Peculiar language uncovered in a newly declassified Russiagate intelligence document is raising suspicions about how the term “critical infrastructure” became a catch-all phrase used by censorship powers to suppress disfavored speech.
Censorship watchdogs are calling attention to a particular phrase, pertaining to “critical infrastructure,” that appeared in the appendix to former special counsel John Durham’s final report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
One message included in the recently released intelligence materials mentioned invoking a threat to critical infrastructure as an impetus for federal intelligence officials to investigate foreign meddling in the 2016 election.
The message, written by a high-ranking executive at an organization funded by Democratic megadonor George Soros, indicates knowledge among some actors that the FBI would play a role in advancing the Russian collusion plotline. Durham’s team of investigators did not disclose to whom the message was directed, only citing a confidential source who had turned over this sensitive intel.
Russian hackers had reportedly accessed the emails of numerous U.S. nonprofit organizations, including the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.
Leonard “Lenny” Benardo, senior vice president of OSF, correctly predicted that the FBI would aid former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to tie Trump to Russia, per a pair of July 2016 emails cited in the Durham annex.
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At the time, Benardo appeared to be engaged in conversations with the Clinton campaign about how to turn the Trump-Russia narrative into “a long-term affair,” as relayed to the unidentified associate.
“Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire,” Benardo, then OSF’s regional director for Eurasia overseeing “efforts relating to Russia and the former Soviet republics,” allegedly wrote in one of the emails.
In the other email, according to the annex, Benardo suggested as part of a messaging strategy, “Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace since both [the president] and [the vice president] have acknowledged the fact [the U.S. intelligence community] would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable.”
“The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue,” Benardo allegedly prefaced the directive.
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The familiar phrasing from Benardo’s “apparently hacked” emails — unearthed nearly a decade later — raised alarm among free speech hawks who have long scrutinized the increasingly expanded scope of what’s considered “critical infrastructure.”
Foundation for Freedom Online founder Mike Benz said he suspects that this moment in the Russiagate saga may be when government censors “cooked up … the legal predicate cover” for policing speech across social media.
Benz, who said he’s flabbergasted by Benardo’s “cavalier” and “flippant” use of the “critical infrastructure” excuse as a throwaway line, asserted that such Russiagate-era jargon gave rise to “censorspeak,” Orwellian terminology classifying almost anything, such as social media, public health, and the U.S. elections process, as so-called “critical infrastructure.”
Investigative journalist Benjamin Weingarten, who has testified before Congress on government-led censorship operations, similarly said that claiming the elections are “critical infrastructure” under threat from Russian actors snowballed into the “censorship-industrial complex.”
According to Benz, formerly a State Department official specializing in international communications and information policy during Trump’s first term, powers granted to prevent the spread of Russian propaganda eventually turned inward toward monitoring the online activities of everyday citizens.
In 2018, Congress created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an ancillary agency of the Department of Homeland Security designed to safeguard “critical infrastructure” against cybersecurity threats.
DHS originally defined “critical infrastructure” as information technology, telecommunications, emergency services, and mass transportation systems, among other traditional understandings of a society’s essential infrastructure.
In January 2017, outgoing Obama administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson expanded the definition of “critical infrastructure” to include the U.S. electoral system despite opposition from some state election officials. Johnson’s declaration, placing election equipment in the same category as electrical grids, came the same day as the U.S. intelligence community released its Russiagate report.
On the same day John Brennan’s bogus ICA was released, DHS Sec Jeh Johnson, one of the most underrated Russiagate perps, declared election systems as “critical infrastructure.” Perfectly orchestrated stunt.
Note how he framed the issue–but NO HACKING pic.twitter.com/qT2336sZB8
— Julie Kelly
(@julie_kelly2) July 22, 2025
This designation laid the groundwork for CISA, formed a year later, to frame its mission as combating foreign interference in U.S. elections under the pretext of protecting “critical infrastructure.”
Notably, when asked in an Axios interview whether Trump is seen as “a domestic threat,” CISA’s inaugural director, Chris Krebs, said, “There is disinformation that he is spreading. I mean disinformation is one type of threat.”
CISA’s efforts to curb “disinformation” ramped up ahead of the 2020 election, especially flagging posts that questioned vote-by-mail.
After former President Joe Biden took office, CISA transitioned its Countering Foreign Influence Task Force to focus more on “general MDM,” or misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, allegedly “aiming to sow divisions and reduce national cohesion.”
In a 2022 pamphlet titled “Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials,” CISA admitted to switching from exclusively targeting foreign actors to surveillance of “domestic sources” supposedly “seeking to interfere with and undermine our democratic institutions.”
CISA head Jen Easterly, the Biden-appointed successor to Krebs, further characterized proverbial wrongthink as “critical infrastructure” within the agency’s purview.
“One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure,” Easterly said at a 2021 RE:WIRED conference. “And the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important.”
According to findings from the House Judiciary’s select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, to justify censorship as cyber defense, CISA classified “misinformation” on the internet as a cybersecurity threat to “critical infrastructure.” Accordingly, tweets challenging state-approved opinions on topics ranging from election integrity to the COVID-19 pandemic were deemed an attack on “critical infrastructure.”
As for Soros, he has a vested interest in the content-moderation industry. Through his grantmaking nexus, he has funded key components of the censorship industrial complex.
The billionaire financier’s Foundation to Promote Open Society dumped $250,000 in grant money into the Disinformation Index, the American outpost of the Global Disinformation Index, known for blacklisting mainstream conservative media from advertising dollars.
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The latter previously received $150,000 in funding from the Open Society Institute, another Soros outfit.
Soros, through his philanthropic work, also poured millions into Global Witness, a group that pressured Big Tech companies, such as Google, X, Facebook, and TikTok, to fight “disinformation” and “misinformation” during the 2022 midterm elections.