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irector of National Intelligence Avril Haines revealed the White House’s vast efforts to “debunk” disinformation and “false narratives,” including about the Russia-Ukraine War, while speaking with a leading British intelligence officer, who called on Western intelligence agencies to “prebunk” disinformation and use “alliances” between big tech and the government to make people view government-backed narratives with more “trust.”
The stunning admissions – which follow confirmation that American intelligence agencies have been colluding with social media platforms to censor Americans – came during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program featuring Jeremy Fleming as a guest host.
Fleming, the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the United Kingdom’s Intelligence, Cyber and Security Agency, also called on intelligence agencies to take a more active role in countering “disinformation,” proposing that intelligence agencies begin “pre-bunking” allegedly false narratives before they become mainstream.
Fleming also alluded to “alliances” between “big tech” and government being used to mainstream certain narratives in a more effective manner in the interview.
Avril Haines, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, joined the BBC program to discuss how the White House was influencing the information landscape about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war under the pretense of minimizing the spread of “disinformation.”
She admits that “we obviously tried to counter disinformation that the Russians were putting out” in the interview.
“We saw that they were looking to create a pretext for the invasion and we wanted to sort of debunk that and help people understand that this was a false narrative,” she explained in reference to Russia and the onset of the war in February 2022.
