Summarised by Centrist
Regime change tactics once deployed overseas have been weaponised against the American people, according to explosive testimony before Congress.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger detailed how the US government, intelligence agencies, and foreign aid programs have used disinformation, censorship, and lawfare to suppress dissent and control public perception—first in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, then domestically after the populist revolts of 2016.
“What we saw abroad—using social media to fuel uprisings, suppress dissent, and manipulate narratives—was turned inward after 2016,” Shellenberger testified. He pointed to Russiagate, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and secret “truth committees” dictating online censorship as prime examples.
Shellenberger traced US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding to organisations that played central roles in the impeachment of Donald Trump and the Russiagate hoax.
USAID, he claims, has spent years quietly infiltrating investigative journalism worldwide, directing coverage to align with intelligence objectives while training groups to demand censorship of “misinformation.”
“The intelligence community didn’t just suppress the laptop story—it reprogrammed public perception,” Shellenberger said, describing how agencies preemptively primed journalists to dismiss the laptop as “Russian disinfo” before it was even published.
Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky vowed to reintroduce legislation to eliminate the National Science Foundation’s “Track F” grants, which he described as a taxpayer-funded censorship scheme.
These grants helped develop AI-driven tools like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, which Shellenberger called “middleware” that allowed authorities to filter the truth.
