There are some bizarre comments in this thread. Does China have PR people that are paid to just comment on random news articles about them with praises in broken english?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Mao_Dang
Anyways, just one of the strange things about living in China, but they are mostly harmless and uninfluential on English boards (now on Chinese boards...).
How are they worse on the Chinese boards?
Part of the reason is because posting comments on certain web pages is not a highly sophisticated task, so wages can be low for the commenters.
* in 2011
* contracted out to a corporation called Ntrepid, see more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntrepid
* worth $2.76M
* targeted non-US websites to counter-act extremist propaganda
That is hardly representative of the US military rather than pet project, let's stop the fear mongering.
However, the project is probably didn't end in 2011 as you have implied, but is still ongoing since there has been no news that it has been shut down.
Also, this is only what the US government has admitted, and only as a response to the information that was leaked as part of the HB Gary hacking. These types of programs are usually not publicized. It is entirely possible that the program is larger than reported or has grown since 2011, especially in light of the NSA whistle-blower's report about data collection of US citizens.
Furthermore the TLAs (Three Letter Agencies) are known to engage in both foreign and domestic clandestine operations while it would be scandalous for the US Military to operate domestically, so I highly doubt they're operating domestically.
what evidence do you have that the program ended in 2011?
Since most information about these classified programs comes from documents that are unclassified well after the program has ended, all that's available right now are piecemeal reports from hackings, like anonymous's attack on HB Gary, or whistleblowers, like William Binney.
While, it's possible that the reports we have outline the entire program, it's just as likely that they have only revealed part of a larger program.
The function of a military is a large tool, it feels neither love nor hatred but a sense of duty; however the same cannot be said about the TLAs as they operate with impunity.