It’s safe to say we’re well past the “it’s like they’re all working together” part of the story. James Baker, who served as the FBI’s top lawyer during the Russiagate operation designed to take down President Donald Trump and then as deputy general counsel at Twitter before being fired by Elon Musk in 2022 , has popped up once again as a member of the Steering Council of an online censorship advocacy organization run jointly by “philanthropic” giant the Knight Foundation and Swamp U, otherwise known as Georgetown University.
The Foundation for Freedom Online released a report Sept. 24 outlining the workings of the Knight-Georgetown Institute. Yes, they want to limit your freedom of information, but rest assured, it’s for something far greater than your pesky individual rights.
“A New Effort Aims to Ensure that the Future of Information Serves the Common Good” is the baldly Orwellian headline the Knight Institute ran in 2023 when announcing the venture. If the phrasing of those last two words sounds familiar, it’s with reason. Protecting the “common good” was the central justification for the coercive social regimen of the coronavirus pandemic. Not surprisingly, the leading face of that massive venture, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is now a “Distinguished Professor” at Georgetown.
Hey, if it worked once ...
The mission statement of the Knight-Georgetown Institute is ominous on its face. KGI will “serve as a central hub for the growing network of scholarship that seeks to shape how technology is used to produce, disseminate, and access information,” the 2023 release stated. “Designed to be a resource for decision makers in both the public and private sectors, journalists and others working to distill and communicate these complex issues, the new Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI) will also serve as a neutral convener in the heart of Washington, DC.”
Translation: The Internet needs to be controlled, and we’ve appointed ourselves to the task of helping the ruling establishment do just that.
Censorship to Resolve ‘Complex Societal Problems’
“For Georgetown, this commitment adds a new resource to its mission of tackling important complex societal problems to serve the common good,” the statement continued. “In recent years, [Knight Research Network] affiliates have established themselves as go-to experts on online information integrity, digital speech, and the range of technological, legal and policy approaches to promote a more effective, informed democracy in the digital age.”
It's the same tired soft language of tyranny that punctuated every aspect of the Biden administration for four years. And it doesn’t only attract former FBI bigwigs.
Joining Baker on the Steering Council is Nabiha Syed, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla owns Firefox, one of the most popular web browsers in the world. Also on board is Alondra Nelson, former President Joe Biden’s acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, “who oversaw a sprawling federal interagency misinformation crackdown spanning 26 agencies, 14 universities, and 20+ NGOs,” the Foundation for Freedom Online notes.
Fiona Scott Morton, professor of economics at the Yale University School of Management, is another member, as is Alexandre de Streel, “professor of European law at the University of Namur and visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and SciencesPo Paris.”
The notorious hard-left Ford Foundation and Omidyar Network are also listed funders of the KGI venture.
Connecting the dots, then, that gives us major players from Big Philanthropy, Big Government, Big Tech, Ivy League Big Academia, and European Academia all joining together to control online information in America.
Europe as a Role Model
Throwing a credentialed European law “expert” into the mix is especially revealing, as the ruling progressive establishment in the Old Continent is miles ahead of the United States in its censorship crackdown. De Streel is “academic director of the digital research programme at the Brussels think-tank Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE),” his KGI bio relates.
“The Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) is an independent Brussels-based think tank advancing robust regulation for tech, media, telecom, energy, mobility, and more,” the group proudly declares on the front page of its website. Give them points for honesty, at least. CERRE unapologetically believes the flow of information must be strictly regulated in a way akin to food safety.
CERRE works to influence the European Union in all its regulatory capacities. This would include advising on the implementation of the Digital Services Act, the EU’s landmark censorship legislation that proclaims curbing “the spread of disinformation” online to be a “main goal.”
In June 2024, CERRE released an expansive report titled “CERRE’s Ambitions for Europe 2024-2029.” In the foreword, Executive Chairman Bruno Liebhaberg noted the EU faces “serious challenges” from “populism,” “xenophobia,” and “climate change.”
So much for neutrality.
“The EU must ensure that its core values – such as democracy, human rights, but also the protection of our planet – are embedded in the development and deployment of new technologies,” the introduction to the report stated.
This is what former FBI general counsel James Baker and his powerful credentialed friends want to bring to America: a formalized censorship regime in the name of the greater social welfare, as defined by them, literally embedded in online technology.
“In March 2025, KGI released Better Feeds, its flagship paper urging platforms to adopt three ‘better’ algorithmic approaches,” the Foundation for Freedom Online noted in its report.
It featured three ways to control Internet algorithms:
“Bridging – prioritize content that fosters ‘positive dialogue,’ i.e., engineered civility over authentic debate.
“Surveys – continuously nudge users by asking if they want to see more or less of certain content, a form of feedback-driven content curation.
“Quality – elevate ‘quality’ content while downgrading language flagged as ‘toxic.’”
The first question that comes to mind would be, who gets to decide what language is “toxic”? A second would be, who gets to set the parameters of “engineered civility”?
Never fear, the specially credentialed custodians selected for this weighty assignment will be looking out for your best interests. Even if they have to push you there against your will. This is how we save democracy.
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