There are moments in journalism when you stumble upon a story that confirms what many Americans have long suspected. This is one of those moments.
Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger has uncovered evidence of a secret gathering that took place last September at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. The guest list reads like a who’s who of global censorship advocates: top officials from Europe, the United Kingdom, Brazil, California, and Australia, all convening behind closed doors to discuss how best to control what citizens can say online.
Picture it. A private dinner, comfortable surroundings, perhaps some wine. And at that table, people making decisions about what you will be allowed to read, write, and share in the digital public square. No cameras. No transcripts. No accountability to the public whose freedoms hang in the balance.
The implications run deep, and they run straight back to former President Barack Obama.
The Stanford Cyber Policy Center is directed by Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration. According to Shellenberger’s investigation, this September dinner was part of a new and possibly illegal censorship initiative that appears even more ambitious than the framework Obama himself proposed in 2022.
That proposal came during remarks Obama delivered to this very same Stanford center, where he outlined his vision for government oversight of major technology platforms. Six days later, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of its now-infamous Disinformation Governance Board.
The pattern is clear. The connections are undeniable.
What we are witnessing is the construction of a global censorship infrastructure, one that would establish unified standards for suppressing speech across international borders. The bureaucratic language surrounding these efforts is deliberately vague, filled with talk of “misinformation” and “harmful content.” But strip away the euphemisms, and what remains is a naked power grab by globalist elites who believe they know better than ordinary citizens what information should be available.
Brazil provides a troubling preview of where this leads. The country’s Supreme Court successfully forced Elon Musk and the X platform to comply with government censorship demands. The ban on X was only lifted after the company paid substantial fines and agreed to block specific accounts accused of spreading misinformation. Translation: accounts that told uncomfortable truths about those in power.
The strategy is insidious. Shellenberger argues convincingly that American technology companies will find it more cost-effective to comply with a single global censorship standard rather than fight country-by-country legal battles to defend free speech principles. The lowest common denominator wins. Nations with the most aggressive speech restrictions will set the rules for everyone else.
Consider the United Kingdom, where police have shown up at citizens’ doors over social media posts that offended the wrong people. That could become the standard everywhere.
This is not about protecting people from genuine threats. This is about control. When government officials from multiple countries gather in secret to coordinate speech restrictions, they are not serving their citizens. They are serving themselves and the power structures they represent.
The American people deserve transparency. They deserve to know who attended that Stanford dinner, what was discussed, and what agreements were reached. They deserve to know whether their own government officials participated in planning a system that would fundamentally undermine the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech is not a privilege granted by governments. It is a right that precedes government, one that must be vigilantly defended against those who would chip away at it in the name of safety, unity, or any other high-sounding principle.
The question now is whether enough Americans are paying attention to stop this before it becomes irreversible.
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