Silicon Valley giants including Facebook and Twitter are full of former members of the U.S. intelligence community, according to reports from Mint Press and the Daily Mail. These employees are often found in the “trust and safety” or “misinformation” departments of tech companies — the sections tasked with platform censorship.
The former spooks identified by reporters include the following:
- Aaron Berman: formerly a senior analytic manager for the CIA who spent 17 years preparing and editing the U.S. president’s daily intelligence briefing, now a senior policy manager for “misinformation” at Meta.
- Bryan Weisbard: formerly a CIA intelligence officer, now a director of “trust, safety, security and data privacy” at Meta. His LinkedIn previously described his work at the CIA as identifying “online social media information propaganda and covert influence campaigns.”
- Emily Vacher: formerly a FBI special supervisory agent, now director of trust and safety at Facebook.
- Daniel Aragnovich: formerly Director for intelligence at the National Security Council, now head of “global threat disruption” at Facebook.
- Matthew Williams: formerly an intelligence program manager at the FBI, now “senior director of public trust, revenue policy, counsel systems and analytics” at Twitter.
- Jacqueline Lopour: 10-year CIA veteran who was a “go-to writer” for presidential briefings, now a senior intelligence collection and trust and safety manager at Google.
- Nick Rossman: former FBI and CIA analyst who is now a senior manager of trust and safety at Google.
- Jeff Lazarus: former economic and political analyst at the CIA, who went on to work for Google’s trust and safety department and then Meta’s “strategic response” unit.
More examples can be found in the reports by Mint Press News and the Daily Mail.
The reports came shortly after recent installments of the Twitter Files, which shed light on the deep links between the FBI and American foreign policy apparatus and Twitter.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.