How the Deep State is using the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ to crush free speech

The Censorship Industrial Complex, dominated by organizations often run by ex-CIA agents, is working around the First Amendment to suppress dissent and promote a one-world government

Author and reformed climate activist Michael Shellenberger has coined the term “Censorship Industrial Complex,” an apparent reference to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in 1961, where the former Army General warned about the influence of the “military-industrial complex.”

In a recently published article, Dr. Joseph Mercola explored the Censorship Industrial Complex, how it works, and who some of the protagonists are. We will examine the following points regarding this nefarious network to understand how the censorship apparatus works:

A key figure: Renée DiResta
The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project
The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World Government
NewsGuard and the “middleware” approach

A key figure: Renée DiResta

Renée DiResta is the research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). Mercola fittingly described the organization’s purpose: “[Founded] in June 2019,” the SIO “promote[s] internet censorship policies and conduct[s] real-time social media narrative monitoring.”

DiResta quickly climbed the career ladder despite being involved in a major election manipulation scandal. She previously worked for the CIA and is a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

DiResta is a prominent example of the connections between the intelligence agency and the censorship industry, but she is certainly not the only one. The organizations that are deciding what is deemed “misinformation” or “hate speech” (i.e., the Censorship Industrial Complex) are often run by former CIA agents. According to Shellenberger’s research, seven former CIA executives serve on the board of the Atlantic Council, an organization partnered with the SIO through several projects.

“The Chief Strategy Officer and the Director of Federal Programs at Graphika, another DiResta partner organization, are former CIA officials,” Shellenberger writes.

In 2018, DiResta organized a false flag online operation that influenced an Alabama Senate race. Before she worked at the SIO, DiResta was the research director at a small political consultant firm, New Knowledge LLC, which received $100,000 from Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, to help the Democrat candidate win the U.S. Senate race in Alabama. New Knowledge used that money to subscribe thousands of fake Russian bot accounts to Republican candidate Roy Moore’s social media campaign. Mainstream media reports at the time claimed Moore was “backed by Russia,” even though his “Russian backers” were fake accounts created by New Knowledge. Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, went on to win the race by a slim margin.

After the election, an internal report from New Knowledge, which detailed the Russian bot operation, was obtained by The New York Times. The report admits that: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”

This revelation gained national media attention and was so scandalous that even members of the Atlantic Council (an organization that now collaborates with DiResta) publicly criticized this egregious example of election interference by New Knowledge.

Shellenberger said the reason that DiResta was made “the leader of the Censorship Industrial Complex,” next to her intellect and articulateness, is that “[l]ike other American elites, DiResta believes that it is the role of people like her to control what information the public is allowed to consume, lest they elect a populist ogre like Donald Trump, decide not to get vaccinated, or don’t accept whatever happens to be mainstream liberal opinion on everything from climate change to transgenderism to the business dealings of the president[‘s] family.”

The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project

The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was founded only months before the 2020 U.S. presidential election “to defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment.”

Mike Benz, former State Department official in the Trump administration and executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online, explained in a video that EIP was created as a “government cut-out,” a “private” organization that de facto acts as censorship arm for the things the government cannot censor because it lacks the legal authority to do so.

One of the “partners” of the EIP is DiResta’s SIO. Benz also notes that all of the EIP’s partners are at least partly funded by the government.

Elon this video goes over it in insta-PhD level detail. It shows exactly how DHS created the EIP censorship octopus. Condensed to 8 mins here: pic.twitter.com/l5EaxAIChD

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) November 7, 2023

In May 2020, a new organization with mostly the same “partners” as the EIP was created, the Virality Project (VP). The VP focused on censoring COVID-related content online, including factual information that “might promote vaccine hesitancy.”

READ: New ‘Twitter Files’ show gov’t-backed Stanford initiative told Big Tech to censor ‘true’ info about COVID jabs

A spokesperson from the SIO (one of the VP’s founding partners) claimed it “did not censor or ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects.” Perhaps the SIO did not censor content directly, but the VP that was founded by the SIO certainly did, as the Twitter Files released by Elon Musk have shown.

