65 - Fed Internet Theory

Spectral Skull Session

Has internet 2.0 been silently seized by the U.S. security services? Elon Musk thinks so. He and some independent journalists believe Twitter was once the iceberg tip of a massive conspiracy run by the American three-letter agencies - FBI and CIA as well as the Pentagon. According to Musk's 'Twitter Files' these government organizations co-opted and paramilitarized Twitter, transforming it from the town square of a virtual global village, into an unofficial wing of the U.S. national security establishment. The FBI calls the story a "conspiracy theory" whose sole purpose is to discredit 'the agency' but doesn't challenge the stated facts, only their interpretation. National Public Radio frames the Twitter Files as part of a debunked right-wing narrative about censorship, while Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt, describes the situation as an attack on the first amendment rights of his constituents. In contrast to these very partisan interpretations, Dane argues that the issues here go far beyond political bias and threaten the integrity of the United States as an open, democratic society, as well as the future of the American-owned internet as a meeting and marketplace for an interconnected and open global society.