Shawn Ryan Show
#170 Mike Benz - USAID Funding CIA-Backed Mercenaries, Media Superweapons and Samantha Powers
Wed, 12 Feb 2025
Mike Benz is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, a non-profit watchdog group dedicated to protecting digital liberties and restoring the free and open Internet. He previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the US State Department during the Trump administration, where he formulated US policy on Internet diplomacy issues and interfaced with private industry. Benz has been a vocal critic of technological government overreach, most recently in his critiques of USAID and his advocacy against online censorship. He actively brings attention to people and organizations involved in controlling speech on social media. Prior to his role at the State Department, Benz was a White House speechwriter for President Trump and advised on technology policy. Prior to his public sector work, he practiced business law as an attorney in New York, representing technology companies and financial firms. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ROKA.com | Use Code SRS https://lumen.me/srs https://hexclad.com/srs http://babbel.com/srs https://www.bubsnaturals.com/ | Use Code SHAWN https://patriotmobile.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at http://betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Mike Benz Links: Website - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@MikeBenzCyberClips Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mikebenzcyber/ X - https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What revelations have recently emerged about USAID?
Mike Benz. Sean. Welcome back. It's good to be back. Man, I feel like we just saw each other. It was a couple months ago, wasn't it? Yeah, but the before and after picture is quite different. I know, man. Wow. I mean, the stuff that's being unveiled and all the corruption that's being exposed, I mean, we kind of chatted about this a little bit downstairs, but... This stuff is rolling out fast.
I mean, like, lightning speed here. Did you expect that to happen?
I didn't expect the speed of this. I think once they fixated on USAID, frankly, I think it was USAID's intransigence as the Trump admin and White House were just trying to simply audit things. And it was their reluctance combined with, I think, the scandals leading up to it that led them to zero in on it.
And I think that just because of the pure money outlays and how easy that picture is to understand for Americans, it's now challenging the entire foreign policy establishment from the operations of the State Department to the intelligence services to the defense establishment. I think it's validated already.
what had been percolating for a long time, which was this weaponization, not just of what the focus was for the past several years of domestic agencies like the Justice Department and FBI against US citizens, but actually our even dirtier
operations abroad are dirtier apparatus, are blob foreign policy apparatus, capacity for covert activity and political dirty tricks weaponized against Americans, which is just a fundamental assault on the premise for even having them in the first place.
Yeah. I mean, it seems like Doge kind of started with USAID. How involved are you with Doge?
Not. Not? You know, I mean, I speak... I think that a lot of the folks there pay attention to the things that I publish. I think so too. There's interaction simply through X and whatnot. They have an incredible job.
One of the things we're confronted by right now in this moment is it's becoming increasingly clear, I think, to the rest of the American population that it's this foreign policy establishment that's been weaponized against domestic citizens. But this was a nationalist movement from 2016 onward. Make America great again. America first, these sorts of things.
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Chapter 2: How does USAID influence global politics?
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So it's difficult right now for them to form that cohesive network and unified action plan when you have folks from the Joe Biden side of the foreign policy establishment still extremely upset and feeling betrayed by the Kamala Harris side of it. But those wounds will heal, and time, I believe, does heal all wounds in that way as their economic interests are threatened further.
potentially by the drastic reforms the Trump administration is pursuing.
Yeah, you know, nothing forms an alliance like a common enemy. And, yeah. So, Mike, second time you're on the show, and we're going to talk all about USAID here coming up. Here's just some stats that we kind of pulled up. Budget of over $44 billion, employed more than 14,000 people, two-thirds of whom worked overseas. Now we're down to 294 to 611 people after the Doge discoveries.
Operated in over 100 countries, primarily in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. I mean, list goes on. You know, one of the things that caught my eye, you know, is, I mean, like I said, there's just been so much that's getting unveiled. But I recently did an interview with Colleen Georgescu, who's running for president in Romania.
And the Romanian Supreme Court annulled the election and basically froze it due to COVID.
russian interference and um you know i got a lot of flack for that interview but i wanted to give that guy a voice because i thought this this really kind of mirrors very similarly to what we saw with trump not in the last election but the election before and you know georgescu called the tens of millions that were sent by usaid a bride wrapped as social aid and an attack on their sovereignty
So it sounds like this was kind of funded, this campaign against him and shutting him down was funded and instigated by USAID. Now, the Russian interference was never proven. It was all just speculation. But the USAID stuff is proven. And so it's interesting. We just did that a couple of weeks ago. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on this.
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Chapter 3: What role does USAID play in media and election interference?
And State Department has to report its finances very publicly and there's –
we created the state department the very first meeting of of congress of the united states of america in 1789 it was the first agency we created it's ancient everything runs through it so he said it might be best actually to have this done but it should still work constantly with the state department it's fundamentally a state farming function but perhaps it should be parked somewhere else and then two months later boom cia nsc 10-2
was tasked to do the thing that was originally anticipated for the State Department Office of Political Warfare. The same thing is happening right now with USAID. That's all this is. They're just going to create, and in fact, everyone can read Max Boot, the, uh, you know, Arch Council on Foreign Relations, you know, Never Trump, Neocon, um, you know, uh,
you know, constant voice on the think tank space against all things Trump world, he penned a article, I believe it was during the Trump administration, where he called for this exact same structure to be set up to create, that we should not shy away from this sort of work or hide the fact that that we do them. We should create a formal track at USAID called the Career Track for Political Warfare.
And it should be called a Bureau of Political Warfare inside of USAID. And people should be trained specifically for this function of USAID early in their careers. And it should not be something that's a big scandal. And so we have a limited personnel pool because nobody wants to say that's what they do. They should be celebrated.
We need to turn the culture around so that when USAID can do this, they've got a much bigger and better network to do this. And we're now running into that. So I don't actually see USAID going away when you move it at state. Okay. You are inheriting – and this is an uncouth phrase, but I think the visceral imagery is intended to make this stick – closing the Ronald Reagan building –
And moving all of those funds, if it's a billion in overhead, moving just, if you keep all the grants and move that 43 billion into the State Department, the State Department just inherits a USAID herpes infection. It's the same problems.
It's this tumor, this growth, this permanent flare-up that now it's just, there's no difference between, other than the structural that allows you to get away from oversight, which is what I'm saying. But frankly, there'd be no difference if you shut down Langley headquarters and you created an office of political warfare at state to do that.
If you shut down USAID headquarters and created an office for international development at state... Now, you're making Marco Rubio at that point the most powerful secretary of state in American history when you do that. But fundamentally, the problem was there was not oversight or repercussions for wrongdoing and rogue activity at USAID.
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