Psaki’s
go-to defense of the establishment of the board under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a continuation “of disinformation-related work that began under the prior administration.” One of the key bodies countering disinformation founded under former President Donald Trump, the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF), was renamed by the Biden administration when he came into office the Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) and was modified to focus on domestic rather than foreign threats, two Trump DHS officials told the Daily Caller.
“The CFITF was focused on foreign influence – particularly as it related to elections. The current MDM description from DHS takes the word ‘foreign’ out of the title. It’s clear that MDM, as it’s currently defined, is also looking at domestic communication,” Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS, told the Daily Caller.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), was created in 2018 under Trump to counter cybersecurity threats. In May of 2018, “a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) was established within CISA’s predecessor agency,” according to CISA’s
website, and was tasked with “helping the American people understand the risks from” MDM.
CFITF was modified by the Biden administration in 2021 to officially change its name to MDM, and its “mission evolved to reflect the changing information environment,” according to its website.
The Biden-era DHS, its assistant press secretary and the CFITF did not respond to several requests from the Daily Caller to say why the name change was necessary, and what the new “mission” of the MDM is.
The MDM is now “charged with building national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities,” the website reads. It also mentions that MDM campaigns are waged by both “foreign and domestic threat actors.”