Analysts Are Quitting the State Department’s Anti-Russia Propaganda Team
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[url]http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/09/analysts-are-quitting-state-departments-anti-russia-propaganda-team/140936/[/url]
[quote]The chief technology officer at the U.S. State Department’s anti-propaganda center left last week, along with two other members of its analytics team, Defense One has learned. The departures raise new questions about the Global Engagement Center, the two-year-old office that remains leaderless nine months into the Trump administration.
The State Department would not say how many data analysts remain at the Center, but one former senior official described the three team members as “the whole enchilada” and added “things are bad.”[/quote]
[quote]Two other members of the analytics team quit at “around the same time” according to the former State employee at the Center, and departed on Friday, the former senior official said. Neither responded to requests for comment by press time.
The Obama administration established the GEC in 2016 to counter ISIS’ various online messaging efforts, directing the new office to use data and work with international partners in a bid to undermine extremist propaganda more effectively than State’s previous such unit, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.GEC’s toolbox included various outreach efforts, including highly targeted ad buys on Facebook.
Last year, the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act gave the GEC an additional mission: fighting “foreign propaganda and disinformation directed against United States national security interests and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support United States allies and interests.” The Act, which became law in December, allowed the Global Engagement Center to ask the Pentagon for $40 million, bringing its total 2017 spending to about $80 million. About $60 million of that was to be used to counter Russian influence operations; about $19 million was aimed at ISIS.
The change of administrations left the GEC leaderless. A telephone directory dated Sept. 11, 2017, indicates that neither the director’s job, which requires Senate confirmation, nor the acting director’s job, which does not, have been filled. Defense One obtained a copy of the directory.[/quote]
and not a single republican will care because der trump doesn't
Pff, hire me for 60k, and I'll grab a bunch of millenials to create spicy memes for the goverment. It'll be the cheapest and most effective program Donald will ever have under his thumb.
I wonder why it is that the current administration has no interest in filling those leadership positions...
[QUOTE=froztshock;52678394]I wonder why it is that the current administration has no interest in filling those leadership positions...[/QUOTE]
and yet russia is using highly targeted facebook ads to undermine our democracy and cause more divisiveness among US citizens
i just [I]cannot[/I] figure out why they won't work to counter that!
it almost feels like they don't care because it's what helped them win
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