US foreign disinformation agency closes

(Keystone-ATS) With the closure of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) after eight years of existence, the US Department of State is losing its only agency that tracked and countered disinformation produced by rival countries of the United States, such as China and Russia.

The ax for this organization, with a budget of $61 million and which employed around 120 people, fell when the measure extending its funding was abandoned in the latest version of the legislative text which made it possible to avoid the budgetary paralysis of the federal state last week.

“Government censorship”

The GEC had long been in the sights of Republican parliamentarians, the majority in the House of Representatives, who accused it of censorship and of surveillance of Americans. Last year, Elon Musk, who has since become the main supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump, assured that the GEC represented “a threat to American democracy”.

The richest man in the world, named by Donald Trump as co-head of a commission for “governmental efficiency” whose avowed goal is to make drastic cuts in the federal budget, accused the agency of being “the worst agent of government censorship and instrumentalization of the media.”

GEC leaders have always dismissed these claims, believing their work to be crucial to combating foreign interference campaigns on American soil.

In June, GEC head James Rubin announced the launch of a multinational organization based in Warsaw to counter Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine. And last year, this agency warned in a report that China was spending billions of dollars in order to disseminate disinformation and “significantly reduce” freedom of expression around the world.