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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm a little scared. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: [LAUGHTER] Wow. What a way to start off a podcast episode.
N. Rodgers: I'm just saying. Listeners, occasionally, I say to Aughie things like, hey, I saw a mention of this thing in a document or an article.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: By the government. What do you know about it? Aughie will be like, "A little, but I'm going to go do some research and come back when I know more." Then we decide whether we're going to record on or not. Some things get recorded, some things don't. At some point, maybe we'll publish a list of all the stuff we went.[LAUGHTER]
J. Aughenbaugh: Which might be an embarrassing list.
N. Rodgers: It might be. But so I said, hey, Aughie, what's this global engagement center thing? Aughie said, "Hold on. I'll be right back." He went away for I don't know it a couple of weeks, and he came back with one of the most terrifying documents. Of his thus far preparation career, where he was like, you might want to sit down. I'm like, wait, what? He's like, "It's mission is to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate US federal government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state, and non state propaganda and disinformation efforts." First fall, resume builders everywhere. Welcome to all the action verbs possible.
J. Aughenbaugh: For those of you younger listeners or those out on the job market, and you're trying to revise.
N. Rodgers: Just make a note of all these.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You're trying to revise your resume. Because career placement services are forever telling people who are writing resumes, you need active verbs in your resume. If you want examples of what those career placement staffers are saying to you, you need to read the mission of the Global Engagement Center, which is a unit of the United States State Department. Because it is chalk full of active verbs that when you combine all of them, is what leads listeners to Nia saying, I'm a little scared by what this particular and it's not a very well reach. [OVERLAPPING].
N. Rodgers: It's a lot of reach for people. If you said to people, hey, what's the Global Engagement Center, they would think that it was at a university somewhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That it meant, we do outreach to other countries and we get students to come here and we send students there. That's what it sounds like. It sounds benign. Global engagement. Doesn't everybody love engagement? It's wonderful. Global, even better, lots and lots of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then Aggie goes, by the way, this is what they do. You go.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's by the way, listeners are the only read part of the mission.
N. Rodgers: You want to finish?
J. Aughenbaugh: She stopped at the non state propaganda and disinformation efforts. Aimed at undermining or influencing the policy, security or stability of the United States, but it doesn't stop there. It's allies and partner nations.
N. Rodgers: What they basically have done is give themselves the mission of knowing everything for everybody?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This organization basically says, we will know every single thing about everybody everywhere in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Being able to then decide. If said information, is aimed at undermining or influencing, the US, its allies or partner nations. That is a huge amount of power and authority given to one little unit of the State Department.
N. Rodgers: Because it's in the State Department and not in the CIA, you, yes, you, an American citizen, can be investigated.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you are acting to destabilize the United States. Unlike the CAA, which cannot act.
J. Aughenbaugh: Domestically. That's correct.
N. Rodgers: It cannot act domestically. This bad boy doesn't have that.
J. Aughenbaugh: That limit.
N. Rodgers: As far as Aughie and I can tell, this is unlimited cosmic power inside an EDD living space. Yes.[LAUGHTER] Twice to quote a Latin.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's just one of the remarkable features of the Global Engagement Center. For me, what was also rather remarkable is it is a relatively recent, if you will, addition to the federal bureaucracy. It was created in Executive Order 13584, in the Obama administration in 2011. It was part of an executive order to establish the State Department Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications to support agencies in government wide public communications activities targeted against violent extremism and terrorist organizations. Now, when you read that, It makes sense for the time frame. 2011.
N. Rodgers: Ten years on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ten years on. We're a decade into fighting the Global war on terrorism. Terrorism experts, like our good friend and colleague, Bill Newman will tell you that one of the tools of non state terrorist organizations, is the use of information or disinformation, as the case may be.
N. Rodgers: GD Twig, I think calls that soft power.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because you're not using military. You're not using, if you will, violent activities to go ahead and affect another country's regime. Instead, you are using words and images to go ahead and get the people of that regime to begin to call into question.
