Reasonable Inference
The Global Engagement Center (GEC) — a State Department entity statutorily mandated to counter foreign propaganda — provided grants and contracts to NGOs that later participated in domestic “election misinformation” work, including as members or stakeholders of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). GEC funded the Disinfo Cloud platform (via a $3 million contract to Park Advisors), provided grants to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) — one of EIP’s four core institutional members — and funded NewsGuard through licensing fees and research contracts. While these programs were nominally foreign-facing, the GEC’s own tools and the organizations it funded were simultaneously promoted to domestic tech platforms and applied to domestic election-related content moderation in 2020; the GEC itself served as an “external stakeholder” in the EIP, flagging social media content during the 2020 presidential election. A bipartisan coalition of congressional committees has since concluded that this architecture enabled a foreign-intelligence component of the State Department to exceed its statutory mandate and operate, in coordination with academic NGOs and CISA, against domestic political speech.
Citations
House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-Experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Political Speech (Nov. 6, 2023): “the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), worked directly with CISA and the GEC to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Created in the summer of 2020 ‘at the request of DHS/CISA,’ the EIP enabled the federal government to launder its censorship activities through a university in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.” Available at: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/eip-jira-report-key-takeaways-one-pager-11.6.23.pdf . EIP Final Report (Stanford Internet Observatory, Mar. 2021), p. 30, confirms GEC participation as an “external stakeholder,” available at: https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:tr171zs0069/EIP-Final-Report.pdf.
The Daily Wire, et al. v. U.S. Department of State (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 6, 2023), Complaint ¶¶ 55–59: GEC funded and directed “Disinfo Cloud” via a $3,000,000 contract to Park Advisors; GEC routed $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index via the 2021 U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge; GEC funded NewsGuard through licensing fees and research contracts. Complaint available at: https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023.12.06-Daily-Wire-Complaint-Court-Stamped.pdf . DFRLab grant: Written Testimony of Benjamin Weingarten, House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability (Apr. 1, 2025): “The GEC would later provide grants to the DFRLab.” Available at: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA19/20250401/118072/HHRG-119-FA19-Wstate-WeingartenB-20250401.pdf
House Committee on Small Business, Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex (Interim Staff Report, Sept. 10, 2024): through GEC’s work developing the “Testbed methodology, the Disinfo Cloud platform, and the Tech Demo Series… the GEC and its partners were able to source and test surveillance and disinformation detection tools. The GEC marketed and promoted these tools, including by providing Federal funding for some” — and “sourced, developed, then platformed and promoted MDM-detection tools directly to the private sector, including to tech platforms with the ability to moderate domestic speech.” Report available at: https://smallbusiness.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_committee_on_small_business_-_cic_report_september_2024.pdf . GEC as EIP “external stakeholder” flagging social media content during 2020: House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee testimony (Apr. 1, 2025), supra fn. 2 (citing EIP Final Report p. 30).
House Judiciary Committee report (Nov. 2023), supra fn. 1. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee testimony (Apr. 2025), supra fn. 2: GEC — “though subject to a strict international mandate, sourced, developed, then platformed and promoted MDM-detection tools directly to the private sector, including to tech platforms with the ability to moderate domestic speech.” See also New Civil Liberties Alliance press release (Jan. 2, 2025): “The U.S. Department of State has closed its Global Engagement Center (GEC), which it had used to finance the development and promotion of censorship technology and enterprises that then blacklisted domestic news organizations.” Available at: https://nclalegal.org/press_release/in-ncla-victory-against-censorship-state-department-shutters-global-engagement-center/ .