USA | Israeli Intelligence Veteran and Tech Billionaire | Calls for Government Control of Speech on US Platforms
”…limit the First Amendment to protect it.”
An Israeli billionaire and former IDF intelligence officer appeared on CNBC calling for the US government to “limit the First Amendment” and “control the platforms, all the social platforms.”
Shlomo Kramer, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity firms Check Point and Imperva and current CEO of Cato Networks, told CNBC’s “Money Movers” that democratic governments should:
“Stack-rank the authenticity of every person that expresses themselves online, and take control over what they are saying, based on that ranking.”
When the host asked directly, “The government should control the social media?” Kramer answered: “Yeah, should do that.”
Kramer framed this as necessary to prevent “polarization” and “inner fighting,” arguing that countries protecting free speech are at an “unfair advantage” compared to China, which “already is using AI to control the population.”
Treating Kramer’s remarks as a generic civil liberties or AI governance issue reproduces the violence.
The reason these systems are being proposed now is because “Israel” is carrying out an ongoing genocide and cannot sustain it under conditions of free speech and open witnessing.
He stated explicitly: “I know it’s difficult to hear, but it’s time to limit the First Amendment in order to protect it, and quickly, before it’s too late.”
His reasoning: “If China has a single narrative that protects its inner stability and the U.S. allows for multiple narratives, it puts them in an unfair advantage that long-term is going to cost the stability of the nation.”
This is not subtle.
A tech billionaire from a state currently under ICJ genocide proceedings, whose government has signed $6 million contracts to manipulate AI chatbots and flood US social media with state propaganda, is now on American business television explicitly calling for the suppression of American speech.
The timing is not coincidental. Support for Israel’s “military operations” in Gaza has collapsed to historic lows. Only 9% of Americans aged 18-34 support “Israel’s” actions. 47% of Americans believe “Israel” is committing genocide.
His proposal only makes sense if you understand its target.
Identity ranking decides whose speech is credible.
Platform control decides which narratives circulate.
State governance decides which truths survive.
In the current political reality, the speech most aggressively targeted as “destabilizing,” “inauthentic,” or “dangerous” is speech that opposes “Israel” and names what is happening to Palestinians as genocide.
We are not guessing. We already see it.
Palestinian journalists are killed, then posthumously smeared.
Palestinian social media is throttled, removed, flagged.
Students protesting genocide are surveilled, expelled, arrested.
Anti-Zionist speech is conflated with antisemitism by design.
Witnesses are treated as threats.
When Kramer calls for “truth control,” the truth he wants controlled is the truth Palestinians are bleeding out in public view. When he praises China’s single narrative as more stable, he is explicitly endorsing a world where one state story dominates and all others are suppressed.
That is why Palestine is central.
“Israel’s” survival strategy right now depends on narrative suppression. The genocide cannot withstand open speech. It requires fog, doubt, delay, deflection, and enforced silence. Kramer’s proposal is the tech translation of that need.
And crucially: he is not proposing this for “Israel”. He is proposing it for the United States. He is arguing that Americans should surrender constitutional protections so that a model perfected on Palestinians can be imported wholesale.
This is not “security.”
This is not “misinformation control.”
This is not “protecting democracy.”
This is authoritarian speech governance developed through settler colonial violence and exported to silence opposition globally.
When your genocide loses the information war, you don’t stop the genocide. You demand control of the information.
The Boomerang
Palestine is the proving ground.
The United States is the destination.
Everything Kramer is advocating follows that arc.
Surveillance first justified on a colonized population.
Speech criminalization first tested on the occupied.
Identity ranking first imposed on the racialized other.
Narrative control first normalized through genocide denial.
Then, once operationally successful, it is repackaged as cyber defense, stability, democracy protection, truth management.
Palestinians live under totalizing control because they are framed as an existential threat. That same logic is now being generalized: dissent itself becomes the threat. Protest becomes destabilization. Naming genocide becomes misinformation. Opposition becomes inauthentic.
What Kramer is really saying is that liberal democracy is inconvenient when it interferes with imperial violence, so liberal protections must be curtailed.
And genocide is the accelerant.
Genocide creates urgency.
Urgency justifies exceptional measures.
Exceptional measures become permanent infrastructure.
The boomerang only works because people are taught not to see Palestine as foundational. If Palestine were centered, this would be obvious. You do not build systems of “truth control” during mass killing unless the truth is the problem.
The Origin Point
This was not a thought experiment. It was a policy vision, delivered calmly on American television.
What makes this moment dangerous is not only the authoritarian impulse it reveals. It is the fact that the systems Kramer describes already exist. They are not future tools waiting to be invented. They are operational infrastructures that have been built, refined, and normalized through the surveillance and domination of Palestinians.
Free speech is incompatible with genocide because genocide depends on silence, doubt, delay, and denial. Witnesses must be neutralized. Narratives must be controlled. Platforms must comply. The First Amendment becomes a liability because it allows truth to circulate.
That is why these proposals surface now.
Palestine is not an example.
Palestine is the origin point.
This is what fascism looks like when it speaks in the language of cybersecurity and platform governance. This is an Israeli intelligence veteran on American business television calling for the US government to silence its own citizens.
The answer is no.
