best, he is a deputy director at nyu, he told the times, we are basically at this point, unable to have a calm discussion about the problem. there is a weird circular looping around effect, the problem itself is helping make us unable to talk about the problem. think about that. the disinformation problem is making it harder to actually talk about the disinformation problem. now that sounds like a challenge. let s take it on. nina is the researcher who briefly led the disinformation governance board before it collapsed, she is the author of books like how to lose the information war and the new book, how to be a woman online. nina, welcome to reliable sources, thank you for coming on. thank you for having me. you have had time to process what went wrong this spring when you briefly were the executive director of this board and then had it all fall apart. let s start with what was the goal, what was the department of homeland security trying to do?
always there. public and politicians are targets of disinformation, and so are basically ever made trees ever major story in the news. there s been a copious amount of disinformation about abortions, some experts are worried about abortion misinformation and intentional disinformation will only increase and make it harder for people to receive care. there are national security applications to disinformation all around the world, that is why the u.s. department of homeland security recently tried to create an advisory board and called it a disinformation governance board but that board quickly collapsed, it came under fierce criticism including from fox and right wing media, the government did a horrible job of explaining what the board was supposed to do, and so it put it on pause, which the government speaks for it is going away and will never come back. so if the government can t even have a real conversation about disinformation, can t even have an advisory board to talk about it,
wouldn t have taken the job. the sympathetic view, to you, is that the disinformation board was the victim of disinformation. is that how you feel? it absolutely was the victim of disinformation. all of these narratives, that the disinformation governance board was going to be this ministry of truth and all of the harassment and disinformation that was directed against me, was based on that falsehood. based on that falsehood that was knowingly peddled by many people in the conservative media ecosystem and on capitol hill. that is true, if that is true, what the heck was the homeland security department doing? why didn t they defend you? why didn t the government explain what the heck it was doing? yeah, i have a lot of misgivings about the way things went down and i think the first thing to point out, brian, is that there was a disproportionate focus on me, given my level of power within the department. i was not allowed to speak on my own behalf, and frankly, all the communica