USA Is Defunding Regime-Change NGOs: This Changes Everything | Dr. Glenn Diesen

## The fall of a hidden infrastructure: why this moment matters For decades a shadow network of funding, training, and communications quietly shaped political narratives across the globe. What is unfolding now — the White House-driven cutbacks to USAID and moves to choke funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — is not a minor bureaucratic adjustment. It is the dismantling of a state-sponsored cognitive warfare apparatus that operated under the benign colors of “civil society” and “independent media.” The significance is twofold. First, it exposes how deeply embedded external political influence had become in supposedly autonomous civic life. Second, it forces a public reckoning about the legitimacy and limits of external support for social movements, advocacy groups, and independent journalism. The conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen crystallizes how these practices functioned and why their sudden defunding ripples through international politics, domestic divisions, and the institutions that claim to represent the public. ## NGOs as instruments of statecraft and the manufacture of consent The most striking insight from the discussion is how non-governmental organizations became an instrument of power indistinguishable in practice from economic or military tools. NGOs were not merely auxiliaries for humanitarian relief or normative advocacy; they were organized vectors to shape minds, build compliant coalitions, and create the appearance of consensus. By channeling funding through intermediaries, intelligence services and foreign ministries could shape agendas without the political costs that direct government intervention would provoke. The crucial advantage was credibility: messages delivered by an organization labeled “civil society” are more persuasive than the same talking points issued by an overt state actor. This is not speculative. The NED itself traces its origins to Cold War strategies and was explicitly designed to pick up work the CIA once managed. Leaks, declassified files, and firsthand testimony have long demonstrated close operational ties between intelligence communities and ostensibly independent groups. The result was a global ecosystem in which NGOs staffed by ideologues, funded largely by governments, and often working alongside intelligence networks, curated an international public sphere. That curated field limited the range of acceptable debate, marginalized dissenting perspectives, and elevated particular geopolitical priorities under the banner of human rights or democratic promotion. ## Why Washington would cut its own influence machine On the surface, defunding a tool that had worked so effectively for decades seems self-defeating. But the conversation points to several intersecting reasons behind the decision. One explanation is ideological: as U.S. politics polarize, the content of NGO-supported projects — from regime-change advocacy abroad to progressive social agendas at home — became domestically contentious. What once served as a seamless extension of American foreign policy now looks like a partisan engine amplifying “woke” cultural priorities that alienate broad swathes of the electorate. Another driver is geopolitical reorientation. The emerging U.S. strategy under a different leadership prioritizes selective competition; sustaining an expansive global network of civic proxies that antogonize multiple states simultaneously is no longer tenable. If Washington wishes to reallocate attention and resources toward great-power rivalry with China or to reduce entanglement in protracted regional conflicts, the apparatus that stoked those interventions becomes expendable. Finally, fiscal pressure provides a mercenary logic: a state subsidizing countless overseas projects while facing mounting domestic liabilities can justify cuts as austerity. Whether ideological, strategic, or fiscal, the result is the same: a deliberate defunding of a system that manufactured political consent abroad and domestically. ## Ukraine as a case study of engineered trajectories Few places illustrate the mechanics and consequences of this model as starkly as Ukraine. The NGOs in question did more than transact funds; they cultivated networks of media, civic organizers, and political actors who shaped public perceptions, mobilized street protests, and policed the limits of acceptable policy. These organizations played visible roles in the 2004 and 2014 upheavals and continued to influence narratives around the Donbass conflict and subsequent elections. One telling example discussed was how NGOs effectively constrained President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace mandate after his 2019 election, insisting that any talks with Russia be mediated or overseen by Western actors and warning against referendums or concessions that could signal rapprochement. The implication is clear: an election victory can be hollowed out if external civic networks — funded and directed to defend certain geopolitical alignments — set red lines that override domestic policy choices. Those networks can also work alongside more overtly coercive actors; in Ukraine, threats from right-wing groups co-existed with NGO-backed pressure campaigns that collectively narrowed the political space for diplomacy. Importantly, much of the Ukrainian media ecosystem depended on external funding. When those streams dry up, it is often framed as a crisis for “independent journalism.” But as the conversation noted, dependence on foreign state-linked funding compromises the independence in the first place: when most outlets operate on similar subsidies, reporting converges toward the priorities of the funders and away from critical scrutiny of policy or battlefield realities. ## European reverberations and the cost of dissent The NGO machinery did not function only at a distance. Within Europe, similar funding and organizational dynamics have been used to influence domestic politics, mobilize protests, and define the terms of public debate. European elites who routed funds through Brussels effectively exported normative projects back into member states, sometimes with the effect of destabilizing elected governments. Responses have included calls to reclaim civic space — to refuse the substitution of citizen-led movements by externally funded proxies. The conversation also provides an intimate portrait of the human costs of this system. Critics of the dominant narratives — whether academics, journalists, or activists — experienced targeted campaigns of smearing, social-media