Shutting Down Censorship: The Fall of the State Department’s Disinformation Hub

What Happened?

The State Department's foreign disinformation center, which has long been accused by conservatives of censoring U.S. citizens, has officially shut its doors due to a lack of funding.

Elon Musk, who has been appointed to head the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has deemed the Global Engagement Center (GEC) as 'the worst offender in U.S. government censorship and media manipulation.'

Established in 2016, GEC was stripped of its funding as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon's annual policy bill.

Why it Matters

Policymakers originally included funding for GEC in its continuing resolution bill (CR).

However, conservatives voiced their displeasure at the decision. It was rewritten without funding moving forward. The agency previously had a $61 million budget, and 120 people on payroll.

Republicans saw little value in the agency's purpose, being that rivals like Iran and Russia spread their own propaganda and disinformation throughout the world. They maintained their argument that the lion's share of its disinformation analysis is already offered by the private sector.

According to investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, who also reported on the Twitter files, said the GEC, 'funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious—and idiotic—new form of blacklisting' for the duration of the pandemic.

Taibbi also reported that the GEC 'flagged accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria like, “Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,”’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.'

While the GEC is part of the State Department, it also partners with the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, GEC also funds the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).

The DFRLab Director Graham Brookie has repeatedly denied claims that tax money was used to track American citizens, stating that GEC grants had an 'exclusively international focus.'

However, a 2024 report from the Republican-led House Small Business Committee condemned the GEC for awarding grants to certain organizations whose work included tracking both domestic and foreign misinformation. A lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist stated the GEC was used as a tool to enforce partisan censorship.

'[The] agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech. 

The complaint describes the State Department’s project as ‘one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.’

What it Means

The lawsuit has argued that a slew of conservative news organizations were branded as 'unreliable' or 'risky' by the agency, which subsequently cost them advertising revenue and dampened their overall circulation.

In addition, America First Legal, a non-profit conservative-focused public interest group, uncovered that the GEC used U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund and create a video game called 'Cat Park', which they used to 'Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation' abroad.

The game showed youth how sensational headlines, memes, and other compromised media can be used to further conspiracy theories and incite violence in the real world.

However, Mike Benz, the executive director at the Foundation For Freedom Online, stated that despite the game's message of ostensibly teaching youth about disinformation, it was really used to push certain political beliefs, as opposed to protecting Americans from foreign disinformation.