“[In] the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twentyfour hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.” - George Orwell, 1984 pg 135
George Orwell wrote those words in the year 1949. He wrote them before the internet. He wrote them before cell phones. He wrote them before GPS. He wrote them before satellites. He wrote them before Amazon Alexa. He wrote them before anyone had heard of Edward Snowden or the NSA. He wrote them before anyone could possibly know how far mass media and mass monitoring could really go. Yet he understood the insight. A population that can be spoken to at all times with a consistent message combined with a population that could be watched all the time was a population that could be mind controlled and oppressed as no other population had been mind controlled and oppressed in the history of man.
Edward Snowden shared this fear when he tried to blow the whistle on all this surveillance. He said, "We are building the greatest tool for oppression the world has ever known."
So technology has created something with the potential of a new evil the world has never seen before.
“Potential?”
Is technology a tool that might be used or one that is already being used?
The answer is that it is a tool already being used. The intelligence community has long been involved in the media.
The involvement of the intelligence community in the media is as old as there was an intelligence community. Allen Dulles sought to establish a recruiting‑and‑cover capability within prestigious journalistic institutions. In addition, the CIA had an internal training program to train agents to be journalists and speak the same language. In addition, the CIA worked to cultivate relationships with journalists that they would use at opportune times. In the early 1980s, former CIA officer, Ralph McGehee gave a detailed explanation to reporters of how the CIA would manipulate the news by planting false stories with trusted reporters in the press. He stated that it was not uncommon for these reports to then spread to other news sources (that would cite the original newspaper or even pretend it was their own work). And the CIA also used pressure and influence with the management within major news organizations. In “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”, author Tim Weiner writes that CIA Director Allen Dulles, “kept in close touch” with the management of The New York Times and The Washington Post. “He could pick up the phone and edit a breaking story, make sure an irritating foreign correspondent was yanked from the field, or hire the services of men such as Time’s Berlin bureau chief and Newsweek’s man in Tokyo.”
In addition to this, the CIA actually planted journalists within these organizations. In 1977, Rolling Stone published a story stating that, “more than 400 American journalists…have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency…” and that some of these individuals were, “full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists…” Much of this effort may have been under the CIA project known as Operation Mockingbird, a large-scale program of the CIA that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to Deborah Davis, the author of Katharine the Great, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
Rolling Stone Magazine wrote on this in 1977,
“Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services — from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”
And such was the state when legacy mainstream media was the only media. But as many transitioned from getting their news from legacy mainstream sources like the nightly news or the daily newspaper to getting their news online, the intelligence community had to pivot. News became increasingly decentralized. Narratives seemingly would become much more difficult to control. As social media became popular, billions of users around the world joined Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. How could the intelligence community shape narratives with so many users?
The interesting thing is that it appears the intelligence community viewed the digital revolution as an opportunity not a threat. From the earliest days of the internet, the CIA and NSA understood that it would be a gold mine for data collection and surveillance. And they would know because, the internet itself was created via the efforts of intelligence. Although, as I have mentioned in the past, the earliest internet protocols were developed at CERN, in many says DARPA is responsible for the internet as we know it. In the 1970s, DARPA, the agency responsible for developing emerging technologies for military, intelligence, and national security purposes, linked four supercomputers to handle massive data transfers. It handed the operations off to the National Science Foundation (NSF) which spread the network across universities and then to the public. This is how the World Wide Web was first established.
And so when the internet started to become popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the intelligence community seems to have been ready. Although courts and public pressure prevented the intelligence community from directly spying on the American people, a work around was created: private corporations. The CIA’s In-Q-Tel provided the first outside funding to Palantir Technologies, a company that specializes in big data analytics (In-Q-Tel’s stake in Palantir would not be publicly reported until mid-2006). Palantir would provide the intelligence community with the tools to analyze large amounts of data that would be harvested from the internet. But it didn’t provide the data itself and this data was ruled by courts to be protected by the fourth Amendment. But once again, the work around of “private institutions” helped avoid the pesky privacy laws.
By the mid 1990s, the intelligence community created a seed funding operation for the most promising supercomputing efforts within the academic world. They funded computer scientists through a project called the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS). This project wasn’t classified but it was highly compartmentalized and it was managed for the CIA and the NSA. Some of the earliest grants funded research by two promising graduate students: Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The founders of Google. Page and Brin had been making rapid advances in web-page ranking, as well as tracking user queries and the CIA and the NSA swept in to help. And throuhgout the process, Sergey Brin reported regularly and directly to two people who were not on staff at Stanford: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser. According to Nafeez Ahmed writing on Google’s founding, both were representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research program on information security and data-mining. As Ahmed states, “From inception…Google was incubated, nurtured and financed by interests that were directly affiliated or closely aligned with the US military intelligence community…”
The intelligence community also has strange connections to plenty of other tech companies and social media apps but just taking Google alone should reveal just how much data might be available. The amount of data Google has gathered from people around the world is breathtaking. Google not only gathered information on searches but through its various divisions and applications (including Google Adwords, Google Maps, Chrome Browsers, Android phones, etc) Google knows where you are, what you are doing, often what you are thinking, what you are saying, and who you are talking to. In many ways, Google knows you better than you. If I asked you what you were doing two years ago at 3pm, you probably would not be able to remember. But Google could tell you. Google knows where you were, what you searched for that afternoon, and who you met with.
