Senator Warns Kamala Partnering With Corporations To Censor Online Speech

In her role as President Joe Biden’s “AI Czar,” Vice President Kamala Harris has been quietly leading a plan to partner with corporations to censor political speech under the guise of protecting Americans from supposedly harmful artificial intelligence.

In reponse, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is demanding answers on what he says is “the Biden-Harris administration’s collaboration with the RAND Corporation, a think tank with Big Tech ties, citing RAND’s previous involvement in both the drafting of the Biden-Harris Artificial Intelligence (AI) Executive Order and efforts by the government to censor online speech.”

In the letter to RAND’s president and CEO, Cruz claims “RAND has received significant funding from tech billionaires who support the controversial ‘effective altruism’ movement. The letter also details how RAND and left-wing groups are embedding AI staffers in federal agencies. Additionally, some of these Big Tech leaders are financially backing Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign, raising alarms about potential conflicts of interest in AI regulation. “

“The letter details RAND’s past involvement in developing a controversial left-wing censorship model within the government ‘to track the spread of false and misleading information’ via Meta’s new virtual reality system,” Cruz’s office adds.

“The concerns about the Biden-Harris administration’s AI censorship efforts are especially significant in light of recent news that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted to working with the Biden-Harris administration to censor COVID-19 information and acknowledged that Facebook wrongly suppressed the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop and Biden family corruption,” Cruz’s office notes.

In the letter to RAND President and CEO Jason Matheny, Cruz writes:  

“It is no secret that under the guise of protecting the public from various, subjective and amorphous harms, the Biden-Harris administration engaged in “a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign” against Americans who engaged in so-called “misinformation” on social media platforms.”  

“Of course, the administration could have more easily surveilled Americans had the government acted to regulate the social media industry in its infancy. Recognizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation as a new opportunity to spy on Americans and restrict speech, last year the Biden-Harris administration launched a campaign to “protect” the public from undefined “harms” that AI could cause.”  

“As the first order of business, the White House announced Vice President Harris—who described AI as “kind of a fancy thing” that is “two letters’—would become the ‘AI Czar’ responsible for leading this new regulatory initiative.” 

In a statement Cruz’s office notes he also “expresses concerns about AI Czar Harris’s efforts to control AI development and influence the content Americans see online. He specifically requests information on RAND’s outsized role in drafting the AI Executive Order (EO 14110), given that a number of organizations that worked with the administration to censor Americans on social media were involved in the AI Executive Order effort.”

Cruz also writes:

“Then the administration issued Executive Order 14110 on the ‘Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence’ (AI Executive Order), which sets forth an audacious plan for the government to control AI development and determine, at the technology’s outset, what content Americans can see and share.” 

 Moreover, the individuals and organizations involved in shaping the administration’s new AI regulations are the very same ones who helped the administration censor Americans’ social media posts.”

… I write seeking information regarding RAND’s role in drafting the AI Executive Order and its previous involvement in the administration’s censorship agenda. 

“The letter requests information about RAND personnel who worked for or advised the federal government on the AI Executive Order before its publication. In addition, the letter requests documents related to misinformation, disinformation, or AI research conducted for the federal government,” Cruz’s office states.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.