Business
How the Deep State is using the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ to crush free speech
Renée DiResta is the research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO)
From LifeSiteNews
The Censorship Industrial Complex, dominated by organizations often run by ex-CIA agents, is working around the First Amendment to suppress dissent and promote a one-world government
Author and reformed climate activist Michael Shellenberger has coined the term “Censorship Industrial Complex,” an apparent reference to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in 1961, where the former Army General warned about the influence of the “military-industrial complex.”
In a recently published article, Dr. Joseph Mercola explored the Censorship Industrial Complex, how it works, and who some of the protagonists are. We will examine the following points regarding this nefarious network to understand how the censorship apparatus works:
- A key figure: Renée DiResta
- The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project
- The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World Government
- NewsGuard and the “middleware” approach
A key figure: Renée DiResta
Renée DiResta is the research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). Mercola fittingly described the organization’s purpose: “[Founded] in June 2019,” the SIO “promote[s] internet censorship policies and conduct[s] real-time social media narrative monitoring.”
DiResta quickly climbed the career ladder despite being involved in a major election manipulation scandal. She previously worked for the CIA and is a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
DiResta is a prominent example of the connections between the intelligence agency and the censorship industry, but she is certainly not the only one. The organizations that are deciding what is deemed “misinformation” or “hate speech” (i.e., the Censorship Industrial Complex) are often run by former CIA agents. According to Shellenberger’s research, seven former CIA executives serve on the board of the Atlantic Council, an organization partnered with the SIO through several projects.
“The Chief Strategy Officer and the Director of Federal Programs at Graphika, another DiResta partner organization, are former CIA officials,” Shellenberger writes.
In 2018, DiResta organized a false flag online operation that influenced an Alabama Senate race. Before she worked at the SIO, DiResta was the research director at a small political consultant firm, New Knowledge LLC, which received $100,000 from Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, to help the Democrat candidate win the U.S. Senate race in Alabama. New Knowledge used that money to subscribe thousands of fake Russian bot accounts to Republican candidate Roy Moore’s social media campaign. Mainstream media reports at the time claimed Moore was “backed by Russia,” even though his “Russian backers” were fake accounts created by New Knowledge. Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, went on to win the race by a slim margin.
After the election, an internal report from New Knowledge, which detailed the Russian bot operation, was obtained by The New York Times. The report admits that: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”
This revelation gained national media attention and was so scandalous that even members of the Atlantic Council (an organization that now collaborates with DiResta) publicly criticized this egregious example of election interference by New Knowledge.
“Somehow, DiResta survived this scandal and continues to be a leading spokesperson AGAINST disinformation and FOR election integrity, even though New Knowledge was caught red-handed using disinformation to interfere in a U.S. election,” Mercola writes.
Shellenberger said the reason that DiResta was made “the leader of the Censorship Industrial Complex,” next to her intellect and articulateness, is that “[l]ike other American elites, DiResta believes that it is the role of people like her to control what information the public is allowed to consume, lest they elect a populist ogre like Donald Trump, decide not to get vaccinated, or don’t accept whatever happens to be mainstream liberal opinion on everything from climate change to transgenderism to the business dealings of the president[‘s] family.”
The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project
The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was founded only months before the 2020 U.S. presidential election “to defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment.”
Mike Benz, former State Department official in the Trump administration and executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online, explained in a video that EIP was created as a “government cut-out,” a “private” organization that de facto acts as censorship arm for the things the government cannot censor because it lacks the legal authority to do so.
One of the “partners” of the EIP is DiResta’s SIO. Benz also notes that all of the EIP’s partners are at least partly funded by the government.
Elon this video goes over it in insta-PhD level detail. It shows exactly how DHS created the EIP censorship octopus. Condensed to 8 mins here: pic.twitter.com/l5EaxAIChD
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) November 7, 2023
In May 2020, a new organization with mostly the same “partners” as the EIP was created, the Virality Project (VP). The VP focused on censoring COVID-related content online, including factual information that “might promote vaccine hesitancy.”
A spokesperson from the SIO (one of the VP’s founding partners) claimed it “did not censor or ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects.” Perhaps the SIO did not censor content directly, but the VP that was founded by the SIO certainly did, as the Twitter Files released by Elon Musk have shown.
According to the Twitter Files published by journalist Matt Taibbi, the VP pressured social media platforms such as Twitter (now X) and TikTok to remove or flag online content. Posts flagged by VP included:
- True information that could fuel “vaccine hesitancy”
- Posts critical of vaccine passports
- True testimonies of people experiencing blood clots after receiving COVID shots
- People asking questions about possible adverse reactions from the jabs
The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World government
As mentioned above, DiResta, in addition to being a former CIA agent, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank specialized in U.S. foreign policy. The globalist CFR is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The CFR was founded in 1921 and has heavily influenced U.S. foreign policy ever since. Most CIA directors and U.S. secretaries of defense have been members of the Council. Mercola argues that the CFR’s ultimate goal “has been to bring about a totalitarian one world government, a New World Order (NWO) with global top-down rule.”
