How the U.S. Government Became an Empire of Censorship, Covert Ops, and Corporate Capture (Julian Dorey Podcast)
America is ruled not by elected officials, but by a transnational permanent power structure—“The Blob” (AI Summary)
Interview of Mike Benz (AI Summary)
This is an AI Summary of a 3.5 hour podcast episode from the Julian Dorey Podcast describing the history of the US “Empire “and how violence, secrecy, and corruption is inextricable with the existence of an “empire” that many Americans associate with “American Greatness.”
The video ends with a call to reform and preserve the empire.
What would the world look like without empire?
Title (in effect): How the U.S. Government Became an Empire of Censorship, Covert Ops, and Corporate Capture
URL: <https://youtu.be/wQMxya1pSLI>
Runtime: ~3.5 hours
Main Argument:
America is ruled not by elected officials, but by a transnational permanent power structure—“The Blob”—that uses the CIA, State Department, NGOs, Big Tech, media, and judiciary to orchestrate both foreign and domestic policy in service of elite interests, often against the will of the American people.
🔹 1: USAID as a Covert Regime-Change Mechanism
Core Argument:
USAID was never truly a humanitarian agency—it was always a plausible deniability front for CIA/State Department regime-change operations.
Key Points:
USAID's True Function: It creates civil unrest abroad via media, NGOs, public health projects, unions, and student groups—all under the banner of democracy promotion.
Discretion Over Covert Action: While CIA operations require presidential findings, USAID can fund disruptive influence operations without explicit executive approval.
Funding Mechanism: Funds are laundered through multiple layers of subcontractors, often disguised as public health or education aid.
Notable Examples:
ZunZuneo (Cuban Twitter): A fake Twitter-style app secretly funded by USAID to foment protest in Cuba. Created fake users, harvested phone numbers, and plotted to inject anti-government content once a threshold of followers was reached.
Fake Vaccine Clinics in Pakistan: Used to collect DNA to locate Osama bin Laden. Later replaced by USAID initiatives when CIA drew criticism.
Fake HIV Clinics in Cuba: Used as an excuse to train dissidents and plant activists.
🔹 2: AI and Algorithmic Censorship as Political Weapons
Core Argument:
AI-based moderation tools, originally used against terrorism, are now weaponized against political dissidents domestically and globally.
Key Points:
DARPA Origins: AI moderation systems were developed during the War on Terror and later repurposed for speech censorship.
Google's Perspective API: Created by Jigsaw (linked to the CIA), it scores speech for “toxicity,” “hate,” or “misinformation”—and automates censorship pipelines.
Scoring Thresholds: High toxicity = deletion; moderate = shadowban; low = allowed. Benz calls this an “off switch” for opposition narratives.
Broader Impact:
Shadow banning and Filtering: AI enforces speech limits invisibly—no knock on the door, just silence.
NetzDG (Germany): Set the legal precedent requiring tech companies to install AI censorship under threat of fines.
European Expansion: Censorship laws in Europe now serve as legal justification to suppress content globally, including within the U.S.
🔹 3: The Censorship Industrial Complex Ecosystem
Core Argument:
Censorship is not a Big Tech-only problem—it is a cross-sector alliance of state and non-state actors.
Key Points:
Government: Directs strategy via DHS, State, DOD, DOJ, etc.
NGOs: Act as firewalls, laundering censorship as independent civil society work.
Academia: Develops narrative control theory, labeling dissent as “threats to democracy.”
Big Tech: Implements filters, provides data access, automates enforcement.
International Orgs: Enact speech laws that bind U.S. firms without violating the U.S. Constitution.
Benz's Conclusion:
This system allows the U.S. and its allies to control both foreign and domestic narratives while maintaining plausible deniability and “arms-length” distance from violations of free speech.
🔹 4: State Department as the "Boss" of Intelligence
Core Argument:
CIA does the dirty work—but the State Department gives the orders.
Key Points:
CIA = Enforcer, not strategist. State Department and National Security Council direct all covert ops.
CIA Directors Get Fired if they defy State Dept or NSC strategy.
Promotions Tell the Story: CIA directors regularly move up to State or Defense Secretary roles (e.g., Pompeo, Panetta).
USAID's Position:
Benz emphasizes that USAID is even less accountable than the CIA, because it isn’t required to get presidential approval for operations.
It served as a shell company for illegal operations the CIA couldn't touch directly.
🔁 Analogy: The CIA is “Furio” from The Sopranos—a scary enforcer—but the real boss is Tony (State Dept).
🔹 5: DOGE Program and the 2020s Censorship Surge
Core Argument:
The DOGE (Domestic Operations for Government Efficiency) program was the post-2020 censorship infrastructure arm.
Key Points:
DOGE Agents were embedded across federal agencies to monitor for “misinformation” and enforce policy compliance.
Though USAID was dissolved on July 1, 2025, DOGE's infrastructure is active through July 4, 2026.
The White House took up some of Benz’s recommendations, but he warns that Congress and courts have blocked meaningful enforcement.
Current Impact:
Most of the censorship infrastructure remains intact but has shifted platforms (i.e., into Europe or private hands).
Only ~5% of proposed DOGE cuts have been implemented due to Congressional resistance from both parties.
🔹 6: Political Warfare Doctrine and Foreign Policy Dependency
Core Argument:
Modern foreign policy depends on censorship to survive.
Key Points:
Free Speech = Threat: If speech isn’t suppressed, NATO collapses, the IMF loses power, and globalism crumbles.
