There is no doubt that Graphika leans into this cool and dynamic corporate image. From its beginnings in 2013, the company has expanded to employ dozens of people at its trendy Manhattan office. Describing<\/a> themselves as \u201ccartographers of the internet age,\u201d the company puts out investigation after investigation about foreign influence operations online, especially concentrating on Russian<\/a>, Chinese<\/a> or Iranian<\/a> attempts to manipulate social media. A layperson could certainly be blinded by its science and impressed by the complex and innovative graphs and charts. Yet when it comes to similar but far larger U.S. government programs<\/a>, the intelligence and analysis agency is silent.<\/p>\n One reason for this could be that Graphika is directly funded and staffed by those same American organizations. The New York-based company is not particularly transparent about its sources of income; however, on its website<\/a>, it lists the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)\u00a0 and the Minerva Initiative \u2013 a research program under the Department of Defense \u2013 as its chief \u201cpartners\u201d in funding. Government records show it also sought and received $3 million<\/a> in grants from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force over the previous two fiscal years.<\/p>\n In addition to this, Graphika has partnered with a number of organizations, including the Atlantic Council<\/a>, a NATO-offshoot think tank funded by the arms industry and the U.S. government. The Atlantic Council has been at the forefront<\/a> of both vigorously wiping pages and accounts critical of the U.S. government and spreading lurid accusations about the power of Russia to influence foreign elections and media. Graphika and the Atlantic Council have joined forces on a number of different projects, including a 2019 joint report<\/a>, on social media bots. The two organizations are also a part of the Election Integrity Partnership, a group that purports to protect the American political system from fake news.<\/p>\n Another member of that group (and a listed partner of Graphika on its website) is the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), an organization perhaps most famous for its work in convincing<\/a> Twitter to delete accounts for the crime of \u201cundermining faith in the NATO alliance.\u201d The SIO is led by Alex Stamos<\/a>, who is on the board of NATO\u2019s Collective Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. In addition, Graphika lists among its partners The Syria Campaign<\/a>, an organization dedicated to drumming up support and funding for the controversial group the White Helmets<\/a>.<\/p>\n If this is the chief organization trusted to keep us safe from bad-faith state actors, there is already a significant problem. Perhaps most worryingly from an internet freedom angle, however, is the fact that Graphika is staffed in large part by former intelligence agents from the alphabet soup of three-letter agencies in Washington.<\/p>\n Chief among these is strategy executive Chris Bane<\/a>. Prior to joining Graphika, Bane spent<\/a> 24 years in the CIA and seven in the U.S. Army, where he became an infantry and chemical officer. Another former spook is the director of federal programs, JoAnn Perry<\/a>, who served<\/a> for three and a half years at the CIA as an intelligence analyst advising policymakers on Middle Eastern affairs. Meanwhile, Lauren Pencek<\/a>, the company\u2019s vice president<\/a> of finance and operations, worked at the NSA, eventually rising<\/a> to become the agency\u2019s director of corporate strategy. Before her time at the NSA, she worked<\/a> for four years at arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman.<\/p>\n Chris Bane worked for the CIA for over two decades before taking charge at Graphika<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pencek\u2019s career history<\/a> underlines the connections between the national security state, the weapons industry, and the emerging tech world. She is far from the only Graphika employee with a similar background. Director of investigations Tyler Williams, for example, spent<\/a> nearly two years at BAE Systems and nearly seven at Booz Allen Hamilton before joining Graphika. At BAE Systems, he is said to have managed a portfolio of over $75 million for programs totaling more than $500 million. In another job at government contractor ANSER, Williams worked hand-in-hand with the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n Eugene Imas, Graphika\u2019s senior analyst and team lead, has also taken a very \u201cspooky\u201d career path. Studying Russian at Georgetown University (a school widely<\/a> known<\/a> as something akin to \u201cCIA U\u201d), Imas went on to work<\/a> as a political and military analyst contractor for the Office of Secretary of Defense, where he provided intelligence for American war simulations against Russia. Meanwhile, Jennifer Mathieu<\/a> spent<\/a> more than 16 years in senior positions at defense contractor MITRE before switching to Graphika in August to become its chief technology\/product officer.<\/p>\n Eugene Imas, Graphika\u2019s senior analyst, worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense before becoming team lead at Graphika<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even Graphika\u2019s staff with journalistic backgrounds have eyebrow-raising connections. Chris Hernon, who contributed to Graphika\u2019s report<\/a> on Russian influence operations, was a member<\/a> of the U.K. government Institute for Statecraft\u2019s Integrity Initiative<\/a>, a secret group of hawkish journalists that the British intelligence establishment has used<\/a> to plant false and coordinated stories into media around the world.<\/p>\n Connecting the worlds of the national security state, the defense industry, and social media is the aforementioned Ben Nimmo. In addition to his role at Graphika, Nimmo is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and was NATO\u2019s press officer between 2011 and 2014. Last February, he was also appointed<\/a> as intelligence chief for Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta. The coldest of cold warriors, Nimmo has accused everybody from Welsh pensioners<\/a> to internationally-recognized Ukrainian pianists<\/a> of being Russian bot accounts. Unfortunately, in his positions at the Atlantic Council and Meta, he is in a position to take action on his suspicions, allowing the botfinder general to act as prosecutor, judge and executioner.