Latest news with #TwitterFiles
Gulf Insider
07-04-2025
- Automotive
- Gulf Insider
Musk Schools Italy on Migration, Censorship, and Rules
Elon Musk joined Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the League party, for an interview during the party's congress in Florence on Saturday. The world's richest man explored a broad range of issues, from mass immigration and censorship to tariffs and EU overregulation. Musk, who notably exposed massive government-tech collusion to censor free speech after releasing the 'Twitter Files,' fiercely criticized forces opposing free expression – which comes on the heels of EU regulators threatening to fine Musk up to $1 billion for not curbing alleged disinformation on the platform. 'You can tell which side is the good side and the bad side by which side wishes to restrict freedom of speech,' Musk told Salvini. 'The Hitlers, Stalins, and Mussolinis of the world had very strong censorship.' .@elonmusk: "You can tell which side is the good side and the bad side by which side wishes to restrict freedom of speech.""In pushing for censorship, it makes it very clear that the left is the side against freedom." — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) April 5, 2025 'Restriction on speech and large government is fundamentally fascists. Ironically, in pushing for censorship, it makes it very clear that the left is the side against freedom,' the Tesla and SpaceX CEO added. Shifting focus, Musk addressed President Donald Trump's tariffs, advocating for a zero-tariff free trade zone between Europe and North America. He emphasized greater economic integration and urged Trump to ease restrictions on individuals living and working across the two regions. 'I'm hopeful that the United States and Europe can move, ideally in my view, to a zero-tariff situation. Effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,' Musk said. 'That's what I hope occurs, and also more freedom for people to move between Europe and the U.S. If they wish to work in Europe or America, they should be allowed to do so, in my view. That has certainly been my advice to the President,' the billionaire added. 🚨 ELON MUSK: "With the tariffs, that at the end of the day, I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America." — DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 5, 2025 This week, President Trump imposed tariffs on numerous countries, including a 20% levy on the European Union, prompting EU officials to pledge retaliation and French authorities to call on domestic firms to suspend investment plans in the United States. Musk also lambasted Europe's stifling regulatory environment, calling it a significant obstacle to entrepreneurial success and pushing for sweeping deregulation. 'Europe is over regulated. There are too many rules and regulations that make it very difficult to create a company and be successful,' Musk told Salvini. 'So I think radical deregulation is necessary in Europe. And if that means leaving the EU, it means leaving the EU,' he added bluntly. .@elonmusk: "Europe is over regulated. There are too many rules and regulations that make it very difficult to create a company and be successful.""Radical deregulation is necessary in Europe." "If that means leaving the EU, it means leaving the EU." — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) April 5, 2025 Finally, Musk delivered a dire warning about unchecked mass immigration, asserting that a nation's identity lies in its people, not its borders, and that unrestricted inflows could spell a country's demise. 'Mass immigration is insane and will lead to the destruction of any country that allows unfettered mass immigration — That country will simply cease to exist,' Musk warned. 'A country is it's people, not it's geography. This is a fundamental concept.' Elon Musk: 'Mass immigration is insane and will lead to the destruction of any country that allows unfettered mass immigration — That country will simply cease to exist… A country is it's people, not it's geography. This is a fundamental concept.' — America (@america) April 5, 2025 Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni campaigned on a promise to reduce illegal immigration, and her efforts are showing clear results. In 2022, Italy saw 105,131 illegal arrivals, a figure that jumped to 157,651 in 2023 due to worsening global conditions. However, by 2024, the number of arrivals plummeted to 66,317—a nearly 60% decrease, the Institute of New Europe reports. Also read: Elon Musk's X Suffers Major Outage; Global Users Report Access Issues
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation
Nina Jankowicz is the former director of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, an entity that purported to advise the Biden administration on how best to counter online misinformation but was shuttered after drawing the ire of conservatives and libertarians. Like so many other purported disinfo experts, Jankowicz's record of identifying actual lies is decidedly mixed: She had dutifully joined the intelligence community and much of the mainstream media, for instance, in wrongly asserting that the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation peddled by Russia. She personally expressed the view that the straightforward explanation—Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair shop—was a "fairy tale." Oops. But like so many other former government intelligence officials who were fundamentally wrong about pivotal issues pertaining to their area of expertise, Jankowicz is fated to fail upward. She is now the president of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting transparency, though the group does not disclose its sources of funding. That intriguing policy—some would say execrable hypocrisy—was noted by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R–Wash.) during a fiery congressional subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Jankowicz testified alongside one of her most ardent critics, the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, whose work exposing the federal government's efforts to compel social media companies to censor contrarian speech was a major driver of negative attention to projects like the Disinformation Governance Board. Taibbi's Twitter Files (as well as similar projects, like Reason's Facebook Files) demonstrated that aggressive moderation of dissident opinions online was not a choice freely made by social media companies—it was forced on them by government agents who were themselves misinformed about the facts. Jankowicz defended the Sunlight Foundation's lack of transparency on grounds that she has personally faced bullying as a result of her antidisinfo advocacy, and she wished to spare her backers from such a fate. She also tore into Taibbi, accusing him of failing to understand the implications of the information he uncovered and the social media censorship stories he had reported on. "Mr. Taibbi said when he was first searching through the so-called Twitter Files, he didn't know what he was looking at," said Jankowicz. "Well, he still doesn't. Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works." That's a bold claim from someone who bought into a conspiracy theory about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Jankowicz proceeded to flatly assert that the State Department's Global Engagement Center, charged with countering foreign propaganda, was never engaged in anything approaching censorship. This claim is abjectly false and collapses under scrutiny. At issue are two independent antidisinfo organizations, NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, that received funding from the State Department. In her testimony, Jankowicz acknowledged that these organizations were federally funded, although she defended the grants as focused on combatting Chinese government propaganda rather than encouraging censorship of American media entities. We will return to that in a moment. Jankowicz subsequently took issue with the idea that NewsGuard was biased against right-leaning news sources, noting that several "conservative" organizations including The Wall Street Journal, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Reason (i.e., this magazine) had received favorable evaluations. Neither Reason nor Cato identifies as conservative, of course; alas, this is precisely the sort of sloppiness one has by now come to expect from the antidisinfo experts. It is true, in any case, that NewsGuard favorably evaluated Reason. But the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is another matter entirely. This organization—a British nonprofit, backed by the State Department—listed Reason as one of the 10 "riskiest online news outlets" and warned advertisers against appearing on the website. The GDI's stated rationale for this purported danger was inscrutable; the disinfo cops accused Reason of having unclear authorship policies, which is simply not true. Reason was far from the only disfavored news source: The GDI targeted the New York Post, RealClearPolitics, The Daily Wire, Blaze Media, The American Conservative, and the Washington Examiner. The Examiner subsequently took a closer look at the GDI's operations and determined that its missives to advertisers to avoid "risky" libertarian and conservative news sites were partly based on the idea that these outlets were promoting COVID-19 misinformation. Specifically, the GDI was shaming these websites for including commentary that COVID-19 may have leaked from a Chinese lab. This theory, labeled a "coronavirus conspiracy" by the GDI, is now judged by the FBI, the CIA, and the Energy Department to be the most plausible explanation for the pandemic's origins. Oops, again. But wait a minute: Wasn't Jankowicz defending the State Department's decision to fund these antidisinfo organizations on grounds that they were merely using taxpayer dollars to counter Chinese government propaganda? The GDI tried to suppress the idea that COVID-19 could have emerged from a Chinese lab under lax safety conditions, a disaster that was subsequently hidden by Chinese officials. Given that millions of people died all over the world as a result of the pandemic, any organizations running cover for the Chinese government on this topic are effectively complicit in the Chinese government's most essential propaganda campaign. So much for the State Department paying disinfo cops to counter foreign misinformation. When it came to COVID-19's origins, the GDI enforced the misinformation. And Jankowicz is still defending it. The post Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation appeared first on
Express Tribune
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
X influencers spotted with 'Epstein Files: Phase 1' binders at White House, sparking online debate
A group of X influencers, including Jack Posobiec, DC Draino, Libs of TikTok, Mike Cernovich, Chad Prather, and Liz Wheeler, were seen carrying binders labeled "Epstein Files: Phase 1" at the White House on Thursday. Their appearance followed an announcement by Attorney General Pam Bondi that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would release additional files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The sighting quickly sparked reactions on social media, with many users comparing the event to the release of the 'Twitter Files.' Some critics argued that the distribution of the documents to select influencers instead of direct public access raised concerns about transparency. One X user commented, "Trump did exactly what I was afraid of, just like Elon did with the 'Twitter Files.' The Epstein files should have been released on a website to the public, not just to a few select people." Pam Bondi should give the Epstein Files to Ricky Gervais and have him present them at the Oscars tonight. It would be the most watched event in human history. — Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) February 27, 2025 The Epstein Files Phase 1: — drefanzor memes (@drefanzor) February 27, 2025 Another user expressed skepticism, writing, "Not blackpilling, but today's Epstein stunt is unfortunately delegitimizing and a poor attempt at recreating some kind of 'Twitter Files' exposé." The 'Twitter Files,' released between December 2022 and March 2023, were internal Twitter communications obtained by independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, with the backing of Elon Musk. These documents were presented as evidence of alleged coordination between social media companies and the government to control narratives and limit free speech. As debates continue, calls for full public disclosure of the Epstein files remain strong, with many urging the DOJ to make the documents widely accessible.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who Is the Anonymous Data Expert Telling Elon Which Cuts to Make?
