It’s irritating that much-needed discourse over content moderation is somehow getting eclipsed by a debate about what Renee DiResta was personally involved with. She clearly has some grievances over how Taibbi and Shellenberger represented her (some probably justified), but that doesn’t mean there weren’t concerning attempts to coordinate censorship (yes—labeling, suppressing, etc. content is censorship).
I find Taibbi/Shellenberger’s occasional histrionics off-putting (though inflating minor threats to civil liberties into righteous battles against tyranny is probably the most American tradition we have…that’s just Common Sense), but that doesn’t discredit reporting on attempts by government agencies to use 3rd parties to circumvent the 1st Amendment.
And the relationship between Silicon Valley and the intelligence community is well established even if her connection between the 2 is overstated. If the blob thinks it’s truly important to sway online narratives, let them make a transparent case to the public (many in the IC seem to forget we live in a democracy).
> Michael Shellenberger has suggested over and over and over again that she is a CIA asset
What a mess. You provide three links. The first two are identical, so there's only really two sources given here.
In the first - a long tweet - he doesn't say she's a CIA asset. He says clearly that she used to work for the CIA, which is true, gives her a right of reply, and then speculates that she MIGHT still have connections but states clearly that it's just speculation.
Given that you mis-represented the first link pretty badly I didn't bother listening to the podcast in the second. But really, if you're going to accuse other people of spreading misinformation, making it appear you have more sources than you do and then badly distorting what they say isn't a good start.
So you disagree that he's suggested she's a cia asset but do agree that he "speculates that she MIGHT still have (CIA )connections." But "It's just speculation". Is our disagreement that I see he's suggesting a false connection but you you think he's just "speculating" about a connection? I see this as a meaningless difference. Anyway he suggests a current connection all the time and doesn't disabuse other who go further than speculation. here are several more times he's snagged in the speculation. Some more: https://open.substack.com/pub/public/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship?r=ilrgh&utm_medium=ios
This is our disagreement yes. There are several problems with what you're saying here.
Firstly, there's no difference between "suggests" and "speculates" but originally you didn't use either word. You said "Michael Shellenberger Says She Is" a CIA asset. It appears he never did say she "is" but only she "might be", because now you weakened your claim dramatically. You're now agreeing with me that he merely "suggests" she a CIA asset. Your new weaker claim is correct but uninteresting; people are allowed to have opinions and this one is relatively mundane.
Secondly, you say "I see he's suggesting a false connection". You don't know what's true or false in this case. The claim is that if a connection did exist it'd be secret, so it's unfalsifiable in both directions short of a giant Snowden-style leak. He can't prove there is one, but equally, you can't prove there isn't.
So the concept of misinformation just doesn't apply to what Shellenberger is saying at all. It's impossible for speculation to be misinformation because speculation doesn't claim to be information to begin with. Do you see this difference? It's fundamental enough that some languages encode it into their grammar. If Shellenberger really was presenting this claim as information, you could prove it false and then claim it was misinformation. But he isn't. He's clearly demarcated what he knows to be true vs what he suspects might be true, and it's no more meaningful to describe the latter as misinformation than it would be to describe his professed taste in music that way.
This does seem really irresponsible on Shellenberger's part, but his schtick seems to a motte and bailey maneuver where he makes wild claims and then retreats to obviously true statements (like the fact that the COVID response and the "trust the science" narrative were crazy and frequently not based in any actual science) when pressured.
There's a lot of assuming that people must be connected in elite circles - I think this is the origin of the (to me, sort of reasonable sometimes) paranoia about the Atlantic Council tabletop exercises, Election Integrity project, progressive nonprofits, etc. You see the same names on attendee lists/boards for a lot of different things, and it's easy to assume that means that the interests of everything they are involved with are aligned.
But the problem is you end up with a lot of false positives, and you end up assuming the worst about people who you don't know at all.
Absolutely fantastic and immensely valuable post Mike, I have really been hoping that someone would rise to the challenge, Renee is one of the most unfairly maligned people in this space over the past few years
I was a paid subscriber to taibbis Substack (now cancelled), and he has done some excellent work in the past. Since the “twitter files” thing though, and his adoption of shellenberger into his company, Matt has been consistently tending toward everything being a conspiracy, and this is a loss to journalism . Ie Shellenberger seems to be a full scale tinfoil hat guy and it’s rubbed off.
*****We all know, or should know, that the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true.******
.
This statement demands clarification.
