According to The Washington Post, an anti-Trump PAC will utilize “artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president’s claims on social media,” and then attempt to “intervene” by “identifying the most popular counter-narratives and boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country — in some cases paying users with large followings to take sides against the president.”
The PAC, “Defeat Disinfo,” is ironically a disinformation project pure and simple and is aimed at spreading false data to American voters.
The PAC includes retired U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is infamous for mocking the former vice president, and the initial funding for the project, says the Post, came from DARPA. DARPA is the Pentagon’s secretive research arm. DARPA, as part of the Department of Defense (DOD), is funded with tax dollars. Thus, those tax dollars are being funneled into an anti-Trump psychological operations effort.
Leftist social media guru Curtis Hougland, who is heading up the group, has said he received money from DARPA when his work was “part of an effort to combat extremism overseas.”
DARPA flatly denies his claim and the Post story: “Hougland’s claim DARPA funded the tech at the heart of his political work is grossly misleading,” DARPA tweeted. “He advised briefly on ways to counter ISIS online. He was not consulted to design AI or analysis tools, nor certainly anything remotely political. DARPA is strictly apolitical.”
“Hougland had a tertiary consulting role advising an agency program on how to explore new and better ways to counter America’s adversaries online,” a spokesperson for DARPA told Fox News. “He was not consulted for technical expertise designing artificial intelligence or network analysis tools, nor certainly any research that was remotely political […] Unequivocally, DARPA funding did not help advance the technology with which Hougland now works any more than does his use of other agency technologies like the Internet or mobile phone.”
Both can’t be telling the truth. Either Houghland was initially funded by DARPA or he wasn’t. If he was, this secretive PAC fronted by a controversial general has some explaining to do to the American public.
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