N. Rodgers: That regime.
J. Aughenbaugh: That regime. It's legitimate.
N. Rodgers: Legitimacy.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Because it's far easier to affect change if the people no longer support the government within that regime.
N. Rodgers: What this is set up to do is to counter that for the United States and its allies.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Yes.
N. Rodgers: When you see in the news, Russian propaganda, the Global Engagement Center is trying to fight that so that it does not have an effect on American.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: On the American citizenry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's the theory anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the first executive order. Five years later, in 2016, President Obama signed another executive order, which renamed the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications.
N. Rodgers: I would say that five times.
J. Aughenbaugh: It doesn't really roll off the. Even the acronym, CSCC, requires you to pause, so you can say it. It was renamed the Global Education Center.
N. Rodgers: The Global Engagement Center.
J. Aughenbaugh: I almost made it even more benign.[LAUGHTER]
N. Rodgers: Even more benign or more terrifying.
J. Aughenbaugh: More insidious.
N. Rodgers: Are you right? Depending on how close it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sorry, listeners. There's some slip that just went on there.
N. Rodgers: There's a free [inaudible] somewhere which could enable engage or educate people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some other, psycho analytical theory that I just just demonstrated. No, it's the Global Engagement Center, the GEC.
N. Rodgers: Which, like I said, sounds like a warm fuzzy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: Doesn't everybody want to belong to the Global Engagement Center? We are all working together.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: To solve problems. That's what that sounds like.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's fine. But it gets depending on your perspective, either better or worse one year later will be okay. Way back when we first started this podcast.
N. Rodgers: I remember that far back.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's only five years ago. Come on.
N. Rodgers: Seventeen seasons.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Just say it.
J. Aughenbaugh: But we did a multiple part episode series on the federal government's budget.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every year, you have budget bills. But we also have a different legislation known as authorization. One of the agencies that Congress always insists on reauthorizing, is the Department of Defense, and the Department of Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017.
J. Aughenbaugh: GECs mission was expanded, because the GEC then was given the authority to address other foreign propaganda and disinformation operations. Because some members of Congress felt that Russian propaganda affected the 2016 presidential election. Now, for our younger listeners who perhaps were not politically aware in 2016 and 2017, there was, if you will, a pretty standard Mantra particularly among Democrats in the United States. That the the only reason why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election is that some foreign nation had to spread disinformation that would lead American voters to not vote for the Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton.
N. Rodgers: I had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't go to most of the Midwest Swing states.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pennsylvania.
N. Rodgers: Come on now. I do understand that there was Russian propaganda involved, because there was Russian propaganda involved in every single one of our elections.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's what having an arch enemy means. We have an arch enemy in the United States. Our arch enemy, me and Mitt Romney, may be the only people who believe this. But our arch enemy is Russia. Russia would like to destabilize us because it would help them in terms of their power. Now, China's starting to play that game as well. Now we're developing more arch enemies than I don't know how many we can handle, but currently we're like Batman. We've got four or five that we have to worry about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nice movie reference. Welcome done. Yes.
N. Rodgers: You know what I mean. That's what arch enemies do is they undermine election.
J. Aughenbaugh: Regime.
N. Rodgers: They undermine beliefs in the country. You think we're not doing that in China? You think we're not putting out social media in China that's like, Shisham Ping. I don't know. Ex murderer, you decide, that stuff. He's not an ex murderer by the way. But that thing is not normal, but is what we do in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, what Nia is describing is what, and again, I'm going to encourage you to go back to one of our previous episodes. We had our good friend and colleague, Judy Twigg, come on this podcast earlier this year when we had a series of episodes about international relations, foreign policy, concepts, terms, doctrines, etc. She came on and she talked about soft power. As she acknowledged, it's not like we don't do it.
N. Rodgers: We don't do it. Of course, we do. We would be total chumps if everybody else in the world was doing it, and we were, no, we're Americans. We don't do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're above the fray.
N. Rodgers: We're so not above the fray.
J. Aughenbaugh: As she pointed out, after World War II and the Cold War ensued, disinformation campaigns and propaganda and destabilizing other countries governing regimes, again, became a fundamental tool of both the Soviet Union and the United States.
