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CISA Director Jen Easterly: 'our cognitive infrastructure'

Speaking at WIRED's RE:WIRED conference in November 2021, CISA Director Jen Easterly described public resilience to misinformation as part of CISA's infrastructure mission. Critics later cited the remark as evidence of mission creep into speech.

Nov 10, 2021
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Whose side it served: Democrats

Remark by the Biden-appointed CISA director.

What the record shows

Easterly said: 'One could argue we're in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure.' Coverage at the time reported CISA was expanding its misinformation and disinformation team. In the July 4, 2023 Missouri v. Biden ruling, Judge Doughty quoted a separate November 2021 Easterly remark that it is 'really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts' and wrote that the Free Speech Clause prohibits government from picking what is true and false. Former CISA executive director Brandon Wales later told lawmakers the MDM work was under 1% of CISA's budget, about $2 million of $3 billion.

In their words

“the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure”— Jen Easterly, CISA Director, RE:WIRED conference, Nov. 2021 · source
“really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts”— Jen Easterly, Nov. 2021, as quoted in Missouri v. Biden ruling · source
The other side

Supporters read 'cognitive infrastructure' as building public resilience to foreign and false information, not removing speech. The scale of CISA's MDM work was small relative to its cybersecurity budget.

Sources

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