<\/p>\n Facebook Hires NATO Press Officer Ben Nimmo as Intelligence Chief<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n An inordinate number of Graphika employees have been educated at the Department of War Studies at King\u2019s College London \u2013 a notorious, intelligence-linked institution that MintPress News<\/i> has profiled<\/a> in depth<\/a>. The Department of War Studies is the training ground<\/a> for a huge number of NATO spies and, worryingly, journalists<\/a> now working in politically sensitive areas such as Russia or the Middle East \u2013 a connection that suggests collusion between the national security state and the fourth estate.<\/p>\n A 2009 study<\/a> published by the CIA extolled the virtues of sending its agents to King\u2019s College London for advanced training from academics with \u201cextensive and well-rounded intelligence experience.\u201d \u201cExposure to an academic environment, such as the Department of War Studies at King\u2019s College London, can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government system,\u201d it concluded. In 2013, former CIA Director and then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave a speech at the department, where he waxed lyrical about its importance to the agency and to the intelligence community more generally. \u201cI deeply appreciate the work that you do to train and to educate our future national security leaders, many of whom are in this audience,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n A School for Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO Spies<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Graphika\u2019s director of analysis, Melanie Smith<\/a>, is one of many company employees who studied at the same foreign university department. Smith graduated with a master\u2019s degree in Geopolitics, Terror and Security, a course that King\u2019s College London itself makes clear<\/a> is largely for military officers or spies. Since 2015, she has also been employed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank funded<\/a> by the arms industry and by a myriad of Western governments (including the United States).<\/p>\n Chair of the Advisory Board and Chief Innovation Officer Camille Fran\u00e7ois is also a War Studies alumnus. A former<\/a> special adviser to the Office of the French Prime Minister, she has also worked closely with DARPA in the United States and was selected in 2014 to train<\/a> in \u201ccyber operations\u201d at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany. Her studies at Columbia University were paid<\/a> for by the State Department and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Years later, she re-entered academia to attend the Department of War Studies, where, in 2019, she produced a report<\/a> on the so-called Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency.<\/p>\n After five years in the U.S. military, Joseph Carter<\/a> completed a master\u2019s at the Department of War Studies. He later worked<\/a> for Palantir<\/a> and joined Graphika in 2019, becoming the company\u2019s director of intelligence production.<\/p>\n Joseph Carter spent nearly five years at Palantir, another firm with deep ties to the national security state, before joining Graphika<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Certainly, the number of key Graphika individuals with deep connections to the national security state raises questions about the independence and neutrality of such an organization. Indeed, if there were any remaining doubts that the company functions as a front for the U.S. deep state, then its senior intelligence analyst Denitsa Nikolova removes them. Describing her job at Graphika on her professional LinkedIn<\/a> profile, Nikolova writes (emphasis added):<\/p>\n Denitsa uses analytical methods and tools to study complex online networks in an effort to <\/i>provide situational awareness to U.S. government clients<\/i><\/b>. Denitsa specializes in surveying the online political environments of various countries in an effort to<\/i> protect U.S. interests<\/i><\/b> from coordinated and inauthentic online activity.<\/i><\/p>\n The description makes crystal clear that the organization exists to protect or promote not the public\u2019s interests, but Washington\u2019s. Prior to Graphika, Nikolova worked<\/a> for the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels and with former King\u2019s College London War Studies Professor Thomas Rid on his book about Russian disinformation campaigns. Another Russia hawk, Rid was crucial in mainstreaming the increasingly gauche theory<\/a> that Russia \u201chacked\u201d the 2016 election, even testifying<\/a> before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the \u201cdark art\u201d of Russian meddling and condemning WikiLeaks and alternative media journalists as unwitting agents of disinformation.<\/p>\n The Notorious London Spy School Churning Out Many of the World\u2019s Top Journalists<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n For all the talk of foreign interference in domestic politics, Graphika has weaponized its reporting in attempts to change public discourse around the world. In 2019, the anti-imperialist, pacifistic, NATO-skeptical Jeremy Corbyn was on the verge of becoming prime minister of the United Kingdom. Corbyn \u2013 who wanted to ditch nuclear weapons, radically raise taxes on the wealthy, pursue a path of dialogue with other nations, and establish a system of 21st-century socialism at home \u2013 represented a mortal threat to establishment interests.<\/p>\n With the help of the Integrity Initiative, there was a coordinated<\/a> government-intelligence-media effort to destroy Corbyn, with claims that he was a secret Russian spy. The Atlantic Council described<\/a> him as \u201cthe Kremlin\u2019s Trojan horse.