According to the Twitter Files published by journalist Matt Taibbi, the VP pressured social media platforms such as Twitter (now X) and TikTok to remove or flag online content. Posts flagged by VP included:

True information that could fuel “vaccine hesitancy”
Posts critical of vaccine passports
True testimonies of people experiencing blood clots after receiving COVID shots
People asking questions about possible adverse reactions from the jabs

The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World government

As mentioned above, DiResta, in addition to being a former CIA agent, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank specialized in U.S. foreign policy. The globalist CFR is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The CFR was founded in 1921 and has heavily influenced U.S. foreign policy ever since. Most CIA directors and U.S. secretaries of defense have been members of the Council. Mercola argues that the CFR’s ultimate goal “has been to bring about a totalitarian one world government, a New World Order (NWO) with global top-down rule.”

According to the Centre for Research on Globalization, James Warburg, the son of one of the CFR’s founders, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

Moreover, CFR insider and former U.S. Navy Admiral Chester Ward stated the following in his 1975 book Kissinger on the Couch:

“[The CFR has as a goal] submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government … This lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of its membership … In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as ‘America First.’”

Mercola concludes that the Censorship Industrial Complex is part of the network that seeks to establish a one-world government.

“Those who oppose America First policies do so because they’re working on behalf of a network that seeks to eliminate nationalism in favor of a one-world government, and DiResta is part of that club,” he writes.

NewsGuard and the ‘middleware approach’

In another condensed video, Benz explains how the Censorship Industrial Complex is now using so-called “middleware” organizations like the news rating site NewsGuard to suppress dissent from the mainstream narratives.

The "Middleware" Plan To Restructure The Censorship Industry

1. Middleware = 'censorship as a service' orgs

2. Morphing from top-down to middle-out

3. Regs + middleware = disinfo compliance market pic.twitter.com/lDPqH72HrD

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 1, 2023

According to Benz, the Censorship Industrial Complex is anticipating a loss in the Missouri v. Biden Supreme Court case, which “threatens to ban all government coordination of domestic censorship with a few exceptions[.]”

To circumvent these possible legal restrictions, the government is propping up “intermediary censorship mercenary firms like NewsGuard.”

READ: Elon Musk slams leftist rating group NewsGuard as ‘scam’ that ‘should be disbanded immediately’

By funding these “private” organizations, the deep state government agencies can “effectively circumvent the First Amendment prohibitions on running a comparable thing out of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”

However, the idea that NewsGuard is somehow independent from the government is wholly divorced from reality. In 2021, the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard $750,000 for its project “Misinformation Fingerprints,” which aims to combat what it calls “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”

Moreover, Benz notes that NewsGuard’s Advisory Board consists of “an all-star apex predator caste of the national security state,” including

retired Four-Star General Michael Hayden, who was formerly the head of the CIA and NSA,
Richard Stengel, former Undersecretary of State,
Tom Ridge, former head of the DHS,
and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head of NATO.

By propping up “middleware” companies such as NewsGuard that are not technically part of the government, the Censorship Industrial Complex is able to work around possible First Amendment restrictions, as websites that receive a negative rating from NewsGuard will have reduced visibility on Big tech platforms and search engines. The negative rating by NewsGuard also provides a pretext for private Big Tech platforms to label outlets as spreaders of “misinformation” and censor them outright.

“There’s no clear solution to this threat, other than to continue pushing back against any and all efforts to legalize, standardize and normalize censorship,” Mercola writes in his conclusion. “To vocally object, to refuse using middleware like NewsGuard, and to boycott any company or organization that uses middleware or engages in censorship of any kind.”

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P.E.I. Moves to Open IRAC Files, Forcing Land Regulator to Publish Reports After The Bureau’s Investigation

Published on November 13, 2025

Todayville

Sam Cooper

Following an exclusive report from The Bureau detailing transparency concerns at Prince Edward Island’s land regulator — and a migration of lawyers from firms that represented the Buddhist land-owning entities the regulator had already probed — the P.E.I. Legislature has passed a new law forcing the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) to make its land-investigation reports public.