According to the Centre for Research on Globalization, James Warburg, the son of one of the CFR’s founders, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”
Moreover, CFR insider and former U.S. Navy Admiral Chester Ward stated the following in his 1975 book Kissinger on the Couch:
“[The CFR has as a goal] submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government … This lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of its membership … In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as ‘America First.’”
Mercola concludes that the Censorship Industrial Complex is part of the network that seeks to establish a one-world government.
“Those who oppose America First policies do so because they’re working on behalf of a network that seeks to eliminate nationalism in favor of a one-world government, and DiResta is part of that club,” he writes.
NewsGuard and the ‘middleware approach’
In another condensed video, Benz explains how the Censorship Industrial Complex is now using so-called “middleware” organizations like the news rating site NewsGuard to suppress dissent from the mainstream narratives.
The "Middleware" Plan To Restructure The Censorship Industry
1. Middleware = 'censorship as a service' orgs
2. Morphing from top-down to middle-out
3. Regs + middleware = disinfo compliance market pic.twitter.com/lDPqH72HrD
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 1, 2023
According to Benz, the Censorship Industrial Complex is anticipating a loss in the Missouri v. Biden Supreme Court case, which “threatens to ban all government coordination of domestic censorship with a few exceptions[.]”
To circumvent these possible legal restrictions, the government is propping up “intermediary censorship mercenary firms like NewsGuard.”
READ: Elon Musk slams leftist rating group NewsGuard as ‘scam’ that ‘should be disbanded immediately’
By funding these “private” organizations, the deep state government agencies can “effectively circumvent the First Amendment prohibitions on running a comparable thing out of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
However, the idea that NewsGuard is somehow independent from the government is wholly divorced from reality. In 2021, the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard $750,000 for its project “Misinformation Fingerprints,” which aims to combat what it calls “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”
Moreover, Benz notes that NewsGuard’s Advisory Board consists of “an all-star apex predator caste of the national security state,” including
- retired Four-Star General Michael Hayden, who was formerly the head of the CIA and NSA,
- Richard Stengel, former Undersecretary of State,
- Tom Ridge, former head of the DHS,
- and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head of NATO.
By propping up “middleware” companies such as NewsGuard that are not technically part of the government, the Censorship Industrial Complex is able to work around possible First Amendment restrictions, as websites that receive a negative rating from NewsGuard will have reduced visibility on Big tech platforms and search engines. The negative rating by NewsGuard also provides a pretext for private Big Tech platforms to label outlets as spreaders of “misinformation” and censor them outright.
“There’s no clear solution to this threat, other than to continue pushing back against any and all efforts to legalize, standardize and normalize censorship,” Mercola writes in his conclusion. “To vocally object, to refuse using middleware like NewsGuard, and to boycott any company or organization that uses middleware or engages in censorship of any kind.”
You’ve certainly been asked (begged!) to join up for at least one loyalty “points” program – like PC Optimum, Aeroplan, or Hilton Honors – over the years. And the odds are that you’re currently signed up for at least one of them. In fact, the average person apparently belongs to at no less than 14 programs. Although, ironically, you’ll need to sign up to an online equivalent of a loyalty program to read the source for that number.
Well all that warm, fuzzy “belonging” comes with some serious down sides. Let’s see how much they might cost us.
To be sure, there’s real money involved here. Canadians redeem at least two billion dollars in program rewards each year, and payouts will often represent between one and ten percent of the original purchase value.
At the same time, it’s estimated that there could be tens of billions of unredeemed dollars due to expirations, shifting program terms, and simple neglect. So getting your goodies isn’t automatic.
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Just why do consumer-facing corporations agree to give away so much money in the fist place?
As you probably already know, it’s about your data. Businesses are willing to pay cold, hard cash in exchange for detailed descriptions of your age, sex, ethnicity, wealth, location, employment status, hobbies, preferences, medical conditions, political leanings, and, of course, shopping habits.
Don’t believe it works? So then why, after all these years, are points programs still giving away billions of dollars?
Every time you participate in such a program, the data associated with that activity will be collected and aggregated along with everything else known about you. It’s more than likely that points-based data is being combined with everything connected to your mobile phone account, email addresses, credit cards, provincial health card, and – possibly – your Social Insurance number. The depth and accuracy of your digital profile improves daily.
What happens to all that data? A lot of it is shared with – or sold to – partners or affiliates for marketing purposes. Some of it is accidentally (or intentionally) leaked to organized criminal gangs driving call center-related scams. But it’s all about getting to know you better in ways that maximize someone’s profits.
