The Information War Against Americans: Inside the Disinformation Machine

Veteran journalist Jacob Siegel exposes how America's disinformation apparatus targets its own citizens, transforming national security tools into domestic control mechanisms.

Key Takeaways

• The "disinformation" framework emerged suddenly around 2017-2018, becoming the organizing principle of national security discourse and anti-Trump political opposition.
• Government agencies coordinated with NGOs and compliant media outlets to fundamentally alter American political philosophy regarding free speech and association.
• The COVID pandemic seamlessly converted foreign disinformation machinery into domestic political speech control without democratic accountability or open debate.
• The Russian bounties story and similar narratives demonstrated how the same apparatus censoring dissent could simultaneously propagate brazenly false partisan narratives.
• Big tech platforms operate as surveillance devices that were allowed to grow massive specifically because they serve defense establishment interests.
• Information regulation has replaced constitutional democracy procedures as a new system of power, creating what amounts to rule by technocratic mandate.
• The internet's chaotic effects stem from technological revolution comparable to the printing press, not primarily from foreign disinformation campaigns.
• Breaking up oversized platforms and introducing transparency requirements offers more democratic solutions than expanding regulatory power over speech.

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–15:00 — Jacob Siegel's background: From Afghanistan veteran to fiction writer to national security journalist at The Daily Beast, eventually becoming senior news editor at Tablet Magazine. Discussion of Tablet's success as grounded in Jewish outsider perspective and traditional values rather than political fashions.
• 15:00–30:00 — The emergence of disinformation discourse: How the term "disinformation" suddenly became ubiquitous around 2017-2018, presented as existential threat requiring fundamental changes to American political system, free speech restrictions, and internet regulation. Connection to false Trump-Russia narrative.
• 30:00–45:00 — COVID and domestic control: The seamless transition from foreign-focused disinformation machinery to enforcing domestic COVID narratives, including lab-leak theory suppression. The Russian bounties story as example of coordinated false narrative propagation through mainstream outlets.
• 45:00–60:00 — Information ecosystem evolution: From centralized propaganda systems of early 2000s (Iraq War promotion) to chaotic post-2008 environment enabled by YouTube and alternative sources. Discussion of foreign interference versus domestic institutional failures.
• 60:00–75:00 — Platform power and surveillance: Big tech companies as surveillance devices allowed to grow massive due to government relationships. The Twitter Files revelations about FBI interference, including Jim Baker's role in Hunter Biden laptop suppression and Mark Zuckerberg's admissions about FBI warnings.
• 75:00–90:00 — Scale and solutions: The inhuman scale of global platforms destroying intermediate community forms and nationalizing all politics. Discussion of Andrew Yang's approach to circumventing culture wars through structural reforms like university administrator ratios.

The Veteran Journalist's Awakening

• Jacob Siegel transitioned from military intelligence officer in Afghanistan to fiction writing before entering journalism through veterans affairs reporting at The Daily Beast. His military background provided crucial context for recognizing implausible narratives like the Russian bounties story as "fantastical on its face" based on ground-level intelligence experience.
• Tablet Magazine's exceptional work stems from its grounding in Jewish identity and tradition, creating what Siegel describes as "accepting one's position as an outsider" and "not viewing political fashions as the highest authority." This positioning freed up skeptical space unavailable to institutions chasing career approval and cultural trends.
• The magazine's success represents a broader collapse of elite institutions that "got invested in self-serving delusional narratives" and "started to see their fellow Americans as broken and degenerate." Editor Alana Newhouse's willingness to publish COVID lockdown skepticism demonstrated editorial courage lacking in prestigious outlets.
• Siegel's outsider status extends beyond Jewish communal institutions to veteran organizations, creating a unique analytical perspective. His experience co-editing "Fire and Forget," the preeminent Iraq and Afghanistan veterans fiction anthology, established connections with fellow veteran writers while maintaining independence from institutional constraints.
• The intersection of Jewish and veteran identity provides what Siegel identifies as "healthy skepticism around assimilation and wariness of authoritarian power." This combination proves particularly relevant during periods when both communities find themselves questioning mainstream narratives and institutional loyalty.
• His transition from fiction to journalism maintained literary sensibilities while developing expertise in national security reporting. This background enabled recognition of narrative construction techniques being deployed in political contexts, particularly the gap between official stories and operational realities.