There is no single "Hunter Biden laptop story." Many of the stories, accepted as true, are actually or plausibly deceitful narratives concocted and promoted in much the same way and spirit as were the deceits from Shellenberger and Comer that Mike shared in this very essay.
The reporting from Marcy Wheeler ("Emptywheel") is indispensible. An example post is at the link below.
I am familiar w Marcy but I'm not talking about all the rabbit holey second and third order claims. Basic truth: Hunter Biden dropped his laptop off at a Delaware repair shop. FBI acquired it. It has many embarrassing and incriminating photos though nothing that directly implicated the president. NYP original story was right. Maybe not their spin on every implication but they got the facts right. It wasn't Russian disinformation. Hunters legal team and federal gov't all acknowledge this under oath.
I see that my invocation of Marcy Wheeler's analysis is not particularly apt given the basic elements that you shared, to which a fair-minded person must stipulate.
There is another lens through which to approach this, one that is directly relevant to the topic of your essay (in connection with which your reference to the laptop controversy was merely an aside).
Among the "actually or plausibly deceitful narratives concocted and promoted in much the same way and spirit as were the deceits from Shellenberger and Comer that Mike shared in this very essay" is the one that, following a deceitful Politico headline, misrepresents the letter from the former national security professionals as one that made an outright claim of Russian disinformation rather than a perfectly appropriate and defensible observation that it "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
The Wall Street Journal had this same concern and declined to publish the story without further vetting. Some New York Post reporters had this concern and declined to participate, one even having experienced her byline added to the story without her knowledge. The other named author was a veteran propagandist for Sean Hannity.
Relevant to all of this, in this episode Facebook and Twitter acted on their own and in good faith (following select excerpts below from the main Wikipedia entry is a direct link to the Social Media Corporations section).
All of which is to say that the Biden laptop October surprise gambit, same as a Russian information op, mixed true things with false (in this case, false assertions and inuendos) to achieve a deceptive end. The deceptions continued and magnified the original story.
Earlier in October, before the Post's report, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski, and close Donald Trump Jr. associate Arthur Schwartz pitched a story about Hunter Biden's business dealings in China to The Wall Street Journal, which the Trump team saw as an ideal outlet due to its combination of conservatism and industry credibility. Without warning to the Trump team and while the Journal was exercising due diligence in investigating the story, the New York Post went ahead and published a version of the story based on documents and emails with "questionable provenance" that alleged, but did not prove, Joe Biden's involvement in his son's affairs.[70]
Bannon had anticipated the Journal story would appear on October 19, and Trump told reporters to expect a major story in the Journal. Bobulinski thought it would not run the piece, so he issued his own statement on October 21, which Breitbart News published unedited. During the next day's presidential debate, Trump vaguely referred to the emails and Bobulinski was his special guest. Afterward, the Journal published a brief story saying corporate records it reviewed "show no role for Joe Biden".[71]
[...]
According to an investigation by The New York Times, editors at the New York Post "pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story", and at least one refused, in addition to the original author, reportedly because of a lack of confidence in its credibility. Of the two writers eventually credited on the article, the second did not know her name was attached to it until after The Post published it.[32]
[...]
[T]he credited lead author of the story, deputy political editor Emma-Jo Morris, had virtually no previous bylines in reporting. Her most significant prior employment was a nearly four-year position as a producer on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. Hannity, a close Trump advisor, had repeatedly suggested wrongdoing by Biden in Ukraine.[143]
[...]
On October 19, 2020, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in the Trump administration and those of the three previous presidents, released an open letter stating that the release of the alleged emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation", adding:
We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.[34][103][104]
That night, Natasha Bertrand of Politico wrote a story about the letter, with the headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The rest of the story, however, was less definitive, with a subheading saying the former officials "signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story," and noting in the story body that the letter said the information in the Post story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a February 2023 analysis, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote "that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who signed the letter, told Kessler, "There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five" of the letter. Politico stood by their report in a statement to Kessler.[105]
In the final presidential debate for 2020 and in an interview with 60 Minutes, Joe Biden referenced the letter from the intelligence officials. He inaccurately claimed the letter asserted that the laptop controversy was a "Russian plan", "a bunch of garbage", "disinformation from the Russians" and "a smear campaign".[105]
Well maybe Renee's possible involvement or knowledge of Hamilton 68 puts her in the category of censorship. Here a few excerpts to that effect.
