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"Foundation For Freedom Online" founder Mike Benz spoke about USAID, the U.S. Agency For International Development, which Donald Trump has essentially shut down.


MIKE BENZ: This by now should be a familiar picture to people who've been subbed for a while where I've described the inside of the blob. Now what's going on in this picture, for people who are new here or just to freshen up for folks who need a reminder.

This describes our trifecta of foreign policy establishments and again, foreign policy just means the American empire instead of the American homeland.

We are an empire that stretches the globe. We must manage our empire affairs, our vassal states, our markets. And so we have three big agencies in the government that do that, and none of these agencies are allowed to operate at home.

Those are the State Department for US national interests, the Defense Department/Pentagon, for national security, and our intelligence community, which provides covert or plausibly deniable assistance on national interest grounds or national security grounds.

National security grounds, meaning a military threat. National interest, if you remember it's, "We want it we got it." National interest means anything. Does it make us richer? Do we want it?

The part that I've left out of this to avoid confusion is a big old entity right in the middle of them. That entity is USAID.

Now, USAID was created in the early 1960s by President John F. Kennedy because the American Empire had been tripping over itself for some time. Because when we set up the CIA in 1947, and we reframed the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947, and we began this creation, really expansion dramatic expansion of the American Empire abroad, outside, we had the DOD doing international development work, so to speak, for military reasons. We had the State Department doing international development work if you will, humanitarian work, supporting local institutions for national interest reasons, and we the CIA doing its own thing.

So they were all tripping over each other. The Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA were all tripping over each other. There was no centralized agency to coordinate all the different reasons that we run money into foreign countries to influence the course of events in those countries.

Again, they all face outward -- they're supposed to.

What is USAID? When people hear the name USAID, they focus on "aid," they focus on thinking like it's humanitarian work. But "aid" is not actually in the name of US aid.

USAID stands for the "United States Agency for International Development," not aid, it's not a charity.

And international development is simply capacity building.



Mike Benz educates Joe Rogan on USAID: “There is no aid in USAID. It's not an aid organization. USAID stands for US Agency for International Development. What it's developing is all the activist organizations in foreign countries that the state department is building to gain… pic.twitter.com/AgTOuZwPy4
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) February 2, 2025



MIKE BENZ: There is no aid in USAID. Your brain is being tricked when you see the phrase "USAID." It's not an aid organization. USAID stands for US Agency for International Development. What it's developing internationally is all of the institutions that the State Department needs to use.

When they are capacity-building activist groups in a foreign country, it is because the State Department wants those activists there. USAID for the first time in its history -- it was created by JFK in the 1960s -- was created because all the intelligence, statecraft, support, and logistical aid was tripping over itself. The military would run aid to certain groups, the State Department would run aid to groups in the region, and the intelligence community would too. There was no central coordinator of those operations.

USAID is a $50 billion operation, the entirety of the intelligence community is only $72 billion. It has more than the CIA and the State Department. USAID is effectively a switch player to assist the Pentagon on national security, the State Department on national interest, and the intelligence community on clandestine operations.



Why did USAID sponsor the 70-NGO consortium that directly threatened newly elected 2019 President Zelensky in Ukraine with 25 "Red Lines Not To Be Crossed" by his new government, ensuring USAID grantees controlled virtually every facet of how Ukraine could run its own country? pic.twitter.com/QKLkLZqAqH
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 3, 2025



To understand how USAid has protected itself for so long, read this brilliantly lucid account of what happened to Trump 1.0-appointed @MarkMoyar in 2019 when he uncovered corruption, fraud and waste at the agency.
His book is a blueprint for how to dismantle the Deep State and… https://t.co/C83MYwajE0
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 3, 2025

Mike Benz: USAID Pushes Internet Censorship, Funds NGOs That Get Foreign Governments To Pass Laws To Stop "Misinformation"



ntelligence community expert Mike Benz on 'The Joe Rogan Experience' talked about the USAID funding of programs to encourage countries to implement laws that censor what they deem to be misinformation.



MIKE BENZ: We just played Internews and the Internews CEO campaigning to governments and corporations and private sector, civil society organizations around the world that they need to economically blacklist news sites that operate on social media. And those are U.S. news sites that operate on social media. And those are US news sites. This is the basis of lawsuits here in the US like Daily Wire and the Federalist suing the State Department because US news sites are in these advertiser blacklists.

And to that end I want to I want to note two things. First, if you if you go to my X feed (@MikeBenzCyber) and you type in the word advertiser or advertisers and if you need to you can plug in the word USAID or CEPPS in this and I want to show you that this is not Internews gone wrong. This is not a half a billion dollar a year grantee of USAID going rogue and being ideological about this.

This is top-down US government policy from the White House and I'll show you the documents on that to the White House executive branch agencies like USAID and state.

