This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The federal government, as revealed through hundreds of grants it is making, is planning first to monitor the speech of every American, and then silence anything that disagrees with the bureaucracy's propaganda, according to a new report.
Margot Cleveland, the senior legal correspondent at the Federalist, has released a new column explaining the coming agenda makes the "Twitter Files," the confirmation the government already was started on doing exactly that, "nothing."
Cleveland, who also is a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge. She's a former full-time university faculty member and teaches now as an adjunct.
She cited "details of hundreds of federal awards" in support of her revelations that "our tax dollars funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover 'problematic' speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations."
"The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet 'conversations,'" she reported.
"Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting 'misinformation' and 'disinformation,'" she said, citing more all those funding projects.
She said, "With AI and ML identifying in real-time the origins of supposed influence operations and how the messages spread, the government will have the ability to preempt the amplification of the speech, squelching even true reporting before the general populace has an opportunity to learn the news."
For example, she cited companies that already have been given money to track statements, including PeakMetrics, which watches millions of news sites, blogs, and more, Omelas Inc., which watches newspapers, TV channels, and more, Alethea Group, which is working on a "machine learning tool for proactive disinformation/misinformation detection, assessment, and mitigation."
Then there's Newsguard, "awarded $750,000 by the DOD," that offers databases including its "unreliable reliability rating database of thousands of news and information websites…"
And others.
"It is also important to recognize that the AI and ML technology under development will not just mine foreign or state-connected actors, but will monitor everyone’s speech. Both the government grants and the web pages of the monitoring companies confirm this reality," she warned.
Further, she pointed out that Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, recently wondered about censoring information "to prevent a run on the banks," suggesting that everything would be subject to editing and silencing.
There's also the fact, she explained, that the government would be deciding what's "true," and censoring anything that disagreed.
"The government’s push to develop AI and ML technology to mine the internet is even more terrifying knowing that a Censorship Complex has already been built. The 'Twitter Files' revealed the breadth and depth of the complex, with every alphabet-soup federal agency working with the social media giants and an array of think tanks and academic institutions, and with the legacy media providing an assist when censorship requests went ignored," she warned.
