[kevcampb]

For context, this is likely related to an Elon Musk tweet earlier today https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887185381797343504 quoting Ian Miles Cheong

> Can someone explain to me why the Department of Defense provided $9,147,532.00 to Reuters for "ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD)"

[jazzyjackson]

I guess he has to ask twitter because he doesn't actually have clearance to ask someone who would know

[yieldcrv]

Narrator: he has clearance

Elon is aiming to inflame and rage bait by providing insight into what the government authorizes payments for, without context

Its working

[kevcampb]

If you read the proposal, this is for providing automated defences against social engineering attacks - eg: phishing. It's incredibly benign.

That's not how it's presented on Elon's twitter post, certainly. The replies are just layers and layers of conspiracy theories.

[chrisco255]

That sounds quaint. Why was it awarded to Reuters, a British/foreign news organization that supposedly hires journalists to report unbiased information? What expertise would they have in preventing social engineering attacks?

[imadethis]

It was awarded to Thomson Reuters, the parent company. They do a lot of work in risk management and fraud detection, so they have a lot of expertise.

[egberts1]

How's that working so far? Millions of illegal immigration, emptying of foreign prisons into America, development of apps to help navigate illegals into their US destinations, pacifying social media of the abovea?

Thomas Reuters apparently is helping against America ... so far.

[chrisco255]

How come they didn't detect the fraud and abuse going on in the government?

[jauer]

Reuters builds software for a variety of fields and maintains datasets that would be useful in identifying if, say, an email with an invoice purporting to be from a specific company aligns with the invoicing practices of that company.

It would be more accurate to compare that side of Reuters to LexisNexus, Wolters Kluwer, or perhaps Bloomberg.

[egberts1]

Apparently Experian does a far much better job giving credit scores to Americans than Thomas Reuters does against criminal immigrants.

[red-iron-pine]

Thomson Reuters is an American-Canadian company. Thompson was founded in Toronto and bought Reuters in 2008. Most of it's leadership is Canadian, and to some degree American or British.

This isn't "foreign", and it has a large presence in the US

They also have a long, long history of providing services to the USG, including a lot of efforts in busting illegal immigration via shared media databases.

[chrisco255]

Thomson Reuters is Canadian. Reuters itself is based in London. It's not American.

[Jimmc414]

I'm annoyed that I have to assert this, but I wasn't even aware of Elon Musk's tweet when I posted this. I found the entire site fascinating for entirely non-political reasons. I didn't know this information was publicly available.

[netbioserror]

Context provided by the vaunted journalists at Politico, I'm sure.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

In a very real sense, do you think its appropriate for one's government actively attempt to social engineer the population it is supposed to serve?

[jazzyjackson]

The grant is for "proposals in the area of automated defense against social engineering attacks."

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Would you be willing to expand on that definition?

Are you referring to this part[1]?

https://www.highergov.com/document/hr001117s0050-amendment-0...

[essentiallywhen]

Probably, when a certain non supported narrative takes hold, Reuters is tasked with combating it with counter intel to change public narrative. This has been happening since Rome and before. Nothing new here.

[red-iron-pine]

when foreign governments and hostile intelligence groups make concerted and aggressive efforts to subvert the US population then, yes, it is appropriate for the USG to make efforts to counter subversion efforts

[derbOac]

Personally, I think that if your adversaries are doing just that, a grant with a title related to that makes sense, both to understand the problem domain and to defend against it. Yes, I would want the department of defense to be funding research in this area.

Maybe more importantly, I would not expect anyone to glean anything useful about said research from a title entry in a grants database, or maybe from anything in the grant description. I especially think it's absurd to expect an individual coming from outside government, who is unfamiliar with the details of what is going on at DARPA to pull up the title of such projects and immediately have any idea what the hell is happening. I know this from a bit of personal experience with DARPA projects.

There's a part of me that finds Musk's behavior in all of this to be a massive security breach. You can put aside any of the questions about the constitutionality of funding, this is an absurd breach of national security, both in terms of the INFSEC/IT aspect but also in terms of him casually shining spotlights on projects he knows nothing about and knows nothing of the consequences of disclosure.

It's ridiculous how much attention and handwringing there was about Wikileaks and Snowden, and yet we just let a random ignorant (in the sense of having no idea what's going on in the government — otherwise his exercise would have been unnecessary) billionaire with ties to white supremacist groups tap into the federal government and start blasting it on his personal social media platform. If this was anyone else doing these exact same actions during a different administration, they would be arrested and charged with espionage and treason immediately.

To me it's performative empty arrogance with real security consequences, both for the people whose personal information was accessed but also for national intelligence and military strategies and methods.

