Mike Benz@MikeBenzCyber · Jul 31, 2025The “Critical Infrastructure” Hoax And How It Permanently Altered The Course Of American History 🧵
Summary
This thread claims the U.S. government used a "critical infrastructure" designation for elections as a legal pretext to censor Trump supporters and opposition voices on social media, starting with a January 6, 2017 coordinated effort by DHS and the intelligence community. The author argues this framework was later expanded to suppress speech about COVID-19, vaccines, and other topics by classifying them as threats to critical infrastructure.
Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.
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The “Critical Infrastructure” Hoax And How It Permanently Altered The Course Of American History 🧵
Mike Benz@MikeBenzCyber · Jul 31, 2025HOLY FUCKING SHIT ***THIS*** IN THE GODDAMN CLASSIFIED INDEX THAT HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED FOR 9 GODDAMN YEARS **THIS** IS WHERE THEY COOKED UP THE 'CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE' HOAX THAT CREATED THE LEGAL PREDICATE COVER FOR THE ENTIRE CENSORSHIP INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ‼️‼️‼️🚨🚨🚨
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@joerogan 3. Note, for example, how DHS — who mass censored virtually the entire Trump movement during the 2020 election — got away with censoring by citing power to “protect critical infrastructure” of elections from “misinformation”, self-aware they bumped up against the First Amendment
Mike Benz@MikeBenzCyber · Mar 13, 2023@RepThomasMassie Rep. Massie: DHS efforts are already underway to add censorship of "financial misinformation" to CISA's portfolio of "critical infrastructure" domains it can classify tweets as a cyber attack on, & thus censor. See, e.g., link below: cisa.gov/sites/default/…
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@joerogan 4. DHS’s social media censorship council, led by its outside censorship partners Vijaya Gadde (head of censorship at Twitter 1.0) and Kate Starbird, was named the “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation” council for this same scam legal reason
Mike Benz@MikeBenzCyber · May 8, 2025Remember during the Twitter Files, Renee DiResta & Kate Starbird & Medhi Hasan tried to say DHS's censorship group EIP didn’t really target 22 million tweets as disinformation about the 2020 election? And I had to post their internal docs? Well, just found a video confession:
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5. IF YOU WERE CENSORED IN 2020 FOR QUESTIONING MAIL-IN BALLOTS OR VOTING MACHINES, THIS CLASSIFIED ANNEX TODAY IS WHY. Here's a medium-length primer on how US government used this unbelievably deceitful false predicate of "critical infrastructure" to censor MILLIONS in the 2020 election. We now know, that all was part of an explicit plan, classified since July 2016 plan but known to the CIA and FBI this whole time, to "Say something about a critical infrastructure threat to elections to feel menace" while "the evidence" for any actual threat to elections was "regrettably still unavailable." (the CIA and FBI would then make up that evidence 5 months later, using the bullshit made-up discredited Steele Dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign itself)
Tucker Carlson@TuckerCarlson · Feb 16, 2024Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy."
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@joerogan 9. Once "elections" were "critical infrastructure," then any "misinformation" about elections, or posted during election season, could be classified as a cyber attack against "critical infrastructure," giving DHS a "cybersecurity" predicate to censor you
Foundation For Freedom Online@FFO_Freedom · Nov 10, 20224. In the summer of 2020, CISA pulled off a trick. By classifying "election misinformation" as threat to "election security," its police powers extended from the tech side of elections to anyone simply *talking* about elections.
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@joerogan 10. The result was a government license to totally and utterly censor any public questions on social media about mail-in ballots or electronic voting machines, 5 months before 2020 election day. DHS set up an censorship consortium called EIP to do this
Foundation For Freedom Online@FFO_Freedom · Nov 10, 20225. But CISA had a problem. It's called the First Amendment. The US government is not allowed to sandblast millions of voters off the civilian Internet because of their speech about elections. CISA needed private sector partners to do dirty work. And that's where EIP stepped in:
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@joerogan 12. It was trick after trick after trick. The "critical infrastructure" trick gave DHS control over elections. Then, the "delegitimization" trick let DHS say any posts casting doubt on mail-in ballots or voting machines attacked "critical infrastructure"
Mike Benz@MikeBenzCyber · Jun 8, 2023My response to the Washington Post. This is a 40-minute lecture, Part 1 in what I'd like to be an ongoing series, Censorship Industry Decoded. This first video cut through the tricks & traps in WaPo's verbage. These tricks are stock for the industry & essential to understand.
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@joerogan 13. Once they got away with censoring the 2020 election, 2021-2022 they went wild. They called public health "critical infrastructure" so any posts that questioned government policy on Covid-19, or vaccines, was now "an attack on critical infrastructure"
Foundation For Freedom Online@FFO_Freedom · Aug 29, 202210. So what was a ***cybersecurity*** agency within DHS doing speech policing what US citizens could say about Covid on social media?
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