And so does the CIA and NSA. Because there is no law protecting the CIA from “buying” such data from Google. And in fact, we know that the CIA and other members of the intelligence community ARE buying such data from private firms including (but not limited to) Google.
Recently, a shocking report was declassified. A once-secret, report prepared for Biden's Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, has revealed how remarkably invasive the spying program of the intelligence community is. The report had been previously marked "secret" – thus it was a crime to discuss it - ensuring that there would be no public debate or vote. The report details how U.S. security state agencies such as the CIA and NSA are purchasing large cashes of data detailing the intricate and intimate activities of American citizens. This data is so personal that it would be certainly prohibited for the CIA or NSA to collect without search warrant. Yet because the organizations collecting the data are “private” and the data is "publicly available information" the legal and constitutional barriers are removed. Some of the data is anonymized but the report makes clear that the intelligence community can use other data to de-anonymize it. They can keep all your data forever. Everything you do. Everywhere you go. Everyone you talk to. Every search. Every click.
Many of the companies selling this data are in business because of the intelligence community. In other words, they would not exist if it was not for the CIA and the NSA buying their data.
So let’s review the process. The government seed funded “private” tech companies that could organize and collect all the data. They then created a market for “private” companies to sell this data. Yet because the whole process was (in theory) “private” the intelligence community was able to ignore congress, the will of the people, and the constitution. They used our tax money to create a system none of us wanted or would have approved.
Snowden remarked, "We are building the greatest tool for oppression the world has ever known." But in fact that needs to be changed to the past tense. We have already built it. And used it. And continue to use it.
Some have challenged me saying that just collecting data is not that bad. Who will it hurt but the criminal? The answer to this should be obvious. If someone showed up from the FBI and stated that they would follow you around and take notes on you all the time and file them in a permanent folder for the rest of your life, would that be oppressive? What if they wanted to follow your teenage daughter? Watching alone is oppressive.
But there also creates the possibility for greater oppression. Everyone goes through life imperfectly. To err is human. We all sin. We all say things that we didn’t think out. We all say things that we would take back later. We all mutter things we don’t mean. We all do things that we regret. We all have done things we are embarrassed by. But what if every thought, every utterance, every action, every meeting, every decision, was recorded and then used against us. “Why did you say this on such and such day?” “Why did you meet with so and so on such and such day?” “Why did you say that about your mother in law?” “Why did you look at that website?” “Why did you laugh at that joke?” “Why did you like that post?” “Why did you retweet that?” We all have these things we have done that could warrant those sorts of questions. And certain ones could make our lives difficult, endanger our closest relationships, our jobs, our reputations, and our friendships. And right now, much of that is somewhere in a government server.
But it can also be more than embarrassment. “Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime.”" are words attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police. His point was that if you look hard enough, everyone has committed a crime. Everyone has made a mistake on taxes. Everyone has made a mistake on expense reports. Everyone has borrowed log in information. Everyone has made traffic violations. And seemingly small crimes (such as trespassing) prosecuted by a zealous prosecutor and adjudicated by the wrong judge, can lead to a major life disruption, reputational damage, and hefty legal expenses.
In theory, everyone has committed a crime. And the government, if they had a perfect record of everything everyone ever did, could, if they wished, could find a crime for everyone. They could inflate the charges (e.g. Made a mistake on your taxes? Intentional tax fraud and years in prison!). Even if you were able to beat the charges, the stress, reputational damage, and cost would make the process incredibly painful and stressful.
So let’s say that you start to complain online about your government. The next day you get a visit from the IRS, they say that you are being investigated for tax fraud. They point to something you claimed on a tax form from three years ago. As they show you the paperwork you remember how you had been confused by that line and had meant to double check it before submitting but did it anyway. You start sweating. They mention that tax fraud is a serious charge that might come with prison time. On the way out, they say, “I am sure the investigation won’t show anything. You like the government right?” You quickly respond, yes. Then you go to your Twitter account and delete every post mildly critical of the government. Still nervous, you tweet out, “Back the Blue!” The IRS then leaves you alone. You tell all your friends about what happened. The word gets out.
But perhaps you say that you have never done anything embarrassing and are confident that you have never committed a crime? Why should you care? Do you have anyone you love? A brother? A parent? An adult child? What if the scenario above was not about your own tax fraud but that of your dad? Or your son?
