Not just propaganda but also psychological operations. It's literally in the name. Their logo colors AID in red [1] so that people think they are an aid organization which they have never been. The money allocated them went to bribing foreign officials, altering narratives, changing policies, blackmailing people, etc... It is very likely that the narratives about cutting funding to them affecting food or other aid programs was likely created by them in attempt to save their organization.
Their name actually stands for United States Agency for International Development
This is your point of view. Atul Gawande’s point of view is that USAID has saved >92M lives and that its discontinuation has killed hundreds of thousands, almost all of them in the Global South, and the evidence for this claim is peer-reviewed public health research [0]. I’m sure you have a point, but claiming that USAID was just a propaganda outfit is incomprehensible to me.
> has saved >92M lives and that its discontinuation has killed hundreds of thousands,
Neither the 92M nor "hundreds of thousands" numbers stand up to scrutiny.
A more objective statement would be "USSAID-funded programs have plausibly contributed to averting tens of millions of deaths over two decades. PEPFAR's ~25M is the best-evidenced single component and the abrupt 2025 dismantling is causing ongoing excess mortality whose true magnitude won't be known for years but is unlikely to be zero."
Even given that, your framing is misplaced because you're saying that if someone you have never met is dying and you don't help them you are killing them. That logic is severely flawed.
> A more objective statement would be "USSAID-funded programs have plausibly contributed to averting tens of millions of deaths over two decades. PEPFAR's ~25M is the best-evidenced single component and the abrupt 2025 dismantling is causing ongoing excess mortality whose true magnitude won't be known for years but is unlikely to be zero."
I think this is a fair critique overall. I was less concerned with a statement of absolute truth, and more with providing a claim that was better-justified than the parent of my original comment.
> Even given that, your framing is misplaced because you're saying that if someone you have never met is dying and you don't help them you are killing them. That logic is severely flawed.
I don't know how much I fundamentally disagree with you, but I have a few responses:
1) I think analogizing the US Government to "you" is questionable. I am one person, born into the universe with approximately zero resources and a finite lifespan. The US Government is approximately the most well-resourced organization on Planet Earth and is, for most intents and purposes, perpetual. If you have been voted into stewardship of this organization, I do not think deliberately ending a sub-program of your organization that prevents significant excess mortality at relatively low costs, while also advancing the political goals of your organization, is ethically neutral or better. Many people further believe that part of the bargain of delegating taxation and governance powers to these governmental forces is the accomplishment of pro-social goals like the prevention of death, but I understand this is not universally-held belief, and the election of someone who promised to cut USAID is basically tantamount to society "okay"-ing these preventable deaths.
2) I have given more than $10k USD to effective altruist charity funds, including Against Malaria, because I do think that people in the rich world have some moral responsibility to spend their resources on the betterment of others who were born into worse circumstances due to simple bad luck. That being said, I can't provide a lower bound at which point I start judging the non-largesse of others, and I think Peter Singer would argue that only having donated four months of my current rent to this goal makes me evil.
The parent wasn't trying to be comprehensible. They are propping up an unsupported fantasy with broadscale nonsense meant to unmoored and decouple people from reality.
There's a very very dark color of kool aid going around, that has no obligation to support itself or to show what reality is: that works to sabotage reality as best it can, casting inuendo and falsity at every reasonable thing out there.
Alas a lot of these people come by their participation in darkest disinformation quite humbly. Aren't plugged in, dont understand the disinformation they campaign for, but are hapless participants also digging deep to undermine society & reason & truth.
Strongly disagree.
USAID organized entrepreneurship programs in eastern europe when I was in high school and it's one of the reasons why I started my own business.
It was also a funnel for American tax dollars into the pockets of those who run the NGOs that facilitate it, who in turn funnel a portion back to our politicians in the form of donations.
It's the "aide", the thing that is accused of being a "veneer" that is the actual provably tanigble object of reality in all of this, and it was this indisputable reality that led the receipients of that aide to credit USAID for certain tangible improvements in their country. This in turn functioned as US propaganda and extended US soft power, two things that are much more intangible and volatile than physical and the tangible aide that created it. Where the "aide" tangibly resulted in worse conditions it functioned as anti-US propaganda, as it should do.
When the CIA and gov black ops use the US treasury as a vehicle for their nefarious operations do we also say that "The US treasury is just U.S. propaganda wrapped in a veneer of 'banking'"? We could but it would be useless in describing the US Treasury's operations in general accurately.
All this looks like abject infantilism when all the nefarious institutions that were using USAID as a vehicle for their blackops, the CIA etc, are still unaffected in pristine condition and are simply doing the same shit they were doing under USAID but now under a different government agency label. The CIA is laughing their ass off as these guys are blaming USAID for their own operations.
Wasn't the big idea China continuing it, and then getting the benefits of propaganda and regime change operations for itself? That was why everyone said cutting USAID was stupid.
Turns out China makes countries dependent on loans, then effectively colonizes countries, usually for resources. No aid for hearts and minds ...
Of course, that and the fact that it would reverse gains on things like AIDS, thus killing a lot of people.
Their name actually stands for United States Agency for International Development
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usaid