Read on Twitter
1/Whatever happened to this story @nytimes? Apparently this money was never spent by @StateDept. A great deal of disinformation is now Covid-related, so this action by State (& resulting ongoing pandemic mishandling) literally killed/killing people & trillions economic damage. https://twitter.com/solusnan1/status/1079709231861755905
2/ @CNN @politco @Newsweek @RonanFarrow you wrote similar stories earlier in 2018 (attributing the figure lower at $80MM that State was sitting on). @TrueFactsStated also discussed this story. Isn't this now super-relevant in the age of ongoing Covid disinformation? What happened?
3/More recently, @tedlieu grilled @SecPompeo on Russia Covid-disinformation campaign. Pompeo assured Rep. Lieu "State doing everything it can to protect Americans" but no mention of $120MM missing $ story, which @Independent& @NPR also reported on in 2018? https://twitter.com/Independent/status/1231561865932746753
4/ @PacCouncil& @YaleGlobal also reported on 2017-18 refused @StateDept disinformation $$, although used lower $80MM figure. Given the new accusations of a heavy Covid-disinformation campaign, isn't this story now super relevant? What happened to the money? https://twitter.com/PacCouncil/status/912346386632445954
5/ @dfriedman33 at @MotherJones seems to have answer in 2019 w/ Pompeo as SoS, with some/most of $80MM anti-Russian-disinfo money creatively diverted to counter ("harass"?) critics of the admin's new Iran policy?!? Seems like should have been bigger story? https://twitter.com/dmzhukova/status/1262415919889989636
6/With the discovery of the MotherJones article suggesting a redirection of funds, this thread on the earlier 2017-19 scandal at State (which is very much Covid-related as well) now seems much more relevant to today's State scandal then when it started https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1262463130505850885
7/ @tedlieu @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff @SenSchumer @TheDemocrats are you going to be asking Pompeo about the earlier 2017-19 $80-120MM disinfo funds redirection scandal, which seems relevant to both today's IG Saudi scandal and Covid disinfo/death as documented in this thread?
8/Yet another reason why this is a scandal: significant disinformation operations continue. Were these funds spent as Congress intended, there would be a well-funded US gov't effort to fight these bots & protect lives. That doesn't seem to be happening. https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1264180035646296067
9/Yet more reasons why this diversion of funds & underreported story is a scandal (if not much more). Foreign-state-sponsored vaccine disinformation will literally kill Americans. That is its intent. (Never mind damage to @BillGates @gatesfoundation). https://twitter.com/evankirstel/status/1264910903213985793
10/Experts, like former FBI Agent turned Yale prof and disinformation lecturer @AshaRangappa_ believe the trolls spreading these lethal conspiracies have a significant hostile foreign state-sponsored component. https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1264326815117606912
11/50% of tweets about Covid are thought to come from bots and appear aimed at sowing divisions in the US (and see above why experts think many bot tweets are directed by hostile foreign gov'ts). https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1263400594338918401
12/2019 @ZDNet estimated online disinfo costs world $78Bil yearly. That was pre-Covid, so doesn't include the many trillions of dollars spent responding to disastrous mismanagement of Covid, a crisis we would argue was possible only due to massive disinfo. https://twitter.com/ZDNet/status/1207364420831076352
13/ @SpeakerPelosi today's EO only part of a long-running & much under-reported campaign (also involving State Dept) to "dismantle" Congressionally-mandated "efforts" to protect US from online disinformation since 2017. See @MotherJones, NYT&c this thread. https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1266100555950297093
14/Congrats Biden @StateDept team! Here's important ?/thread we ran from way back on Trump State Dept's anti-disinfo budget scandal. As you know, disinfo afterwards went on cause some problems for Congress (like domestic terror). What about this $$$ Biden admin?
