American think tank’s report on Washington’s lies against Iran and other rivals

According to RCO News Agency, following the recent actions of the American government against the Russian media for allegedly spreading false information, the American media pointed out in an article the records of the United States in promoting false information and asked the White House to end these actions.

The website “Responsible Statecraft”, which belongs to the American think tank “Quincy”, reported that the United States has made the fight against misinformation in the cyberspace and by the media one of its main priorities, especially in the run-up to the American presidential elections. Recently, the US government has taken new steps in this direction, including confiscation of Internet domains and sanctions against Russian citizens.

According to Quincy, this issue became more controversial when Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), admitted in 2021 that the White House had pressured Facebook to censor some posts related to the Corona pandemic. ; Including humorous posts.

America’s long lead in disinformation campaigns

Although the World Economic Forum has recently identified “false information” as the biggest threat to global stability in 2024-2025 in a report, but according to the American think tank, history shows that the United States itself has played a role in spreading this false information. For example, in 2011, the United States launched Operation Honest Voice, a military program that used fake accounts on social networks to spread information in favor of the US government.

The American think tank also noted that in 2022, Stanford University’s Internet Observatory uncovered fake US-based accounts targeting people in Russia, China and Iran. “Some of these accounts published shocking stories such as Iranians stealing organs from Afghan refugees, but secondary investigation revealed that some of these accounts were linked to the Pentagon,” the report said.

Leaked documents from the US Special Operations Command show that in 2022 the organization requested tools for “digital deception” and “disinformation campaigns” and demanded access to technologies such as “deep fake”.

“Last month, advertisements for the dating software Tinder appeared in Lebanon with pro-US messages linked to the US military,” the report said.

The smoke of spreading lies in the eyes of Americans

The American think tank also expressed concern about the impact of military plans on the internal issues of countries, and pointed out, for example, a secret American campaign against Chinese vaccines in the Philippines, which eventually led to the beginning of a movement against vaccination and Chinese masks and test kits.

According to Quincy, the United States is somewhat aware of these internal risks and has enacted laws to prevent these targeted ads from being shown to the American public, but these laws are old and outdated. For example, the US Department of State does not have the right to broadcast targeted propaganda against the citizens of this country, but the US Department of Defense does not face such a restriction; Now, most of the disinformation campaigns are organized by the Pentagon.

In recent years, the United States has made many efforts to implement information campaigns against its rivals and enemies, but in many cases these campaigns have failed because foreign influence campaigns often face cultural barriers. For example, in one of America’s foreign influence efforts, the intended content was literally translated from English to the target language and used common American hashtags, not local hashtags.

The American think tank warned Washington that the risks of information campaigns are greater than its benefits, pointing out that in the era of American communication, it cannot conduct its foreign and domestic policy completely separately.

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