The bill — introduced by Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane — passed unanimously on Wednesday, CTV News reported. It amends the Lands Protection Act to require IRAC to table final investigation reports and supporting documents in the Legislature within 15 days of completion.

MacFarlane told CTV the reform was necessary because “public trust … is at an all-time low in the system,” adding that “if Islanders can see that work is getting done, that the (LPA) is being properly administered and enforced, that will get some trust rebuilt in this body.”

The Bureau’s report last week underscored that concern, showing how lawyers from Cox & Palmer — the firm representing the Buddhist landholders — steadily moved into senior IRAC positions after the regulator quietly shut down its mandated probe into those same entities. The issue exploded this fall when a Legislative Committee subpoena confirmed that IRAC’s oft-cited 2016–2018 investigation had never produced a final report at all.

There have been reports, including from CBC, that the Buddhist landholders have ties to a Chinese Communist Party entity, which leaders from the group deny.

In the years following IRAC’s cancelled probe into the Buddhist landholders, The Bureau reported, Cox & Palmer’s general counsel and director of land joined IRAC, and the migration of senior former lawyers culminated this spring, with former premier Dennis King appointing his own chief of staff, longtime Cox & Palmer partner Pam Williams, as IRAC chair shortly after the province’s land minister ordered the regulator to reopen a probe into Buddhist landholdings.

The law firm did not respond to questions, while IRAC said it has strong measures in place to guard against any conflicted decision-making.

Reporting on the overall matter, The Bureau wrote that:

“The integrity of the institution has, in effect, become a test of public confidence — or increasingly, of public disbelief. When Minister of Housing, Land and Communities Steven Myers ordered IRAC in February 2025 to release the 2016–2018 report and reopen the investigation, the commission did not comply … Myers later resigned in October 2025. Days afterward, the Legislative Committee on Natural Resources subpoenaed IRAC to produce the report. The commission replied that no formal report had ever been prepared.”

The Bureau’s investigation also showed that the Buddhist entities under review control assets exceeding $480 million, and there is also a planned $185-million campus development in the Town of Three Rivers, citing concerns that such financial power, combined with a revolving door between key law firms, political offices and the regulator, risks undermining confidence in P.E.I.’s land-oversight regime.

Wednesday’s new law converts the expectation for transparency at IRAC, voiced loudly by numerous citizens in this small province of about 170,000, into a statutory obligation.

Housing, Land and Communities Minister Cory Deagle told CTV the government supported the bill: “We do have concerns about some aspects of it, but the main principles of what you’re trying to achieve are a good thing.”

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Mark Carney Seeks to Replace Fiscal Watchdog with Loyal Lapdog

Published on November 13, 2025

Todayville

Dan Knight

After scathing warnings from interim budget officer Jason Jacques, Liberals move to silence dissent and install a compliant insider with “tact and discretion.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? After a decade of gaslighting Canadians about their so-called “fiscally responsible” governance, the Liberal Party, now under the direction of Mark Carney, finally runs into a problem they can’t spin: someone told the truth. Jason Jacques, the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, was appointed for six months, six months. And within weeks, he did something this government considers a fireable offense: he read the books, looked at the numbers, and spoke plainly. That’s it. His crime? Honesty.

Here’s what he found. First, the deficit. Remember when Trudeau said “the budget will balance itself”? That myth has now mutated into a projected $68.5 billion deficit for 2025–26, up from $51.7 billion the year before. Jacques didn’t just disagree with it. He called it “stupefying,” “shocking,” and, this is the one they hate the most, “unsustainable.” Because if there’s one thing Ottawa elites can’t handle, it’s accountability from someone who doesn’t need a job after this.