N. Rodgers: Chris Saladino's episode expands on that when he talks about hemispheric control doctrine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because we messed with all governments.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Destabilized all people.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you think that Nia and I are just beating up on the GEC because we're definitely afraid of some Orwellian experience. I'm making now a book reference or an author reference.
N. Rodgers: 1984 reference.
J. Aughenbaugh: To George Well's 1984. We acknowledge that this is part of, if you will, international relations today. This is state craft 101.
N. Rodgers: You really can't call yourself a country if you're not engaged in this behavior. One of the things that makes me skeptical about Luxembourg as a country is that they don't do this. I'm like, are you really a country? Just 50 miles wide.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the 21st century, if you're running around boldly claiming that you're neutral, and that you're not all that concerned about other nations trying to destabilize other nations. I'm just like, what allows you to go ahead and put basically your head into the sand and act there ain't anything going on around me.
N. Rodgers: Especially since you're in the middle of a bunch of countries, but anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you were at the edge, it might be, if you were Portugal, it might be different, but you're just up in there in the middle. That's a whole separate. That's a map issue. I have a question, if you don't mind. We have an executive order, but then in the National Defense authorization. Now, Congress has bought in to the existence of the global engagement center.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is correct.
N. Rodgers: The likelihood of it just being disbanded.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not good.
N. Rodgers: Because now it's in the budget. It's accounted for.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's institutionalized.
N. Rodgers: It's probably here to stay.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is institutionalized.
N. Rodgers: Unlike the Disinformation Board, which came and went before even people realized it. It was less than two years, I think. It had a very short run.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, what Nia is just referencing is another one of our episodes.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. I fell a lot of call back today.
J. Aughenbaugh: We discussed the short unhappy life of the Disinformation Board, which was an attempted creation during the Biden administration within the Department of Homeland Security.
N. Rodgers: But this has been going strong for 13 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Now, the GEC, according to our reports submitted to Congress last year in 2023, has basically breaks down its work into five, if you will, major components or essential activities. One, they do analytics and research. They collect data from foreign actors to produce and share analysis on foreign malign information influence operations. Say that fast. Foreign malign information influence operations with stakeholders within the State Department.
N. Rodgers: They don't care if you say nice things about the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, they're interested in malign. There's a word. Listeners, try to go ahead and use that.
N. Rodgers: Drop that in a sense in the next three or four days and see what happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I believe your intent is malign.
J. Aughenbaugh: Malign. Yes. I'm going to malign you with the following.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Second, international partnerships. This to me is what's really truly scary. They participate in international coalitions partnerships with foreign governments to coordinate counter disinformation analysis and solutions.
N. Rodgers: They're working with other countries saying, I think it's bad. Do you think it's bad? We should work on this together.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, listeners, this isn't being publicized. It isn't like they issued press release.
N. Rodgers: It's so supper open actor.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're not issuing a press releases saying, "Hey, we're partnering up with Germany to go ahead and monitor what's going on in Central Europe." No.
N. Rodgers: They're just doing it, but they're not talking about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they have programs and campaigns. This really reminded me of what Judy Twigg described as soft power. GEC houses teams focused on Russia, China, Iran, and counter terrorism. It tailors initiatives and coordinates internally within the state department across agencies and with international allies.
N. Rodgers: No, the Russia, China, and Iran.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But those nations are probably subject to change depending on our closeness or distance from them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If for some reason, we got suddenly buddy with Russia, which I don't know how that would happen. But if we did, then that Russia may drop off and move into the ally group and some other country might move into the non ally.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Those are probably fluid.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's fluid, but let's face it. Basically, the last four presidents, Bush 43, Obama, Trump to a certain extent, but definitely Biden. If there are the three big, if you will.
N. Rodgers: If there's an axis of evil.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It would be Russia, China, and Iran right now.
N. Rodgers: I know that North Korea does not make this list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: My guess is that's because North Korea's propaganda machine just really doesn't work in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: States.
