April 27, 2024 (EIRNS)—Wrapping up his belligerent and threatening trip to China, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused that nation of interference in the upcoming U.S. elections. In an interview with CNN on April 25 in which he unveiled these accusations, Blinken refused to provide any details, though he stressed that Washington would consider any election interference as “unacceptable.” Blinken also told the media outlet that he stated these concerns to President Xi Jinping and other high-level Chinese officials.
“We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere. And we want to make sure that’s cut off as quickly as possible,” Blinken pontificated.
It remains to be seen what the response to Blinken’s claims will be among those who have belatedly wised up to similar accusations against Russia in the last election cycle—although given that the vast majority of the Republicans are psychotic towards China, we shouldn’t presently hold our breaths. Recall that accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 election led to the justification for the creation of what is being called the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” With Blinken’s accusations and similar claims we can expect increasing pressures on those Republicans who have opposed the public private partnerships behind the censorship regime—as well as full-scale attacks on the Chinese government, including proposed unilateral financial sanctions.
As journalists such as Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag exposed in the Twitter Files, the FBI and CISA leaned heavily on Silicon Valley with their “suggestions” as to which voices and outlets should be censored on social media. FBI and CISA collaborated with the NSA (recently even more empowered by FISA’s extension), and U.S. Cyber Command, in a “whole of government” effort to defend against alleged foreign interference in elections and foreign disinformation campaigns, following the fraudulent claims that the Russian GRU hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) database. These Pentagon and intelligence agencies also collaborated on the same issues with Silicon Valley in a “whole of society” effort. NSA-Cybercom then formed the “Russia Small Group” after the 2016 election, which was later renamed the “Election Security Group” in the run-up to the 2018 midterms. Former head of NSA-Cybercom, Paul Nakasone, said that the Russia Small Group was a continuation of the Pentagon’s ISIS counterinsurgency campaign called Joint Task Force Ares, which he said in Congressional testimony in 2022 was now being directed to the Indo-Pacific to deal with China.
