The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) served as one cornerstone of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, colluding with nongovernmental organizations and tech giants to silence disfavored speech during the 2020 election cycle. An investigation by The Federalist now indicates GEC violated its congressional mandate by financing activities and organizations that targeted the speech of Americans.
GEC’s Creation and Mission Creep
The Global Engagement Center is a multi-agency center housed in the State Department that originated in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), which the Obama administration established by executive order to support federal agency communications in targeting “violent extremism and terrorist organizations.”
In 2016, the Obama administration issued a second executive order, morphing the CSCC into the GEC but leaving “its counterterrorism mission largely unchanged.” However, when Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, statutorily establishing the GEC, the center’s purpose was expanded beyond its original mandate of countering the influence of international terrorists such as the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and other foreign extremists.
The 2017 NDAA directed the GEC to “coordinate efforts of the Federal Government” to counter foreign state and foreign nonstate “propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The 2019 NDAA then further expanded the GEC’s mission, authorizing it to counter foreign “propaganda and disinformation” that undermines not only the United States’ national security interests but also the “policies, security, or stability” of the U.S. and our allies. While Congress dramatically expanded the breadth of the GEC’s mission,
