Information warfare isn’t exclusively directed against foreign enemies. Governments can engage in information warfare against their citizens. You can forget about so-called democracies being shining cities on a hill. They’re all kakistocracies at this point—which is to say government of the worst. They use propaganda and psychological warfare to keep themselves in power. In today’s new era of information psyops, you really don’t need jackbooted police with riot shields to keep the plebs under control. Psychological warfare can “cancel” people, and social media can be used to shame them into silence and submission. Elements of the population can be turned against each other so that the government itself doesn’t have to become directly involved.
BY DOUG CASEY FOR INTERNATIONAL MAN
EDITED BY THE INTERNATIONAL CHRONICLES
CONTROLLING INFORMATION
Information has always been, and still is, the single most important factor in any conflict.
Information, or intelligence in the military vernacular, allows tiny forces to conquer huge forces or to avoid destruction by larger forces. It’s the key to guerrilla warfare, knowing where the enemy is and what he’s thinking. Intelligence allows you to strike when and where the enemy is weakest. It can be a 10-1 force multiplier.
This is why spies and traitors are so important. Spies, who typically gain trust and then betray their victims, are usually morally despicable as individuals; they, justifiably, can expect no mercy if discovered. But they’re critical to successful warfare; a good spy, or a traitor, can be worth many thousands of soldiers.
This is why governments gather huge amounts of data on both potential enemies and their citizens. The USA government and its various praetorian agencies—the CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, and many others—are naturally paranoid, especially of domestic threats (including each other) which they can’t readily identify.
Though both are important, I would rather have good information than good material when it comes to war. But intelligence agencies have become so large, aggressive, and secretive since World War 2 that they’ve become extremely dangerous and counterproductive. They’re now semi-independent powers unto themselves. When it comes to actionable intelligence useful to defend their country, they’ve become Byzantine bureaucracies—very expensive but practically worthless.
INFORMATION AND WAR
It’s been said that truth is the first casualty in warfare. And that’s certainly true in this conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.
It’s clear that the Russians would like to end the war. As they announced early on, they don’t even consider it a war. They consider it a “special military operation.” It was intended to solve a particular problem— Kiev’s attack against the breakaway Donbass provinces, wherein it killed about 20,000 ethnic Russians. Lies on the part of the US, NATO, and the Ukraine are what’s kept this war going—lies to the effect that the Ukraine was winning and that the Russians and Putin are the devil incarnate.
The CIA is supposed to supply the intelligence needed to prosecute this proxy war, but it’s proving to be just as worthless here as it has been in just about every conflict since its creation. They failed to predict the rise of Castro in 1959, and their Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a disaster. Their intelligence in the Vietnam War was abysmal. They had zero idea a revolution was growing in Iran in 1978. Or that the Soviets were about to invade Afghanistan in 1979. They always believed that the Soviet economy was competitive with that of the US and had no idea it would collapse in 1990. They didn’t have a clue about the Twin Towers attack in 2001.
It’s as if the CIA is an evil twin of the Keystone Cops. They squander who knows how many billions per year from their giant campus in McLean, VA, but a lot of it goes to self-promotion in Hollywood movies, black sites, bribes, slush funds, and foreign corruption.
I don’t doubt that the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of them have voluminous files on absolutely everyone of importance in the US Government—information that can be used to pressure individuals to do anything. These agencies amount to a genuine shadow government.
The example of the “Ghost of Kiev” is actually comical. Anybody capable of rational thought could tell that it was made up out of whole cloth. But the average American, hooting and panting while he sported his Ukraine lapel pin, blanked it from his memory within days of its being revealed as a Babylon Bee-esque fantasy.
Just a brief word on the Ukraine: Kiev appears to have lost something like 350,000 dead soldiers, an equal number of serious wounded, and almost all its armor and aircraft. The Russians will win decisively. That should be a non-problem for the US—except for a well-deserved loss of prestige and power. Considering that actual Jacobins control Washington, the average American shouldn’t worry—as long as they don’t touch off World War 3.
THE INFORMATION WAR AGAINST THE CITIZEN
The term propaganda was originated by the Catholic church, adopted by Lenin as agitprop, and perfected as psyops by US covert services with Madison Avenue techniques. Its essence is manipulation through deception and half-truths.
Propaganda is extremely important to authoritarian governments, especially during wars. That’s because war itself is, first and foremost, a matter of psychology. And propaganda controls mass psychology. If you can demoralize an enemy through psyops, the war is 90% won. Economics and logistics are of secondary importance. Tanks, planes, and bullets are just tools.
Sun Tzu believed that the most successful kind of war is the war that you don’t fight. Fighting should be only an afterthought, a formality. That can be accomplished through the effective use of information and propaganda.
The big problem facing the world today is that governments—especially the US government—have become far more powerful than ever before relative to their own societies.
It’s almost at the point where they realize that they can’t fight each other, because war has become way, way too destructive and deadly. The global nomenklatura who meet in places like Davos are, I suspect, much more loyal to each other than they are to their respective countries. The real war is now against the plebs in their own countries. Their own plebs, not a foreign enemy, are the greatest danger to the elite. Therefore, the elite will use the apparatus of the State to keep the plebs confused, disorganized, and docile. A belief in democracy helps keep them that way.
