Thread by @ThePollLady

We all know U.S is involved in numerous “Regime Change Ops”

But Did you know they selectively use 'Internet freedom’ or 'censorship' as per their convenience to remove unwanted governments?

Brief history 🧵

1. The story starts in the 80s : How 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐔.𝐒. 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭.

• DARPA : Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency linked four supercomputers as an experiment to handle massive data transfers.

• Later, the National Science Foundation (NSF) assumed responsibility for this operations, they multiplied the network across thousands of universities and, ultimately, the general public, creating the architecture and scaffolding of the World Wide Web.

• US intelligence community was seeding funding to the most promising supercomputing efforts across academia through an unclassified, highly compartmentalized program that was managed for the CIA and the NSA.

• The intent was to track digital fingerprints inside the expanding World Wide Web. They wanted to track like-minded groups of people across the internet and identify them from the digital fingerprints. Example terrorists, dissenting political parties, protesting groups, etc.

𝟐. 𝟗𝟎𝐬 : 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦

• Free speech was championed by the Pentagon, US State Department, and the CIA to support dissident groups around the world in order to help them overthrow unfavourable government.

• Internet free speech allowed Instant regime change operations to be able to facilitate the foreign policy establishment's state Department agenda.

𝟑. 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟓 : 𝐂𝐈𝐀 𝐍𝐒𝐀 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡.

• Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PhDs.

• They received Google funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program for search engine aggregation.

• The primary objective of this grant was “query optimization of very complex queries that are described using the ‘query flocks’ approach.”

• And coordinate effort to build a massive digital library using the internet as its backbone.

• While Google was helping people use search functions to find precisely what they wanted inside a very large data set.

• The intelligence community, however, saw different benefit in Google: Organise the network so efficiently that they be able to identify and track groups or individual users based on their search result.

• Google has forever denied that it was funded or created by the CIA.

𝟒. 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟎𝐬: 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧.

Quickly after the success of Google search, they got Google Maps by purchasing a CIA satellite software: EarthViewer, essentially, and the ability to track.

𝟓. 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟓-𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟎 : 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡.

• US used free speech on the Internet as a way to circumvent state control over media, over in places like Central Asia or all around the world.

• It was seen as a way to be able to do what used to be done out of CIA station houses or out of embassies or consulates in a way that was totally turbocharged.

𝟔. 𝐂𝐈𝐀 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐏𝐍 & 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐞𝐛.

And all of the Internet free speech technology were initially created by US national security state:

• VPN, virtual private networks to hide ip address.
• Tor, the dark web, to be able to buy and sell goods anonymously,
• End to end encrypted chats.

These were created initially as DARPA projects or as joint CIA NSA projects to be able to help intelligence backed groups to overthrow governments that were causing a problem to the Clinton or the Bush or the Obama administration.

𝟕. 𝐀𝐫𝐚𝐛 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟎-𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑

• The high watermark of the Internet free speech movement was the Arab Spring in 2011-2012.

• When one by one, all of the adversary governments of the Obama administration, Egypt, Tunisia, all began to be toppled in Facebook and Twitter revolutions.

𝟖. 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟐

• US State Department worked very closely with social media companies to keep them online in non U.S. ally countries.

• During this period, there was a famous phone call from Google's Jared Cohen to Twitter to not do their scheduled maintenance so that the preferred opposition group in Iran would be able to use Twitter to win election.

• Free speech was the instrument.

𝟗. 𝐍𝐆𝐎𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐔𝐒 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐮𝐩 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭.

• US established tech architecture, NGOs, Media, etc in other countries to influence elections.

• Relationships between the tech companies operating in other countries and the US national security state had been long established.

𝟏𝟎. 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐔𝐒 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟒.

• And the plan worked magically from about 2001 until about 2014, when there began to be an “about face/opposite outcome” on Internet freedom and its utility for the United States.

𝟏𝟏. 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟒.

• India witnessed an unexpected rise of right wing political party, BJP to power.

• BJP candidate, Narendra Modi who at that time was banned to enter US for alleged “severe violations of religious freedom”, become the Prime Minister of India.

𝟏𝟐. 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟒.

• In 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, there was an unexpected counter coup where Crimea and the Donbass broke away.

• And they broke away with essentially a military backstop that NATO was highly unprepared for at the time.

• US had one last hail mary chance, which was the Crimea annexation vote in 2014.

• But when the hearts and minds of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation, that was the last straw for the concept of free speech on the Internet.

𝟏𝟑. 𝐔𝐒 𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟒.

• After 2014 the fundamental nature of war changed in the eyes of NATO.

• At that moment US realised they don’t need to win military skirmishes to take over countries.

• All they needed to do was to control the media and the social media ecosystem, because that's what controls elections.

• And if they simply get the right administration into power, they control the military. So it's infinitely cheaper than conducting a military war to simply conduct an organized political influence operation over social media and legacy media.

𝟏𝟒. 𝐖𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓.

• An industry was then created that spanned the Pentagon, the British Ministry of Defense and Brussels into an organized political warfare outfit.

• Essentially infrastructure that was created, initially stationed in Germany and in central and eastern Europe, to create psychological buffer zones.

• This was done to create the ability to have the military work with the social media companies, to censor domestic right wing populist groups in the world especially in Europe who were rising in political power at the time because of the migrant crisis.

𝟏𝟓. 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐭 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟔

• US State department, intelligence community, Pentagon, groups like Germany's AfD started to target and manipulate social media in countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Central Asia, etc.

• But then Brexit happened in 2016.

• This was a crisis moment where suddenly US not only needed to worry just about just Asia and eastern Europe anymore as the revolt was coming westward.

• Right wing control over hearts and minds in population was seen as dangerous.

𝟏𝟔. 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐎 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟔

• The very next month after Brexit, NATO convened a conference in Warsaw where they formally amended the charter to expressly commit to Cyber and hybrid warfare as new NATO capacity.

17. Very cleverly NATO and the United States went from building tanks and aircrafts to building capacities for censoring tweets and posts that they considered to be Right Wing propagandistic in nature.

18. This thread covered how US led regime/government change operations went from “Internet Freedom” to “Internet Censorship”.

Next thread we will cover regime changes with “Internet Censorship post 2016.”

Stay connected!