Since Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) swept into Washington last month, an anonymous X account called DataRepublican has taken the government demolition crew's supporters by storm. The account, and its alleged findings of mismanaged government agency spending, has been shared by Musk often, as well as Utah Senator Mike Lee. The account is followed by Vice President J.D. Vance. The woman behind the account, who's described herself as a Deaf software engineer, has appeared anonymously on NewsNation, and on several right-wing programs this month, like Glenn Beck's Blaze Media show, wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt to obscure her identity, even as she's billed as a government spending expert. The account accused neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol of being a 'deep state agent,' asserting his nonprofit, the Defending Democracy Together, is an 'indirect beneficiary of USAID,' the U.S. Agency for International Development, a government agency that Musk moved to shutter. The argument here was, in effect, that USAID gave money to a nonprofit donor-advised fund that gave some money to another nonprofit that then gave some money to Kristol's organization — so he's then benefiting from USAID spending. Donations can't be traced this way, and this basic misunderstanding of how donor-advised funds work led several pundits to analyze DataRepublican's claims, with one dubbing it the new 'Twitter Files.' But DataRepublican's fans think her work is genius. Nicole Shanahan, who was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 vice presidential nominee and financier, recently interviewed DataRepublican on her show, telling her: 'While you are not necessarily in this administration, what you have done is extraordinary.' Conservative host Steve Deace called her a 'genius software engineer,' adding 'we want to keep her personal identity secure so she is free from corporate media types who would love to do something to intimidate her.' So who is this government information data guru? The woman behind the account shared her full name Tuesday evening, after a man on Facebook posted that he knew her from the Deaf community, prompting DataRepublican to confirm her identity as Jennica Pounds. Pounds is indeed a Deaf, female software engineer from Utah, who until this week worked as a senior software engineer at an AI lending company called Upstart, a company that has tangled with regulations from the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau (CFPB) for years. Pounds wrote on Tuesday, 'I recently resigned from my job to pursue DOGE-adjacent efforts full-time.' But versions of Pounds' LinkedIn viewed by Rolling Stone as recently as late last week showed she listed herself as a current employee of Upstart. Some time this week, the LinkedIn was edited to show a February end to her Upstart tenure. Earlier this month, Musk famously tweeted 'CFPB RIP' as DOGE moved to gut the agency and the administration paused its work Replying to Musk's post, DataRepublican tagged Senator Elizabeth Warren (the CFPB was Warren's brainchild), writing: 'Hey @ewarren look at this.' Musk has quoted DataRepublican on X at least 24 times over the last three weeks, telling people to follow the account, and replying 'noted' to her claim on Jan. 21 that she found 'a quick billion' of federal spending for DOGE to cut. Her suggested cuts were funds going to groups like Global Refuge, a faith-based organization that provides safety and support services to immigrants, migrant refugees and asylum-seekers around the world. Two weeks later, Musk declared at 3:14 a.m. on a Sunday that DOGE was 'rapidly shutting down' supposedly 'illegal payments' to Global Refuge. A newly-launched corresponding website lets users search for charities and nonprofit officers. A false claim that Jeffrey Epstein was paid by USAID appears to have started with people using the website and mixing up the notorious sex offender with another Jeffrey Epstein. On Friday, DataRepublican announced she's adding an ActBlue donor search element to the website, which Musk then amplified, quoting her tweet and saying 'interesting.' At Upstart, Pounds was a Senior Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer since 2023, a high-level position at the publicly-traded San Mateo, California-based company, where she works remotely. A software engineer who has knowledge of the company told Rolling Stone that Pounds' position was one of the highest levels an engineer could reach there. Upstart received Series A funding and additional later funding from the far-right billionaire Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and co-founder Paul Gu was a Thiel Fellow before launching Upstart in 2012. Thiel, of course, founded PayPal with Musk. Upstart has a complicated relationship with CFPB regulations. The company received a special designation from the CFPB in 2017, during Trump's first administration, allowing it special regulatory treatment by immunizing the lender from being charged with fair lending law violations with respect to its underwriting algorithm. Upstart was the first company to receive such a letter. The no-action status was renewed in November 2020, and the company then immediately closed its first public offering and began trading on Nasdaq. In February 