The Department of Defense funded a $9.1 million program to build a network of fake social media accounts, according to public spending disclosures

The Department of Defense funded a “large scale social deception” program, according to public spending disclosures.

The Air Force awarded the contract, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — the military’s shady research branch — funded the work.

The contract's “program manager” was a DARPA scientist Joshua Elliott , documents show.

The government sponsored a massive network of fake social media accounts that it could manipulate, capable of capturing users’ data.

SRI developed a similar system, but with a more ominous moniker — “ Project NEMESIS” Raytheon developed a system that would “gather as much personal information on an attacker as possible, including identifying individual bad actors and any agencies that might be behind them.

MITRE published a paper on the subject in October 2022 .

It recommended tactics including “ AI and ML ,” and “partnership with the government and private industry technology” MITRE allegedly “developed a parallel framework which employed similar techniques and tactics” For the promised $2.4 million contract with the Canadian Commercial Corporation , there appears to exist another contract with an identical ID number — but a different recipient.