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WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – The U.S. Department of Defense was pressured Thursday to explain why it paid over $9 million to the company that owns the Reuters news agency for activities that included “active social engineering” and “large-scale social deception.”

While most of that money was spent under the previous Biden administration, the contract’s start date was in the first term of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, according to records reviewed by Worthy News.

The first roughly $2.1 million was allocated to Thomson Reuters Special Services LLC between September 2018 and February 2020, showing graphics on the USASPENDING.GOV website, which tracks how the government spent taxpayers’ dollars.

While commentators were quick to say that it was part of Biden’s misinformation campaign, experts and officials suggested that Reuters was asked to help defend against large-scale social deception rather than participate in it.

“The Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) program aims to develop the core technology to enable the capability to automatically identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks. If successful, the ASED technology will do this by actively detecting attacks, intervening in communications between users and potential attackers, and coordinating investigations into the source of the attacks,” said the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

It added that this is necessary as “Over the past 40 years, our world has become increasingly connected,” enabling “major advances in national security from pervasive real-time intelligence and communications to optimal logistics.”

However, “With this connectivity has come the threat of cyber attacks on both military systems and critical infrastructure. While we focus the vast majority of our security efforts on protecting computers and networks, more than 80 percent of cyber attacks and over 70 percent of those from nation states are initiated by exploiting humans rather than computer or network security flaws.”

Reuters was asked to provide technology and expertise, suggested the records seen by Worthy News. Yet Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire turned advisor overseeing Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has questioned the relationship between government agencies and media.

Reuters says, however, that “Independence is the essence of our reputation as a “stateless” global news organization and fundamental to the trust that allows us to report impartially from all sides of a conflict or dispute.”

The news agency adds, “It is crucial to our ability to report on companies, institutions, and individuals in the financial markets, many of whom are also our customers, without regard for anything other than accuracy, balance, and the truth. Our independence stems not only from the structure of Reuters but also from our duty as journalists to avoid conflicts of interest or situations that could give rise to a perception of a conflict.”

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