The Global Engagement Center: From Fighting Propaganda Abroad to Silencing Chad from Cleveland

WASHINGTON, D.C. — April 2025 — Once upon a post-9/11 time, the U.S. government said, “Let’s create a nice little unit to battle foreign disinformation!” And thus, the Global Engagement Center (GEC) was born — a noble government duckling, meant to swim into the murky waters of global propaganda and quack back at hostile narratives from abroad.

Fast-forward to today, and it seems the GEC may have wandered out of the pond, grown steel talons, and now spends its free time combing through your aunt’s Facebook posts about vaccine crystals and lizard people.

According to critics (and a few very vocal people with profile pictures of bald eagles wearing sunglasses), the GEC has evolved into a kind of bureaucratic hall monitor with a Department of Homeland Security badge and a deep grudge against memes.

At Bohiney.com, we traced the GEC’s transformation — from humble origin to full-blown Ministry of Vibes Management.

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The Original Mission: “Counter Foreign Propaganda”

The GEC was created to protect the U.S. from foreign state-backed disinformation campaigns — like when Russia claimed to have invented jazz, or when Iran said America’s COVID vaccine turned people into WiFi routers.

The goal was simple: expose fake news from enemy states and maybe win the occasional hearts-and-minds campaign in countries where “freedom of speech” was still considered experimental.

Back then, the GEC’s tools included:

• Fact sheets

• Twitter threads with 3 likes

• A sternly-worded PDF no one read

It was charming. It was underfunded. It was government at its most earnest and ineffective.

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Then the GEC Discovered… Americans

Somewhere around 2019, the GEC looked inward. And what did it find?
The call was coming from inside the house.

Suddenly, “foreign propaganda” started to look suspiciously like “domestic trolling,” and the next thing you know, Chad in Cleveland who tweeted “Mask mandates are communism” found himself flagged by an AI trained to spot bot farms in Uzbekistan.

One former GEC contractor reportedly asked,

“What if misinformation doesn’t come with a Russian accent?”
A manager replied, “Then we whisper ‘foreign adjacent’ and move on.”

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Mission Creep, But Make It Patriotic

According to whistleblowers, leaked emails, and one particularly angry substack post typed entirely in caps lock, the GEC began partnering with:

• Think tanks

• Academic researchers

• Tech companies

• And a guy named Kyle who “knows how the algorithm works, bro”

Their mission shifted from “fighting Kremlin narratives” to “flagging Facebook pages that post too many eagles.”

In government speak, this is called “evolving priorities.” In American speak, it’s called “wait, are they watching me?”

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The GEC’s Toolkit Today Includes:

• Social listening software with the moral compass of a confused Roomba

• Misinformation taxonomies with over 47 definitions for the word “problematic”

• A dashboard that flashes red every time someone mentions ivermectin, Epstein, or “Epstein’s ivermectin”

There are rumors they even have a “Concernometer,” which ranks content on a scale from “meh” to “send to FBI.”

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What the Funny People Are Saying About the Global Engagement Center

“The GEC used to fight Russian bots. Now it’s trying to cancel Grandma for her soup meme.”
— Sarah Silverman, currently shadowbanned for sarcasm

“They told us they’d stop foreign propaganda. Turns out they just rebranded Uncle Steve’s barbecue rants as ‘hostile influence ops.’”
— Ron White, sipping bourbon filtered through a burner phone

“This is the only government office where the mission statement changes based on trending hashtags.”
— Wanda Sykes, reviewing a flagged TikTok of her dog

“At this point, the GEC is basically a Tumblr mod with a grant from the Pentagon.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, furiously filing a FOIA request

“If they wanted to stop misinformation, they could’ve just unplugged Facebook and gone home.”
— Larry David, trying to reset democracy with a paperclip

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The Irony: In Trying to Protect Speech, They Kinda… Didn’t

Supporters say the GEC isn’t censoring — just “guiding discourse.”
Opponents say that sounds a lot like “free speech, but only on weekends.”

The GEC, of course, denies any wrongdoing, claiming they’re merely sharing “contextual insights with trusted partners” — which, in plain English, translates to:
“We emailed Twitter and said, ‘Maybe this guy’s vibes are off.’”

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Meanwhile, Congress is Confused but Loud

During recent hearings:

• One senator asked, “What is a meme, and can it be weaponized?”

• Another demanded to know if the GEC monitors his grandma’s cookie blog

• A third accidentally printed out 400 pages of Reddit comments and called it a “classified briefing”

The hearing ended when someone said “disinformation” and a fight broke out over the pronunciation of “GIF.”

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Final Thought: From Fighting Putin to Policing Paranoia

The GEC was built to shine a light on foreign deception, but somehow ended up trying to dim the LED glow of domestic skepticism.

Was it intentional? Accidental? Bureaucratic mission creep powered by consultants named Trevor?

We may never know. But one thing is certain:
When a government office meant to fight foreign lies starts reading your tweets, it might be time to rename it the Global Engagement Center for Local Concerns.

Auf Wiedersehen, original purpose. You’ve been flagged for disinformation.

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Global Engagement Center Observations

1. The GEC started as a tool to expose Russian trolls… then slowly pivoted to silencing Chad from Ohio for sharing a meme of George Washington crying in a gas station.

2. Its original mission was “counter foreign influence.” Now it’s “moderate domestic opinions — but with Excel.”

3. Somewhere along the line, they added “misinformation whisperer” to their job titles and started judging your uncle’s barbecue takes.

4. At first, they tracked enemy propaganda. Then they got bored and tracked anyone who said the phrase “plant-based communism.”

5. Their motto used to be “fight disinfo abroad.” Now it’s “fight Facebook groups that post too many bald eagles.”

6. The shift happened when they realized foreign trolls were less effective than a suburban mom with Canva and a grudge.

7. Originally, they flagged foreign bots. Now they just hover nervously over every tweet containing the word “truth.”

8. You know they’ve gone too far when Grandma’s recipe blog gets flagged for “spreading high-sodium narratives.”

9. They used to monitor Russian state media. Now they’re reading your cousin’s YouTube comment about vitamin D and civil liberties.

10. The GEC went from tracking geopolitical psy-ops to fact-checking a duck wearing a MAGA hat.

11. Their budget now includes a line item for “emotional damage caused by conspiracy GIFs.”

12. The day they reclassified sarcasm as “subversive coded language,” America lost its last surviving Twitter joke.

13. Somewhere, a former Cold War analyst now spends his days monitoring Instagram reels about lab-grown meat conspiracies.

14. The GEC’s new field manual is titled: “From Putin to Patriot Memes: A Journey in Misguided Moderation.”

15. If freedom of speech had a digital babysitter, it would wear khakis, run on outdated software, and call itself the Global Engagement Center.

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