USAID: The Empire Reinvents Itself

Elon Musk, who was tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency,* thundered on X, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” His words rang out like the harbinger of an impending storm. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump, on his first day back in the White House, ordered a three-month suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid, especially aid from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The shutdown was abrupt and forceful. Dozens of senior officials were furloughed, thousands of contractors were laid off, and the Washington headquarters of USAID closed its doors without notice. As if it had never existed, the agency’s website and its X account disappeared from the digital landscape, leaving behind a void that was soon filled with speculation and innuendo on the internet.

Confusion increased when Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced from the Dominican Republic that his department would assume the agency’s operations as Rubio wound up his first tour of Latin America.

Rubio, who became acting administrator of USAID, assured people that Washington’s foreign aid would continue, but on the condition that “It has to be aligned with our national interests.”

This move, which some prefer to see as mere administrative restructuring, is a strategic shift that portends profound change in U.S. foreign policy, aimed at greater efficiency and new, repressive goals. The aim is not shelve the purposes of the agency — recognized as a front for the CIA — but rather the opposite: to refine them and perfect the empire’s system of international influence. As Dr. Hans Vergerus said in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg,” “Anyone can see the future here; it is like a snake’s egg. Through the thin membrane you can make out an already formed reptile.”

USAID, founded during the Cold War in 1961, became a colossus of interference, covert operations and destabilization networks. While it offered charity in certain countries, it worked to dismantle any opposition to Washington’s allies. It also been the source of scandal and corruption. Last week the FBI revealed without much detail its investigation of Juan Guaidó, the short-lived interim president of Venezuela, and his ambassador in Washington, Carlos Vecchio, in connection with the embezzlement of $1 billion between 2018 and 2020 processed as “humanitarian aid.” The funds, channeled through USAID, vanished in a whirlwind of opaque expenditure.

In the case of Cuba, the covert program known as ZunZuneo, a failed “Cuban Twitter” financed by USAID and designed to stir up dissidence on the island, is well known. Millions of dollars went to shell companies violating the law of several countries, including U.S. law. Trump, pragmatic and ruthless, seems to understand that USAID’s covert operations are not only ineffective on the ground, but difficult to control and counterproductive. It is foreseeable that the U.S. will redirect the million-dollar funds that fed these failed operations into more subtle and effective channels. For example, money will stop flowing to Spanish-language propaganda websites operating out of Florida which, although useful for disseminating toxic anti-Havana content on social media, lack the legitimacy and reach necessary to influence U.S. public opinion.

It is likely that the money will go to media and spokespersons carrying greater weight in U.S. and international public opinion. Analysts warn that USAID funds will also feed the coffers of private contractors. In somewhat of a catastrophe, “regime change” programs will not disappear with the subordination of USAID to the State Department. Instead, the immorality of the interventionist and anti-democratic methods of USAID, and other international “aid” agencies will entrench the deep state’s control as well as the new Trump administration’s revamped policies.

USAID’s closure and the transfer of its functions to the State Department is more than a bureaucratic maneuver. It is prelude to a more aggressive foreign policy, one more aligned with the interests of the ultra-conservative sectors of the U.S., and much more refined in communication and political terms. In this new scenario, the manipulation of information and the use of funds to promote ideological agendas could intensify and directly affect countries such as Cuba, where the media battle is just another aspect of the economic, financial and diplomatic blockade endured by the island for decades.

Thus, the disappearance of USAID marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new phase in U.S. intervention, more sophisticated, more covert and, perhaps, more dangerous.

*Editor’s Note: The “Department of Government Efficiency” is a temporary organization established by Donald Trump. The White House has declined to explain what authority Elon Musk has with respect to DOGE.