Skip to main content

TikTok: Chinese “Trojan Horse” is run by State Department officials

Amid a national hysteria claiming the popular video-sharing app is a Chinese Trojan Horse, a MintPress News investigation has found dozens of ex-U.S. State Department officials working in key positions at TikTok. 
 
by Alan Macleod

Part 2 - State Department-affiliated media
 
For quite some time, TikTok has been recruiting former State Department officials to run its operations. The company’s head of data public policy for Europe, for example, is Jade Nester. Before being recruited for that influential role, Nester was a senior official in Washington, serving for four years as the State Department’s director of Internet public policy.

Mariola Janik, meanwhile, left a long and fruitful career in the government to work for TikTok. Starting out at the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Janik became a career diplomat in the State Department before moving to the Department of Homeland Security. In September, however, she left the government to immediately take up the position of TikTok’s trust and safety program manager, a job that will inevitably include removing content and reshaping algorithms.

While there is no suggestion that Janik is anything other than a model employee, the fact that a U.S. government agent walked into such an influential position at the social media giant should be cause for concern. If, for instance, a high Chinese official was hired to influence what the U.S. public saw in their social media feeds, it would likely be the centerpiece of the TikTok furor currently gripping Washington.

Janik is not the only former security official working on TikTok’s trust and safety team, however. Between 2008 and 2021, Christian Cardona enjoyed a distinguished career at the State Department, serving in Poland, Turkey and Oman, and was in the thick of U.S. interventionism in the Middle East. Between 2012 and 2013, he was an assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Kabul. He later left that role to become the political and military affairs manager for Iran.

In the summer of 2021, he went straight from his top State Department job to become product policy manager for trust and safety at TikTok, a position that, on paper, he appears completely unqualified for. Earlier this year, Cardona left the company.

Another influential individual at TikTok is recruiting coordinator Katrina Villacisneros. Yet before she was choosing whom the company hires, Villacisneros worked at the State Department’s Office of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. And until 2021, she was part of Army Cyber Command, the U.S. military unit that oversees cyberattacks and information warfare online.

Other TikTok employees with long histories in the U.S. national security state include: Brad Earman, global lead of criminal and civil investigations, who spent 21 years as a special agent in the Air Force Office of Special Investigation and also worked as a program manager for antiterrorism at the State Department; and Ryan Walsh, escalations management lead for trust and safety at TikTok, who, until 2020, was the government’s senior advisor for digital strategy. A central part of Walsh’s State Department job, his own résumé notes, was “advanc[ing] supportive narratives” for the U.S. and NATO online.

Walsh, therefore, is illustrative of a broader wave of individuals who have moved from governments attempting to manipulate the global town square to private companies where they are entrusted to keep the public safe from exactly the sort of state-backed influence operations their former colleagues are orchestrating. In short, then, this system, whereby recently retired government officials decide what the world sees (and does not see) online, is one step removed from state censorship on a global level.

For all the talk of digital influence operations emanating from Russia or other U.S. adversaries, the United States is surely the worst offender when it comes to manipulating public opinion online. It is known, for instance, that the Department of Defense employs an army of at least 60,000 people whose job is to influence the public sphere, most of whom serve as “keyboard warriors” and trolls aiming to promote U.S. government or military interests. And earlier this year, the Twitter Files exposed how social media giants collaborated with the Pentagon to help run online influence operations and fake news campaigns aimed at regime change in the Middle East.
 
Source, links:
 
 
[1][3][4]
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Syria welcomed back into Arab League & US flips out

The Jimmy Dore Show   For more than a decade Syria under President Bashar al-Assad has been ostracized by most other Arab nations and excluded from the Arab League. But now that’s changed and Syria has been invited to re-join — a move that has left the United States apoplectic. But it seems that other member states don’t much care what the U.S. wants as they demonstrate an increasing willingness to thumb their noses at the globe’s declining superpower.  

