2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG
RAPID RESEARCH NOTE
This Rapid Research Note is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. It is crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.
If you would like more information on a particular rumor, or wish to speak to the CIP research team about our ongoing rapid research findings, you can contact us using this Google Form.
Key Takeaways
- Early last week, rumors started to spread between multiple social media platforms and across political communities online about a recently reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01 that documents procedures when there is a potential use of lethal force.
- Some online communities have speculated that the directive’s changes are timed with the upcoming election, with some suggesting without evidence that the intent behind the change is that the government is planning to use force against Americans.
- The viral spread could be exploiting a data void – a situation where there is no reliable information about a topic in search results — given there are no published fact-checks or traditional journalist coverage of the directive’s changes.
Overview
Early last week, rumors started rapidly circulating on multiple platforms, across conservative, libertarian-leaning, gun enthusiast, and far-left communities, discussing a reissued Department of Defense (DoD) directive that documents procedures around when there is potential use of lethal force against Americans. A subset of these rumors allege the directive to be suspiciously timed with the coming election. The myriad and evolving rumors rely upon speculation about the motivations behind changes to the DoD directive and perceived differences between this new document and existing documents.
In part, these rumors’ spread may be the result of a data void — a situation where there is no reliable information available about a particular topic in search results or social media platforms. At this time, there are no published fact-checks of any of the core allegations or any official statements addressing the rumors. This absence of information has allowed influencers on social media, right-wing media outlets, and conspiracy theory-focused blogs to fill the void with conspiratorial frames about the document’s intent and implications for the election.
The multi-platform and multi-partisan spread, increased engagement by political influencers, and integration into broader conversations speculating about political violence around the upcoming election signal that these rumors will be important to watch — and potentially address with fact checks and explanations — in the coming days and weeks.
This post explores the cross-platform and transpartisan spread of the rumor and the nature of its unevidenced speculative connection to the 2024 U.S. election.
The Rumors and Their Connection to the Election
The directive in question, 5240.01, is an internal DoD policy document that details policies for DOD intelligence components’ assistance to U.S. law enforcement. Previously issued in 2007, the directive has been periodically updated, most recently on September 27, 2024, and was made publicly available by the DoD.
The speculative rumoring about the directive hinges on the perceived language differences among several documents, including the September 2024 version of the directive, a 2020 update to the 2007 issuance of the same directive, and a 2016 DoD procedural manual that is also numbered 5240.01. The language focuses on changes related to potential use of lethal force and prohibitions regarding assassination.
Speculation about the meaning and possible implications of the directive’s changes has spread across numerous communities and platforms, ranging from Q-Anon aligned influencers on Telegram and X, to far-right communities on Gab, to firearm enthusiasts on YouTube, to left-wing accounts on TikTok. Right-wing influencers have focused on two interpretations of the language differences among the circulating documents. The first alleges that the DoD is intentionally removing language to allow government agencies to plan assassinations on U.S. soil against American citizens. The second interpretation more closely ties in the directive to the 2024 election, fixating on language around “lethal force” in the document as evidence that the U.S. government may be preparing to use lethal force against U.S. citizens in response to election-related civil unrest. On the left, we saw accounts expressing concern about the possibility that this DoD directive is granting the military the power to repress Americans’ civil liberties.
October 25, 2024 Addendum on Content of the Directive
Since we published this rapid research post, experts and officials have weighed in on the nature of the DoD directive. Simply put, the directive does not grant the military any new powers that don’t already exist.
As reported in the War Horse, “Contrary to claims online, DOD Directive 5240.01, which had last been updated in 2020, does not grant any new powers to the military. That’s not how military directives work. Like them or not, all military policies are subject to U.S. law; they do not create new legal authorities.”
In a rare move, the DoD pushed back by offering comment to journalists given the spread of the rumor. “The policies concerning the use of force by DOD addressed in DoDD 5240.01 are not new, and do not authorize the DOD to use lethal force against U.S. citizens or people located inside the United States, contrary to rumors and rhetoric circulating on social media,” Gough said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Experts from the Brennan Center published in Just Security: “In reality, while some of the legal authorities governing domestic deployment of the military lack sufficient safeguards and are in urgent need of reform, the changes to this directive do not reflect any change in DoD policy and provide no new authority to deploy the military domestically or to use lethal force in such deployments.” The authors note that there are good reasons to be concerned about the federal government’s power to use armed forces domestically, but this directive’s new language is not one of the them; the point of their report on how the Insurrection Act poses a far greater danger.
Timeline
This timeline offers some of the key moments in the growth and spread of rumors about the DoD directive. It does not detail every single popular post.
September 27
The DoD issues Directive 5240.01, which reissues and cancels a prior directive from 2007. The 2007 directive was updated in 2013 and 2020 before the issuance of the 2024 directive canceled it.
October 3
The updated Directive 5240.01 is shared by an X account officially associated with the DoD.
Natalie Winters, a co-host on Steve Bannon’s War Room and self-described investigative journalist, posts about the 2024 directive on X. The post focuses on — and speculates about — slightly different wording in a provision that prohibits DoD staff from engaging in assassinations.
