Army Sec Orders West Point To Fire Biden Censorship Czar
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has ordered West Point to terminate the employment of Jen Easterly, President Biden’s recently appointed censorship czar and former director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Easterly was named to a distinguished chair at West Point’s department of Social Sciences but faced criticism for leading CISA during a period when it allegedly expanded its role from cybersecurity protection into domestic surveillance and censorship, notably targeting conservative voices ahead of the 2020 election. In response, Driscoll has also paused involvement of non-governmental organizations in hiring at the academy and called for a comprehensive review of West Point’s hiring practices. Pentagon officials emphasized their focus on training military leaders rather than promoting censorship activities.
On Wednesday, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll ordered West Point to terminate the employment of President Biden’s recently hired censorship czar.
The revelation came following a now unavailable Tuesday announcement from the academy that Jen Easterly, the former director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), would be serving as the new Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair within the school’s Department of Social Sciences. Easterly graduated from West Point in 1990.
“A Homecoming Worth Celebrating,” West Point Dean Shane Reeves wrote in a now unavailable X post congratulating Easterly. “Welcome home!”
Easterly led CISA from July 2021 to January 2025, a time period during which she oversaw the agency’s efforts to censor Americans.
As described in a June 2023 report by the House Judiciary Committee, CISA was originally founded in 2018 “to be an ancillary agency designed to protect ‘critical infrastructure’ and guard against cybersecurity threats.” In the years that followed, however, it “metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.”
A separate House committee report released later that year showed that CISA colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring prominent conservative voices — including The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis — leading up to the 2020 election. The agency’s censorship operations would continue to grow under Easterly’s tenure, with House lawmakers noting its efforts to “camouflage its activities” from the public by 2022 and 2023.
In addition to ordering Easterly’s termination, Driscoll instructed West Point to “immediately pause all non-governmental and outside groups from selecting employees of the Academy, including instructors, professors, teachers, and shaping academic or developmental lectures.” He further requested the chair of West Point’s Board of Visitors to “conduct an immediate top-down review of the United States Military Academy’s hiring practices.”
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell released a statement responding to Driscoll’s announcement, saying, “We’re in the business of warfighting.”
“We’re not turning cadets into censorship activists. We’re turning them into warriors & leaders,” Parnell said. “Our future officers will get the most elite training so that America can continue to dominate on the battlefield.”
When pressed for additional comment, Defense Department spokesman Joshua Wick referred The Federalist to the Army and West Point for more information on “their hiring actions.” The Army and West Point did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s requests for comment.
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