Donald Trump is raging about the $9 million that “Radical Left Reuters” received to supposedly study “large scale social deception,” demanding that it immediately “give the money back” even though it was awarded during his first administration and was given to a company that operates seperately from the news agency.
The president’s Thursday morning social media tirade comes hours after DOGE chief Elon Musk peddled a misleading claim on X (formerly Twitter) that Reuters engaged in a “total scam,” sharing a post that alleged the news organization had been paid millions of dollars from the government for a “social engineering” program.
Musk, who has been tasked by the president to dismantle federal agencies and lay off hundreds of thousands of federal workers while slashing “fraud and waste,” took aim at Reuters on Wednesday night shortly after the outlet reported that the majority of his DOGE spending cuts were based on ideology rather than cost-savings.
The administration’s recent attack on Reuters, meanwhile, comes as Trumpworld has sought to not only blow up large swaths of the federal government but also to thoroughly discredit the mainstream media, which has included spreading conspiracy theories that federal aid was propping up legacy press outlets.
“DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study “large scale social deception.” GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!” Trump blared on Truth Social on Thursday morning.
“DOGE: Why was Politico paid Millions of Dollars for NOTHING. Buying the press??? PAY BACK THE MONEY TO THE TAXPAYERS! How much has the Failing New York Times paid? Is this the money that is keeping it open??? THEY ARE BUYING THE PRESS,” the president added in another post. (The payments to Politico and the Times were for subscriptions to the outlets’ paid content for government employees.)
“Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception,’” Musk tweeted the night before. “That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam. Just wow.”
The world’s richest man and Trump’s “first buddy” was reacting to a post by Mario Nawfal, a Musk acolyte and conservative social media influencer. According to Nawfal, the Department of Defense had paid Reuters $9 million for a “social engineering” program – something that was uncovered by Musk’s meme-based government efficiency agency.
“DOGE investigations reveal mysterious Defense Department payments to Reuters for "large scale social deception" project between 2018-2022,” he tweeted, citing a federal spending open data source website and frequent Musk reply guy Ian Miles Cheong. “While DARPA claims it was for cyber defense, questions swirl about why a news agency received millions for ‘social engineering.’ The revelation comes as other media outlets face scrutiny over federal funding.”
Nawfal’s post came shortly after Musk seemed put off by a recent Reuters piece, which was shared on X by Hollywood director Ron Howard. “The first phase of the rapid-fire effort by…Elon Musk and President Donald Trump to cut waste from government agencies appears driven more by an ideological assault on federal agencies long hated by conservatives than a good-faith effort to save taxpayer dollars, according to two veteran Republican budget experts,” Reuters noted.
“I wonder how much money Reuters is getting from the government?” Musk replied to Howard’s tweet. “Let’s find out.”
Despite how Trump, Musk, and their allies are portraying it, the contract was actually paid to a wholly separate subsidiary of the broader Reuters conglomerate, Thomson Reuters Special Services. This subsidiary describes itself as a “trusted leader in delivering scalable solutions to governments and global institutions” through data analysis and risk mitigation. The company operates independently from the news agency and is similar in scope and mission to organizations like LexisNexis.
While the implication from Musk and Trump was that the Reuters news service was running a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Pentagon, the truth of the matter is far more benign. It also began under Trump’s first administration in the first place — and was centered mainly on preventing cyberattacks and phishing.
The contract was issued to Thomson Reuters Special Services in 2018 by the Air Force Research Laboratory and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. According to the contract that was posted on a government website, the description of the project was a study of “large scale social deception” for Active Social Engineering Defense for DARPA, which TRSS completed in 2022.
“We call attacks on humans ‘social engineering’ because they manipulate or ‘engineer’ users into performing desired actions or divulging sensitive information,” DARPA explains in its description of ASED. “The most general social engineering attacks simply attempt to get unsuspecting internet users to click on malicious links.”
DARPA adds: “More focused attacks attempt to elicit sensitive information, such as passwords or private information from organizations or steal things of value from particular individuals by earning unwarranted trust.”
The agency also notes that ASED aims “to develop the core technology to enable the capability to automatically identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks,” and if successful, the technology would do this by “actively detecting attacks, intervening in communications between users and potential attackers, and coordinating investigations into the source of the attacks.”
Meanwhile, despite their broad claims and purported evidence, Trump and Musk have yet to show much evidence that they are actually cutting much “fraud” in the federal government.
