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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

12/30/22 Eli Clifton on Twitter’s Hypocritical Acceptance of US Information Operations

Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

Scott Horton

News, Politics

4.8902 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Scott brings Eli Clifton of Responsible Statecraft on to discuss the recent revelations about Twitter’s boosting of U.S. military information operations. They go over some of the details outlined in Lee Fang’s thread, which served as part 8 of the ongoing Twitter Files. Fang reveals Twitter’s hypocrisy as the firm publicly exposed and censored disinformation campaigns by foreign governments while it worked to amplify specific fake propaganda accounts at the request of the Pentagon. Scott and Clifton go through what we learned and then zoom out. Although they see a lot of value in these Twitter Files disclosures, the two also voice concern over the lack of action Musk appears to be taking beyond just exposing past behavior. They point out how financially dependent Musk is on the government which serves as a natural ceiling to how much he can expose and upset the military and intelligence agencies. They also talk about the enormous scale and efficacy of foreign lobbying on the government, DC think tanks and America’s largest companies.  Discussed on the show: “How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public” (Responsible Statecraft) “The Twitter Files Part 8: How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign” (Twitter) “DC think tank puts hawkish former Aussie PM on China Center board” (Responsible Statecraft) Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative-Journalist-at-Large at Responsible Statecraft. Follow him on Twitter @EliClifton. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right, y'all welcome to the Scott Horton's show.

0:02.0

I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute.

0:09.0

I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute,

0:14.8

editorial director of anti-war.com.

0:17.6

Author of the book, Pools Arren,

0:19.6

time to end the war in Afghanistan,

0:21.6

and the brand new enough already. Time to end the war in Afghanistan and the brand new enough already time to end the war on

0:24.8

terrorism and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003 almost all on

0:31.3

foreign policy and all available for you at

0:34.3

Scott Horton.org you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview

0:39.1

archive is also available at YouTube. YouTube. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Statecraft.org the Quincy Institute website there how Twitter hid US military

0:56.9

info ops from the public. Welcome back to the show Eli how you doing? I'm doing

1:02.3

well I'm doing well, I'm doing well, thanks for having me.

1:04.3

Very happy to have you back on the show here,

1:06.2

and so this is one part of the Twitter files

1:10.6

that have been released so far, and there's a hell of a lot but you're

1:15.1

focusing on some military info ops that I gather were directed mostly at

1:21.7

foreigners or is that even correct?

1:23.7

Yeah I think by all accounts it probably was mostly focused on foreigners on the

1:29.9

Arab speaking Twitter users the account seemed to have a focus on Yemen and on Iraq and Syria.

1:37.7

But obviously the accounts had a pretty broad audience and there was no limitation on who was

1:45.0

reading these or who was the audience for them. Right yeah that's true that's the

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