The House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing became contentious as Rep. Matt Gaetz challenged the National Science Foundation’s allocation of technology grants to combat misinformation.
Gaetz accused the NSF of targeting individuals based on their beliefs, particularly those related to cultural and constitutional convictions.
The debate involved Norman Eisen, a former Obama administration official, and escalated to the implications of using AI for censorship, drawing parallels to dystopian fiction.
“Mr. Eisen, I guess my question to you, if you’re done texting, would be, like, is that OK with you? What NSF has done?” Gaetz said.
“Is that essentially what you’re reporting concludes? […] Essentially, this Track F program […] awarded the $750,000 grants to 12 initial projects,” he said.
“I do have an opinion, Mr. Gaetz, as you know, there are two texts that are holy to me. One is our Torah, our Bible that I live by… The other text that is holy to me is the Constitution,” Eisen said.
“Okay, let me stop you there Mr. Eisen because here’s the problem. While you indicate that the Torah and the Constitution are your sacred texts, if Americans indicate online that the Bible and the Constitution are sacred to them, the very grants that are being issued by the NSF would deem those people in a separate and diminished class,” Gaetz said.
“Have you seen the movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise? Doesn’t this kind of feel like that? That you’re trying to do that, that it’s coming to life before our very eyes,” Gaetz pressed.
Gaetz argued that the grants classified certain Americans as more prone to misinformation due to their reliance on personal convictions over the “expert class.”
“It’s not that military families and rural Americans and people who love the Bible and Constitution are dumber or uniquely susceptible to anything. It’s just they don’t think like how the expert class and the National Science Foundation wants them to think,” he said.
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