2020, Sens. Warren and Cory Booker, and then-Sens. Kamala Harris and Robert Menendez, wrote to the company, expressing concern about the company's adherence to fair lending laws and asking for insight into how the company made credit determinations. But in 2022, the company asked for its no-action status to be terminated, the bureau wrote, rather than have the CFPB review 'significant changes to its artificial intelligence model,' as the CFPB required, 'effectively ending the company's special regulatory status, and allowing it to be able to make changes to its model without need for CFPB review and approval.' Pounds' job at Upstart involved working on that AI model, two sources say, although she started with Upstart a year later, in May 2023. Upstart's CEO and cofounder Dave Girouard participated in the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum in November 2023, telling senators that his AI lending company is an example of AI working well without added legislation. 'In 2012, before even launching the company, we naively marched up to the San Francisco office of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and introduced ourselves,' he stated. 'This was not one of the new 'Offices of Innovation' — this was the local enforcement team. But what did we know? We were convinced that we were the good guys and were committed to innovating within the law.' Later that month, Upstart was subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding disclosures related to use of its artificial intelligence models and loans, according to the company's quarterly report. Before co-founding Upstart, Girouard was President of Enterprise at Google. He posted on X in December about the CFPB looking to AI for a new lending model, joking, 'Hath hell frozen over?' 'It costs NYC 8-12X more than EUROPEAN cities to build a mile of subway! We need DOGE for every state and city gov.,' he posted in January. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Pounds wrote: 'My former employer has nothing to do with my activities. Leave them out of it.' Girouard and Gu did not immediately reply to comment. Before becoming DOGE's favorite anonymous expert, Pounds ran a Github that analyzed election data in Florida and North Carolina, two states she has lived in. Prior to her role at Upstart, Pounds worked at Snap Inc., eBay and Amazon. Pounds and her husband, who worked for a decade at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also own a distillery in Salt Lake City. Pounds registered a Utah company called Redata, LLC in 2020. The couple purchased a McMansion with an indoor pool and movie theater in 2021. The DataRepublican site has a donations section, with options for one-time and recurring donations: 'I'm @DataRepublican, working hard to bring you the most transparent and insightful data on government spending and contracts. If you find value in what I do, would you consider supporting financially? It helps me continue this journey, ensuring that I can keep providing these insights independently. Every little bit supports the mission, and I truly appreciate your consideration.' DataRepublican posted this week that 'a generous benefactor has reached out and offered to cover AI expenses,' and she is undergoing a 'background check' as she seeks to work with DOGE. After Pounds posted about what she called her 'doxxing,' Trump's interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, replied to her: 'We are here for you, Jennica, just like you are here for America when we need you most. It is wrong and illegal to threaten anyone, and we will not tolerate a threat to a federal worker.' Martin, who recently described himself as 'President Trump's lawyer,' has pledged to use his office to 'protect DOGE' and 'hold accountable those who threaten workers.' The threats Martin referenced regarding Pounds were not immediately clear. 'I join your mother @data_republican in awe and appreciation of your excellent work,' Martin added. 'We got your back.' More from Rolling Stone Trump Eviscerates a Bedrock Public Health and Environmental Protection Law Trump Posts Grotesque Video Imagining Glitzy 'Trump Gaza' Musk's Attempt to Overhaul FAA Reveals Shocking Lack of Air Travel Knowledge Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Elon Musk boosted false USAID conspiracy theories to shut down global aid
Until recently, Elon Musk seldom posted about the U.S. Agency for International Development on X, where he is wont to share his thoughts on nearly every subject. Then on Sunday came a flurry of posts wherein the world's richest person, the Trump-appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, described USAID, the foreign humanitarian assistance agency, as 'a viper's nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,' 'evil' and 'a criminal organization.' 'Time for it to die,' Musk posted. Musk's sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID's funding enriched an elite few who control the world. But until very recently, those claims were largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington. That is no longer the case: President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that while he appreciated 'the concept' of USAID, the people in the agency 'turned out to be radical left lunatics.' Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid, and the agency is expected to be reduced to about 290 workers of the more than 5,000 foreign service officers, civil servants and personal service contractors it currently employs, according to two sources familiar with the plans. Most of Musk's more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims. A review of the accounts' profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. The pattern is similar to one that played out with the so-called Twitter Files in 2022, when selectively framed narratives and out-of-context internal documents were weaponized to fuel allegations of a grand government censorship conspiracy. And it is one likely to continue under Trump and Musk, who have histories of trafficking in falsehoods. Musk has not offered evidence for his descriptions of USAID — in an X Space, he called it 'a ball of worms.' Trump said a report on its 'tremendous fraud' is forthcoming and released a list of projects funded by the agency, including efforts to support diversity and inclusion, and examples of projects that had unintended and problematic consequences, including agriculture work that wound up supporting poppy farming in Afghanistan. The Trump administration, Musk and the State Department, which now oversees USAID, did not respond to requests for comment. In recent days, Musk has promoted the anonymous account DataRepublican and a corresponding searchable website of government grants and charities. X users have taken to plugging in the names of politicians and media figures who have spoken against the shuttering of USAID and charting organizations they are connected to, misrepresenting their opposition. 'The money laundering is done through several intermediaries,' Musk posted Thursday. Influencers often collaborate with their audiences in that way to build conspiracy theories, according to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington, who was one of the earliest researchers to study online rumors. 'But now many of those influencers have immense power, both financial and political,' Starbird said. 'Not only are they shaping the content and flow of those conspiracy theories, but [they are also] making hugely impactful decisions and shaping the structure of political institutions based upon them.' The overarching message seems to be resonating beyond X, to networks like Gab and Telegram, according to Pyrra, a platform that monitors social media. 'Two narratives permeate the MAGA argument against USAID,' said Eric Curwin, Pyrra's chief technology officer: 'that it's a tool of the left' and that 'it's a lawless organization, without oversight and rife with fraud.' A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week. Benz, a self-described cybersecurity expert who briefly worked as an assistant deputy for international communications for the State Department under Trump, started tweeting about USAID in 2022. He framed its funding of a handbook on disinformation from a nonprofit democracy consortium as evidence of an agency-run global internet censorship program. Over the next two years, he posted waves of tweets and dozens of hours of video presentations marked with highlighted texts and red notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, flicking at a sprawling narrative of USAID as a covert operations division of the CIA in which staff members sought to enrich themselves, spread leftist ideology at home and abroad and harm Trump. The theory alleged that USAID was behind the mass censorship of Americans, as well as global efforts to manipulate social media, rig elections and quash dissent. 'Benz runs the same playbook every time,' said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University and author of a book about how fringe creators, including Benz, increasingly influence public opinion. 'He picks a villain, pretends it has ties to the CIA or some 'deep state' and acts as if he has inside knowledge when he's really just decontextualizing public content. The remarkable thing is that the masters of the universe seem to repeatedly fall for it.' Benz did not respond to a request for comment. USAID provided humanitarian assistance to foreign countries as an independent agency. It has always faced criticism from groups arguing that it lacks accountability, that its results are difficult to quantify and that its projects do not always align with a clear national agenda, said Andrew Natsios, USAID's administrator during the George W. Bush administration. But never has the entire agency, which Natsios said safeguards against the international spread of disease, famine-induced immigration and a host of other dangers to the United States, been so demonized. Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical consulting firm, agreed. 'It's a big organization in a huge government, and clearly there are lots of inefficiencies, plenty of programs that I'm sure any sensible American would find that we're spending too much money on or that shouldn't be continued,' Bremmer said. 'If you ask me does an organization like USAID scream for reform, along with pretty much every part of the U.S. government, the answer is, of course, yes,' he continued. 