N. Rodgers: We don't really take North Korean propaganda seriously. We don't really take North Korea seriously as a country. It's probably a mistake because they are armed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They could start some crap on the peninsula, and we have a strong ally there in South Korea that we would need to defend.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We also have military there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The DMZ is still operated under the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's still active.
N. Rodgers: We probably should take them seriously, but I don't know that we take them as seriously as we take the others. In part because, two, here you'll notice, by the way, listeners, Russia, China, and Iran are all nations that can afford misinformation campaigns because they're not cheap. It's not cheap to buy that work.
J. Aughenbaugh: They have robust disinformation campaigns.
N. Rodgers: Because they have the money to put into them. When you get into nations that would like to do that, but don't have the money to that, you're talking about North Korea and a few other nations. That may also change depending on the finances of the global economy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The fourth major activity is exposure. Now, this is where we might actually hear. They coordinate interagency exposure of foreign information influence activities. We are recording this episode near the end of the month of October.
N. Rodgers: No, August.
J. Aughenbaugh: August. Good Lord.
N. Rodgers: It's been a rough start since the semester started.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're recording this at the end of August. Earlier this week, the United States State Department released a press release that was picked up by most of the major news organizations in the United States, saying that they had credible information that China had employed hackers to affect the upcoming election here in the United States.
N. Rodgers: No.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: So I'd say it's so ugly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This is the exposure that we are talking about.
N. Rodgers: Because they want to keep the American public aware that everything that you see on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other casual social media may or may not be generated out of good will.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: How is that for diplomatic?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well done. Technology assessment and engagement is the last major activity.
N. Rodgers: Figuring out who has the ability.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and this is the scary censoring element to what the GEC does. Because the GEC hosts private sector technology demonstrations, assess counter disinformation technologies, and identify technological solutions.
N. Rodgers: How can we use AI to counter this stuff? I'm just saying AI because in 2024, that's the latest, but who knows where that will be two years from now? Who knows where that technology will be?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or they hold meetings with the CEO in the boards of major technology companies sharing with them how their platforms are being used by foreign governments, terrorist organizations to engage in disinformation campaigns.
N. Rodgers: Yes. You have to wonder if some of those CEOs care.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because it does make them money. Shareholder response is the driving force in the market.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, what has also become aware over the last few years is the number of efforts of former presidential administrations to get those platforms to take down information that those presidential administrations thought were dangerous disinformation.
N. Rodgers: Which is awful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Well, anyway, that's a whole separate. We should talk about that at some point. If you believe in the market, you can't have it both ways. You can't say, I believe in the market except when I control the market, and then I believe in the market.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. If you subscribe to the idea that the marketplace of ideas will produce truth, then the government stepping into the market and saying, these ideas are never truthful should bother you.
N. Rodgers: Which brings us to one of your critiques, your first critique, which I agree with you. It does feel like the ministry of truth in 1984. It does feel like there's some truth with a big T that the government can establish.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I know, this is a small, but important callback. The sun is at the center of the universe, not the Earth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: And several people lost their heads?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Literally and figuratively over that idea when it first came about because the government and the church were like, no. The Earth is at the center of the universe.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That idea of who establishes the big T Truth. Now, what is it? Like 250 years or 300, whatever how many years it is on the church was like, hey, sorry, Copernicus about that. You're a little late.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're right.
N. Rodgers: This idea that are bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: How many people had to lose their lives, simply because -.
N. Rodgers: Or their livelihoods. You can't say that because we just are telling you it's not true, even if it is true. It's so sketchy to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, it's this idea that the government is suppressing narratives that it doesn't agree with. Now, are they suppressing narratives they don't agree with because they are afraid that it is going to harm the United States or its allies. Or they're afraid that we will be embarrassed.
N. Rodgers: Probably, sometimes that. It's probably a mixture.
J. Aughenbaugh: This gets something that you and I previously discussed, particularly on air, but also off air off reporting. The federal government's use of the classification system, making a document classified. Are they doing it because it truly needs to be classified, or are they doing it because they're afraid it's going to go ahead and embarrass the government and they don't want the public to find out?
