“It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, then slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets,” critical journalist says.
Critics are sounding the alarm that a new federal office to shield U.S. public opinion from purported threats of foreign disinformation is a thinly veiled reboot under a new name of the abortive Disinformation Governance Board, the Homeland Security Department office abandoned after being defined in the public mind as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”
Housed in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the new Foreign Malign Influence Center was launched with little public notice but is already provoking fears that it will use overstated foreign threats as a pretext to interfere in domestic political debate or will duplicate other federal efforts, especially a controversial State Department unit that tries to squelch populism abroad.
“The threat to U.S. democratic processes and institutions from foreign malign influence is persistent and dynamic,” according to FMIC’s undated fact sheet. “Informing efforts to counter it requires constant attention, a whole-of-government approach, support from the private sector, and engagement from the public.”