Mike Benz

The whole society counter-disinformation, the whole society censorship framework.

But more than emphasizing the complex side of it, I emphasize the industry side of it.

Before 2016, you could not get a full-time job getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to censor what other people say on the internet.

The content moderation jobs were about getting rid of spam and child porn and a little bit of compliance for other countries that had hate speech laws.

But it has become an industry.

It has become a career track.

and it is supplanting other career tracks that used to be soft power influence jobs.

If you wanted to work at the heart of the action a generation ago, you'd go to Georgetown and you would study political science or international relations,

and you'd get a job on the Hill, and you'd work your way up through NGOs or civil society institutions, or you'd tag your star to a member of the House or the Senate, and you'd quietly work your way up the ladder until 10, so 10 years later, you're in the action.

Well, with this new advent of disinformation studies,

and it's folded under so many different programs, it'll make your head spin.

The communications departments have this.

The applied physics departments have this for the AI censorship software component.

The sociology departments have this.

The psychology departments have this.

The computer science programs at universities have this.

The linguistics programs have this.

This broad field of disinformation studies is now an advanced track golden ticket to be at the heart of the action in terms of high-level, high-impact foreign policy blob positions, because it doesn't just put you at the heart of Washington and in its own secular interests.

It puts you right at the heart of a big government,

Big business and big tech.