[chrisco255]

The government works for the people. In a republic, we have a right to know how our money is being spent.

Calling attention to how the government is spending our national treasury, is a service, not a national security threat. I don't need to know the positions of the Navy Seal teams before they hit a target. I do need to know if DARPA or USAID or the CIA or the FBI is spending money and human resources in a wasteful or corrupt fashion. I do need to know if they are violating the constitution and censoring speech with OUR money. I do expect people who violate American rights to be fired at a minimum and barred from public service. We cannot be free if we cannot hold our government accountable.

Assange and Snowden should be pardoned. However, the President of the United States has unlimited authority to declassify information on whatever terms they wish.

[anigbrowl]

You already had the right to know how the money is spent, you just never bothered to dig through any of the available public databases to look. That stuff has all been online for years. You are also confusing Reuters, the news organization, with Thomson Reuters, its parent company and a major vendor of information technology services.

Consider doing some more information gathering and analysis before letting your feels post.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

<< It's ridiculous how much attention and handwringing there was about Wikileaks and Snowden

The two situations are very, very different for reasons that should be relatively obvious. Musk ( via Trump ) has actual mandate to do that.

<< You can put aside any of the questions about the constitutionality of funding, this is an absurd breach of national security, both in terms of the INFSEC/IT aspect but also in terms of him casually shining spotlights on projects he knows nothing about and knows nothing of the consequences of disclosure.

This may be one point I am kinda agreeing with you on.

<< To me it's performative empty arrogance with real security consequences, both for the people whose personal information was accessed but also for national intelligence and military strategies and methods.

Maybe.. just maybe.. some of those methods should be revised in light of day.

<< Yes, I would want the department of defense to be funding research in this area.

I am genuinely of two minds about it so the question is why you think it is a good idea especially given that you also stated the following:

<< I would not expect anyone to glean anything useful about said research from a title entry in a grants database, or maybe from anything in the grant description.

Either it is ok to fund it, because you think it is a good idea or you don't know what it is and still think it is a good idea. I can accept one of those propositions.

[snypher]

Maybe you missed the 'defence' part?

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Friend, I accept that there is a level of snark, when it comes to this stuff, but even rudimentary check of the website in question[1] will tell you that there are two pieces to this program:

- ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) - LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD)

I presume you are being snarky about ASED. I was thinking about the other one.

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA865018C7886_970...

[imadethis]

Where are you seeing that there’s two pieces? I’m only seeing it referred to as one program there. I’m not a govt contracts expert so by all means let me know what I’m missing.

[Lammy]

That's defense of the government apparatus in the same sense as “Continuity Of Government” — not defense of constituents themselves.

[netbioserror]

Was the Patriot Act patriotic?

[taurknaut]

Right, just like the DoD is "defending" us.

[jandrewrogers]

Even if he doesn't have a clearance (he might because SpaceX), he doesn't need one. Anyone with sufficient authority can read him into any program.

[yapyap]

My god, he’s actually acknowledging Cheong..

Meatriding has never been this successful

[jeffbee]

IMC is a known Russian agent, a Malaysian national who openly writes for Putin propaganda outlet RT. Of course he wants to defund American information security.

[taurknaut]

You can do worse than RT if you watch it knowing you're seeing a curated narrative (which is no different from any paper, really, ours just happen to shill for our own state department). RT is a really good source for eg central asian news, most of which never even gets a mention in western papers.

People really need to stop throwing around "russian agent" if they want the phrase to stay scary. IMC does not need to be tied to Putin to criticize him; he's a moron who's weirdly obsessed with american conservative ragebaiting despite not having anything to do with this country. Like I can't emphasize enough how clearly stupid the man is. (Though it is also very unsurprising that he allegedly supports Putin.)

Other examples: Financial Times is a Japanese paper, so it's not the most reliable at eg reporting on China and Korea. They have surprisingly quality coverage outside of east asia, though, and from my eye they have a lot more matter-of-fact tone to american political coverage than most american papers do. Al Jazeera is not reliable for reporting on Qatar, but they're indispensable for a lot of reporting the west will refuse to engage in around the MENA world (and to a very limited extent, subsaharan africa). Etc etc.

RT has its place; it's no Epoch Times. They have some mildly interesting americans working for them who seem very willing to openly criticize Putin. The russian language version is much more blatantly propaganda.

Edit: well it seems that RT also spreads qanon stuff; I emphatically don't endorse that kind of content, nor did I realize it was there. I stand by the fact that it's a useful tool.

[jeffbee]

Seems like you went on a whole journey while writing and editing that comment! Downvotes not deserved.

[excalibur]

It's literally an attempt to protect Americans against you, Elon.