New Database Exposes Extent Of Federal Thought Control Money Machine

From a nearly $1 billion Pentagon contract to Uzbek-language stage musicals lampooning “fake news,” a newly released database reveals the federal government’s multi-agency, $1.4 billion push to stamp out “mis-, dis- and malinformation.”

The searchable trove — compiled by transparency watchdog liber-net — catalogs more than 850 grants and contracts issued since 2010 to universities, nonprofits, contractors and foreign groups, all under the banner of curbing harmful content. While many awards fund routine research of public health campaigns, several stand-outs illustrate how expansive the government’s information war budget has become.

“The Department of Defense has awarded a task order worth up to $979 million over a five-year period to Peratron to counter misinformation from U.S. adversaries,” the contract notice states.

The Peraton task order, issued in 2021 for U.S. Central Command, alone accounts for roughly two-thirds of the spending identified so far. The Pentagon said the contractor would provide “operational planning, implementation and assessment services,” but the publicly available description offers few specifics beyond that scope.

At the other end of the spectrum, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Central Asia Media Program financed journalist trainings, documentary-film schools — and two original Uzbek-language stage shows titled “Victims of False Information” and “Facts Against Opinions,” conceived as musical PSAs to teach critical news skills.