence for what it called a “sweeping effort to sow divisions,” Twitter dug in. NK pointed to five supposedly Russian accounts it said were “relatively easy to find with the Twitter public API."
Roth scoffed.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
40 Reposts · 226 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
37. Roth said two of the five accounts were a “small Indonesian content farm… just commercial spam. (Would suspend but don’t want to throw fire on the NK report by making anyone think they’re correct.) Becca account is an American and not at all suspicious.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
44 Reposts · 221 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
38.Twitter’s Nick Pickles: “New Knowledge’s pitch... pick accounts that they have deemed to be IRA controlled, and then spin up bigger macro analysis... stories about ‘2000 Russian accounts tweeting about Kavanagh/Walkway/Caravan’ [were] often based on media activity from NK.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
48 Reposts · 222 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
39. Just like Hamilton 68, GEC and New Knowledge littered the media landscape with flawed or flat-out wrong news stories. Exacerbating matters, Americans in both cases paid taxes to become the subject of these manipulative operations.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
70 Reposts · 264 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
40. Particularly egregious: a New Knowledge report to the Senate on Russian interference was leaked just days before it was outed in a scheme to fake Russian influence in an Alabama election, and no media outlets issued retractions.
No SSCI staff have commented, either.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
67 Reposts · 245 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
41. Foreign cyber-threats exist, and there are sophisticated ways of detecting them. But GEC and its subcontractors don’t use those, instead deploying junk science that often lumps true bad actors in with organic opinion.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
45 Reposts · 224 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
42.“Disinformation studies” has mostly become a con, where non-experts mesmerize reporters with what one former GEC staffer calls “hairball” charts, usually measuring something idiotic – like who follows two Chinese diplomats, or shares an Iranian “FREE PALESTINE” meme.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
58 Reposts · 260 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
43.The Washington Examiner and @gekaminsky just profiled a GEC-funded NGO in the UK that algorithmically scores media outlets by "risk."
How does downranking the Daily Wire to help the New York Times get more ad revenue counter “foreign” disinformation?
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
70 Reposts · 264 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
44.An IG report shows GEC was initially obligated $98.7 million, of which roughly $80 million came from the Pentagon. It reportedly gave to at least 39 different organizations, whose names were redacted.
Why is this list secret?
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
96 Reposts · 272 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
45. Twitter comms official Ian Plunkett wrote years ago that “misinformation, like [countering violent extremism, or CVE] before it, is becoming a cottage industry.”
Disinformation is the counterterrorism mission, rebranded for domestic targets.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
43 Reposts · 215 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
46. Reauthorization for GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year. Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
86 Reposts · 319 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
47. The #TwitterFiles were prepared by a third party, so material may have been left out. Thanks to @ShellenbergerMD and the team at Racket.News, who’ll have more on this all month.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
45 Reposts · 244 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
48. NOTE: Just before publication, Graham Brookie of DFRLab wrote to clarify about the 40,000 India names: “We didn’t publish this from a former researcher because we lacked confidence in its findings.”
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
43 Reposts · 206 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
49. I asked Brookie if he’d made this lack of confidence clear to the Reuters reporter whose story based on that research is still live and uncorrected online: reuters.com/article/facebo…
He hasn’t replied.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
64 Reposts · 322 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
50. For more on these and other #TwitterFiles topics, @ShellenbergerMD and I will be testifying in the House on Thursday, March 9, at 10 a.m. We're humbled and grateful to @Jim_Jordan and @JudiciaryGOP for the invitation.
5:00 PM · Mar 2, 2023
153 Reposts · 565 Likes
This just pisses me off. We are at war with our own government. I believe it's time to revolt, with something much scarier than strong words! Wtf?
When coupled with diverting funds from the war in Ukraine through Scam Bankrupt Fraud to finance Democrats' campaigns, we're totally fucked. Time for a new Constitutional Convention.
Unfortunately, tribalism won't permit that, so we first must make use of the Second Amendment, then we can have CC2.