Οι ολιγάρχες ετοιμάζουν την καρατόμηση Μητσοτάκη που θα ανοίξει το δρόμο σε μια κυβέρνηση ΝΔ-ΠΑΣΟΚ στα μέτρα τους

globinfo freexchange   Όπως είχαμε γράψει ήδη από τον Δεκέμβριο του 21, οι ολιγάρχες ξέρουν καλά ότι ο Μητσοτάκης δεν πρόκειται να πετύχει ξανά αυτοδυναμία σε επόμενες εκλογές, όποτε και αν γίνουν αυτές. Γι'αυτό και ετοιμάζονται για το Plan B, που είναι μια νέα συγκυβέρνηση ΝΔ-ΚΙΝΑΛ.  Τα σχέδια όμως χάλασαν, αφού η αποκάλυψη του μεγάλου σκανδάλου των υποκλοπών, με αρχι-υποκλοπέα τον Μητσοτάκη και έναν εκ των παρακολουθούμενων, τον Ανδρουλάκη, έκαψε το χαρτί συγκυβέρνησης ΝΔ-ΚΙΝΑΛ τουλάχιστον με τα σημερινά δεδομένα. Παρόλο που είναι βέβαιο ότι διάφοροι βαρόνοι-μνηστήρες της ηγετικής καρέκλας στη ΝΔ επιθυμούν διακαώς να ξεφορτωθούν τον Μητσοτάκη (και για τον λόγο ότι δεν θέλουν να τους συμπαρασύρει σε μια πιθανή εκλογική συντριβή), ο Μητσοτάκης κατάφερε να επιβιώσει ακόμα και μετά από δύο προτάσεις μομφής εναντίον του. Και αυτό γιατί πιθανόν να τους απειλεί με αποκάλυψη βρόμικων υποθέσεων που προέκυψαν από τις παρακολουθήσεις. Τώρα όμως οι μπλε βαρόνοι σε συνεργασία με τους ολιγάρ

Outrageous, Preposterous, Disgusting: After 1500 days, Julian Assange is still in prison and under slow-motion execution by the Anglo-American imperialist criminals

failed evolution   On 11 April 2019, the Ecuadorian government of traitor Lenin Moreno, invited the Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and they arrested Julian Assange . Since then, Assange is kept in Belmarsh high security prison in London, without actual charges.   The real reason world's number one political prisoner is still kept in this high security prison, is because he exposed horrendous war crimes carried out by the US imperialists and their allies.   The ruthless Western imperialist regime wants to punish the No1 real journalist in the world and make him an example for any Whistleblower or real journalist who will attempt to expose its big crimes in the future.   And the Anglo-American axis has now become officially a fascist coalition , framed by the rest of its Western pets. UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the most ruthless ever, decided to extradite Julian Assange to US. No surprise of course. The only question we had in mind is

Greece: signs of a rigged election as the country officially enters a dark post-democracy

by system failure   The last four years with Kyriakos Mitsotakis in charge of Greece could be easily characterized as one of the worst periods in country's history since the fall of military junta in 1974.    From the beginning of his term, Mitsotakis took full control of the National Intelligence Service and the Athens News Agency. This was a first strong sign that his administration was about to be transformed eventually into a regime that would defy fundamental democratic principles.    Shortly after, Mitsotakis started to put his own people in key positions in Greece's national television and radio broadcaster. In this way, he managed to control the entire landscape of Greece's mainstream media as the big private TV stations that belong to the local oligarchs, did everything to bring him in power and fully support him to this day. Mitsotakis and his cabinet had also become the only option for the Brussels-Berlin directorate of the EU, as well as for the US imperialist b

Εκλογές 2023: Πώς αποδείχθηκε ότι η μιντιακή προπαγάνδα είναι πανίσχυρη

του system failure   Το αποτέλεσμα των βουλευτικών εκλογών Μαίου εξέπληξε σχεδόν τους πάντες, καθώς κανείς δεν περίμενε μια τέτοια μεγάλη διαφορά μεταξύ ΝΔ και ΣΥΡΙΖΑ. Το αποτέλεσμα βγάζει νόημα μόνο αν παραδεχθούμε ότι έχουμε να κάνουμε με μια κυβέρνηση με καθαρά καθεστωτικά χαρακτηριστικά, που από την επόμενη κιόλας μέρα ανάληψης της εξουσίας επιχείρησε - και απ'ότι φαίνεται το κατάφερε -  να ελέγξει όλους τους κεντρικούς μηχανισμούς και να στήσει αυτό που τα στελέχη της ΝΔ βάφτισαν "επιτελικό κράτος".    Μετά από τέσσερα χρόνια αποτυχιών και σκανδάλων, με την χειρότερη ίσως δεξιά που κυβέρνησε τη χώρα μεταπολιτευτικά, η μιντιακή υπεροπλία του καθεστώτος Μητσοτάκη καράφερε να δημιουργήσει μια εικονική πραγματικότητα δήθεν σταθερότητας και επιτυχιών.  Είναι βέβαιο ότι η εικονική αυτή πραγματικότητα επηρέασε ένα κομμάτι των ψηφοφόρων που δεν βιώνουν άμεσα τις συνέπειες των πολιτικών Μητσοτάκη και είναι εξαιρετικά επιρρεπείς στη μιντιακή προπαγάνδα. Αυτό όμως δεν αρκεί  γι

Ukraine's neoliberalism on steroids, Europe’s economic suicide

Geopolitical Economy Report   To analyze the conflict in Ukraine, political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by economic geographer Mick Dunford. They discuss the aggressive neoliberal reforms being imposed by the Ukrainian government and Europe's suicidal policies.