"We know from other correspondence that Starbird pays attention to episodes like Hamilton 68, whose dashboard was designed by New Knowledge CEO Jonathon Morgan in conjunction with GEC contractor J.M. Berger. Back in 2018, just after New Knowledge was caught in a crazy scheme to create fake Russian Twitter accounts and have them follow Alabama Senate candidate Doug Moore, Starbird wrote future Graphika chief Ben Nimmo:"
"The research director at New Knowledge during the period of both the Alabama and Hamilton 68 episodes was Renee DiResta. Nimmo’s Graphika and Starbird’s Center for an Informed Public would both go on to team up with DiResta in the 2020 Election Integrity Partnership. Apparently that discussion of “boundaries” of “ethics” involving “offensive” information operations didn’t judge the latter too harshly."
Hi, Renee here. I was NOT the research director at NK during the period of either Ham68 or Alabama. My LNKD work timeline makes this very clear. I have pointed this out to Taibbi and requested a correction and he has not made one.
That's from a paywalled Taibbi post right? It doesn't get at what I wrote about. I'm not here to get Into The weeds of every aspect of DiResta's life. I don't mean that as an evasion it just muddies the waters and gets in the way of what I'm arguing. a) she's not a CIA operative B) shellenberger knows this c) Shellenberger constantly smears her unfairly d) there's no evidence of DiResta censoring true info. Ham 68 is its own thing. I does seem to have labeled regular bad opinions as Russian disinformation.
Im convinced Taibbi and Shellenberg really don’t know sh*t about the State Department and are really just suffering from audience capture. It’s all for the clicks and subs, baby!
I dont know what they know about State, and I tried to center my objections to Shellenberger bc what he did was more nakedly objectionable. But you do get the impression that if they yell CIA !!! it absolutely drives more interest and engagement .
As one of your loyal readers/listeners, this piece is just discouraging. How does a regular person, going to work every day, taking the kids to soccer, worrying about aging parents … all that, and then wanting to be a responsible informed citizen …
How does one avoid just disengaging in despair at last?
We have to recognize what's going on, reject the partisan lens, but also reject the knee jerk anti-partisan lens, and be guided by truth and accuracy. Also keep in mind, these disinformation campaigns aren't especially effective. This column is a who will watch those who watch the watchmen type recursivity, but its valid I do believe.
It’s irritating that much-needed discourse over content moderation is somehow getting eclipsed by a debate about what Renee DiResta was personally involved with. She clearly has some grievances over how Taibbi and Shellenberger represented her (some probably justified), but that doesn’t mean there weren’t concerning attempts to coordinate censorship (yes—labeling, suppressing, etc. content is censorship).
I find Taibbi/Shellenberger’s occasional histrionics off-putting (though inflating minor threats to civil liberties into righteous battles against tyranny is probably the most American tradition we have…that’s just Common Sense), but that doesn’t discredit reporting on attempts by government agencies to use 3rd parties to circumvent the 1st Amendment.
And the relationship between Silicon Valley and the intelligence community is well established even if her connection between the 2 is overstated. If the blob thinks it’s truly important to sway online narratives, let them make a transparent case to the public (many in the IC seem to forget we live in a democracy).
> Michael Shellenberger has suggested over and over and over again that she is a CIA asset
What a mess. You provide three links. The first two are identical, so there's only really two sources given here.
In the first - a long tweet - he doesn't say she's a CIA asset. He says clearly that she used to work for the CIA, which is true, gives her a right of reply, and then speculates that she MIGHT still have connections but states clearly that it's just speculation.
Given that you mis-represented the first link pretty badly I didn't bother listening to the podcast in the second. But really, if you're going to accuse other people of spreading misinformation, making it appear you have more sources than you do and then badly distorting what they say isn't a good start.
So you disagree that he's suggested she's a cia asset but do agree that he "speculates that she MIGHT still have (CIA )connections." But "It's just speculation". Is our disagreement that I see he's suggesting a false connection but you you think he's just "speculating" about a connection? I see this as a meaningless difference. Anyway he suggests a current connection all the time and doesn't disabuse other who go further than speculation. here are several more times he's snagged in the speculation. Some more: https://open.substack.com/pub/public/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship?r=ilrgh&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/public/p/victory-stanford-shuts-down-censorship?r=ilrgh&utm_medium=ios
https://youtu.be/mY591Ax0Bms
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-shellenberger-exposing-the-censorship/id1602708292?i=1000617748012
> I see this as a meaningless difference.
This is our disagreement yes. There are several problems with what you're saying here.
Firstly, there's no difference between "suggests" and "speculates" but originally you didn't use either word. You said "Michael Shellenberger Says She Is" a CIA asset. It appears he never did say she "is" but only she "might be", because now you weakened your claim dramatically. You're now agreeing with me that he merely "suggests" she a CIA asset. Your new weaker claim is correct but uninteresting; people are allowed to have opinions and this one is relatively mundane.
