Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts

Order DHS and DOJ to contract U.S. AI firms against CCP influence ops

Not started

790 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”

“Order the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice to contract with U.S.-owned and U.S.-operated artificial intelligence companies that are capable of detecting, identifying, and disrupting both the domestic groups’ and CCP influencers’ social media operations and funding streams using public information as a rapidly available offensive measure.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The administration moved the other way on the domestic half of this ask on its first day. EO 14149 directs that no federal department or agency may "engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen", and orders an end to federal involvement in identifying and moderating online speech. Contracting artificial-intelligence firms to detect and disrupt "domestic groups'" social media operations is the practice that order forbids. On the CCP half, no order, memorandum or contract vehicle directing DHS or DOJ to buy such capability could be found: NSPM-7 of 2025-09-25, the one presidential document in the window that tells DOJ and DHS to disrupt networks, contains no reference to artificial intelligence, contracting, China or the CCP. **The procurement check the earlier pass deferred has now been run (read-queue ticket 07, 2026-09-06), and it finds nothing either.** Federal contract awards to DHS and DOJ from 2025-01-20 to 2026-09-06 return zero results for "influence operations", "malign influence", "foreign malign influence", "disinformation", "propaganda" and "Chinese Communist Party" at both departments. "Social media monitoring" returns four awards across the two, of which exactly one falls inside the window: ATF's $334,250 contract to Kentech Consulting of 2025-09-15, coded NAICS 561611, "Investigation and Personal Background Check Services" - vetting applicants, not detecting influence operations, and a renewal of a 2020 contract for "social media monitoring check services". So the record is doubly negative: no directive to buy the capability, and no purchase of it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The contrary Evidence rides in the frontmatter with the not started event, under playbook 3b.

NSPM-7, Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence (2025-09-25), was read in full on whitehouse.gov because it is the nearest thing to the ask’s domestic half. Word counts in its text: “artificial intelligence” 0, “contract” 0, “China” 0, “CCP” 0. It is a lead only. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/

Federal procurement records are the place this would show if it happened outside the Federal Register. That check was run on 2026-09-06 and is now part of the negative rather than a read-queue row.

  • Route: POST https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/search/spending_by_award/ with filters.keywords, award_type_codes ["A","B","C","D"] (contracts), a time_period of 2025-01-20 to 2026-09-06, and an awarding toptier agency name. No key needed. Nonsense-controlled: zzzqqxnonsense returns 0 for DHS while artificial intelligence returns 14.
  • The one in-window near-miss is recorded but not written as Evidence: CONT_AWD_15A00025FAQA00188_1560_47QRAA25D001R_4732, ATF to Kentech Consulting Inc, 2025-09-15, $334,250, “SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING SERVICES”, NAICS 561611 Investigation and Personal Background Check Services, period of performance to 2027-09-14. The words match the ask and the work does not: Kentech is a background-screening firm and its predecessor contract, from 2020, is described as “social media monitoring check services”. Attaching it under the moved-nearby rule would invite a reader to infer a capability purchase that the NAICS code contradicts.
  • What this negative does not reach: classified or otherwise unreported procurement, and interagency agreements, which USAspending records as assistance rather than contract awards.
Action
issue
Object
DHS and DOJ contracts with U.S. artificial intelligence companies
ID
2088