NY Times is wrong on dedollarization: Economist Michael Hudson debunks Paul Krugman's dollar defense

Geopolitical Economy Report   Economist Michael Hudson responds to the misleading arguments against de-dollarization that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made, as part of an attempt to defend US hegemony and the dollar system. 

Bombshell filing: 9/11 hijackers were CIA recruits

At least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation that was covered up at the highest level, according to an explosive new court filing. by Kit Klarenberg Part 4 - Quite some coverup   Another of Canestraro’s sources, a former FBI agent who went by “CS-23,” testified that after 9/11, FBI headquarters and its San Diego field office quickly learned of “ Bayoumi’s affiliation with Saudi intelligence and subsequently the existence of the CIA’s operation to recruit ” Hazmi and Mihdhar. However, “ senior FBI officials suppressed investigations ” into these matters. “CS-23” alleged, furthermore, that Bureau agents testifying before the Joint Inquiry into 9/11 “ were instructed not to reveal the full extent of Saudi involvement with Al-Qaeda. ” The US intelligence community would have had every reason to shield Riyadh from scrutiny and consequences for its role in the 9/11 attacks, as it was then one of its closest allies. But the FBI’s eager complicit

A guide to understanding the hoax of the Century

Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation   by Jacob Siegel   Part 2 - Russophobia Returns, Unexpectedly: The Origins of Contemporary “Disinformation” The foundations of the current information war were laid in response to a sequence of events that took place in 2014. First Russia tried to suppress the U.S.-backed Euromaidan movement in Ukraine; a few months later Russia invaded Crimea; and several months after that the Islamic State captured the city of Mosul in northern Iraq and declared it the capital of a new caliphate. In three separate conflicts, an enemy or rival power of the United States was seen to have successfully used not just military might but also social media messaging campaigns designed to confuse and demoralize its enemies—a combination known as “hybrid warfare.” These conflicts convinced U.S. and NATO security officials that the power of social media to shape public perceptions had evolved to the point where it could decide the outcome of modern wars—outcomes that

Δεύτερη τετραετία Μητσοτάκη: Ο απόλυτος εφιάλτης για τη χώρα

globinfo freexchange   Πάρτε μια μόνο ιδέα για το τι θα σήμαινε μια δεύτερη τετραετία Μητσοτάκη:   - Καθεστώς σκληρότερο και πιο αδίστακτο. - Περαιτέρω υποβάθμιση δημοκρατικών θεσμών. - Ρουσφέτι, κατασπάραξη δημοσίου χρήματος από μπλε τρωκτικά, νέα αύξηση δημοσίου χρέους. - Διάλυση δημόσιας υγείας, παιδείας. - Ιδιωτικοποίηση νερού, εκτόξευση τιμών και υποβάθμιση υπηρεσιών και ποιότητας νερού.    - Βόλεμα γαλάζιων παιδιών σε προνομιακές θέσεις στο δημόσιο με ταυτόχρονες απολύσεις & διάλυση υπηρεσιών σε ακριτική επαρχία.    - Διάλυση κοινωνικού κράτους.   - Επέκταση καρτέλ πέρα από τρόφιμα, καύσιμα, ενέργεια.  - Σφαγή μικρομεσαίων επιχειρήσεων από την επέκταση των καρτέλ.   - Εξάπλωση της εργασιακής ζούγκλας με μισθούς πείνας λόγω καρτέλ.  - Πληθωρισμός στα ύψη λόγω αισχροκέρδειας των καρτέλ.   - Περαιτέρω συρρίκνωση του μέσου εισοδήματος λόγω εκτόξευσης τιμών από αισχροκέρδεια καρτέλ. - Μεγάλη μαύρη τρύπα στο ασφαλιστικό από το χρηματιστηριακό τζογάρισμα των γαλάζιων golden boys.