by Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola:
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger has exposed Renée DiResta, research director for the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), as one of the key architects behind the censorship industrial complex
- DiResta is connected to the CIA, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which seeks to implement a One World Government
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
- Before DiResta became research director for the SIO, she was the research director for a small Democrat donor-funded political consulting firm called New Knowledge LLC that created thousands of fake “Russian bots” and used other disinformation tactics to alter the outcome of a local election
- DiResta’s reputation was not destroyed by this revelation. Instead, she’s been elevated to more prominent “disinformation expert” positions
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security created the EIP and outsourced what would otherwise be illegal and unconstitutional censorship to it. In 2021, the EIP was rebranded as the Virality Project, at which point the information being censored shifted from elections to that of COVID-related matters, including factual information about the COVID jabs and their potential dangers
In an April 3, 2023, Substack article,1 investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger exposes Renée DiResta as one of the key architects behind the censorship industrial complex (a term coined by Shellenberger himself).
In it, he draws many of the same conclusions I did a year ago, when I dissected DiResta’s “Shooting Starlings” essay.2 In my December 7, 2022, article, I pointed out that DiResta appears to be a key player in the censorship of Americans, and that behind her public persona hides direct connections to the globalist deep state.
Why Did DiResta Hide Her CIA Connection?
DiResta is the research director for the Stanford Internet Observatory, founded in June 2019 to promote internet censorship policies and conduct real-time social media narrative monitoring. As I pointed out in December 2022, she’s also connected to the CIA, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).3
DiResta’s CIA connection was revealed by her supervisor, Alex Stamos, during a presentation (video above). Had it not been for this casual mention that DiResta “worked for the CIA,” this connection might never have surfaced. In his April 3 article, Shellenberger writes:4
“We now know … that the Censorship Industrial Complex is violating the First Amendment by coordinating with government agencies and receiving government funding to pressure and help social media companies to both censor information, including accurate information, while spreading disinformation, including conspiracy theories …
One of the most intelligent, influential, and fascinating public-facing leaders of the Censorship Industrial Complex is Renee DiResta … DiResta has, more than anyone else, made the public case for greater government-led and government-funded censorship …
In 2021, DiResta advocated for creating a government censorship center … within the federal government … Did the Department of Homeland Security act on DiResta’s proposal to create a censorship center? It did … DHS … called it a ‘Disinformation Governance Board,’ which the agency announced publicly in April 2022.
DiResta’s rise to the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community struck me back in December of last year as improbably meteoric. DiResta had repeatedly described her involvement in fighting disinformation as having started in 2013 when she became a new mom and grew concerned about spreading anti-vaccine information online …
Two years later she was helping to fight ISIS online and by 2018 she was testifying before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. While these suspicions nagged at me, I waved them away …
[G]iven the historical dominance of high tech by founders in their 20s and 30s, and the challenges of older people to understand social media, I convinced myself that a person with DiResta’s limited experience battling disinformation online might leapfrog over the hundreds if not thousands of researchers, analysts, and intelligence experts who conduct research and combat foreign disinformation for the U.S. government and government-funded think tanks and academic institutions. But then I learned that DiResta had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).”
Censorship Industrial Complex Is Loaded With Former CIA Officials
According to DiResta, her “purported secret-agent double life was an undergraduate student fellowship at CIA, ending in 2004,” and that she’d “had no affiliation since.”
“But DiResta’s acknowledgment of her connection to the CIA is significant, if only because she hid it for so long,” Shellenberger writes. “And, notably, the CIA describes its fellowships as covering precisely the issues in which DiResta is an expert …
Is DiResta telling the truth when she claims she’s had ‘no affiliation since’? Perhaps. But one of the things I have heard from multiple people, including people within the intelligence community, is, ‘Nobody ever retires from the intelligence community.’
Such a claim is, no doubt, exaggerated. But there is truth to it. Moreover, one of the main characteristics of spycraft is the deployment of agents and assets not publicly affiliated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies.”
Shellenberger also points out that former CIA officials in general feature heavily in the censorship industrial complex.