But Jacques didn’t stop there. He pointed out that this government has no fiscal anchor. None. Not even a fake one. A fiscal anchor is a target, like a deficit limit or a falling debt-to-GDP ratio—basic stuff for any country pretending to manage its money. Jacques said the Liberals have abandoned even that pretense. In his words, there’s no clear framework. Just blind spending. No roadmap. No compass. No brakes.

And speaking of GDP, here’s the kicker: the debt-to-GDP ratio, which Trudeau once swore would always go down, is now heading up. Jacques projects it rising from 41.7% in 2024–25 to over 43% by 2030–31. And what happens when debt rises and growth slows? You pay more just to service the interest. That’s exactly what Jacques warned. He said the cost of carrying the debt is eating into core government operations. That means fewer services. Higher taxes. Slower growth. The burden gets passed to your children while Mark Carney gives another speech in Zurich about “inclusive capitalism.”

And let’s talk about definitions. Jacques flagged that the Liberals are now muddying the waters on what counts as operating spending versus capital spending. Why does that matter? Because if you redefine the terms, you can claim to be balancing the “operating budget” while secretly racking up long-term debt. It’s accounting gimmickry, a shell game with your tax dollars.

He also pointed to unaccounted spending, about $20 billion a year in campaign promises that haven’t even been formally costed yet. Add that to their multi-decade defense commitments, green subsidies, and inflated federal payroll, and you’re looking at an avalanche of unmodeled liabilities.

And just to make this circus complete, Jacques even criticized the way his own office was filled. The Prime Minister can handpick an interim PBO with zero parliamentary input. No transparency. No debate. Just a quiet appointment, until the appointee grows a spine and tells the public what’s really going on.

Now the Liberals are racing to replace Jacques. Why? Because he said all of this publicly. Because he didn’t play ball. Because his office dared to function as it was intended: independently. They’re looking for someone with “tact and discretion.” That’s what the job listing says. Not independence. Not integrity. Tact. Discretion. In other words: someone who’ll sit down, shut up, and nod politely while Carney and Champagne burn through another $100 billion pretending it’s “investment.”

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about replacing a bureaucrat. It’s about neutering the last shred of fiscal oversight left in Ottawa. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is supposed to be a firewall between reckless political ambition and your wallet. But in Carney’s Canada, independence is an inconvenience. So now, instead of extending Jacques’ term, something that would preserve continuity and show respect for accountability, the Liberals are shopping for a compliant technocrat. Someone who won’t call a $68.5 billion deficit “stupefying.” Someone who’ll massage the numbers just enough to keep the illusion intact.

They don’t want an economist. They want a courtier. Someone with just enough credentials to fake credibility, and just enough cowardice to keep their mouth shut when the spending blows past every so-called “anchor” they once pretended to respect. That’s the game. Keep the optics clean. Keep the watchdog muzzled. And keep Canadians in the dark while this government drives the country off a fiscal cliff.

But let me say it plainly, thank god someone in this country still believes in accountability. Thank God Jason Jacques stepped into that office and had the guts to tell the truth, not just to Parliament, but to the Canadian people. And thank God Pierre Poilievre has the common sense, the spine, and the clarity to back him. While Mark Carney and his Laurentian elite pals are busy gutting oversight, rewriting the rules, and flooding the economy with borrowed billions, it’s men like Jacques who refuse to play along. He looked at the books and didn’t see “investment”—he saw a ticking fiscal time bomb. And instead of ducking, he sounded the alarm.

Poilievre, to his credit, is standing firmly behind the man. He understands that without a real watchdog, Parliament becomes a stage play, just actors and scripts, no substance. Backing Jacques isn’t just good politics. It’s basic sanity. It’s the minimum standard for anyone who still thinks this country should live within its means, tell the truth about its finances, and respect the people footing the bill.

So while the Liberals scramble to muzzle dissent and hire another smiling yes-man with a resume full of buzzwords and a Rolodex full of Davos invites, at least one opposition leader is saying: No. We need a watchdog, not a lapdog. And in a city full of spineless bureaucrats, that’s not just refreshing—it’s absolutely essential.

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