Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood in front of the press and declared victory. Not against any foreign adversary, but over the remnants of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a small office within the State Department tasked with tracking foreign propaganda. "Whatever name it goes by," Rubio said, "GEC is dead. It will not return."
In a rambling op-ed in The Federalist, Rubio laid out his reasoning for crushing the GEC. It was a body crafted by “our own governing ruling class,” including the “enemies of speech,” who “had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse”: defending “our democracy” (in scare quotes) by tracking “disinformation.” In Rubio’s telling, the Deep State had hijacked a government office and repurposed it to attack American citizens—namely conservatives—before it was finally put down by a righteous administration.
In reality, Rubio’s act is more accurately viewed as yet another step in a broader campaign to dismantle America’s capacity to detect and respond to foreign influence operations...