The Disinformation Machine Exposed

• The word "disinformation" transformed from obscurity during the Obama administration to becoming the "organizing principle of National Security discourse" by 2018. This sudden ubiquity accompanied claims of imminent existential threats demanding immediate fundamental changes to American political systems and internet regulation.
• Government agencies coordinated with aligned NGOs to push narratives through "credulous and compliant press outfits," including the New York Times and Washington Post. The New York Times disinformation reporter's call for a "reality czar" exemplified how dystopian concepts became mainstream journalistic positions.
• The machinery presented foreign threats while actually targeting domestic elements, as Siegel discovered: "these things that are presented as foreign threats are really a way of obscuring domestic threats and turning them into opening up the possibility of using the tools of warfare against what are in fact domestic elements."
• Congressional legislation like the Countering Foreign Disinformation and Propaganda Act, passed by Obama in December 2016, provided legal frameworks for information control. Subsequent congressional committees and inquiries expanded these powers while progressive activists warned about disinformation radicalizing young people.
• The apparatus demanded restrictions or elimination of free speech while deeming "whole categories of information and inquiry so dangerous that they were off-limits lest one who was inquiring into those categories, even accidentally spread Russian disinformation." This created self-censoring effects among researchers and journalists.
• Academic research institutions played crucial roles by providing "objective expert" credentialing while "effectively working in tandem with intelligence agencies and political operatives." This created false scientific legitimacy for what were essentially political enforcement mechanisms.

COVID's Seamless Transition to Domestic Control

• The pandemic revealed how foreign disinformation machinery converted to domestic political speech control "without any open debate, without any democratic process or accountability." All language and censorship apparatus simply transitioned to enforcing COVID narratives, many now known to be false.
• Social media platforms embedded this machinery directly into their content moderation systems, relying on extended networks of NGOs and academic institutions for guidance. These organizations provided expert credentialing while secretly coordinating with intelligence agencies to determine acceptable discourse boundaries.
• The lab-leak theory suppression exemplified how the system operated: "this machinery of disinformation and information regulation...began to now enforce COVID narratives" including origins questions that were later acknowledged as legitimate scientific inquiries deserving investigation.
• Official enforcement extended beyond vaccine mandates to broader narrative control about pandemic origins, treatments, and policy effectiveness. The machinery suppressed not only dissenting medical opinions but also basic journalistic inquiries into government decision-making processes during the crisis.
• The seamless transition demonstrated that foreign threat frameworks were always intended for domestic application. The infrastructure built ostensibly to combat Russian interference provided ready-made tools for controlling American political speech when circumstances demanded.
• Public health became weaponized through information control mechanisms, with medical questioning reframed as national security threats. This established precedent for using health emergencies to bypass normal democratic deliberation processes and implement technocratic mandates through narrative control.

False Narratives and Coordinated Propaganda

• The Russian bounties story demonstrated how the censorship machinery could simultaneously propagate "brazenly false, brazenly partisan narratives leaked to the press at a moment where it was designed to have maximum political impact." Mainstream outlets carried these stories as verified truth despite their implausible nature.
• Siegel immediately recognized the bounties story as implausible based on his Afghanistan military intelligence experience, yet major newspapers and Democratic officials echoed it endlessly. This revealed how institutional capture enabled obviously false narratives to dominate public discourse when they served political purposes.
• The Steele dossier represented a "nakedly, overtly partisan political document with ludicrously thin sourcing" that was "originally funded by Republicans to knock Trump out of the Republican field" before being picked up by the Clinton campaign. Much sourcing came from "Russian think tank employees working in Washington D.C." rather than deep Kremlin sources.
• These false narratives shared characteristics with Iraq War propaganda: "a small number of sources keep getting brought up over and over again as being central to the story." This pattern should alert readers to coordinated information operations rather than organic news development.
• The same period saw mainstream media amplification of "contrived narratives promoting ridiculous conspiracies like the PP tape" while elevating "criminals like Michael Avenatti and porn star Stormy Daniels as though they were paragons of virtue and credibility." These campaigns demonstrated institutional willingness to abandon journalistic standards for political objectives.
• The coordination between intelligence agencies, NGOs, and media outlets created feedback loops where false narratives gained credibility through repetition across multiple seemingly independent sources. This manufactured consensus then justified further censorship of dissenting voices as "disinformation."