It’s quite clever the way “democracy” has been transformed into what amounts to a new deity or a secular religion. Democracy, a relatively gentle form of mob rule, is essentially just a method of electing rulers. It, not freedom, is worshiped around the world. The plebs are propagandized into believing their votes count and that they elect their rulers. But their rulers, who orchestrate the degraded charade, not only aren’t the best and the brightest (as they’ve convinced the plebs) but the worst and slickest.
You can forget about so-called democracies being shining cities on a hill. They’re all kakistocracies at this point—which is to say government of the worst. They use propaganda and psychological warfare to keep themselves in power.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND INFORMATION WARFARE
In today’s new era of information psyops, you really don’t need jackbooted police with riot shields to keep the plebs under control. Psychological warfare can “cancel” people, and social media can be used to shame them into silence and submission. Elements of the population can be turned against each other so that the government itself doesn’t have to become directly involved.
They use “fact-checkers” to censor and invalidate information. And “influencers” to manipulate beliefs.
So how does one discover the truth with all this deception and manipulation?
George Carlin was right. His prime directive was: Don’t believe anything the government says. But you can go beyond that at this point. Because of the rise of social media, photoshop, artificial intelligence, and woke corporate action, you shouldn’t believe almost anything.
Not believe anything? In a way, this is a good thing. Why? Because not accepting anything at face value might force some people to become critical thinkers.
Most people are not critical thinkers. They believe everything they hear if it comes from an authoritative-sounding source. They’re proof that Einstein was right when he said that, after hydrogen, stupidity was the most common thing in the universe.
Unfortunately, one thing that you can’t believe anymore is that the USA are always the good guys. It’s a pity because there was once a time when the USA was still more or less aligned with its founding virtues. Those principles made it different from and better than any other nation in the world.
At this point, however, it’s become very much like the Athenian empire. Ancient Athens started out as the classical shining city on the hill, the source of all the philosophy, and the epicenter of literature in the ancient world. It once epitomized righteousness and gave democracy a good name.
However, it gradually transformed itself into an evil, destructive, and aggressive empire. In the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed them, the Athenians turned out to be the aggressors against the Spartans.
I fear that the same thing is happening with the US. It’s transformed itself, much the way Athens did, into an aggressive empire. Maybe even more so because it’s bankrupt and, therefore, desperate. The US is unlikely to reform any time soon. Not just because genuine Jacobins have now captured the apparatus of the State but because universities are no longer devoted to thoughtful education and critical thinking. They’re now nothing but indoctrination centers for statism, collectivism, and Neo-Marxism.
In any event, it’s become harder and harder in today’s world to discover the truth. There are a lot of forces trying to hide the truth in order to keep themselves in power. They have money, power, and they’re entrenched. It’s a real problem.
THE BROADER TREND
It’s in the interest of the powers that be to keep the plebs onside. They don’t want the average guy to be too unhappy and angry. It’s important for the plebs to think that the government is their friend, and protector and should be trusted.
Although that facade is starting to crack, that’s why the internet is a big problem for these people. It can spread dissension. My guess is that they’re going to find a way to restrict the internet, probably by making users register. Then they can be controlled more closely and punished for “bad think.” It’s already a fact, if you express the wrong attitudes or thoughts at work or in school.
Where is this trend headed?
Well, as far as I’m concerned, both the COVID hysteria and brain-dead support for the Ukraine regime are just overtures to the main event, namely climate change. They are all psyops based on lies, misinformation, and disinformation. The idea is to keep people’s thoughts in line, as if they were at a political rally or cheering mindlessly at a sports event.
The future will be controlled with things like social credit scores. They’ve been implemented in China and will certainly be implemented here in the West. Your standing as an upright citizen will be dinged if you are known to say the wrong things, have the wrong beliefs, or do things considered anti-social in the opinion of the people in control.
Another example is the growing implementation of 15-minute cities. It’s part of the overall trend to turn citizens back into serfs. In medieval times, all cities, all villages, were 15-minute cities. People had to ask permission from their lord to travel more than 15 minutes from their hut.
It’s disguised as a way of fighting global warming. These trends are very negative from the point of view of personal freedom and classical Western values.
I’m sorry to say that everything is continuing to accelerate in the wrong direction.
DATA AS THE NEW OIL
Data banks know practically everything about everybody. Trillions of microchips are increasingly interconnected. The Internet of Things lives in The Cloud. They’re controlled by algorithms and increasingly by artificial intelligence. They’re so complex that I wonder if they won’t take on a life of their own. If SkyNet exists, it’s bound to be growing larger and more powerful every day.
“They” know everything about us, both as individuals and as groups. It’s very much like what Larry Ellison said 30 years ago, to the effect of “Forget privacy, it doesn’t exist.” And that was decades ago. It’s orders of magnitude more true today.
Most of where we go, who we see, how we feel, what we do and have, say and write, believe and think, might seem trivial and of no value to others. But when thousands or millions of bits of these things are aggregated and analyzed, they form a pattern that “they” can use. And use it they do. Mostly in a subtle more-or-less benign way right now. But conditions can change.
