The Defense Department ordered an investigation into how it conducts clandestine information warfare, The Washington Post reported.
The Pentagon's action comes after major social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, identified and took offline fake accounts, suspected of being run by the U.S. military, in violation of the platforms' rules, the Post reported.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month, the newspaper said.
Several defense and administration officials told the Post that the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Pentagon's attempted manipulation of audiences overseas.
The White House, the State Department and Defense Department officials have been concerned that policies regarding clandestine online operations are too broad and risk eroding U.S. credibility, the Post reported.
"Our adversaries are absolutely operating in the information domain," a senior defense official told the Post. "There are some who think we shouldn't do anything clandestine in that space. Ceding an entire domain to an adversary would be unwise. But we need stronger policy guardrails."
Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told the Post in a statement that the military's information operations "support our national security priorities" and must be conducted in compliance with relevant laws and policies. "We are committed to enforcing those safeguards."
Internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory last month said that more than 150 fake personas and media sites created in the U.S. were taken down in recent years by Twitter and Facebook.
Two officials told the Post that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are being scrutinized. Centcom, headquartered in Tampa, Florida, influences military operations across 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia.
Posts removed included ones that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing Moscow's "imperialist" war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict's direct impact on Central Asian countries, and a made-up Persian-language media site that shared content reposted from the U.S.-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe.
The researchers' report said that another takedown was linked to a Twitter handle that in the past had claimed to operate on behalf of Centcom.
If true, one defense official told the Post, it would "absolutely be a violation of doctrine and training practices."
The Post also reported, independent of the Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory release, that in 2020 Facebook disabled fictitious personas created by Centcom to counter disinformation spread by China regarding coronavirus.
The Chinese disinformation claimed the virus that resulted in COVID-19 was created at a U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Post said.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.