U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk criticized the Department of Defense (DoD)’s contract with Thomson Reuters to develop automated defenses against social engineering attacks.
“Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the U.S. government for ‘large scale social deception,’” Musk wrote on X. “They’re a total scam.”
Many, including Musk, were in outrage at the contracts awarded to Reuters that were labeled as Active Social Engineering and Large Scale Social Deception (LSD) in DoD contracts.
Trump expressed frustration on Truth Social where he demanded Reuters, “GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!”
”Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception,'” he wrote.
Thomson Reuters Special Services, in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was tasked with developing defenses against cyberattacks such as phishing, to create systems that can detect, analyze, and mitigate the threats on a large scale and enhance cybersecurity.
The initiative started in 2018, under the first Trump administration and continued until 2022 when the Joe Biden administration ended the contract, worth $9,147,532.
Trump also targeted Politico and The New York Times in another Truth Social post. He questioned why and how much Politico and the “failing” New York Times were paid for “nothing.”
“PAY BACK THE MONEY TO THE TAXPAYERS!” Trump said.
The U.S. government also spent $40 million on subscriptions to The New York Times, according to the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) Live Tracker, which revealed the figures on Monday.
In response, The New York Times stated that the funds received were payments for government subscriptions, totaling less than $2 million last year.
It revealed that canceled Politico subscriptions amounted to $500,000.
The revelations follow criticism from tech billionaire and DOGE head Musk, who has accused certain media outlets of receiving payments from federal institutions, particularly agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID). (Anadolu)