Here we go! #Twitter Became a World Wide Military Propaganda Machine * Twitter directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations * Twitter has claimed for years that they make concerted efforts to detect & thwart gov-backed platform manipulation. Twitter testified to Congress about its pledge to rapidly identify and shut down all state-backed covert information operations & deceptive propaganda. * But behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops -- and did not suspend accounts for 2 years or more * In 2017, a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages". Twitter immediately gave these account special tags to allow them to trend and be free from censoring. * CENTCOM accounts on the list tweeted frequently about U.S. military priorities in the Middle East, including promoting anti-Iran messages, promotion of the Saudi Arabia-U.S. backed war in Yemen, and “accurate” U.S. drone strikes that claimed to only hit terrorists. * One Twitter official who spoke to me said he feels deceived by the covert shift. Still, many emails from throughout 2020 show that high-level Twitter executives were well aware of DoD’s vast network of fake accounts & failed to censor them #James Baker Was Well Aware of the Operation * James Baker was well aware of their use and mentioned this in emails #Pentagon Wanted to Setup a special SCIF to Avoid Detection * Stacia Cardille, another Twitter attorney, replied that the Pentagon wanted a SCIF & may want to retroactively classify its social media activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and that this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.” * In addition to the 57 accounts provided by the DOD, Twitter identified other accounts Tweeting in Arabic and Russian * Accounts continued to Tweet into this year and didn't get stopped until May 2022 or later #Account Activity Slowed After ELON's Offer to Purchase Twitter * The U.S. propaganda network relentlessly pushed narratives against Russia, China, and other foreign countries. They accused Iran of "threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth," and of harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees. * After the Psyop was detected by a Stanford group, Twitter worked closely with reporters to mitigate the damage this might cause to their reputation -- in other words Twitter was praised for actions to suspend accounts without revealing their true role. Link to Full Report https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-accounts/ * Twitter limited this reporters access and searches were performed by a Twitter Attorney #Note: There may be more damning information that was not viewed by this reporter, given the limitations on searches by Twitter