The Trump administration’s use of paid social-media influencers has triggered outrage in some quarters. But according to Ted Galen Carpenter, there is nothing particularly new about the basic tactic.

The Pentagon and other parts of the national-security bureaucracy have been using supposedly independent analysts to sell government policy to the public for decades.

The new wrinkle is social media.

In late August, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Defense was employing paid social-media “influencers” to build public support for the Trump administration’s foreign-policy positions and military reforms. The Bulwark had reported similar allegations shortly beforehand.

But Carpenter argues that today’s arrangement is actually less deceptive than some of its predecessors.

Why? At least some of the new influencers are officially identified as government employees. Two prominent hires reportedly had active government email addresses and were assigned to the office of Anthony Tata at the Pentagon. Their addresses carried the “.civ” designation, identifying them as civilian employees rather than contractors.

That is hardly the picture of an independent commentator.

But at least the government connection is visible.

The darker history begins when the government’s relationship with supposedly independent analysts is hidden from the audience entirely.

And that history goes back decades.

@americanmajority