America's Unilateral Disarmament in the Censorship War

"Every day, some 2 billion people around the world use privacy-protection tools supported by the Open Technology Fund. When people in China escape their government's firewalls and censorship software-now so dense that the system has been called the "locknet"-or when users in Cuba or Myanmar evade cruder internet blocks, they can access material written in their own languages and read stories they would otherwise never see."

"If they live in Iran, for example, they might have learned from Radio Farda (backed by U.S. funding, broadcast in Persian) that their government did not, as it had claimed, capture an Israeli pilot during June's bombing campaign, and they might even have heard, in their own language, American explanations of the campaign instead."

"If they live in Siberia, they could hear from Radio Liberty (U.S.-backed, staffed by Russian-speaking journalists) precise information about the poor condition of their local roads, including one highway that is 89 miles long but so muddy and full of potholes that traversing it takes 36 hours."

"If they are Uyghurs living in China, they could have heard, at least before the end of May, reporting in Uyghur from Radio Free Asia (also U.S.-backed, producing reports in nine languages), the broadcaster that originally informed the world about internment camps for members of the persecuted minority."

Some 2 billion people worldwide use privacy-protection tools supported by the Open Technology Fund to bypass censorship and access information. Users in China, Cuba, and Myanmar can reach material in their own languages that state media censors. The U.S. government has for decades backed a constellation of programs — the technology fund, independent foreign-language broadcasters, and counterpropaganda campaigns — to deliver evidence-based news. That network supplies reporting that often contradicts state narratives, from Persian broadcasts correcting false government claims to Russian-language reporting on Siberian infrastructure and Uyghur-language reports exposing internment camps.

Read at The Atlantic