由 jpichiban Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:58:53 GMT
2024年5月6日，美国加州比佛利山庄，SpaceX和特斯拉首席执行官、X平台所有者埃隆·马斯克出席米尔肯研究院2024年全球会议。图片来源：David Swanson | 路透社
直到最近，埃隆·马斯克在X平台上很少提及美国国际开发署（USAID），而他通常乐于分享对几乎所有话题的看法。然而，上周日，这位全球首富、特朗普任命的新政府效率部（DOGE）部长突然连发数帖，将这家对外人道主义援助机构描述为“憎恨美国的激进左翼马克思主义者盘踞的蛇窝”、“邪恶”且“犯罪组织”。
“是时候让它消失了，”马斯克写道。
马斯克对USAID突如其来的关注并非凭空而来：长期以来，该机构因其援助项目被指掩盖国家干预行为并在海外过度消耗美国纳税人的钱而饱受批评。一些阴谋论声称，全球人道主义项目是生物战研究的幌子，或USAID的资金让控制世界的少数精英阶层更加富有。但直到最近，这些说法大多游离于主流之外，而USAID——向100多个国家提供数十亿美元的食品和药品——在华盛顿通常得到两党支持。
如今情况已变：美国总统特朗普周一告诉记者，虽然他欣赏USAID的“理念”，但该机构的人员“原来是激进左翼疯子”。特朗普签署了一项行政命令，冻结对外援助。据两位知情人士透露，USAID预计将从目前雇用的5000多名外交官、公务员和个人服务承包商缩减至约290名员工。
马斯克关于USAID的160多条帖子大多是对少数小而具影响力的认证账户的回应，其中许多使用化名。根据X平台的指标，最受欢迎的帖子——包括来自“华尔街猿人”、“伟大的Kanekoa”、“首席极客”和“自闭症资本”的帖子——已被浏览数亿次，并由马斯克及其2.16亿粉丝放大传播。随着这些理论的扩散，它们被重新包装，并在许多情况下被添油加醋，以进一步推动这些说法。
对这些账户资料的审查揭示了一场近年来在相对边缘的互联网圈子里将USAID描绘成邪恶势力的漫长运动，只是突然被马斯克提升并付诸行动。这一模式与2022年所谓的“推特文件”事件相似，当时选择性构建的叙述和断章取义的内部文件被武器化，以助长关于政府大规模审查阴谋的指控。在特朗普和马斯克的领导下，这种情况很可能会继续下去，两人都有传播虚假信息的历史。
马斯克没有为其对USAID的描述提供证据——在X Space中，他称其为“一团蠕虫”。特朗普表示，一份关于其“巨大欺诈”的报告即将发布，并公布了该机构资助的项目清单，包括支持多样性和包容性的努力，以及一些项目产生意外和问题后果的例子，如在阿富汗最终支持罂粟种植的农业工作。
特朗普政府、马斯克和目前负责USAID的国务院均未回应置评请求。近日，马斯克推广了匿名账户“数据共和党人”及其对应的可搜索政府拨款和慈善网站。X用户开始输入那些反对关闭USAID的政客和媒体人物的名字，并绘制他们关联的组织图表。 misrepresenting their opposition. “The money laundering is done through several intermediaries,” Musk posted Thursday. Influencers often collaborate with their audiences in that way to build conspiracy theories, according to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington, who was one of the earliest researchers to study online rumors. “But now many of those influencers have immense power, both financial and political,” Starbird said. “Not only are they shaping the content and flow of those conspiracy theories, but [they are also] making hugely impactful decisions and shaping the structure of political institutions based upon them.”The overarching message seems to be resonating beyond X, to networks like Gab and Telegram, according to Pyrra, a platform that monitors social media.”Two narratives permeate the MAGA argument against USAID,” said Eric Curwin, Pyrra’s chief technology officer: “that it’s a tool of the left” and that “it’s a lawless organization, without oversight and rife with fraud.”A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week. Benz, a self-described cybersecurity expert who briefly worked as an assistant deputy for international communications for the State Department under Trump, started tweeting about USAID in 2022. He framed its funding of a handbook on disinformation from a nonprofit democracy consortium as evidence of an agency-run global internet censorship program. Over the next two years, he posted waves of tweets and dozens of hours of video presentations marked with highlighted texts and red notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, flicking at a sprawling narrative of USAID as a covert operations division of the CIA in which staff members sought to enrich themselves, spread leftist ideology at home and abroad and harm Trump. The theory alleged that USAID was behind the mass censorship of Americans, as well as global efforts to manipulate social media, rig elections and quash dissent. “Benz runs the same playbook every time,” said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University and author of a book about how fringe creators, including Benz, increasingly influence public opinion. “He picks a villain, pretends it has ties to the CIA or some ‘deep state’ and acts as if he has inside knowledge when he’s really just decontextualizing public content. The remarkable thing is that the masters of the universe seem to repeatedly fall for it.”Benz did not respond to a request for comment. USAID provided humanitarian assistance to foreign countries as an independent agency. It has always faced criticism from groups arguing that it lacks accountability, that its results are difficult to quantify and that its projects do not always align with a clear national agenda, said Andrew Natsios, USAID’s administrator during the George W. Bush administration. But never has the entire agency, which Natsios said safeguards against the international spread of disease, famine-induced immigration and a host of other dangers to the United States, been so demonized. Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical consulting firm, agreed. “It’s a big organization in a huge government, and clearly there are lots of inefficiencies, plenty of programs that I’m sure any sensible American would find that we’re spending too much money on or that shouldn’t be continued,” Bremmer said. “If you ask me does an organization like USAID scream for reform, along with pretty much every part of the U.S. government, the answer is, of course, yes,” he continued. “But the idea that the organization is somehow criminal or evil or that all the money is wasted is, on its face, ludicrous.”But according to Benz’s posts, USAID’s crimes are plenty, and they go straight to the top, accusations he lobs in ra pid speeches filled with acronyms and hyperbole. Benz paints a federal grant to a journalism outfit as proof USAID funded the 2019 impeachment of Trump; in reality, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global