harassment, institutional pressure, and attempts to delegitimize their positions as “foreign propaganda.” National organizations, financed by foreign donors, could produce hit pieces, lobby university administrators, and encourage boycotts of events. In one account, a scholar faced organized efforts to cancel talks, letters to his employer, published denunciations labeling him a foreign agent, and even the online publication of his home address. Those tactics reveal the darker side of NGOs when they operate as political technocrats rather than civic interlocutors: they become tools for policing dissent, not platforms for pluralism. This raises an uncomfortable paradox. Civil society, in theory, is the sphere that checks state power and fosters democratic deliberation. Yet when a few well-funded NGOs monopolize representation, they can displace authentic civic voices and constrain the deliberative field precisely at the moment when it should be most expansive. ## Reclaiming the boundary between support and interference If the problem is a hegemonic NGO ecosystem that substitutes for genuine civil society, what are the policy options? First, transparency is non-negotiable. Funding sources, institutional links to intelligence services, and the qualifications of NGO staffing should be public and scrutinizable. The covert or semi-covert channels that allowed governments to “hide in plain sight”

USA Is Defunding Regime-Change NGOs: This Changes Everything | Dr. Glenn Diesen For the longest time, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have been funding foreign NGOs to influence local populations through media propaganda and the pretense of a civil society consensus. Donald Trump just pulled the plug on that one by defunding USAID and even going after the NED. This is unprecedented in modern history that a state dismantles its own cognitive warfare apparatus. What happened? I'm discussing these tectonic shifts with Professor Glenn Diesen, a professor at the University of Southeast Norway. Find Glenn on other platforms: Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com / @GDiesen1 Twitter: https://x.com/glenn_diesen?s=21 #M3 So if you're Trump, you see these NGOs as being very ideological, globalist, left-wing, and also ones that try to perpetuate the war in Ukraine. Defund them. This is the main idea, and they're doing this. They're just defunding everything. Of course, there's a money issue here as well, as the U.S. is obviously heading for bankruptcy, so they also need to cut their costs significantly. #M2 Hello, everybody. I'm still talking to Glenn Diesen here, my friend and colleague from Norway. And now, in the second part of the interview, after we discussed what was going on in Europe, we need to talk about one of the mechanisms with which the discourse in Europe and worldwide has been, to a large part, monopolized and also guided. Through this, the way of the propaganda network, we learned that recently with the revelations about the funding of all of these NGOs all around the world, including in Europe. The funding is now being revealed because Donald Trump is investigating the U.S. AID agency and other agencies on how they spend money. And we are learning that there are millions and hundreds of millions going into different NGOs. This is also channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy. I want to discuss this with you, Glenn, because on the one hand, you've been observing it for a long time. On the other hand, you've been on the receiving end of the influence that the NGOs are wielding, even in Europe. Do you also see this as one of the mechanisms through which narrative control and consent are being manufactured? #M3 -- 1 of 10 -- Yeah, of course. I think this is a key instrument of power. Again, we have economic power, military power, and then we have a fight for information in the media. In this effort to shape public opinion, why would trying to influence the civil society of other countries be off the table? Of course, it is in one's interest to change the minds of people in other countries. This is an instrument of power, and this has always been the case. What is so shocking about this is not just what has been revealed, but the extent of this influence. And as you said, this is to manufacture consent. Across the Western countries, we use the same NGOs here to manufacture consent, making sure that there's no real dissent against the main ideas. And in adversarial countries, we have efforts to use the same NGOs for regime change. Now, what is a bit surprising is how much surprise there is, because we kind of already knew this. All the evidence was already out. You mentioned the National Endowment for Democracy. This was set up by Reagan and the CIA director in the 1980s for this exact reason. There have been so many leaked documents, declassified documents. You had CIA whistleblowers. You had the people who set up the National Endowment for Democracy, all confirming that, yeah, yeah, what the CIA used to do, we do. And it makes a lot of sense. But it's also a very controversial topic. First of all, civil society is very important. This is what balances the state. The government doesn't decide everything. Your role as a citizen is not just to vote every couple of years, but you should be able to engage more. But we made up this idea that these non-governmental organizations, they are now, they are civil society. They're the ones who get to represent civil society, which is a very strange thing to argue because suddenly a lot of power is vested now in the NGOs. If now we claim that NGOs are the ones who get to represent civil society, it makes it much worse. What if all the major NGOs are financed by governments? What if they're staffed by people close to the intelligence community? And what if their interpretation of, for example, human rights always aligns with geopolitical interests? So when you have issues, I often bring up the Assange issue, because often these NGOs see Julian Assange, and they don't care that much about what he reveals, but they spend a lot of time smearing him. So, you know, you always have this. And again, this is not a conspiracy theory. We have all the evidence already. We know that they're financed almost completely by governments. We know from all these leaks that they have been staffed by people close to the intelligence community, that they've been working with the intelligence community. Because they're a great instrument for manipulating civil society, they become the main facilitator to organize it. And also, instead of having military leaders try to do it, they get to present themselves as altruistic. They're