Today in Project 2025: Meta's newest public policy director has thoughts

In the Donald Trump administration, Dustin J. Carmack served as the chief of staff to Trump Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. That was a reprise of his role as chief of staff to Rep. John Ratcliffe—as you might remember, Trump had a penchant for elevating hard-right House Republicans—and to Rep. Ron DeSantis. He's also been a "Research Fellow" at the Heritage Foundation, aka the bucket of frothing fascists who dumped Project 2025 on our heads and thought America would be quite pleased to hear about it, and was a senior adviser to DeSantis' aborted campaign for the presidency.

All of that is in the (very recent) past, however; in May, Carmack landed a new gig as a Director of Public Policy at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, aka Facebook, aka the social network that's gone to some lengths to hide political discussion even as your worst relatives remain free to post the weirdest conspiracy claims they've heard on any particular day.

Anyhoo, Carmack was in charge of writing Chapter 7 of Project 2025's Mandate For Leadership, an assertion-rich but rather thin-on-details section describing how the United States' intelligence communities ought to be reformed. Just for kicks let's see what the ZuckerBorg's latest top public policy guru thinks are the most pressing intelligence issues of the day, shall we?

Finally, future IC leadership must address the widely promoted “woke” culture that has spread throughout the federal government with identity politics and “social justice” advocacy replacing such traditional American values as patriotism, colorblindness, and even workplace competence.

Uhhhhh okay then. Anything else you'd like to share, big-shot Meta power broker who is definitely not, as the kids say nowadays, weird?

In particular, the IC must restore confidence in its political neutrality to rectify the damage done by the actions of former IC leaders and personnel regarding the claims of Trump–Russia collusion following the 2016 election and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and media revelations of its existence during the 2020 election. But the problem is not confined to the executive branch struggle between the IC and policymakers; it also relates to the IC’s relationship with Congress as evinced by DNI James Clapper’s failure to answer honestly in response to congressional questions about government surveillance programs.

The ODNI and CIA are undergoing a crisis of confidence based on several factors. First, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, gravely damaged the CIA by minimizing the Directorate of Operations and exploiting intelligence analysis as a political weapon after he left office. Brennan's role in the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials before the 2020 election is unclear, but in dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation,” the CIA was discredited, and the shocking extent of politicization among some former IC officials was revealed.

Oh sure, in your in-depth analysis of what is wrong with the intelligence community these days you're definitely going to want to hone in on the dangers of "woke" culture and devote at least two paragraphs to Hunter Biden's Alleged Laptop That Appears To Have Been Significantly Meddled With Before Being Presented To Rudy Giuliani And The Government.

The overtly fascist Mandate for Leadership is riddled with oddities like this, little bits that were obviously written back when Trump's fellow coup-backers thought calling people "woke" was going to be the winning issue of the campaign (oh Ron DeSantis, you poor sucker) and there's very little of it that isn't premised on perceived past insults to the movement (often, as in this case, with a heaping helping of rank dishonesty) and the urgent necessity of rooting out anyone and everyone unwilling to prioritize the needs of the movement over the needs of the government, the country, and take-your-pick.

But it's simply hard to remain fashionable, as a fascist. One moment you think Donald Trump's campaign will revolve around describing their American enemies as "woke," and the next the campaign is floundering because the ultra-hard-right crank Trump picked as his vice president is mired in controversy over ... well, never mind. Over you-know-what.