'But the idea that the organization is somehow criminal or evil or that all the money is wasted is, on its face, ludicrous.' But according to Benz's posts, USAID's crimes are plenty, and they go straight to the top, accusations he lobs in rapid speeches filled with acronyms and hyperbole. Benz paints a federal grant to a journalism outfit as proof USAID funded the 2019 impeachment of Trump; in reality, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global investigative news consortium in part funded by USAID, has produced significant reporting, including the Panama Papers, a massive leak of financial details about secret offshore accounts in 2016, and it revealed Rudy Giuliani's political activities in Ukraine. For Benz, funding to a scientific research nonprofit is evidence that USAID played a role in starting the pandemic. He draws that conclusion based on contributions of funding by USAID — along with the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department and other government agencies — to the EcoHealth Alliance, in part to identify emerging infectious diseases. One organization EcoHealth worked with was the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, a potential origin point of the Covid pandemic, though scientists and authorities are divided over the lab-leak theory. 'So our U.S. tax dollars were used effectively to, in the end, kill Americans, which is insane,' Musk said of USAID in an X Space on Monday. Benz also cites unspecified 'source docs' as substantiation that USAID was censoring social media. From former President Barack Obama to the Bush family, 'they're all in on it,' he told a Newsmax host Tuesday. Benz was a relative unknown until 2022, when he positioned himself as the primary researcher behind a conservative fight against perceived government censorship. His Twitter Files research — which he rolled out in hourslong videos and posted on X, then known as Twitter — consisted of poring over government websites, academic documents, news reports and internal Twitter communications to draw what he claimed were connections among them that showed intent to silence conservatives. Few seemed to question Benz's qualifications, and fewer still seemed to be aware of his identity as a former alt-right vlogger, a self-described white identitarian who posted videos under the alias Frame Game alleging a mass censorship conspiracy against white people, with links to Jewish organizations, the U.S. government and social media companies. (After NBC News published an article connecting Benz, who is Jewish, to Frame Game in 2023, he said the account was a covert effort intended to somehow combat the antisemitism it espoused.) Since then, his profile has only grown in conservative circles, where he runs a 'free speech watchdog' organization and has been promoted by Musk, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. In 2023, he made $253,889 in consulting fees from the Institute for Citizen Focused Service, a nonprofit public policy think tank led by former Trump officials, tax filings show. Benz's USAID theories have again made him a darling of right-wing media. This week, he has appeared on NewsNation, Glenn Greenwald's Rumble show and Steve Bannon's 'War Room.' On Wednesday, Benz hosted a full hour of Charlie Kirk's podcast. Before Musk led the charge to terminate USAID, his companies worked with and took funding from it. Tesla holds a stake in a company called Zola, which is funded in part by USAID to bring renewable energy to agricultural communities in sub-Saharan Africa. And Musk's aerospace and defense contractor, SpaceX, partnered with USAID to bring its Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine in 2022 after Russia's invasion destroyed telecommunications infrastructure. While Musk and his businesses were lauded initially for bringing Wi-Fi service to Ukraine, controversy erupted after SpaceX withheld Starlink access from Ukraine's military, effectively thwarting its drone attack on Russia's Black Sea Fleet in 2022, which Musk said he did to avoid being complicit in a 'major act of war.' Russian troops also reportedly obtained and began using Starlink against Ukraine within its borders. Musk denied Starlink terminals were sold to Russia. Last year, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee initiated a probe, and USAID's inspector general was investigating Starlink's use in Ukraine as part of its own accountability checks. On Wednesday, Musk shared a faked video claiming USAID had sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine. Darren Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, told NBC News the video was manufactured Russian propaganda. The impact of false conspiracy theories on USAID — whether they have directly shaped Musk's actions at the agency or provided a convenient justification — is already being felt. Critical medical supplies, essential medicines and food aid are being withheld from their intended international recipients, and aid workers are scrambling to comply with the ordered shutdown of the agency on Friday. 'All of these things have been in the mix for a long time,' said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories. 'Now it's coming from the president, and it's got real teeth attached to it.' On Tuesday, Benz took to X to suggest more was coming. 'I know this is going to sound weird but I feel like I haven't even begun to unload on USAID and how dark it all goes,' Benz posted. 'Wow,' Musk replied. This article was originally published on
