Government censorship: it's not just for NuXi Flu anymore

would you trust this man to tell you what to think, and say?

The article is from The Federalist, a widely read, respected publication that Google defunded before reversing itself after a huge outcry, but which the Left continues to try to shut down as a “hate site”. It seems likely that these military officers would support that effort.

Military officers say that to defeat “disinformation”, U.S. and Big Tecch must control free speech

Four military officers who describe themselves as “researchers” at the Army’s highly respected Cyber Institute have published an article that adds to the growing concern about the ongoing politicization of the military. Published by the military’s National Defense University (NDU), their article purports to analyze the dangers of misinformation and disinformation and to advise the Biden administration about how to counter it.

The article’s authors all are military officers and at least two are professors at West Point. They say their article “is written in response to the Capitol insurrection.”

Read the whole thing, if you want your hair to stand on end, but here’s an excerpt:

So, how would these military officers identify “disinformation”? It is difficult to know, since the authors never define either mis- or disinformation. But apparently it is anything that is contrary to what they call “shared reality.”

They repeatedly call for a “shared reality,” which can be aided by, in their words, government “pressure, if not regulation” to “bury spurious sources.” They give an example: “It may be necessary to consider requiring social media companies to adjust their algorithms to ensure users view a variety of legitimate professional news sources.”

The authors acknowledge (in a footnote) that it may be difficult to secure “universal agreement” on just which news sources are “legitimate.” They never identify just who should be the arbiter of truth; they just leave that to unidentified actors in “the private sector, the government, and the public.” And they do not say how they would identify what needs to be censored, other than speech that departs from groupthink shared reality.

But, of course, some person must be the arbiter, even if only by writing the tech companies’ algorithms. Who shall it be? A 23-year-old intern at Twitter? A committee of Mark Zuckerberg-approved techies? The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and serial liar Adam Schiff? Government bureaucrats such as Anthony Fauci, who lied to the American people because he thought they “can’t handle the truth”? The authors provide no answer.

Hunter Biden Coverage Shows How It Would Work

The folly inherent in the Cyber Institute researchers’ heavy-handed proposals for government and private collaboration to limit speech to some “shared reality” was on full display in a disinformation campaign the authors ignore. That is the successful efforts by the Biden team (which includes the media and much of the intelligence community) to effectively censor The New York Post’s revelations about Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails evidencing his and President Biden’s corruption.

Just two weeks before the presidential election, and while early voting was in progress, Biden allies falsely portrayed the New York Post’s revelations about Hunter’s laptop and emails as Russian disinformation. In an article headlined “Russian Disinfo,” Politico reported that “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter” outlining their shared reality that the recent disclosure of Hunter Biden’s emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” They concluded: “It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy.”

These former “senior intelligence officials,” including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, claimed that they were doing exactly what the learned researchers at the Cyber Institute advocate in their article – countering the Post’s alleged disinformation. And their bogus “Russian Disinfo” theme quickly became a “shared reality” among Democrats, the media, and other Biden supporters.

But they were dead wrong. It can no longer be seriously disputed that the laptop was indeed Hunter’s and the emails were genuine. The “shared reality” published by the 50-plus learned “senior intelligence officials” was itself disinformation that, unlike the Capitol riot, may well have been decisive in the election.

A serious and intellectually honest article about the dangers of disinformation would also have mentioned the biggest and most effective disinformation campaign in recent history – the Big Lie that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians. That was disinformation of the first order. It was spread by lies concocted by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in collusion with Russians, to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

Yet these Cyber Institute researchers ignore this disinformation and that Biden allies such as Clapper publicly spread disinformation about Trump’s supposed collusion with Russians to undermine the election, while admitting admitting under oath in closed-door sessions they knew of no evidence to support that. Such glaring omissions create, at a minimum, the appearance that the authors are reluctant to accuse prominent Democrats of disinformation lest they be perceived as aiding Trump when they are seeking to advise the Biden administration.

As this author has previously pointed out in The Federalist, there is no greater long-term danger to the country than the politicization of the military. For that reason, the military has a culture of not publicly wading into partisan disagreements.

The regrettable direction of the NDU article by the Cyber Center authors creates an unfortunate appearance that this nonpartisan culture may be at risk. These authors have shown little hesitation about wading into partisan thickets. Let us hope that this is an outlier, not a trend.

John Lucas is a practicing attorney who has tried and argued a variety of cases, including before the U. S. Supreme Court. Before entering law school at the University of Texas, he served in the Army Special Forces as an enlisted man and then graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1969. He is an Army Ranger and fought in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader. He is married with five children. He and his wife now live in Virginia.