One truly scary way this data is used involves surveillance pricing (also known as price discrimination) – particularly as it’s described in a recent post by Professor Sylvain Charlebois.
The idea is that retailers will use your digital profile to adjust the prices you pay at the cash register or when you’re shopping online. The more loyal you are as a customer, the more you’ll pay. That’s because regular (“loyal”) customers are already reliable revenue sources. Companies don’t need to spend anything to build a relationship with you. But they’re more than willing to give up a few percentage points to gain new friends.
I’m not talking about the kind of price discrimination that might lead to higher prices for sales in, say, urban locations to account for higher real estate and transportation costs. Those are just normal business decisions.
What Professor Charlebois described is two customers paying different prices for the same items in the same stores. In fact, a recent Consumer Reports experiment in the U.S. involving 437 shoppers in four cities found the practice to be quite common.
But the nasty bit here is that there’s growing evidence that retailers are using surveillance pricing in grocery stores for basic food items. Extrapolating from the Consumer Reports study, such pricing could be adding $1,200 annually to a typical family’s spending on basic groceries.
I’m not sure what the solution is. It’s way too late to “unenroll” from our loyalty accounts. And government intervention would probably just end up making things worse.
But perhaps getting the word out about what’s happening could spark justified mistrust in the big retailers. No retailer enjoys dealing with grumpy customers.
Be grumpy.
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If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again: Dimon Liu’s warning to Canadian Parliament.
Editor’s Note: The Bureau is publishing the following testimony to Canada’s House of Commons committee on International Human Rights from Dimon Liu, a China-born, Washington, D.C.-based democracy advocate who testified in Parliament on December 8, 2025, about the human cost of China’s economic rise. Submitted to The Bureau as an op-ed, Liu’s testimony argues that the Canadian government should tighten scrutiny of high-risk trade and investment, and ensure Canada’s foreign policy does not inadvertently reward coercion. Liu also warns that the Chinese Communist Party could gain leverage over Canadians and treat them as it has done to its own subjugated population—an implied message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pledged to engage China as a strategic partner without making that position clear to Canadians during his election campaign.
OTTAWA — It is an honor to speak before you at the Canadian Parliament.
My testimony will attempt to explain why China’s economic success is built on the backs of the largest number of displaced persons in human history.
It is estimated that these displaced individuals range between 300 to 400 million — it is equivalent to the total population of the United States being uprooted and forced to relocate. These displaced persons are invisible to the world, their sufferings unnoticed, their plights ignored.
In 1978, when economic reform began, China’s GDP was $150 billion USD.
In 2000, when China joined the WTO, it was approximately $1.2 trillion USD.
China’s current GDP is approximately $18 trillion USD.
In 2000 China’s manufacturing output was smaller than Italy’s.
Today it’s larger than America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea combined.
If you have ever wondered how China managed to grow so fast in such a short time, Charles Li, former CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has the answers for you.
He listed 4 reasons: 1) cheapest land, 2) cheapest labor, 3) cheapest capital, and 4) disregard of environmental costs.
“The cheapest land” because the CCP government took the land from the farmers at little to no compensation.
“The cheapest labor,” because these farmers, without land to farm, were forced to find work in urban areas at very low wages.
The communist household registration system (hukou 戶口) ties them perpetually to the rural areas. This means they are not legal residents, and cannot receive social benefits that legal urban residents are entitled. They could be evicted at any time.
One well known incident of eviction occurred in November 2017. Cai Qi, now the second most powerful man in China after Xi Jinping, was a municipal official in Beijing. He evicted tens of thousands into Beijing’s harsh winter, with only days, or just moments of notice. Cai Qi made famous a term, “low-end population” (低端人口), and exposed CCP’s contempt of rural migrants it treats as second class citizens.
These displaced migrant workers have one tradition they hold dear — it is to reunite with their families during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, making this seasonal migration of 100 to 150 million people a spectacular event. In China’s economic winter of 2025 with waves of bankruptcies and factory closures, the tide of unemployed migrant workers returning home to where there is also no work, and no land to farm, has become a worrisome event.
Historically in the last 2,000 years, social instability has caused the collapse of many ruling regimes in China.
“The cheapest capital” is acquired through predatory banking practices, and through the stock markets, first to rake in the savings of the Chinese people; and later international investments by listing opaque, and state owned enterprises in leading stock markets around the world.
“A disregard of environmental costs” is a hallmark of China’s industrialization. The land is poisoned, so is the water; and China produces one-third of all global greenhouse gases.
Chinese Communist officials often laud their system as superior. The essayist Qin Hui has written that the Chinese communist government enjoys a human rights abuse advantage. This is true. By abusing its own people so brutally, the CCP regime has created an image of success, which will prove to be a mirage.
If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again.
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To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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