N. Rodgers: As Aughie has told listeners in past, and as we have discussed many times, there are too many things that are listed as top secret super classified. You're like, really, it's the lunch menu. Come on. It's the lunch menu from a meeting. Nobody needs to think that. Who cares why did you had taco salad at lunch? Come on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who showed up at a meeting? Well, I would hope that the president would have a wide array of potential advisors at a particular meeting so that the president can hear a wide array of perspectives before making a decision. What we find out that, hey, somebody who represents, this group that is disfavored right now, was there? Well, okay. But they need to be heard too.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Who knows that in 20 years, they're not the awesome group who had the insight into the future. Anyway, that's problematic.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, we've segued way into critique. Nia has already mentioned one, the similarity of the GEC to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984.
N. Rodgers: Which if you've not read, you should.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Another critique is the potential abridgment of the press, right?
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, we've tangentially touched upon it already, but this idea that the government can say who is or is not fake or engaged in disinformation, really does seem like this is in violation of the First Amendment freedom of the press.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. The way this is coming together, which is unfortunate to my mind, and tell me if I'm wrong, Aughie, is that the press is in some ways dying in the United States. Journalism is less frequent. The government is stepping in to theoretically fill that void by trying to surface things that it doesn't like. But because it's a biased source of that information, you're going to get biased information. Theoretically, good journalists are taught to seek the neutral, to look at a proposition and take all of strip out as much of the bias as they can so they can get at the actual issue at hand.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that used to be the objective this idea of whether it be neutrality or objective reporting, versus subjective. But increasingly, you are seeing in major newspapers in the United States and even in journalism schools that this notion of the objectivity standard is being called into question. Well, if that is the case, then I can understand why the government would want to go ahead and try to put pressure on various news organizations to not report certain things. Because the media is not pursuing "big T Truth''. If they're giving slanted news because they are appealing to a particular, if you will, customer base, and the government is concerned that that is quite obviously disinformation, then I can see why the government does this. In part, the media needs to look at themselves, because if you're the media and you no longer are pursuing objectivity, you then can't turn around and go ahead and say, we need protection from the federal government's GEC.
J. Aughenbaugh: That just looks hypocritical. At that point, you don't have a leg to stand on because the government.
N. Rodgers: Is filling the void that you've made.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You can't go ahead and say, is us, when the reason why you're in this kind of position where the GEC might be saying to you, you can't print X because that's disinformation. Well, you already are printing disinformation or you're already airing slanted coverage of a particular political event. Now, interestingly enough, our next criticism is not that the GEC is crossing certain lines. The next criticism is the GEC is not getting enough funding and doesn't have enough staff.
N. Rodgers: How big is it? Wait, who's the head of this agency?
J. Aughenbaugh: The current head is, James Rubin, is the current head.
N. Rodgers: How many staff does he have?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the most recent figure I could find is May of 2020. The GEC only had a staff of 120.
N. Rodgers: That's not enough, with the mission this big.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that reflected the fact that the Trump administration didn't think the GEC was a priority.
N. Rodgers: There may be more now?
J. Aughenbaugh: Now. Yes. But you've had a test in 2017, some rather prominent members of the senate, Republican Rob Portman, who I think is used to be from Ohio, I think he was replaced by JD Vance, and then Chris Murphy, who's still in the US senate, argued that the GEC needed more funding. However, the Inspector General for the State Department concluded in April 2020, that the GEC lacked safeguards that were necessary so that it would be independent. The Trump administration's use of the GEC, or I should I say, non use, received a lot of criticism. Because many foreign policy experts are like, other nations have more robust, better funded, greater technology at their disposal to engage in this soft power use. We need to ramp up our efforts, not shrink them.
