After eight years of operation, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center is set to cease functioning as an entity at midnight on Monday. Established by Obama’s Executive Order 13584 in 2011, the center’s original mission was to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts targeting the United States and its allies. Initially intended as a temporary effort, it became a permanent entity in 2016 to coordinate government-wide communication activities aimed at countering terrorist organizations’ messaging and influence.
However, over time, the Global Engagement Center evolved into a controversial entity characterized by federal overreach and tendencies towards censorship. The center’s involvement in suggesting moderation topics for social media platforms became entangled with the divisive political atmosphere surrounding the Trump administration, the Russia-gate controversy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the intensely contested 2020 presidential campaign.
The Global Engagement Center was criticized for flagging accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria such as attributing the Coronavirus to being an engineered bioweapon, blaming research conducted at the Wuhan institute, and attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Eventually, the GEC started using its authority to award grants to bankroll leftist efforts like the Global Disinformation Index, which worked with Big Tech to limit advertising on disfavored outlets; see .
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🚨Today, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center is officially set to terminate eight years after it was authorized during the Obama administration.
The GEC, which almost earned a lifeline under the first CR version, is already scattering its employees to other agencies… pic.twitter.com/PBxxHrF5A3
— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) December 23, 2024
Like so many zombie-like federal agencies, the GEC was nearly reanimated last week when it was given a new lease on life in the 1500+ page continuing resolution that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy went to war over; see and .
The GEC’s authorization under the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017 expires at midnight on December 23, 2024. The staff has new jobs to report to after Christmas, so this one small challenge to free speech has been brought up short. However, the people who managed the effort are still employed by the federal government. The networks that identified people and ideas to be silenced still exist. And the attitude that common people should shut up and do what they are told is as strong as ever.
