The Israeli Defense Tech Conference, aimed at tech companies working with the Israeli military, was scheduled for November at the Google for Startups campus in Tel Aviv.
The event, according to a listing posted on the event RSVP app Luma, was pitched at “founders, investors and innovators” looking to network and learn more about the defense tech space. It was co-sponsored by Google, Fusion Venture Capital, Genesis, a startup accelerator, and the Israeli military’s research and development arm, known as the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D, or Ma’fat).
When The Intercept contacted Google, the event page disappeared.
Google was not only listed as the physical host of the event and one of its sponsors, but the event listing also included a notice that attendees “approve of sharing [their] details with the organizers (Fusion & Google)” as part of signing up.
When The Intercept contacted Google, as well as the other companies and venture capital firms on the event page, the event page disappeared.
Well, that’s just not true. There’s a fuck ton of propaganda all the time.
Since around 2016 there’s been increasing domestic propaganda about an increasing amount of foreign propaganda. But it’s bullshit.
Firstly, this country isn’t a democracy and our votes hardly matter, so there’s little benefit to a foreign power in trying to shape domestic public opinion. And secondly, foreign governments already have a much more efficient & effective way of influencing the US: by bribing (a.k.a. funding the political campaigns of and lobbying) politicians and bribing high-level government appointees.
So then why are we increasingly being fed this propaganda? It started as a partisan project relating to the 2016 election. But now it’s also bipartisan/deep state project for the purposes of censorship and suppression for various purposes, one of which being the new cold war. For the purposes of manufacturing consent.