N. Rodgers: As this world becomes more and more interconnected.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm a little terrified by this agency, but if you're going to have a terrifying agency, it needs to be hyper funded and have lots of people. You either need to foot to the floor or nothing at all. Don't try to do it with 120 people, because they probably can't cover everything that needs to be covered.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a couple other criticisms I want to mention. One, the GEC relies a lot on other units and other partners to do a lot of its work and that has led to the criticism that the GEC should receive more funding, have more staff. So it can better direct its counter information efforts that is more of your standard bureaucratic politics critique. But the last one, and I oscillate back and forth. There have been a number of conservatives and republicans who have criticized the agency for strain from its original purpose, to engaging in the censorship of conservative opinions in the United States, and this is the criticism that was probably best represented by what Elon Musk said in February of 2023, when he called the GEC, "an obscure agency."
N. Rodgers: Which is this?
J. Aughenbaugh: He described it as "the worst offender in US government censorship and media manipulation and a threat to our democracy."
N. Rodgers: Now let us know. I'm just going to say here, I'm not a fan of Elon Musk.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I think Elon Musk is extraordinarily overrated.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's one of those people and guys moment, who's like, everybody's like, and then you're wait, what was that guy? Do I think he's visionary, perhaps, but do I also think he's a chuckle-head?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Him calling it a useless agency or obscure agency censorship. Censorship is a little rich coming from Elon Musk, who made them redo the algorithm at X, so that his tweets would always reach more people than anyone else. Which is its own not even remotely hidden form of suppression of other people tweet, or X's, or whatever they're called now. I'm not buying what he says. I do buy that there is an effort to suppress. I wouldn't say conservative only, I would say extreme viewpoints on both ends. The problem with that is that you drive them underground. It's not that they go away, it's they go away from being able to be vetted, and seen, and potentially dismissed if they are nutty enough. Instead, what happens is those people all start talking to each other in circles that are very tight, but can lead to damaging outcomes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because there's an echo chamber there when you don't allow different views to challenge what they are saying.
N. Rodgers: This organization butts up right against that. For me, that's a form of dictatorship. That makes me nervous. I'm not a huge fan of that. I also not sure how much oversight is there with this organization.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a torn here, this is like many of the topics that we cover here. On one hand, I'm well aware of what many foreign policy scholars say, which is the United States needs this kind of agency in this day and age. Information is just too readily available, much of that information is bad.
N. Rodgers: For damaging in some way that's dangerous.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even if you have the rosiest, most optimistic view of some of the information that gets posted, particularly on social media. It can still go ahead and undermine faith in government, faith in the regime, et cetera, and if our enemies are going to play this game, we need to be equipped to respond. I'm not always a big believer that, so and so did it, so we should be able to do it. That reminds me of my mom saying, if so and so jumped into a river, would you follow them? Well, it depends on the river and etc.
N. Rodgers: How cute she is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Exactly.
N. Rodgers: I'm kidding. But circumstances matter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: Am I standing with my back to a fire? Then yes, I would jump in a river.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, again, I apologize to our younger listeners because perhaps for our older listeners, this will resonate more. But for older Americans, the federal government having a unit like the GEC is particularly troublesome. It reeks of the state-sponsored propaganda and censorship seen in regimes that we fought in World War II and the Cold War. Listeners, Nia started off this episode saying that she was scared, I believe that correct me if I'm wrong, that was a part of what makes you afraid is that the government is deciding what we should have access to.
N. Rodgers: Which never ends well. I'm just saying there is no circumstance in history where that has ended well because that first of all, government tends to be myopic. It tends to be self-serving. It's going to protect itself. It's like a turtle with a shell. It's going to pull everything in and protect itself. I love a government, folks. You guys know that because you heard me say it over. But there are elements of that that we have to watch out for. That's the whole point of democracy is transparency. We need to be able to say, hey, I don't like what you're doing in my name. That's not okay, or you don't get to suppress ideas until we vetted them out. It's not how academia works. It's not how science works. It's not how human thought should work. We should be able to fight over an idea publicly.
J. Aughenbaugh: The work of trust in our ability as citizens to be able.
N. Rodgers: To know that something is crap, you don't have to tell me it's crap. I can tell by looking at it. I don't need an announcement.
J. Aughenbaugh: If we're at a point to where the government has basically come to the conclusion that most Americans are unable to go ahead and perceive what is disinformation versus accurate information, we have far larger problem.