Or, what if the laws change such that you in good conscience can no longer follow them? What if, for example, a state passes a law that says that parents who don't 'affirm' their children's gender are abusive (as a bill in California is currently seeking to do)? What if your child says they are considering transition and you know that your phone is listening to you as you answer. And if you discourage it or pause in anyway, you know that you are committing a crime that might get that child taken from you? How do you respond?
This is a system that cannot help but be abused. It is already being abused. And it will certainly become more abusive. When no conversation is private. When no thought is private. When everything is recorded. When everything can be made public. When every crime can be seen and prosecuted. We will live in the most oppressive society in history.
And we are there. There are really no restraints other than the consciences of those in power. Zero checks. Zero balances.
This by itself is a giant control of the population’s behavior. The more people realize the state of surveillance, the more behaviors will change. Conversations will become more guarded. More careful. More bland. Less challenging of the powers. Less willing to take risks.
In addition to this sort of negative control - based on the ever present threat of life’s destruction for thought crimes - modern technology allows the more traditional forms of mind control to be put on steroids.
Government bots can spread information about narratives they want to put out on Twitter and Facebook. News stories can not only be planted by operatives in the media, they can be made to trend so that more people see them. Dissenting stories can be demonetized, censored, and shadowbanned. And this too is happening. In 2022, after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he allowed a reporter to look at the events surrounding the 2020 Presidential election. The findings showed close coordination between the intelligence community and Twitter employees. In one report, The Free Press’s Michael Shellenberger provided evidence suggesting that the FBI’s and the Department of Homeland Security’s many warnings to Twitter about foreign election interference led the company to suppress a story that had the potential of changing the presidential race: the Hunter Biden laptop story. The revelations showed a tight relationship with social media platforms and the US government. And demonstrated a successful effort to censor completely lawful speech.
But in addition to simply having a close relationship, the Twitter files also showed that the intelligence community had “former” employees in key positions within Twitter including a high level lawyer who appeared to be blocking the effort of the Twitter Files! And Twitter is not alone. A 2022 report by Mint Press showed that Facebook and other social media companies also had “former” intelligence community members at high level positions within the content moderation departments.
So it is clear that the intelligence community is influencing from outside and potentially from inside the major social media companies to control narratives and speech. And the intelligence community’s long history of ethically and legally questionable (at best) actions should make this a terrifying truth for us. The efforts of the CIA to shape public opinion and behaviors are notorious. In the 1970s, the CIA was forced to admit to a project called MK ULTRA. This program sought to use psychedelic drugs to control the minds of subjects. The idea was to create unwilling agents that could kill, spy, or say what the agency wished. The CIA admitted to testing this on unwilling human subjects leading to at least one death. As bad as their admissions were, independent researchers have shown that the program was much more extensive than the CIA admitted and went on much longer than the CIA admits.
The efforts of MK ULTRA were conducted on American citizens but the CIA’s mind control efforts outside the USA are also extensive. The CIA is notorious for “Color Revolutions” in countries where they build support for overthrowing regimes the CIA doesn’t want by a combination of distraction, deception, and propaganda. The CIA has been linked to revolutions and civil wars in so many countries that it is hard to count. These efforts include both successful and unsuccessful efforts to effect regime change countries like Iran, South Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Argentinian, Panama and many others. All of these involved some sort of mass propaganda and mind control techniques of the population but let’s take a moment to review two examples that show just how wild U.S. Intelligence propaganda efforts will go.
In 1954, U.S. intelligence sought to overthrow the regime in Guatemala. In order to do this, the CIA planted fake news stories in the Guatemalan media. They leaked that a plot was underway to depose the Guatemalan president, Jacobo Árbenz. Imaginary uprisings were broadcast by the CIA on its radio program in Guatemala to give the people a sense that there was a popular outcry to remove Árbenz. In addition, and bizarrely, declassified documents show that the CIA’s plot even included efforts to confuses and distract the population with wild stories including UFOs flying over Guatemala, the birth of sextuplets in rural Guatemala, and a decree by Arbenz that he was “forcing all Catholic troops to join a new church that worshipped [Joseph] Stalin!”
Much more recently, in 2014, the U.S. intelligence apparatus focused on Ukraine. And although 60 years separated it from the regime change effort in Guatemala, the tactics have definite parallels. Protests real and imagined were spread throughout the country. Then armed protesters in Maidan Square seized the government buildings and demanded a change of government and constitution. Western media made it clear to the population of Ukraine that US and European leaders championed the "masked militants." "America is with you," Senator John McCain told demonstrators. When the government tried to stop the militants, the Western media denounced the elected government for its crackdown. And when an unelected government was in place, the Western media made it clear that US and European leaders championed the unelected government's use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls. Recordings released years later show US officials haggling with each other over who would make up the new Ukrainian government. Throughout it all, the use of mass media and propaganda kept the Ukrainian people from organizing an effective response.