Okay if you go to search and you put in the word advertiser, yeah --

[SEARCH RESULTS ON COMPUTER SCREEN]

BENZ: And it could be advertiser or advertisers. Okay, so there you go. So click on that left, the left image first. This is, now we talked about this group, SEPS, last time, you know, in our hit a few months ago. SEPS is a program that is basically a joint baby of USAID and the State Department and is implemented by USAID's key operational arm, the National Endowment for Democracy.

But this is a USAID program on countering disinformation. Internet censorship is what they do. And we went over last time, I remember we played that 2 minute video where they were openly saying that the plan is to get foreign governments to pass legal reform, pass laws and regulations to stop the spread of misinformation on US social media websites. So the USAID would not be able to lobby the US government to do that because we have a First Amendment. Europe doesn't. Brazil doesn't. But here is from an internal document February 2021 of USAID's SAVS program and now this is a 97 page document. They referenced the word advertiser and advertising in this document 31 times in 97 pages. So this is, and that was three years before that clip we just saw. How far back in motion this is.

And I can go back even further to that in 2017 and share clips on that and how this network coordinated the very ad boycotts that Elon is subject to and that brought Facebook and Google to their knees when they folded to very ad boycotts that that Elon is subject to and that brought Facebook and Google to their knees when they folded to advertiser boycotts. There you go. "In order to disrupt the funding and financial incentive, using the same phrases that the Internews CEO did to disinform, attention is turned to the advertising industry particularly with online advertising." So it goes on to say, "Thus cutting the financial support in the ad tech space would obstruct disinformation actors."

They're not human beings. They're not Americans running mom and pop shops that depend on their Facebook page to be able to advertise their flower business. No, they're reduced to the inhuman disinformation actors from spreading messaging online.

So the efforts being made to inform advertisers of the risk, such as the threat to brand safety. So this is USAID saying, we've got to talk to these advertisers and say, hey, you know, brand safety is really important to all your brands. It would be a shame if you were known for putting ads next to misinformation websites like Daily Wire in the Federalist. It goes on to say, Additionally with this data organizations in these are part organizations this group CEPPS runs together with USAID and the State Department run network of hundreds of NGOs around the world that all jointly carried this out. This is what they're sponsored to do.

It say, "The aim is to redirect funding to higher quality news domains and improve regulatory and market environments." Regulatory means laws about this. Laws like the EU Digital Services Act. Redirect -- so this is a top down US government plan to financially re-engineer the entire economics of the news industry in order to make it so that if you spread messaging against the state or against a sensitive policy issue by the state, you are put out of business, you cannot professionalize, you can't compete with CNN or New York Times or MSNBC.

Just like this is what happened to Breitbart,for example and they got caught up in this web. They lost 99% of their advertising revenue. They were going up like this. And however you feel about Breitbart, these are plain facts of this inaction. They were a rising star in the 2016 election. Steve Bannon, who was you know the head of that, went on to be that basically the top White House adviser. They got crushed when 99% of their ad revenue -- this is why everyone's having to switch to bilking our own citizens to pay for it because the natural thing advertisers would want to do -- a return on investment for putting ads you know on new sites or social media they can't do because they're getting pressure from the government. And so now look at the bottom. Now I don't have this but any members of Congress or DOGE or House or Senate Oversight or White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, I implore you.

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/12/2 ... usaid-cuts

Seven African countries will be hit the hardest by the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), according to development analysts.

DR Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda received more than a fifth of their total development assistance from USAID, said researchers at the Center for Global Development. The small size of their economies means that aid accounts for an average of 11% of their gross national income: “With USAID providing 30% of [development assistance], the freeze could create a shortfall equivalent to over 3% of GNI,” the researchers said, triggering “a potentially major economic shock.”


Title iconKnow More
In all but two of these countries, USAID’s focus is categorized as “emergency response”: Basic health is the main sector targeted in Liberia, while in Uganda it is reproductive health. USAID spent more than $12 billion in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, according to government records, the majority on humanitarian and health aid. DR Congo received the largest amount of aid, at $1.3 billion, followed by Ethiopia and Sudan.

A chart showing US development assistance as a percentage of gross national income

Za-Ilmaknun

Did you listen to the full interview?

Za-Ilmaknun wrote: ↑

19 Feb 2025, 11:28

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/12/2 ... usaid-cuts

Seven African countries will be hit the hardest by the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), according to development analysts.

DR Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda received more than a fifth of their total development assistance from USAID, said researchers at the Center for Global Development. The small size of their economies means that aid accounts for an average of 11% of their gross national income: “With USAID providing 30% of [development assistance], the freeze could create a shortfall equivalent to over 3% of GNI,” the researchers said, triggering “a potentially major economic shock.”


Title iconKnow More
In all but two of these countries, USAID’s focus is categorized as “emergency response”: Basic health is the main sector targeted in Liberia, while in Uganda it is reproductive health. USAID spent more than $12 billion in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, according to government records, the majority on humanitarian and health aid. DR Congo received the largest amount of aid, at $1.3 billion, followed by Ethiopia and Sudan.

A chart showing US development assistance as a percentage of gross national income