Secondly, you say "I see he's suggesting a false connection". You don't know what's true or false in this case. The claim is that if a connection did exist it'd be secret, so it's unfalsifiable in both directions short of a giant Snowden-style leak. He can't prove there is one, but equally, you can't prove there isn't.
So the concept of misinformation just doesn't apply to what Shellenberger is saying at all. It's impossible for speculation to be misinformation because speculation doesn't claim to be information to begin with. Do you see this difference? It's fundamental enough that some languages encode it into their grammar. If Shellenberger really was presenting this claim as information, you could prove it false and then claim it was misinformation. But he isn't. He's clearly demarcated what he knows to be true vs what he suspects might be true, and it's no more meaningful to describe the latter as misinformation than it would be to describe his professed taste in music that way.
This does seem really irresponsible on Shellenberger's part, but his schtick seems to a motte and bailey maneuver where he makes wild claims and then retreats to obviously true statements (like the fact that the COVID response and the "trust the science" narrative were crazy and frequently not based in any actual science) when pressured.
There's a lot of assuming that people must be connected in elite circles - I think this is the origin of the (to me, sort of reasonable sometimes) paranoia about the Atlantic Council tabletop exercises, Election Integrity project, progressive nonprofits, etc. You see the same names on attendee lists/boards for a lot of different things, and it's easy to assume that means that the interests of everything they are involved with are aligned.
But the problem is you end up with a lot of false positives, and you end up assuming the worst about people who you don't know at all.
Absolutely fantastic and immensely valuable post Mike, I have really been hoping that someone would rise to the challenge, Renee is one of the most unfairly maligned people in this space over the past few years
I was a paid subscriber to taibbis Substack (now cancelled), and he has done some excellent work in the past. Since the “twitter files” thing though, and his adoption of shellenberger into his company, Matt has been consistently tending toward everything being a conspiracy, and this is a loss to journalism . Ie Shellenberger seems to be a full scale tinfoil hat guy and it’s rubbed off.
Mike wrote:
*****We all know, or should know, that the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true.******
.
This statement demands clarification.
There is no single "Hunter Biden laptop story." Many of the stories, accepted as true, are actually or plausibly deceitful narratives concocted and promoted in much the same way and spirit as were the deceits from Shellenberger and Comer that Mike shared in this very essay.
The reporting from Marcy Wheeler ("Emptywheel") is indispensible. An example post is at the link below.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/06/06/how-to-think-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop/
I am familiar w Marcy but I'm not talking about all the rabbit holey second and third order claims. Basic truth: Hunter Biden dropped his laptop off at a Delaware repair shop. FBI acquired it. It has many embarrassing and incriminating photos though nothing that directly implicated the president. NYP original story was right. Maybe not their spin on every implication but they got the facts right. It wasn't Russian disinformation. Hunters legal team and federal gov't all acknowledge this under oath.
Fair enough, Mike.
I see that my invocation of Marcy Wheeler's analysis is not particularly apt given the basic elements that you shared, to which a fair-minded person must stipulate.
There is another lens through which to approach this, one that is directly relevant to the topic of your essay (in connection with which your reference to the laptop controversy was merely an aside).
Among the "actually or plausibly deceitful narratives concocted and promoted in much the same way and spirit as were the deceits from Shellenberger and Comer that Mike shared in this very essay" is the one that, following a deceitful Politico headline, misrepresents the letter from the former national security professionals as one that made an outright claim of Russian disinformation rather than a perfectly appropriate and defensible observation that it "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
The Wall Street Journal had this same concern and declined to publish the story without further vetting. Some New York Post reporters had this concern and declined to participate, one even having experienced her byline added to the story without her knowledge. The other named author was a veteran propagandist for Sean Hannity.
Relevant to all of this, in this episode Facebook and Twitter acted on their own and in good faith (following select excerpts below from the main Wikipedia entry is a direct link to the Social Media Corporations section).
