FBI thought it was censoring on behalf of Ukraine; Oops, it was Russia

Hanlon’s Razor is an intellectual tool that reminds us that people often do bad things not because they are evil, but rather because they are stupid.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

The FBI, though, is proving to be both evil and stupid.

The FBI was enlisted by the Security Service of Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion to demand social media platforms take down posts and block accounts such as those belonging to American journalists, according to House Judiciary Committee… https://t.co/DShLlufyfV

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) July 12, 2023

Censoring political speech is wrong, and usually done for malicious reasons–to push people into doing and believing things that are for the benefit of those pushing controversial policies.

Most censorship is stupid as well. It rarely works, because people learn to mistrust anybody who feels the need to forcefully shut up their opponents. Shutting people up can have a “positive” effect in the short term by delaying the inevitable but in the long run, people wind up more inclined to believe whatever is being censored.

The FBI, though, has proven to be monumentally stupid. Not only did it agree to help censor Americans on behalf of a foreign government, but it did so on behalf of the wrong foreign government because it got duped.

We need a corollary to Hanlon’s Razor.

The FBI was enlisted by the Security Service of Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion to demand social media platforms take down posts and block accounts such as those belonging to American journalists, according to House Judiciary Committee investigators.

It is now suspected that Russian agents had infiltrated the Ukraine intelligence agency, known by the acronym SBU, potentially manipulating the FBI’s attempts to censor the journalists and at least one State Department official.

The FBI also vouched for removing social media posts that were pro-Ukraine or critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the report.

As a practical matter, given how censorship works in the real world, this did little to help Russia. While governments love censorship because it seems a cheap and easy way to force opinions upon people, it tends to harden the opposition rather than tamp it down. It has all sorts of other bad effects, of course, by suppressing needed debate and making people stupid, but it rarely has the intended effect.

Positive propaganda works much better but requires more work. And since intelligence officials don’t have the built-in credibility that people in white coats (used to) have, it requires a defter touch. Yet with Ukraine that positive propaganda has largely worked because, let’s face it, the case is not that hard to make that Ukraine is the victim of the war.

None of this matters, though, when evaluating what the FBI did here. They worked to censor Americans on behalf of a foreign government–very bad indeed–and wound up doing so on behalf of another foreign government–which is very very stupid.

“Given that the SBU was compromised by a network of Russian collaborators, sympathizers, and double agents at the time of its interactions with the FBI, the FBI‘s uncritical cooperation with the SBU‘s requests is deeply concerning,” said the report by panel’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

“The inclusion of American accounts on the SBU‘s lists indicates that the FBI either did not properly vet the SBU‘s requests or was aware of their domestic nature, and nonetheless carried them out. In so doing, the FBI violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security,” the report said.

By now we expect the FBI to be both malicious and stupid, and it is strongly to be desired that the American people rise up in disgust and demand that they be held in check. And, I suppose, they will likely do so after enough examples pile up.

Unfortunately, such issues rarely rise to the level where elections turn on them. Most people are unmoved by failures to follow good processes. The next election will be decided by two major issues: the economy and the personalities of the candidates. If the election turns out to be a rerun of 2020, it will be a contest decided by who hates whom most.

Do you hate Joe Biden or Donald Trump more?

That is a sad inevitability, given how threatened the American constitutional order is. Trump, for all his flaws and his contempt for the rules, actually obeyed them far more often than Biden. Probably because his aides held him in check–Trump is not a big rule-follower himself, obviously–but as a practical matter his administration respected the rule of law far more than the Biden regime.

Trump kept on saying “Lock her up!” but in fact, his Justice Department was easy on his political opponents; Biden mouths pieties about the “rule of law” while running roughshod over it. The latter matters more.

As an effete intellectual, I am in the minority that prefers that our government agencies be neither stupid nor malicious, and think it matters quite a bit whether the rules are followed. In the long run, our Democracy really does depend upon trust that our system is basically fair.

It obviously isn’t and hasn’t been for quite a while. Which is why we see so many stupid and malicious things done all the time now.