Contract linked to DARPA program to identify, disrupt ‘social engineering attacks’
President Donald Trump is calling on two prominent media organizations to repay millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.
The president fired off two early morning posts Thursday on his Truth Social platform aimed at Reuters and Politico that had a combined $17 million in contracts with the federal government.
Just before 6 a.m., Trump responded to a newly-uncovered 2018 contract between the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS). Thomson Reuters is the parent company of the Reuters news agency.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
In the post labeled “DOGE,” or Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by Elon Musk, Trump wrote, “Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!”
Musk also weighed in on his own X platform, calling the contract a “total scam.”
Dated back to Trump’s first administration, the contract’s description reads, “Active social engineering defense (ASED) large scale social deception (LSD).” Initiated originally by DARPA, the ASED program is aimed at the development of “core technology to enable the capability to automatically identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks,” which the agency describes as attacks on human targets which attempt to “manipulate or ‘engineer’ users into performing desired actions or divulging sensitive information.”
The agency says ASED will, if successful, identify and disrupt threats by “actively detecting attacks, intervening in communications between users and potential attackers, and coordinating investigations into the source of the attacks.”
According to HigherGov.com, the $9.1 million contract ended in November 2022. It’s unclear what specific role Thomson Reuters was assigned in the contract.
A news release from TRSS dated May 2019 announced the company “presented a machine learning model for detecting corporate malfeasance to leading U.S. government scientists, technologists, and engineers” at the Innovators’ Showcase, an annual forum hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and Intelligence and National Security Foundation (INSF).
Since 2009, TRSS has received $13.6 million from various government entities, including over $7.5 million from the U.S. Air Force and another $5.6 million from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over $4.7 million of funding came under the federal classification code for “Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals,” according to USASpending.gov.
In response to Trump’s comments, TRSS released a statement saying both Trump and Musk “misstate the company’s defense work,” and that Thomson Reuters’ defense work is separate from the company’s news division, according to Bloomberg News.
Reuters news division on Wednesday put out a report highlighting the “growing relationship” between SpaceX and other Musk-owned ventures and the U.S. military. The report notes that SpaceX alone has about $22 billion in government contracts, including a $733 million National Security Space Launch contract awarded in October.
Later Thursday morning, Trump fired off another post also labeled “DOGE,” this time aimed at reports published last week that the federal government paid $8.2 million for premium Politico subscriptions for federal employees.
The president wrote, “Why was Politico paid Millions of Dollars for NOTHING. Buying the press??? PAY BACK THE MONEY TO THE TAXPAYERS! How much has the Failing New York Times paid? Is this the money that is keeping it open??? THEY ARE BUYING THE PRESS!”
Trump’s call for Politico to repay the funds comes after White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt told reporters those subscriptions will be canceled.
“I was made aware of the funding of USAID to media outlets, including Politico. … And I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” Leavitt said last Wednesday. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”
Congressional records show that members of U.S. Congress from both parties and the committees they led paid tens of thousands for Politico subscriptions in the last year, according to CBS News.