But now the US intelligence community now seems just as focused on activities on American soil. Ever since September 11, 2001, the threat of terror has allowed the federal government to use fear to justify the privacy violations we have seen above but a fear that once focused on foreign nationals with full of religious hate for freedom loving Americans has now shifted to the very Americans that once supported such efforts. In May of 2023, President Joe Biden denounced white supremacist hate groups as the “most dangerous terrorist threat” to the nation. The definition of the terms “white supremacist” or “hate group” are important. It may be imagined that the terms are limited to members of the KKK or neo-Nazi groups but that would be wrong. Many on the left have stated that anyone who supported Trump (even latinos) is a white supremacist. The New Yorker, a fairly mainstream periodical, called Trump’s term in office the “White-Power Presidency”. And the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is cited by mainstream media and government officials as an authority on who counts as white supremacists and what constitutes a “hate group”. And the SPLC list does include the KKK and actual Nazis. But they also list a variety of run of the mill conservative organizations. The American Family Association, a group created to promote decency on TV is listed as a hate group. Family Research Council, an organization created to promote Christian traditional values, is considered a hate group. The American College of Pediatricians, an organization of child advocates that happen to oppose gay adoption as a hate group. Taking the SPLC definition of hate group, organizations with basic traditional values (values that almost everyone held just 20 years ago) are now, according to Biden, the most dangerous terrorist threat to the nation.
And the intelligence community, citing the SPLC, is even started focusing on the largest Christian denomination in America as a hate group. Thanks to a whistleblower, the public came to know about a now rescinded memo titled, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” The memo characterized radical-traditional Catholics or “RTCs” by “the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology." The memo suggested that the FBI should infiltrate “places of worship.” And work on “the development of sources.”
Let’s stop there are review where we have come. The US Intelligence community has sought to control and manipulate US minds using mass media from the earliest days. The US intelligence community used the mass media to overthrow numerous regimes throughout the world. The US intelligence community has shown a wild lack of ethics and care as they have sought to get better at mind control. As the digital revolution happened, whatever powers the intelligence community had thanks to agents and helpers at Newspapers and Television stations became almost infinitely greater. They developed not only the ability to communicate with the population and control narratives (via social media censoring and highlighting of stories) but also the ability to watch everything we do and now has (at least the potential) to pressure every citizen in the United States with ruin if they do not bow to their power. And this entire apparatus is now pointed at mainstream citizens with mainstream views including organizations pushing for traditional values, traditional Catholics, and possibly everyone who voted for Donald Trump.
This is a frightening shift in human existence. All supported and enabled by technology.
And the dangers are not limited to US Intelligence. Other intelligence organizations such as Israel, China, and Russia certainly employ similar tactics.
Sometimes the source of the propaganda is unclear. It could be coming from one of these groups or it could be simply an organic movement but the use of technology brings it into the homes of almost every American. Take for example the resent craze of gender ideology. Researcher, Abigail Shrier, writes in “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” that,
“In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries. In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments. In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls.”
Shrier attributes this change not to increasing acceptance (because older people who presumably would have been forced to stay closeted until now are not seeing a similar increase) but to technology and mass media. She talks about how various popular Youtubers have inspired countless people to start questioning the gender they were assigned at birth and to begin exploring gender transition.
That is just one tech inspired craze. But there are so many others. Think of the body positivity movement. Various Reddit campaigns combined with other social media efforts and big brands like Dove changed the conversation around body weight to the point where it is now controversial to lose weight. The #MeToo campaign changed workplace dynamics in multiple industries especially Hollywood and made it so once mainstream behavior is considered a fireable offense. The original gay marriage effort was driven by online memes and Facebook groups. And in the case of both Barak Obama and Donald Trump, they drove their entire campaign using social media all the way to the White House. Technology, like it or not, is now able to shape our view of the world.
Technology is able to shape our thoughts. It is able to shape our culture. It is able to control our minds.
Sources
Jeff Nesbitt, “Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance” https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance, 2017.
Whitney Webb’s “One Nation Under Blackmail – Vol. 2”. Trine Day. Kindle Edition.
Carl Bernstein, “THE CIA AND THE MEDIA”, Rolling Stone, 1977.
Glenn Greenwalk, “REVEALED: The CIA and NSA Are Purchasing Sweeping Dossiers on U.S. Citizens which the Constitution Bars Them From Collecting on Their Own”, 2023.
Nafeez Ahmed “How the CIA made Google” 2015.
What is surprising is to see it unfolds in real time.
Last episode is around the reckonning adound covid policies. Peter Hotez play a perfect lightning rod role....
https://spearoflugh.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-the-lightning-rod-5e62425a7d05