Mike Benz

I have concerns about that relationship between the people who are supposed to be overseeing the blob and the people who are funded by the blob and who are invited to the blob cocktail parties and who do their Aspen ski retreats with fellow blob compatriots.

I understand it is a delicate tango dance because what you're talking about is something

that has potential huge diplomatic blowback.

So much of US diplomacy hinges on free speech, because this is our cudgel to pry other countries

countries open with.

This is our open society doctrine.

One of the reasons that George Soros and the Open Society Foundation is such an active and effective co-sponsor of State Department or USAID activity.

This notion of open society is what allows our U.S.

national interests to penetrate the region and influence the internal politics.

And I'm not even saying, I don't,

There's different schools of thought on that.

I'm not weighing in on whether that's good or bad.

I want free speech on the internet.

And I want Americans to be able to determine our own elections and our own social and cultural and political discourse.

And I don't want to be caught in a proxy war any longer between this foreign-facing department of dirty tricks and our domestic speech at home.

But what I'm getting at here is,

I think what needs to be offered to people who meanwhile on both sides of the political aisle, I'm not just talking about Republicans, although they happen to be predominantly the ones who have taken this issue up,

is you have to be able to articulate a firewall between the capacity to do this in other countries and its blowback on American citizens here and American platforms that are used internationally.

Because I don't think you can get the political will to do heavy surgery to this, at least in the beginning, because

we have this Moody's, S&P, Goldman Sachs problem, where the people who are tasked with accountability and oversight