(by Nick Givas | Just The News) – The government’s campaign to fight “disinformation” has expanded to adapt military-grade artificial intelligence once used to silence the Islamic State (ISIS) to quickly identify and censor American dissent on issues such as vaccine safety and election integrity, according to grant and cyber documents. experts
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently awarded several million dollars in grants to universities and private companies to develop tools eerily similar to those developed in 2011 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC). program
DARPA said these tools were used “to help identify disinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” beginning with the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East that spawned ISIS. of a decade
The initial idea was to track dissidents who were interested in overthrowing pro-US regimes or follow any potentially radical threats by examining political posts on Big Tech platforms.
DARPA established four specific goals for the program:
“Detect, classify, measure and track (a) the formation, development and dissemination of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or misleading messages and misinformation. Recognize the structures of persuasion campaigns and influence operations through social media sites and communities. Identify participants and intent, and measure the effects of persuasion campaigns. Counter message from adversary influence operations detected.”
Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online has compiled a report detailing how this technology is being developed to manipulate the speech of Americans through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other organizations.
“One of the most disturbing aspects of Convergence Accelerator Track F’s domestic censorship projects is how similar they are to military-grade social media monitoring and censorship tools developed by the Pentagon for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism contexts abroad,” says the report. Read the full article >
