Marco Rubio Kills State Department Anti-Propaganda Shop, Promises ‘Twitter Files’ Sequel

Rubio, until recently, was hawkish astir warring overseas power campaigns. In 2023, a 2nd diplomatic root with nonstop cognition said, helium supported re-authorizing backing the Center into the 2030s. “It’s not conscionable Russia—Iran, China, North Korea, and adjacent Cuba are pushing disinformation into America,” helium posted past September. But aft being confirmed arsenic Secretary of State, Rubio appeared to bash thing of a 180. While the section would proceed to antagonistic “enemy propaganda,” helium wrote successful a cable, immoderate State programs that “lead oregon successful immoderate mode open the doorway to censorship of the American people volition beryllium terminated.”

“The Secretary believes shutting down GEC was agelong overdue,” a State spokesperson tells WIRED. “It outgo taxpayers $50 cardinal a twelvemonth and the Biden Administration utilized that wealth to soundlessness and censor Americans. What started retired years agone arsenic an effort to antagonistic violent organizations was exploited by partisan bureaucrats who utilized the bureau to spell aft Americans’ escaped speech. Even vocation employees acknowledged GEC’s ambiguous ngo was ever problematic. Thanks to Secretary Rubio the American radical won’t person to interest astir it anymore arsenic it has been permanently disbanded.”

For the archetypal 60 days, the renamed, pared-down Global Engagement Center escaped the clear-cutting that took down the US Agency for International Development and different programs boosting America’s lasting abroad. But employees determination knew that this was, astatine best, a impermanent enactment of execution. In his Federalist op-ed, Rubio wrote, “Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever sanction it goes by, GEC is dead. It volition not return.”

Stories astir GEC volition continue, Rubio promised successful a livestreamed conversation with Mike Benz, a erstwhile State Department authoritative who has some a well-documented animus towards foreign-assistance and counter-disinformation programs—as good arsenic a long history of promoting outlandish conspiracy theories.

Benz asked Rubio if determination would beryllium a benignant of Twitter Files sequel, this clip for GEC. “Yeah. So I deliberation what we person to bash now, and Darren [Beattie] volition beryllium progressive successful that arsenic well, is benignant of papers what happened,” Rubio answered.

The Secretary of State promised an adjacent further-reaching, “cross-jurisdictional” effort to look astatine who got “deplatformed” for peddling disinformation oregon overseas propaganda, and whether the US authorities could beryllium blamed for it. “If we could somehow, with an interior review, make a linkage betwixt immoderate accusation that came from thing the State Department paid for and an existent aggrieved party, that's what's important,” Rubio said.