The nation and also which policies represent them in the seats of power but what happens if these forums for public debate get censored what happens when key topics become off limits when certain political narratives can no longer be challenged or discussed openly if information is restricted then what
Information informs the voters when they choose their representatives and most importantly who is left in control of the flow of information and which side of the political system do their interests serve these are crucial questions for the United States that the country needs to be facing right now
The questions that are coming to the Forefront as we learned about the so-called weaponization of government are really around this now on the information front we saw for example from the Twitter files how the FBI was using its connections with Twitter and Facebook to help Crush legitimate information on covid-19
Crucial to People’s Health and even on political topics like Hunter Biden’s laptop that could have altered the outcome of an election but as anything really changed or the risks to public information actually becoming a lot bigger than they were even before well this is where the Pentagon is now coming into Focus The
Intercept revealed something interesting a document from February 23rd or sorry 2023 released by the U.S Special Operations Command and it detailed how the elite War fighters of the United States are looking into new tools for psychological warfare operations in particular it seems they want to use deep fake videos for military operations
Now deep fakes are a type of fake but very realistic looking video where people’s faces can be superimposed on others they can make public figures appear to say things they never said they can be used to frame people for crimes or for scandals that they had no part in
And which types of tools the Pentagon has its arsenals for this this you know things to counter disinformation or to create disinformation of its own really we still don’t really know we do now however that they have military units dedicated to psychological warfare operations look last year in fact there was a military
Recruitment video that was turning some heads mainly because it was so weird it was from the US Army’s fourth psychological operations group under Special Operations Command they’re described by Special Operations Command with this psyop forces are masters of influence the core of information Warfare we conduct influence activities to Target
Psychological vulnerabilities and create or intensify fissures confusion and doubt and adversary organizations we use all available means of dissemination from sensitive to height and high tech to low Tech to no-tech and methods from overt to clandestine to deception this was the video they released last year let me show you
Sarah is another very important phase of warfare it has as its Target not the body but the mind of the enemy the target psychological warfare it is words and ideas ammunition used by fireworks foreign And at the same time is expected and encouraged to study foreign languages and the social sciences such as history economics and sociology he must have a broad and sympathetic understanding of All Phases of Human Experience now look it should be clear that war is no longer what it used to be we’re no
Longer in this age like uh you know conventional guns and bombs and tanks we’re in an age now of Total War whole of nation Warfare unrestricted Warfare the short of War operations that push conflicts to the very boundaries of what would illicit conventional military response but never cross that line
Some call it fifth generation Warfare It’s the new way of fighting that bypasses the guns and tanks and bombs and goes straight to the hearts and minds of a Target population America’s adversaries are also involved in this domain the Chinese Communist party for example they have an entire military system adopted into their
Military code dedicated to this they call it the three warfarers and that includes media Warfare to control Outlets of information legal Warfare to manipulate international law as a weapon of war and psychological warfare to control how people perceive information and the United States our military is likewise responding to this and similar
Operations from other nations and the systems mobilized in this war are not limited to the Pentagon it’s a whole of society operation that includes government branches like the FBI the state department and many many others and while it’s debatably necessary there are some valid concerns over you know
What what it means for the government to have legal authority to manipulate information and public perception the state department actually wrote in June of 2023 about its shared responsibility to fight disinformation and it claimed this it said Russia has operationalized the concept of Perpetual adversarial competition in the information environment by encouraging
The development of a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem and it claims that this ecosystem flows into nearly every topic that it includes everything from human rights to Environmental Policy to assassinations and civilian killing bombing campaigns are fair Targets in Russia’s malign Playbook so does the state department or even the
Pentagon for that matter then have the authority to counter alleged Russian narratives in nearly every single topic while the state department page quotes President Joe Biden from his inaugural address noting that this responsibility is not even limited to just the government it’s everyone let me show you Biden said back then
And each of us has a duty and a responsibility as Citizens As Americans and especially as Leaders leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation to defend the truth and defeat the lies this raises a deeper question if branches of our own government are
Given the power to regulate truth and lies like Biden suggested what happens if a group of individuals creates false information and then weaponizes the system created for that to instead Crush truth and if these programs are about fighting foreign threats of disinformation can a faction falsely create evidence to claim there’s
A foreign threat and then mobilize all these powers for their own gain we saw this happen in the United States we saw this remember the Pentagon was involved in the 2020 elections for example it’s involvement in the 2020 elections was motivated by the fake information spread by the DNC in the Obama intelligence
Community that Trump had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 elections fake information was used as a dog whistle to activate the Pentagon Time Magazine actually reported in September of 2020 that the pentagon’s Cyber command and the NSA the National Security Association formed a new unit called the election Security Group and
It noted as a result of the new group’s findings the Department of Homeland Security has already hardened election infrastructure security and the FBI is better positioned to counter foreign trolls on social media platforms fighting against information that they deemed to be disinformation it seems and look we’ve unfortunately learned that
Since then that the FBI was not exactly free from political interest itself in fact we recently learned from the Durham report that the agency the FBI allowed fake information that undermined former president Donald Trump to interfere in three American elections again the trump-russia claims it interfered in 2016-2018 and in 2020.
And for the FBI this has been an unfortunate pattern we learned from the Twitter files with Elon Musk how the agency the FBI was using its relationships with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to crush legitimate stories and the Pentagon was involved with some of this as well in particular when it
Came to coronavirus disinformation the Department of Defense actually claimed they said this in April of 2020 this under the rubric of not wasting a good crisis Russia China and others are using the coronavirus pandemic to spread disinformation to further their goals and in response the Pentagon declared it
Was working with the state department and others to quote curb this trend and we’ve since learned that many stories on covid-19 that were curved let’s say they were censored turned out to have been true in many cases The Establishment censored truth and they promoted lies this raises some very important questions for us
Last year the Pentagon announced it was conducting a sweeping audit of how it conducts information Warfare including with its use of fake profiles on social media websites you get that the Pentagon has fake profiles fake users on social media many of these programs go back over a decade and have steadily gotten
Actually a lot more powerful in 2016 it was revealed to the public how the Pentagon was partnered with Allied Nations to create fake news and false Flags even before that in 2011 it was revealed that the Pentagon was establishing what Wired Magazine called a social media propaganda machine in 2019
Rolling Stone revealed the Pentagon wasn’t just looking to influence online discussions but they were also working directly to influence news outlets news coverage in the United States now the excuse that’s used for these types of operations is that they’re designed to fight foreign disinformation and look while that is a legitimate
Concern I’ve written a lot about it actually what happens when our own agencies censor news and create fake information of Their Own how can they ensure it does not impact us domestically claim to go after foreign threats while they may respond to foreign narratives Outlets like Twitter and Facebook they’re not limited
By national borders it is a global forum and if you’re putting fake information on a global forum what’s going to happen it’s because of this that the powers that control information or even for the Pentagon to create fake information they inevitably become domestic and what does it mean for us as well
When the pentagon’s disinformation is influencing the opinions of American citizens need to go to the polls and cast their votes folks stay tuned after the break will be speaking with Dan Schneider he’s vice president of the media Research Center about how conservatives and Christians are getting labeled as terrorists