investigative news consortium in part funded by USAID, has produced significant reporting, including the Panama Papers, a massive leak of financial details about secret offshore accounts in 2016, and it revealed Rudy Giuliani’s political activities in Ukraine.For Benz, funding to a scientific research nonprofit is evidence that USAID played a role in starting the pandemic. He draws that conclusion based on contributions of funding by USAID — along with the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department and other government agencies — to the EcoHealth Alliance, in part to identify emerging infectious diseases. One organization EcoHealth worked with was the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, a potential origin point of the Covid pandemic, though scientists and authorities are divided over the lab-leak theory. “So our U.S. tax dollars were used effectively to, in the end, kill Americans, which is insane,” Musk said of USAID in an X Space on Monday.Benz also cites unspecified “source docs” as substantiation that USAID was censoring social media. From former President Barack Obama to the Bush family, “they’re all in on it,” he told a Newsmax host Tuesday. Benz was a relative unknown until 2022, when he positioned himself as the primary researcher behind a conservative fight against perceived government censorship. His Twitter Files research — which he rolled out in hourslong videos and posted on X, then known as Twitter — consisted of poring over government websites, academic documents, news reports and internal Twitter communications to draw what he claimed were connections among them that showed intent to silence conservatives. Few seemed to question Benz’s qualifications, and fewer still seemed to be aware of his identity as a former alt-right vlogger, a self-described white identitarian who posted videos under the alias Frame Game alleging a mass censorship conspiracy against white people, with links to Jewish organizations, the U.S. government and social media companies. (After NBC News published an article connecting Benz, who is Jewish, to Frame Game in 2023, he said the account was a covert effort intended to somehow combat the antisemitism it espoused.) Since then, his profile has only grown in conservative circles, where he runs a “free speech watchdog” organization and has been promoted by Musk, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. In 2023, he made $253,889 in consulting fees from the Institute for Citizen Focused Service, a nonprofit public policy think tank led by former Trump officials, tax filings show. Benz’s USAID theories have again made him a darling of right-wing media. This week, he has appeared on NewsNation, Glenn Greenwald’s Rumble show and Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” On Wednesday, Benz hosted a full hour of Charlie Kirk’s podcast. Before Musk led the charge to terminate USAID, his companies worked with and took funding from it. Tesla holds a stake in a company called Zola, which is funded in part by USAID to bring renewable energy to agricultural communities in sub-Saharan Africa. And Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor, SpaceX, partnered with USAID to bring its Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine in 2022 after Russia’s invasion destroyed telecommunications infrastructure. While Musk and his businesses were lauded initially for bringing Wi-Fi service to Ukraine, controversy erupted after SpaceX withheld Starlink access from Ukraine’s military, effectively thwarting its drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in 2022, which Musk said he did to avoid being complicit in a “major act of war.” Russian troops also reportedly obtained and began using Starlink against Ukraine within its borders. Musk denied Starlink terminals were sold to Russia. Last year , Democrats on the House Oversight Committee initiated a probe, and USAID’s inspector general was investigating Starlink’s use in Ukraine as part of its own accountability checks.On Wednesday, Musk shared a faked video claiming USAID had sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine. Darren Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, told NBC News the video was manufactured Russian propaganda. The impact of false conspiracy theories on USAID — whether they have directly shaped Musk’s actions at the agency or provided a convenient justification — is already being felt. Critical medical supplies, essential medicines and food aid are being withheld from their intended international recipients, and aid workers are scrambling to comply with the ordered shutdown of the agency on Friday. “All of these things have been in the mix for a long time,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories. “Now it’s coming from the president, and it’s got real teeth attached to it.”On Tuesday, Benz took to X to suggest more was coming. “I know this is going to sound weird but I feel like I haven’t even begun to unload on USAID and how dark it all goes,” Benz posted. “Wow,” Musk replied.
原文链接：https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/how-elon-musk-boosted-false-usaid-conspiracy-theories-to-shut-down-global-aid.html