October 5
@amuse, a newsbrokering account that describes itself as “supporting independent journalism” and pro-Trump, posts about the updated wording in the prohibition on assassinations, including a clip of Natalie Winters making similar claims to those in her tweet on Steve Bannon’s war room. Amuse makes posts on both X and Facebook. This sets off the rumoring about the directive on X, which takes off significantly on October 15, 2024, when another newsbrokering account, @hodgetwins, retweets a post related to it (Figure 1).
Figure 1: A cumulative graph showing the number of tweets (posts on the X platform) over time engaging in conversation surrounding the DoD directive, with nodes sized by the number of followers. Tweets that explicitly connect the directive to the election are indicated by diamonds.
October 7-12
A self-described “natural healing” blog that has repeatedly spread anti-vaccine content, Greenmedinfo publishes an article titled, “DoD Directive 5240.01: The Stealth Expansion of Military Intelligence Powers in Life-or-Death Domestic Scenarios.” This article appears to be the first to tie the directive to the election, suggesting that the reissuing of the just six weeks before the election is specifically intended to target those who raise concerns about U.S. election integrity issues.
The Greenmedinfo article draws attention to the inclusion of the words “lethal force” in the 2024 Directive, claiming that the U.S. government has newly authorized the U.S. military to kill Americans on U.S. soil ahead of the election. The article creates a distinction between language in the 2024 DoD Directive and what they call “the 2016 version of the directive” and speculates around the rationale for the changes.
In the days that follow, the article gets picked up and cited by several conspiratorial outlets, including ZeroHedge and Infowars. Its core claims are also widely shared across Truth Social and Telegram, as well as other “alt-tech” platforms that tend to attract far-right and conspiratorial communities, such as Gab, Gettr, Rumble, and Bitchute (Figure 2). It also catalyzed additional efforts to identify and compare earlier documents to this new document and to infer the intent of those changes.
Figure 2: A temporal graph showing the relative volume of posts over time mentioning the DoD directive across six ‘alternative tech’ platforms: Truth Social, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Gab, and Bitchute.
October 15-17
A TikTok video from @TitoComrade, a self-described anti-imperialist, communist life coach, discusses the directive. This video spreads on Facebook. On X, the video is boosted by @wallstreetapes, a newsbroker account celebrating that it is followed by right-wing personalities, Donald Trump Jr. and James O’Keefe. When sharing the video, the account claims, “They’re Getting Ready to Steal the Election.”
A popular gun enthusiast channel on YouTube does a livestream about the directive, citing the October 12 Zerohedge article. The video, titled “HAPPENING NOW: Military Authorized To Use LETHAL FORCE To ASSIST Civilian Police In Civil Unrest…,” amasses over 600,000 views in under 24 hours. A number of other gun enthusiast channels also do livestreams, alleging that the directive newly authorizes the use of lethal force in response to domestic civil unrest.
October 25, 2024 Addendum to Timeline
October 21-24: Second and Third Wave Spread on X
A second wave of spread occurred on October 21, prompted by a tweet from @LibsofTikTok underlining the potential use of lethal force against Americans. This tweet received 1 million views. The third wave began on October 23, when Robert Kennedy Jr. endorsed the claims, amplifying concerns about the directive’s alleged repressive potential, which got 9.5 million views. Both tweets framed the directive against Vice President Harris and made comparisons.
Image 1: @libsoftiktok’s October 21 tweet on the DoD Directive “5240.01”
Image 2: Robert Kennedy Jr.’s tweet on the DoD Directive “5240.01,” retweeting Harris’s statements following former Trump chief of staff John Kelly’s New York Times statements on Trump.
October 24: DoD Responds to the Allegations
On October 24, the Department of Defense addressed allegations regarding the directive “5240.01.” In a rare move, they denied rumors suggesting that the new directive permits the federal government to use lethal force against Americans on U.S. soil.
Figure 3: A temporal graph illustrating the volume of online conversations mentioning the keyword “5240.01” on X, with data collected using Brandwatch. The first spike on October 14 marks the initial wave of the rumor’s spread on X. The second spike, occurring on October 21, is primarily driven by @LibsofTikTok’s tweet (second wave). The highest volume of conversation peaks after Robert Kennedy Jr. endorses the rumor on October 23 (third wave).
An Expanding Conversation
This rumor—and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s tweet in particular—emerges in response to ongoing conversations spurred by former Trump officials, Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris and mainstream press in recent days, suggesting that Trump could mobilize the U.S. military against Americans, echoing language Trump himself has used, referring to perceived domestic opponents as “the enemy from within.”
Recently, former Trump aides warned that Donald Trump might deploy U.S. troops against his adversaries. Recent remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris labeled Trump a “fascist” and warned that he could use the military for personal vendettas. Additionally, several high-ranking Democrats have endorsed the idea that Trump could mobilize the U.S. military against Americans. Kennedy’s tweet and rumoring about the DoD directive directly respond to this conversation, quoting the Harris campaign’s tweet about her statement on Trump.
Image 3: Right-leaning response to Democratic rhetoric about Donald Trump’s potential military use by invoking DoD Directive “5240.01” as alleged evidence of a covert Democratic plan.
Conclusion
Speculation about this directive appears to have significant resonance across multiple communities as the November 5 election draws close. This evolving rumor may have the potential to translate to calls for action or offline mobilization: the implication that the US military is gearing up to crack down on election-related civil unrest may prime certain audiences to prepare for violence or confrontation with law enforcement in the aftermath of the election.