there to support democracy and human rights. And as anyone who studies communication theory knows, how the message is received very much depends on who's delivering it. If you claim to be an organization that's just there to promote freedom, it's more likely that your -- 2 of 10 -- messages will be accepted. If the CIA stands there handing out money to protesters, you know what's happening. If it's a non-governmental organization fighting for democracy, there's not that voice in the back of your head opposing this as much. So it has been a very big tool. And this is what we find out now as well. When the US cuts funding to USAID, suddenly 85% to 90% of Ukrainian media no longer get their paychecks, and we see the political groups are not financed. We see protesters suddenly not receiving their money. I mean, this is part of politics, and it should be addressed. But the beautiful part of these NGOs is that if you criticize them, now you hate civil society. This is what I discovered. I criticized an article about how the NGOs were hijacking civil society, and one of these NGOs actually wrote a letter to my university to explain to them how dangerous I was because I actually undermine and threaten civil society by criticizing them. I mean, it's absurd. #M2 You, as a member of civil society, threaten civil society by criticizing it. #M3 No, you have to subordinate. You have to accept NGOs. You rule a civil society. And this is a point of departure. If you don't accept that they represent civil society, then you're not allowed to speak anymore. And yeah, they will come for you. #M2 It's the same mindset that we talked about in the first part of the interview, right? It's like equating a higher good with yourself and then making everybody else believe that. But I want to talk about your experiences, too, in just a second, because I have two more related questions. One question is, of course, why does the U.S. itself now dismantle this tool of its own power, which has worked beautifully? I mean, think about it from the perspective of the United States. This thing is responsible for convincing enough people in Ukraine to actually be the sacrificial lamb, right, to go to the battlefield and fight a war that the Biden administration wanted to fight, right? This is a very, very powerful tool, and the U.S. is dismantling it itself. Secondly, this tendency now of the media to actually still bemoan this. Reporters Without Borders, a French organization, complained that, oh, now so many journalists are not getting paid anymore because the U.S. is cutting this funding. And this is so horrible because independent journalism is so important. Not understanding that that post is still up. They equate being paid by journalists, NGOs, and by U.S.- funded or EU-funded money in some parts with independent journalism, as in they still don't understand that that is not independent. That's more or less the definition of being dependent on somebody. Can you speak to these two questions? -- 3 of 10 -- #M3 Yeah, well, this is why it was referred to in the '80s when they set up these NGOs as hiding in plain sight. Because if American intelligence agencies give money to journalists, now you have a scandal. If the CIA sets up NGOs as an intermediary, the intelligence agencies still give money to the NGOs, and they work with the intelligence agencies, and they give it to the journalists. Now it's okay. Now it's not a scandal anymore. Again, you can hide in plain sight. But this is something very, very crazy. I've seen these headlines popping up everywhere, not just... Yeah, this idea that they're cutting money for independent media. But when you're being financed by the United States and organizations linked to intelligence agencies, it's going to impact your reporting. And if it's not telling you what to do, at least it's limiting who gets access to these funds. The people who end up on the payroll have certain ideological positioning. And you see all of these independent media outlets they have in Ukraine, which 85-90% have been financed. Well, they don't tend to report on the realities on the battlefield. They don't report on the most basic things happening. For example, the shooting on Maidan, what's actually happening in the court, which has been proving that it was the opposition groups who later took government, who were behind the shooting. They don't address these issues because, well, why would you? That's not why you were hired. So I think this is, I think, but also, why would the US, why would Trump cut it? Because, as you said, they've been very good. And I think they became too ideological. And this is a problem when a society becomes polarized, because if it's just an instrument for US interests against the rest of the world, why would you cut it? But you also see now that some of the concern in the United States is, as society polarizes, they see a lot of this USAID promoting a lot of woke projects. This is not something they like because that's some of the things that divide them internally. But it's also in terms of foreign policy interests. As we see now, the Trump administration wants to take the US in a different direction. They can't go after Russia, China, and everyone at the same time. So it's important to see how these NGOs are used. Not only have they been used in the color revolutions, but if you look at Ukraine, for example, the NGOs had a very central role when they toppled the government in Ukraine in 2004. They also had an important role when they toppled the government in 2014. But also, in the efforts to have peace, the NGOs are very good at opposing this situation. As we spoke about earlier, in 2019, they had a presidential election in Ukraine. As we remember, Zelensky ran on a peace platform. He was going to talk to Donbass, actually have diplomacy. He was going to try to make peace with the Russians. And most of this was going to be achieved by implementing the Minsk Agreement. But what happened? Well, we know the United States, of course, had all of these right-wing fascist groups, which they have been financing, that threatened Zelensky's life if he would do this. Very open in the media, by the way. But we also had NGOs, such as the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, and they actually sent a letter of warning to Zelensky. -- 4 of 10 -- They said, as a civil society, you know, because they're a civil society, we have a list of red lines not to be crossed. One of the important things was, well, I think the first one was, don't hold a referendum on negotiations with the Russians. Something along those lines. If there is going to be talk with Russia, it can