'Give the money back now' - Trump wants $9 million back from Reuters

President Donald Trump issued a demand about Reuters, saying he wants them to pay back a $9 million contract they were allegedly given. There's a bit of confusion going on around the basis of the contract, which was actually issued during Trump's first term, but it's unclear if he was aware of it or not. Or, if there's been new light shed on what the money was actually used for.

We did some research on the contract and a report said "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.”