Color Revolutions: Benz draws a direct line from 1948 memos (like George Kennan’s “Organized Political Warfare”) to USAID’s social media coups today.
Doctrine of Plausible Deniability: NSC-10/2 (1948) gave CIA covert powers under State Dept direction.
Examples Cited:
1948 Italy election: CIA worked with the mafia, Vatican, and unions to rig the vote.
CIA’s post-WWII alignment with organized crime and the Vatican to run covert funding networks (Castle Bank, BCCI).
🎯 Bottom Line: If you don’t censor speech, the “international order” built post-WWII may fall apart. That’s why censorship is treated as a strategic necessity by U.S. elites.
Would you like a graphic version of this breakdown for Substack, Twitter, or presentation use?
Sources
You said:
Are there any other parts remaining?
ChatGPT said:
Yes, there are additional important themes in the Mike Benz interview that expand upon the 6-part summary previously outlined. These supporting sub-narratives help flesh out his larger thesis of covert governance through soft power and psychological operations.
Here are the remaining parts worth including:
🔹 7: USAID’s Use of Youth Culture & NGOs for Psychological Operations
Key Point:
USAID weaponized NGOs, hip-hop, art, and youth culture to co-opt revolutionary energy abroad.
Specific Examples:
Cuban hip-hop scene: USAID funded rappers, artists, and studios to radicalize youth and create dissident cultural movements.
They built “cultural Trojan horses” disguised as youth empowerment but seeded with anti-regime messaging.
Funded NGOs and “activist incubators” to develop charismatic leaders aligned with U.S. policy goals.
📌 Benz describes this as “manufacturing dissent by engineering the culture” rather than reacting to real grassroots unrest.
🔹 8: CIA–Vatican–Mafia Alliance Post–WWII
Key Point:
After WWII, the U.S. established a transnational black market funding mechanism through covert alliances.
Main Components:
CIA worked with the Vatican (via Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Montini, later Pope Paul VI) to move looted Nazi and fascist gold into covert accounts.
Castle Bank, BCCI, and Nugan Hand Bank: Financial institutions used to launder covert funds for black ops.
Mafia cooperation: The U.S. utilized mafia structures in Europe and the U.S. (e.g., Lucky Luciano) to suppress communism and help rig elections.
📚 These relationships enabled the financing of regime change, coups, and assassinations, without needing congressional funding or oversight.
🔹 9: ZunZuneo as Behavioral Surveillance Infrastructure
Key Point:
ZunZuneo, the Cuban Twitter clone, was not just a messaging platform—it was a behavioral and surveillance engine.
Features:
USAID secretly built and ran the entire platform to:
Collect phone numbers, social graphs, and sentiment data
Monitor responses to “injection content”
Track emotional volatility in youth segments
Plan was to test when users would respond positively to protest calls and escalate messaging accordingly.
🧠 Benz likens this to running “a psychological experiment on a whole society without their knowledge”.
🔹 10: Biometric Collection via Public Health and Aid Fronts
Key Point:
USAID and CIA have used fake or real public health programs to harvest biometric data globally.
Examples:
In Pakistan, children’s DNA was secretly collected via polio vaccines to help track Osama bin Laden.
In Africa, NGOs built health infrastructure in exchange for fingerprints, iris scans, and facial geometry, often for voter roll manipulation or population control.
🧬 Benz argues this is part of a broader “digital ID and control grid” being piloted globally before being imported domestically.
🔹 11: Timeline of the DOGE Program (2020–2026)
Key Point:
The DOGE (Domestic Operations for Government Efficiency) program was not just bureaucratic—Benz claims it was the most powerful censorship enforcement body in U.S. history.
Timeline:
2020–2021: DOGE infrastructure stood up across federal agencies after post-election turmoil.
2022–2024: Embedded “DOGE agents” conducted censorship audits, coordinated interagency data exchange, and influenced funding decisions to enforce ideological conformity.
July 1, 2025: USAID abolished; DOGE remains.
July 4, 2026: DOGE’s statutory authorization sunsets unless renewed by Congress.
🚨 Benz warns that most of DOGE's personnel and architecture are simply being shifted into foreign-facing infrastructure, like the EU’s regulatory framework or NGO shells.
🔹 12: Elite Impunity and the Foreign Policy Career Pipeline
Core Argument:
The globalist foreign policy elite operate above democratic accountability, moving effortlessly between government, finance, and think tanks.
Key Figures:
Tom Donilon: National Security Advisor under Obama, now Chair of the BlackRock Investment Institute.
Benz criticizes how Donilon can manage $10 trillion in assets and influence the economy after directing foreign policy.
Donilon’s brother runs CNN, while his wife was Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton.
This elite “web” creates feedback loops between media, finance, and war policy.
🧱 Benz calls this structure “institutional capture of democratic levers by the foreign policy class.” Elections can’t change anything if all institutions are staffed by the same rotating insiders.
🔹 13: NSC and the “Presidential Censorship Switch”
Core Argument:
The National Security Council (NSC) is the true locus of censorship and political warfare strategy, more powerful than the President on speech issues.
Key Points:
NSC officials often overrule or manipulate the president, especially on national security narratives.
Censorship infrastructure like DOGE, CISA, and funding pipelines are largely NSC-guided, not Congressional.
The NSC, along with the State Department, oversees partnerships with foreign governments to export or launder censorship policies back into the U.S.
Benz implies that even if a new president opposed censorship, the system is too deeply entrenched in NSC and interagency agreements to dismantle easily.