Journalist Matt Taibbi reported in the latest Twitter Files thread that the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office set up under the State Department to combat disinformation, was funding the think-tank group Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) which falsely tagged U.S. citizens as foreign operatives. The DFRL, which denies the use of GEC money to track Americans, provided a list of 40,000 accounts to Twitter in June 2021 of people it said were allegedly involved in “inauthentic behavior” to promote the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and to promote Hindu nationalism, according to The Daily Caller. When Taibbi contacted several Americans listed on the accounts, they said they were not involved in Indian politics and had no knowledge of Hindu nationalism.