MONETIZING YOUR DATA
I try not to worry about the commercial implications of this data being monetized, per se. Partly because you can’t really avoid it, and most commercial applications probably won’t hurt you.
However, corporations are hand in glove with the State and enforce its laws and regulations in increasingly direct ways, not to mention the fact that most corporate bigwigs, like almost all high government officials, tend to be sociopaths.
Today, everybody is attached to their cell phone. The thing is fun, convenient, and almost necessary. But you should, to the greatest degree possible, stay away from the thing, not just for privacy, but for sanity and mental health. Many people appear umbilically attached to their device, unaware that it’s constantly feeding you propaganda while uploading tons of data to likely adversaries. Every minute, you’re on it. I hate my cell phone and avoid using it. The same goes for electronic vehicles (EVs).
All cars have thousands of computer chips today. The worst offenders, though, are EVs, which are constantly reporting, sending, and receiving everything that happens. Your rate of speed, where you are, and perhaps even what you say in the car, whether you know it, or like it, or not, becomes part of a permanent semi-public record.
I’m a fan of electronic vehicle technology in some ways. They can make sense in cities where they don’t drive long distances and can be charged easily overnight. And in temperate areas so as to avoid depleting the battery. However, the State’s mandates for universal use by 2030 are simply insane, for many reasons that aren’t germane to this conversation.
Generally speaking, you want to stay away from EVs as you do from cell phones. That goes double for Alexa and Siri. At best, they’re frenemies; they’re intrusive, brain-deadening busybodies made to rat you out. The same goes for social media.
People who are constantly on Facebook, Twitter, and the like are not only wasting their lives but voluntarily disclosing everything about their lives. It’s as if they’re purposefully building a case against themselves which can, and will, be used against them.
It’s like you’re adding pages to your FBI, CIA, IRS, and NSA files every day, saving them the trouble of snooping on you. It’s like waving a flag, saying, “Watch me! Investigate me if you’ve got some spare time!”
IMPLICATIONS OF YOUR DATA IN GOVERNMENTS’ AND CORPORATIONS’ HANDS
Corporations work hand in glove with the State, both directly and indirectly. It’s an intrinsic aspect of state capitalism or, to use Mussolini’s word, fascism.
The bottom line is that they know everything about you. If it suits them, “they” could threaten to disclose sensitive data in a private, public, or legal forum. Blackmail? Not when your betters do it. The prospect is intimidating, though. It makes you want to be a good little lamb. Which is the whole idea and why they are only rarely forced to take the gloves off in our sham “democracy.”
Of course, when a formal social credit system is adopted in the West as it has been in China, you won’t be able to do anything without being observed and judged for it.
You won’t be able to do, have, say, or go anywhere without having an algorithm determine whether that was good or bad. The implications to personal freedom are worse than horrible. They’re catastrophic and Orwellian. Truth, justice, and traditional Western values? Fugedaboudit.
Governments are the worst possible custodians of data.
I dislike doing everything—or at least most things—by computer. But you actually have little choice living in the modern world. And it’s getting worse.
As computers become more powerful, they become both more invasive and more necessary to life the way it is. Can you protect your data with biometrics? Well, to some degree, but your biometrics can be captured and used against you. And once they have your biometrics, that’s just more data that they can use to control you. Biometrics are, at best, a double-edged sword that mostly cuts against you.
In warfare, the advantage always goes to the attacker. He’s always looking for ways to ways to subvert and obviate defenses and can strike unexpectedly when he finds a weakness. It’s the same in the computer world; innovation favors the aggressor. The average guy is always going to be on his back foot.
The best thing you can do is use electronic devices as little as you can. And use them as best you can to subvert the enemy, not work with him.
I’ve got to say that the biggest “clear and present danger” right now, to use their lingo, are CBDCs. You won’t be able to buy, sell, own, or transfer anything without going through the central bank’s computer. They have the prospect of reducing us to veritable serfs. Serfs with currently a high standard of living, but serfs nonetheless.
Most people (serfs) in the West will welcome it, however. It will seem so convenient…
SPECULATIVE OPPORTUNITIES?
The real question is: How to profit from the ongoing collapse of Western Civilization. It’s perverse because Western Civ represents just about everything that’s good and worth preserving. That’s what this is really all about, what’s at stake. But we now live in Bizarro World, and lots of people want to destroy it.
Some people would say that you ought to buy the shares of successful computer companies that have phony mottos that make them seem like your friend.
Like, “Don’t be evil,” which you’ll recall years ago used to be Google’s motto. But with what little intellectual honesty they still have, they dropped that because they actually are evil.
They’re not even your frenemy; they’re actually your enemy.
The world is going through a revolution right now that’s as big as the Agricultural Revolution 5,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.
I’m not sure what the exact nature of the current revolution will be because it has so many tentacles and so many aspects—robotics, nanotechnology, biotech, quantum computing, and AI, among them. What’s going on right now will climax in Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity, which will change the whole nature of life itself—unrecognizably and permanently.
