alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation
The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content
Sounds more like the Pentagon did tell them so they could whitelist the Pentagon trolls from getting banned. Then social media companies got nervous that the troll farm was sloppy and going to get caught by someone not under NDA sooner or later, and a new admin was an opportunity to lobby to get out of this bad PR situation.