\u201d Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revealed<\/a> that the U.S. was trying its \u201clevel best\u201d to prevent a Corbyn victory. Meanwhile, a British Army general warned<\/a> that if Corbyn\u2019s Labour Party won the election, the military would stage a coup.<\/p>\n But Corbyn\u2019s team had an ace up their sleeve. Just days before the election, it released 451 pages of documents of negotiations between Conservative government members and American corporations, showing that the Tories were in negotiations to sell off Britain\u2019s National Health Service (NHS) to foreign interests. The revelation threatened to sink Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n Thankfully for Johnson, Graphika sprang into action, with Nimmo immediately announcing<\/a> that the documents \u201cclosely resemble\u2026a known Russian operation.\u201d Within days, Graphika produced a long report<\/a> insinuating that Corbyn was \u2013 wittingly or not \u2013 part of a Kremlin campaign.<\/p>\n At no point did anyone challenge the veracity of Corbyn\u2019s documents. <\/i>Nimmo and Graphika\u2019s words, however, allowed the media to spin the story against Corbyn, so the national narrative shifted from \u201cTories selling off our precious NHS\u201d to \u201cCorbyn working with Russians to push propaganda,\u201d thereby helping to torpedo the latter\u2019s October Surprise and ensure years more of Conservative rule. In the cold light of 2022, the Johnson administration is indeed<\/a> carrying out its plan to privatize<\/a> the country\u2019s healthcare system.<\/p>\n More recently, Graphika has also charged<\/a> Iran with attempting to interfere in Scottish politics, especially on the question of independence, claiming the Islamic Republic was creating networks of inauthentic bots to push for a breakup of the United Kingdom. A further report<\/a> alleged that a powerful Iranian influence operation was blaming the United States for its response to COVID-19 while praising China\u2019s reaction, all the while pumping out pro-Iran and pro-Palestine propaganda.<\/p>\n The Manhattan-based tech firm has been at the forefront of the establishment attack on alternative media, attempting to construct a non-existent link between left-wing sites, the Kremlin, and the Trump reelection campaign. In 2020, Nimmo and Fran\u00e7ois wrote a report<\/a> insinuating that a Russian government operation had infiltrated a host of well-known independent news sites, including MintPress, The GrayZone, InTheseTimes,<\/i> and Common Dreams<\/i>. The crux of the Graphika report claimed that a microblog called \u201cPeace Data\u201d was attempting to build an audience by \u201cpartner[ing]\u201d with them and reposting their content. MintPress<\/i> publishes under a Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can freely rehost content it produces, and there are a myriad of websites and microblogs that do just that. At the time, nobody at MintPress<\/i> was even aware of Peace Data<\/i>\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n In its report, Graphika described MintPress<\/i> as \u201ca U.S.-based site with a focus on the Middle East that has\u200b described U.S. foreign policy as \u2018an imperialist agenda that believes it\u2019s possible for America to bomb its way out of every difficult situation.\u2019\u201d While there may be an element of truth to that description, from the context, it is clear that this is intended to scandalize the reader.<\/p>\n Without evidence, Graphika claimed that Peace Data<\/i> was a Kremlin-controlled operation, noting that a sure giveaway was its \u201canti-Western tone\u201d that \u201caccused Western countries, the E.U. or NATO of imperialism or interference in other states,\u201d its stance against the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, and sympathy for the plight of Palestinians or Kashmiris. The implication of this, as The GrayZone<\/i>\u2019s Ben Norton noted<\/a>, was clear:<\/p>\n \u201cIf journalists acknowledge U.S. imperialism exists, report critically on Western foreign policy, or show sympathy toward Yemen, Palestine, and Kashmir, they are aiding and abetting the Kremlin.\u201d<\/p>\n The vast majority of Peace Data<\/i>\u2019s content was in Arabic, not English, and only 5% of its articles related to the 2020 U.S. elections at all, strongly indicating that this was not a Kremlin interference operation to get Trump elected. Furthermore, its reach was utterly minuscule, as even Graphika was forced to concede. A measure of this is the fact that its English-language Facebook page had only 198 Likes by the time it was closed down. If this was indeed an influence operation, it was incompetent and ineffectual, and certainly not worthy of so much attention from a hotshot New York intelligence firm. An individual could have reached a larger audience by talking loudly in a busy movie theater.<\/p>\n The attempts to link Peace Data<\/i> to well known anti-war sites were also extremely weak. As Miles Kampf-Lassin, web editor at In These Times<\/i><\/a>, noted<\/a> on Twitter: \u201c[T]he entirety of this attempt to \u2018infiltrate and exploit\u2019 In These Times<\/i> by Russian trolls consists of a single email sent from a random address to our general submission email that was never responded to. Just so everyone is clear on what\u2019s actually going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n Umm, the entirety of this attempt to \u201cinfiltrate and exploit\u201d @inthesetimesmag<\/a> by Russian trolls consists of a single email sent from a random address to our general submission email that was never responded to. Just so everyone is clear on what\u2019s actually going on here. https:\/\/t.co\/sMPcgCMY9S<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Miles Kampf-Lassin (@MilesKLassin) September 11, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe magnets around Graphika\u2019s compass<\/h2>\n
And inside its compass<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/z3news.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Eugene-Imas-1.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nThe English Connection<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nThe best defense\u2026 (is a good offense): the takedown of Corbyn<\/h2>\n
Propaganda about propaganda<\/h2>\n
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