No fewer than seven former CIA directors are on the board of the Atlantic Council, which is partnered with the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project that DiResta is directly involved in. The chief strategy officer and the director of federal programs at Graphika — another Stanford Internet Observatory partner — are also former CIA officials.
Why Did DiResta Become the Face of the Censorship Industrial Complex?
According to Shellenberger, DiResta “is without question one of the most, if not THE most, influential leaders within the network of for-profit and nonprofit organizations and government agencies that comprise the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” having led both the 2020 Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Project and its 2021 Virality Project, the latter of which was aimed at taking down vaccine misinformation.
“The question now is why,” Shellenberger says. “Who is Renee DiResta, and why is she, and not somebody else, the public-facing leader of the censorship industry and a trusted advisor to Democrats in Congress?
Why is she doing it? And what will it take to defund the Stanford Internet Observatory, dismantle the censorship industry, and disempower DiResta?
To answer those questions, we first need to understand how DiResta got away with and was even rewarded for participating in one of the most outrageous and likely ILLEGAL, election disinformation campaigns in recent history.”
DiResta Is a Disinformation Agent
Before DiResta became research director for the Stanford disinformation lab, she was the research director for a small Democrat donor-funded political consulting firm called New Knowledge LLC.
In 2017, New Knowledge received a $100,000 donation from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman to help Alabama Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones defeat Republican Roy Moore in a special election.
The following year, it was revealed that New Knowledge had created and subscribed thousands of fake “Russian bots” to Moore’s social media campaign. The fake bots were created by generating user accounts using a virtual private network (VPN) to simulate Russian IP addresses.
Moore narrowly lost the election after mainstream media reported that he was “backed by Russia.” Alas, Moore’s “Russian backers” were merely bots created by New Knowledge.5 As reported by Shellenberger:6
“A 12-page New Knowledge memo dated Dec. 15, 2017 described the operation. ‘We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet’ …
The memo claimed that the work of New Knowledge had shifted enough votes for Jones to win the election, which had been decided by fewer than 22,000 voters.
How? Through the use of disinformation to ‘radicalize Democrats, suppress unpersuadable Republicans (‘hard Rs’) and faction moderate Republicans by advocating for write-in candidates,’ said the memo.
New Knowledge also ‘planted the idea that a Russian botnet amplified the Moore campaign on social media. We then tied that botnet to the Moore campaign digital director, making it appear that he had purchased the accounts.’”
We Must Make Ourselves More Resilient to Propaganda
Somehow, DiResta survived this scandal, and continues to be a leading spokesperson AGAINST disinformation and FOR election integrity, even though New Knowledge was caught red-handed using disinformation to interfere in a U.S. election. Shellenberger continues:
“Why, in the end, is it Renee DiResta, and not somebody else, the leader of the Censorship Industrial Complex? A big part of the reason is because she is the intellectual architect, and most articulate public advocate, of government funding of, and cooperation with, non-governmental actors, such as Stanford Internet Observatory, to increase social media censorship of disfavored views and disfavored users.
But there is another, deeper reason. Like other American elites, DiResta believes that it is the role of people like her to control what information the public is allowed to consume, lest they elect a populist ogre like Donald Trump, decide not to get vaccinated, or don’t accept whatever happens to be mainstream liberal opinion on everything from climate change to transgenderism to the business dealings of the presidents family …
While we must defund and dismantle the Censorship Industrial Complex, the greatest change must happen within ourselves. We must be suspicious of those who raise the alarm about ‘foreign election influence’ and ‘disinformation’ and demand greater ‘content moderation’ by social media platforms. As such, we should take a page from our would-be censors and make ourselves more resilient to their disinformation.”
A New World Order Propagandist
Another aspect of DiResta that Shellenberger does not address is that she’s also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),7 and you don’t get into that club without some serious connections. You also don’t get in unless you are able to contribute to CFR’s work.8
CFR is financed in part by the Gates,9 Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations,10 and has influenced U.S. foreign policy ever since its inception 95 years ago. Almost all U.S. secretaries of defense have been lifetime members, as have most CIA directors. This is of crucial importance, considering the CFR’s goal, from the start, has been to bring about a totalitarian one world government, a New World Order (NWO) with global top-down rule.
