FOIA Files: Garry Kasparov Resigns from Aspen Institute Commission, Compares it to Soviet Committee
"If I'm being honest...This type of approach was common practice in the USSR."
On April 22, 2021, the Aspen Institute — an influential civil society group that draws funding from several federal agencies and in recent years has become an odd hodge-podge of boutique-left ideas and hardcore security-state rhetoric — announced that a “Commission on Information Disorder” would be preparing a major report, one that:
Aims to identify and prioritize the most critical sources and causes of information disorder and deliver a set of short-term actions and longer-term goals to help government, the private sector, and civil society respond to this modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.
The Institute released names from its anti-disinformation Hall of Justice. Their technical advisors were digital censorship all-stars, a group including Stanford’s Renee DiResta, Harvard’s Joan “Deplatforming Will Work” Donovan, Senate Intel Committee consultant and Johns Hopkins Russia hawk Thomas Rid, Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, his Facebook opposite Nathaniel Gleicher, and others.
The list of Commissioners was headlined by Katie Couric, Prince Harry, and Chris Krebs, the founding director of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, a central figure in recent high-profile media features condemning congressional and journalistic investigations of anti-disinfo programs, would join as well. Thanks to a FOIA request Racket submitted to Starbird’s employers, we know world chess champion Garry Kasparov was at some point on the Commission. He would not remain on it for long:
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