Google Ideas is a means by which US outreach, propaganda, narrative, voice and news sites and apps can be protected when it broadcasts to populations around the globe.
US investment in organizations and outlets that align with its strategic goals (or when they are fronts for one department or another) are looked very poorly upon by some countries around the world, which will attempt to take them down - either by legal means, cyber attack or network (e.g. DNS) level blocks.
It is a geopolitical project and a very valuable investment for the United States overseas power projection.
It's a shame this has been voted up so far up the page. For a poster engaged in supposedly "fact-based and evidence-laden argumentation", you forgot your facts and evidence. The only bit where you seem to even approach specifics is
> Google will, in all likelihood, very selectively give protection to news outlets.
> For example those from the Board of Broadcasting Governors, or from the BIIP, or from USAID, or from US sponsored NGOs are definitely going to get support.
But that "in all likelihood" is just you making things up and is not, of course, actual evidence. Everything else you've provided in this thread is handwaving.
> But that "in all likelihood" is just you making things up and is not, of course, actual evidence. Everything else you've provided in this thread is handwaving.
Not in the least. Is there anything you'd like corroborated?
Allow me to add some information here, as the commentor hasn't asked for anything specific.
The United States disbanded USIA (the agency in charge of US propaganda) after the end of the Cold War in 1999. USIA was split into a couple components. Overt programs were given to the Department of State, covert ('black') programs to the Department of Defense and the Board of Broadcasting Governors were split off into their own organized body.
During the Bush administration there was a lot of turmoil about how to organize efforts - they found that splitting the efforts caused confusion as various programs weren't coordinated with the same messages. Bush created Policy Coordinating Committees for "Strategic Communication" to help interdepartment and interagency cooperation. Mostly during this time efforts were focused on the Middle East, and indeed today the US heavily blankets the Middle East with propaganda.
Things have evolved since Bush. There has been a growing role of social media analysis and interaction. The Department of State has a Digital Outreach Team where they will engage on forums in the Middle East (it's an overt program, so they will identify themselves) - but the goals as can be seen from FOIA requests and strategic documents are to confuse adversaries, 'get in their heads' and to engage parties whose opinion may be swayed. Covert operations do much of the same, but under false flags and with persona management software (check out Earnest Voice). You can find out more about these efforts by searching for the Department of States "war of ideas" or congresses "Jihad 2.0", or generally doing due diligence and reading legislation and strategy documents.
Another big change in US strategy is that its audience is much wider. Strategy documents toward the end of the Bush Administration and through the Obama Administration focus on the need to counter anti-American ideas abroad.
Now the CIA especially runs NGO and CSO fronts, many times through USAID, and more generally NGOs and CSOs are invested in if they align with US strategic objectives. If you like you can find CIA reports on investment in NGOs inside of Ukraine as part of their long term plan as project UNITER and how this turned out with NGOs leading Euromaiden protests (if you read foreign media - Germany's Der Speigel is a good source you may trust). ZunZuneo is a very transparent example because there's been lots of journalism on it - in this case the CIA set up a fake Twitter network in Cuba where they were monitoring citizens and planning to turn their network (peaking somewhere around 60,000 users) into an outlet to stir dissent and organize protests.
Many countries try to quell this activity. Cuba, for example, banned smart phones at one point. Russia recently, after the Ukraine affair, kicked out all NGOs with funding from or ties to Western governments.
Aaannnyyway. There's tons of more details to be had (US research into manipulating social networks a la DARPA SMISC, Project MINERVA) but in reading through material and reports on the various task forces of Congressional meetings it's quite clear - though really not surprising as these have been longstanding US practices.
If you would like to read more about propaganda and CIA fronts in the Iraq war, searching for Rendon Group, the Iraqi National Council, and the Office of Strategic Influence.
The United States unequivocally funds and supports NGOs and CSOs that align with its strategic interests and invests them as operating fronts for special operations. This isn't really something that's widely contested.
The Department of Defense (just search for this using your favorite client/search engine) is right now investing large amounts of money through partnerships with Venture Capitalists into Silicon Valley and the tech sector. There is a call for both cybersecurity startups and for civil society apps.
Google is offering (and there are plenty of examples of Google's involvement with US national security investments, perhaps you'd like to ask about this) to protect news and human rights agencies. This will of course be providing protection to US and US-aligned news media organizations and NGOs (they can call my bluff by supporting Chinese NGOs - and China is now starting to try to have its own culture export, news organizations, and human rights groups in Africa, South America and Eurasia).
You just wrote an entirely irrelevant wall of text before finally addressing the question in the last paragraph. However your argument still remains that the US government has used NGOs to advance its interests in the past and this service is offering to shield NGOs from DDoS attacks. QED.
That's not an argument or evidence, that's classic handwaving.
What sort of evidence exactly are you looking for?
Understanding how the US operates, how US companies cooperate, and the context, timing, history and actor roles appear not to be enough.
I suppose you're looking for a smoking gun - a document from Google that explicitly states that Google's intention is to support American NGOs for the purposes of US power projection.
No, I don't have a smoking gun. I can not provide that for you.
It is established that America uses NGOs for culture export/soft power projection.
It is established that Google is a geopolitical actor.
It is established that Google provides investment for researchers who are funded by and for DoD programs.
It is established that Google aligns itself with US culture expansion abroad (they wrote a book on this).
It is established that the US partners with private industry to achieve its objectives. It is established that the US has been calling for more partnership on the cyber domain and with strategic communication.
It is established that Google will be protecting American NGOs.
If it is reasonable to conclude that Google's involvement protecting American NGO's is partnership with US foreign policy is bullshit or handwaving, how would you read the situation?
I think it's unreasonable to think that:
A company that is legally obligated to maximize shareholder profit, and which partnered with the US government for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, and whose executives fairly regularly meet in person with the president of the United States and who has a revolving door with the same Department of State for roles in under Public Diplomacy - that this company, completely separate from these details - on its own 'good will' - decided it would be a nice charitable thing to host US NGO sites and US news intended for foreign audiences.
a citizen from india would like to weigh in and say that I believe you and everything you said lines up with how the youth in our country are turning more and more to western ideals and ignoring their culture (facebook posts, game of thrones, popular pages making posts on iraq, posts on north korea, posts on russia, and a host of other things that you can only experience and observe by living in the country and having friends from that country). that's all i will say for now, if the opinion of someone in an (allegedly) affected country counts.
I do not know much about Cloudflare. It was my impression that they were a legitimate business on their own right. They very well may have a partnership to protect CIA operation digital assets, or partner with other departments for other purposes (protecting US assets during the cyberwar). This in itself would not imply that they are a 'front', just a partner. To claim a front you would have to have some reason to believe that CloudFlare was infiltrated by, bought by (like Condolezza Rice at DropBox) or started/managed by a gov't agency.
I would not claim to believe that they are a front or a partner. I'm not a good person to ask though, I don't know very much about CloudFlare.
The danger of making such jokes, even when they are funny like yours, is that it clouds legitimate and reasonable discussion about the ways in which US companies support US national security efforts.
There is no need to ridicule this poster, as parallel questions about national security efforts and how, where and when US tech companies help are topical, factual and technical.
US investment in organizations and outlets that align with its strategic goals (or when they are fronts for one department or another) are looked very poorly upon by some countries around the world, which will attempt to take them down - either by legal means, cyber attack or network (e.g. DNS) level blocks.
It is a geopolitical project and a very valuable investment for the United States overseas power projection.