N. Rodgers: We do have some of those problems. The other side of me that feels this you need to be doing more of this is when I see deep fakes that are so believable that I know that people say. When you get political ads, where they now faked somebody saying something that they didn't say and people are I don't like that person because they said this thing. Once the person believes that, it's really hard to get them to not believe that. There's a part of me that also is like, dude, you should be doing more of this. Why aren't you out here with 10,000 people trying to fix this? I don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is where I get torn.
N. Rodgers: I'm with you on the dilemma. There's a part of me that wants more of it, and there's a part of me that wants less of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, listeners when Nia first proposed this, I was just like, I'd only seen references to the GEC-like articles.
N. Rodgers: Nobody ever really talks about it. Now we know why. But we are on some list somewhere now, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then I started finding hearing transcripts in Congress. Then I started finding references to appropriations bills and Department of Defense Reauthorization Acts. I was just like, wow.
N. Rodgers: This thing is a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: This thing is a thing.
N. Rodgers: By the way, it's not part of the Department of Defense it's Department of State. But the Department of Defense Authorization Act gets barnacles attached to it. You'll be reading along and somebody will say, Oh, the authorization for this farm thing. This tractor subsidy thing that didn't fit in the Farm Bill because that had already been passed. We just attached that to the Defense Authorization Act. You're like, what does that have to do with defense? But growing foods defensible. I don't know. They just make stuff up about why.
J. Aughenbaugh: With that particular example, then all of a sudden, you got members of Congress who are like, this is essential to the security of the United States because we need to be able to go ahead and grow our own food. But we need this particular tractor, so we need to subsidize the manufacturing of it. After a while, even those of us who are geeks are just like whatever.
N. Rodgers: We go through the amendments with half an eye. Because at that point, you can make anything department. Aughie and I can make an argument for every single dollar spent in the United States as related to the defense of the United States. It's sad, but it's true.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like when your child begins to provide a defense for bad behavior, and they figured out that if they fill a buster if they talk long enough, you'll just give up because you just want them to stop talking. Where you're just like, okay, sure, fine, whatever. Do it.
N. Rodgers: One last question, if you don't mind, please. James Rubin reports to Anthony Blinken, who is that Secretary of State. The Secretary of State does not in any way, report to Congress in the sense of they don't go there and give reports, or do they?
J. Aughenbaugh: They do.
N. Rodgers: There is broad oversight of the State Department. There's just not particular oversight of this organization within the State Department.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: I just want to make sure we understood that. The sub-agencies don't really have the scrutiny.
J. Aughenbaugh: Typically, secretaries of the departments don't like having their sub-units go to the hill and report. They wanted to go through them unless the agency within the department is about ready to get into trouble.
N. Rodgers: They'll throw you under a but. You need to go and explain what you were thinking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Theoretically, there could be great oversight. But again, it's so small.
N. Rodgers: But that's not just this group. Listeners to preview, something that's coming in the spring, we are going to do alphabet agencies in the spring. We are going to do agencies that are under the departments. Some of which you've heard of the history, the EPA that kind. You will have heard of that. Although there's some cool stuff there that you may not know. There's some really interesting stuff that's gone on with the EPA. Then some we hope you haven't heard of that you'll go, we have agency for that? Because we think those are fun too. We're doing agencies in the spring, so that's coming up next season.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because previously, we looked at cabinet-level departments.
N. Rodgers: Now we're going to dig in on something more fun thing. Some of the more fun acronyms that you're like, what the heck is that thing?
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't know how many times I've had people come up to me, Nia saying, can you explain to me why when I go to my bank, it says, FDIC certified? What is FDIC?
N. Rodgers: How much time do you have and how much coffee do you have? Exactly. We will be visiting the FDIC.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is an appetizer if you will. We just concluded an appetizer episode. I can't believe I'm describing one of our episodes as an appetizer. The listeners are just like wow, if this is Aughie's idea of an appetizer, I don't want to go to dinner with him.
N. Rodgers: That's right. We thought we just put this one out there and see where it goes, but then we decided to do more. Thanks, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.
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