All of which is to say that the Biden laptop October surprise gambit, same as a Russian information op, mixed true things with false (in this case, false assertions and inuendos) to achieve a deceptive end. The deceptions continued and magnified the original story.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy#New_York_Post_reporting
Earlier in October, before the Post's report, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski, and close Donald Trump Jr. associate Arthur Schwartz pitched a story about Hunter Biden's business dealings in China to The Wall Street Journal, which the Trump team saw as an ideal outlet due to its combination of conservatism and industry credibility. Without warning to the Trump team and while the Journal was exercising due diligence in investigating the story, the New York Post went ahead and published a version of the story based on documents and emails with "questionable provenance" that alleged, but did not prove, Joe Biden's involvement in his son's affairs.[70]
Bannon had anticipated the Journal story would appear on October 19, and Trump told reporters to expect a major story in the Journal. Bobulinski thought it would not run the piece, so he issued his own statement on October 21, which Breitbart News published unedited. During the next day's presidential debate, Trump vaguely referred to the emails and Bobulinski was his special guest. Afterward, the Journal published a brief story saying corporate records it reviewed "show no role for Joe Biden".[71]
[...]
According to an investigation by The New York Times, editors at the New York Post "pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story", and at least one refused, in addition to the original author, reportedly because of a lack of confidence in its credibility. Of the two writers eventually credited on the article, the second did not know her name was attached to it until after The Post published it.[32]
[...]
[T]he credited lead author of the story, deputy political editor Emma-Jo Morris, had virtually no previous bylines in reporting. Her most significant prior employment was a nearly four-year position as a producer on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. Hannity, a close Trump advisor, had repeatedly suggested wrongdoing by Biden in Ukraine.[143]
[...]
On October 19, 2020, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in the Trump administration and those of the three previous presidents, released an open letter stating that the release of the alleged emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation", adding:
We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.[34][103][104]
That night, Natasha Bertrand of Politico wrote a story about the letter, with the headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The rest of the story, however, was less definitive, with a subheading saying the former officials "signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story," and noting in the story body that the letter said the information in the Post story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a February 2023 analysis, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote "that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who signed the letter, told Kessler, "There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five" of the letter. Politico stood by their report in a statement to Kessler.[105]
In the final presidential debate for 2020 and in an interview with 60 Minutes, Joe Biden referenced the letter from the intelligence officials. He inaccurately claimed the letter asserted that the laptop controversy was a "Russian plan", "a bunch of garbage", "disinformation from the Russians" and "a smear campaign".[105]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy#Social_media_corporations
Well maybe Renee's possible involvement or knowledge of Hamilton 68 puts her in the category of censorship. Here a few excerpts to that effect.
"We know from other correspondence that Starbird pays attention to episodes like Hamilton 68, whose dashboard was designed by New Knowledge CEO Jonathon Morgan in conjunction with GEC contractor J.M. Berger. Back in 2018, just after New Knowledge was caught in a crazy scheme to create fake Russian Twitter accounts and have them follow Alabama Senate candidate Doug Moore, Starbird wrote future Graphika chief Ben Nimmo:"
"The research director at New Knowledge during the period of both the Alabama and Hamilton 68 episodes was Renee DiResta. Nimmo’s Graphika and Starbird’s Center for an Informed Public would both go on to team up with DiResta in the 2020 Election Integrity Partnership. Apparently that discussion of “boundaries” of “ethics” involving “offensive” information operations didn’t judge the latter too harshly."
Hi, Renee here. I was NOT the research director at NK during the period of either Ham68 or Alabama. My LNKD work timeline makes this very clear. I have pointed this out to Taibbi and requested a correction and he has not made one.
That's from a paywalled Taibbi post right? It doesn't get at what I wrote about. I'm not here to get Into The weeds of every aspect of DiResta's life. I don't mean that as an evasion it just muddies the waters and gets in the way of what I'm arguing. a) she's not a CIA operative B) shellenberger knows this c) Shellenberger constantly smears her unfairly d) there's no evidence of DiResta censoring true info. Ham 68 is its own thing. I does seem to have labeled regular bad opinions as Russian disinformation.
Im convinced Taibbi and Shellenberg really don’t know sh*t about the State Department and are really just suffering from audience capture. It’s all for the clicks and subs, baby!
I dont know what they know about State, and I tried to center my objections to Shellenberger bc what he did was more nakedly objectionable. But you do get the impression that if they yell CIA !!! it absolutely drives more interest and engagement .
Totally!!!!
As one of your loyal readers/listeners, this piece is just discouraging. How does a regular person, going to work every day, taking the kids to soccer, worrying about aging parents … all that, and then wanting to be a responsible informed citizen …
How does one avoid just disengaging in despair at last?
We have to recognize what's going on, reject the partisan lens, but also reject the knee jerk anti-partisan lens, and be guided by truth and accuracy. Also keep in mind, these disinformation campaigns aren't especially effective. This column is a who will watch those who watch the watchmen type recursivity, but its valid I do believe.