I'm not aware of any agency with the authority to do so.
One could argue that the changes require that the material be originally intended for foreign consumption, but how does one prove "intent?"
https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/smith...
They're building the Ministry of Truth.
If you need an AI and propaganda to convince someone instead of neutral, rational, and educational means - then guess what, you are in the wrong.
To be honest, it's been going on for effectively forever.
See operation mockingbird -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
If Phillip morris is running a bot farm or paying people to tell others that smoking is healthy and doesn't cause cancer, then we have a duty to call that disinformation and strive to correct it. And I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me about the growing lung cancer rates in nonsmokers or that lung cancer is more deadly in nonsmokers.
Even the "we're not Trump" EU are still gaslighting about the genocide, amongst other things.
I'd be shocked if this wasn't already happening. Both with domestic and foreign targets.
We've been doing propaganda for a century. The methods are changing.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
And it's been one of the ones he's been actively trying to enforce:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/21/health/trans-community-trump-...
https://19thnews.org/2025/03/trump-anti-trans-executive-orde...
Shit, here's an article from TODAY if you want to say these measures are no longer high-priority:
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/school-board-sues-tru...
Just like a good documentary, selecting which set of true, objective facts to insert into one’s attention and narrative can perfectly serve an agenda.
On a side note, it is interesting to see how quickly America's elites turned against free speech after Israel takes a few Ls online for murdering "lesser beings that don't actually exist" in the middle east. Maybe their support was akin to how Martin Luther thought publishing the Bible would result in everyone having the same opinion as him.
That's why they jailed, beat, firebombed, and finally just shot him in the head.
ETA: Didn't have my glasses on. Wrong Martin Luther.
There is a fundamental difference between the private sector and the government performing these actions.
(Bill Gates getting his car legalized is a great non-controversial example of how this had been the case for a LONG time.)
This feels like the war on drugs and it won't end well in that nobody wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
And the USSR had its propaganda arm too. The US also effectively did this but without the same labels criticizing them - for example recently when the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor or ban opinions they didn’t like.
The fact that AI may now be used for this purpose isn’t offensive. It’s that governments (or corporations or any other group) interfere with free speech much more broadly than we think, and don’t just limit that to a few exceptions. Whether the use people or AI, it’s wrong.
actionfromafar•3h ago