Twitter Files: US Govt Funded Group Accused 40,000 Users, Including Ordinary Americans, Of Supporting BJP, Hindu Nationalism

A United States government funded group had accused 40,000 Twitter users, including ordinary Americans, of allegedly engaging in 'inauthentic behaviour' in support of the BJP and Hindu nationalism.

In the latest edition of Twitter Files, independent journalist Matt Taibbi has revealed that US think-tank Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL), which is funded by the US government, had in 2021 said it suspected 40,000 accounts of being “paid employees or possibly volunteers” of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"Attached you will find a spreadsheet of around 40k (40,000) twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behaviour in support of BJP and Hindu nationalism more broadly," Andy Garvin, managing editor and senior fellow, DFRL had said in an email to Twitter.

However, the list was full of ordinary Americans, many with no connection to India and no clue about Indian politics, Taibbi said.

In response to Andy's email, Twitter's the then head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, wrote, "Thanks, Andy... I spot-checked a number of these accounts, and virtually all appear to be real people".

DFRLab is funded by the US Government, specifically the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which is listed as a US State Department entity.

GEC was created in the last years of the Obama administration.

Taibbi said that GEC is an interagency group “within” State department, whose initial partners included FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA, DARPA, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and others.

GEC’s mandate is “to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign... disinformation.”

On the surface, it has the same mission the United States Information Agency (USIA) fulfilled for decades, with a catch that USIA focused on foreign “disinfo", Taibbi said.

"It’s an incubator for the domestic disinformation complex,” Taibbi quoted a former intelligence source as saying.

“All the sh*t we pulled in other countries since the Cold War, some morons decided to bring home," the source added.

Taibbi added that GEC could have avoided controversy by focusing on exposing/answering “disinformation” with research and a more public approach, as USIA did.

"Instead, it funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious – and idiotic – new form of blacklisting," Taibbi said.