After Pack was confirmed for his new post on June 4, following a personal campaign of support by President Donald Trump, Pack fired the technology group's top officials and bipartisan board, an action now being fought in the courts. A federal judge last week ruled in Pack's favour, a decision that plaintiffs will likely appeal.

The move was a victory for a lobbying effort backed by religious freedom advocates displeased with the fund's work and who are often allied with conservative political figures.

This battle revolves around software developed by Falun Gong, the secretive spiritual movement persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party.

Some Falun Gong members have become notable players in American politics. The Epoch Times, a newspaper started by Falun Gong practitioners, has spent millions of dollars on pro-Trump ads — including conspiratorial ones — on Facebook and YouTube, and was even banned by Facebook last year from buying more ads because it had tried to evade advertising rules.

Now, allies of Falun Gong are making a big push for the Open Technology Fund and the State Department to give money to some of the group's software, notably Ultrasurf, developed about a decade ago by a Falun Gong member.

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Their thinking is that if enough Chinese citizens have this software to bypass the Great Firewall of government censorship, the citizens will see news about repression by the Communist Party.

But pieces of circumvention software like Ultrasurf are considered old, and they are not widespread in China, according to cybersecurity experts. Just as important, Chinese patriots or nationalists who have access to reports critical of the Communist Party — including students in the United States — often do not change their views.

"Anyone who has studied China's information control regimes and the evolution of Chinese technology knows that funding a set of circumvention tools is not going to bring down the Chinese Communist Party," said Rebecca MacKinnon, a former Beijing bureau chief for CNN who directs an internet freedom program at the New America Foundation that has received State Department funds before.

Critics also warn that if lobbyists get their way and shift the fund's focus toward solely supporting software like Ultrasurf, it could set back the fight for internet freedom by decades.

Both Democrats and Republicans are worried. Leading Republican senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham wrote to Pack with five other senators expressing their "deep concern" about his staff cuts, saying the moves raised "serious questions about the future of the US Agency for Global Media" under his leadership. Other Republican members of Congress said earlier that they were concerned about the Open Technology Fund.

The bulk of the fund's money goes to incubating new technology that promotes human rights and open societies. The group supports projects such as widely popular encrypted messaging tools like Signal and technology like Pakistan's first 24/7 hotline for confidentially reporting sexual harassment.

The Open Technology Fund also looks to create and train a community of technical experts who can fend off sophisticated cyberattacks against internet freedom.

One of the bedrock principles of the Open Technology Fund is to support open-source technology. Creating and funding tools that are open source means a worldwide collective of programmers can examine the products to ensure they are safe and secure for people in repressed societies to use, cybersecurity experts say.

"Imagine a teenager in a country where being LGBTQ is illegal, and they just want to have a normal social life," said Isabela Bagueros, the executive director of the Tor Project, a nonprofit digital privacy group. "The internet enables that, and if you provide the security for them to do so, it is extremely important as a part of life."

At the heart of lobbying efforts supporting the Falun Gong developers are Michael Horowitz, a Reagan administration budget official, and Katrina Lantos Swett, the daughter of noted human rights champion Tom Lantos

During the time Pack assumed his role, they have worked to advance their agenda.

On June 13, three days after Pack took office, Horowitz was a guest on a talk show hosted by Bannon, who was formerly Trump's chief strategist. Horowitz denounced Liu, who was the chief executive of the technology fund. Liu happened to be tendering her resignation to the board that day, effective in July. Pack fired her on June 17 and dismissed the board.

Swett has been vocal about her displeasure with leadership at the fund because they have shied away from focusing most of the group's funding toward programs like Ultrasurf. She claims it is one of the most effective tools to fight against China's firewall, despite criticism from experts who warn that since Ultrasurf is closed source, there is no way to independently verify its performance or assure end users that they are not being tracked.

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"Open source versus closed source, we don't get hung up on those things," Swett said.

Many internet freedom experts disagree with this approach.

"There is no person in their right mind who should be advocating for closed-source applications," said Nima Fatemi, the founding director of Kandoo, an internet freedom nonprofit. "When we're talking about people inside Iran, China and Russia who are already facing so much oppression, using these tools don't guarantee safety or security; they actually put them in more danger."

The day after Pack assumed office, Swett sent him and officials at the State Department a letter requesting that $US20 million in funding be steered toward firewall circumvention programs like Ultrasurf. The State Department declined to comment.

And one day after Pack fired Liu, officials with the White House's National Security Council received communication from the Lantos Foundation advocating the funding of programs like Ultrasurf.

Swett denied contacting the National Security Council herself, but she said she could not rule out whether someone on her foundation's staff reached out to the organisation.

The New York Times