Did the U.S. government pay Reuters to engage in "large scale social deception"? No, that's not true: The U.S. Department of Defense paid Thomson Reuters Special Services to provide "software and information services to U.S. government agencies," a statement from the company's CEO said. Thomson Reuters Special Services and Reuters News operate independently of each other.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by Elon Musk on February 13, 2025. The post's caption said:
Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for "large scale social deception".
That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They're a total scam.
Just wow.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Feb 13 18:30:00 2025 UTC)
The Musk post amplified a post (archived here) originally published on X on February 12, 2025. The post's caption said:
🚨🇺🇸 DOD PAID REUTERS $9M FOR "SOCIAL ENGINEERING" PROGRAM
DOGE investigations reveal mysterious Defense Department payments to Reuters for "large scale social deception" project between 2018-2022.
While DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] 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.
Source: USASpendingGov, @stillgray
To make its case, the post included a screenshot of a page (archived here) from USAspending.gov, a website that tracks government payouts and who the money goes to. A screenshot taken by Lead Stories appears below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Feb 13 19:08:48 2025 UTC)
The contract start date is September 28, 2018, during the first Trump administration, which began in January 2017, and the contract's end date was November 29, 2022, during the Biden administration.
Thomson Reuters Special Services
The USAspending.gov website shows Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS), and not Reuters News, as the recipient of the Department of Defense (DoD) contract for "ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD)."
In a February 13, 2025, email to Lead Stories, Thomson Reuters media relations shared a statement from Steve Rubley, CEO of TRSS, emphasizing that TRSS and Reuters News operate separately:
Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS), LLC is a separate U.S. legal entity governed by an independent Board of Directors, that operates independently from Reuters News. Recent public discourse has conflated these entities and has inaccurately represented the nature of the business between TRSS and the Department of Defense.
TRSS has provided software and information services to U.S. government agencies across successive administrations for decades, to assist in identifying and preventing fraud, supporting public safety, and advancing justice.
Reuters News is the leading global provider of business, financial and world news in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles which govern its newsroom. Thomson Reuters commercial agreements, including Reuters News commercial agreements, have no influence over or impact on Reuters editorial coverage.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
ASED falls under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its website (archived here) says the mission of ASED isn't to promote large-scale social media deception but to stop it:
The Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) program aims to develop the core technology to enable the capability to automatically identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks. If successful, the ASED technology will do this by actively detecting attacks, intervening in communications between users and potential attackers, and coordinating investigations into the source of the attacks.
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