Platform Surveillance and Government Control

• Big tech platforms "were built as surveillance devices" and "were only allowed to get that big because they were serving a particular set of interests" broadly defined as "the defense establishment in the American ruling party." Their massive scale serves intelligence community data collection rather than genuine market competition.
• Elon Musk revealed that "the security agency's penetration of Twitter was complete, even deeper than we know, and more comprehensive than we already know from the Twitter Files" including direct access to users' private messages. This demonstrates total surveillance integration between platforms and intelligence agencies.
• The Twitter Files exposed crucial mechanics of government-platform coordination, including Jim Baker's role as former FBI lead counsel who became Twitter's lead counsel and "was one of the main voices calling for the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop reporting." This created direct intelligence agency influence over content moderation decisions.
• FBI coordination with Facebook demonstrated proactive narrative management, as Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Joe Rogan: the FBI approached him in summer 2020 with warnings about "possible Russian disinformation operation revolving around Hunter Biden's laptops that may come in a few months." This constituted an "information operation" run against the American public.
• Amazon's role as "the backend data warehouse of choice for the United States government and its secret agencies" illustrates how cloud infrastructure enables comprehensive surveillance. These relationships weren't accidental but represented deliberate integration of private platforms with government intelligence capabilities.
• The global nature of platform surveillance created "informational interconnectedness" that is "inherently destabilizing and inherently violence-producing" because it operates beyond human social network scales. This architecture enables both foreign interference and domestic manipulation while destroying traditional community-based information sharing.

Scale, Decentralization, and Democratic Solutions

• The platforms operate at "inhuman scale" that has "wiped out in a physical way" the "intermediate forms of association and community in American life." Local journalism collapsed as the industry consolidated into coastal and DC professions, forcing all political disputes to play out at platform level rather than in communities where people have genuine stakes.
• Andrew Yang's university reform approach offers a model for circumventing culture war rhetoric while addressing structural problems: rather than fighting "wokeness," simply restore historical faculty-to-administrator ratios through federal funding requirements. This targets the material basis of administrative ideology without engaging in ideological combat.
• The January 6th platform coordination, where "all the social media platforms decided in unison to boot Donald Trump off their platforms," prompted international recognition of platform power dangers. Leaders like Angela Merkel understood that "if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to me also" and began efforts to recapture national sovereignty over internet architecture.
• Breaking up oversized platforms addresses both monopoly concerns and business model problems, as Jaron Lanier argues: "mass surveillance platforms are always going to tend to be too big, because their objective ultimately is just to hoover up as much bulk data as possible." Scale and surveillance business models are inseparable.
• Transparency requirements and algorithm disclosure would force platforms to reveal their content moderation processes, making democratic accountability possible. The solution isn't "more power for regulators" but "more transparency, more openness, more accountability, and also decentralization" to enable meaningful oversight.
• Democratic solutions require distinguishing between legitimate regulation and "discretionary government power at the executive level." Banking regulations in the 1930s created stability without empowering arbitrary government control, suggesting similar approaches could work for platforms while preserving free enterprise within democratic limits.

The disinformation framework represents a fundamental shift from constitutional democracy to technocratic rule by information control. Reclaiming democratic sovereignty requires breaking up surveillance platforms and instituting transparency measures that serve citizens rather than security state interests.