Discernment and Information Warfare

Psyops and Secrecy

Discernment is essential for maintaining cognitive stability in the past decade considering the explosion of information available on the internet, in social media, and in books. This is because mainstream media and government officials now call anything not in alignment with the official party line misinformation.  Independent ideas used to be labeled conspiracy, meaning illogical and ridiculous.  Now it is criminal enough that  you can be arrested, fired or have your professional license removed for expressing an opinion or protesting.   It is causing many people to feel confused when they struggle to make sense of a world that feels bizarre, divisive and unsafe.

 It’s shocking when your government calls you a terrorist for just expressing an opinion, expecting freedom to choose medical interventions, have a say in what your children are taught in school or be told your work is non-essential and to stay home.  Choosing a belief system and defending it in the face of ostracization (cancellation) is a spiritual challenge too, when we make internal journeys in the search for truth to understand who we are and what we believe in.

For me, knowledge is vital for discerning the truth between mainstream news lies and alternative sources.  I turned off my TV ten years ago, although it still remains a source of news for the un-awakened who only believe what they see and hear on TV.  It’s wise to regularly listen to both sides  side of a story and consider as many perspectives as possible.  Discernment means having an open mind and considering evidence that doesn’t necessarily fit a given belief.  Everything happens for a reason, even if not a good reason, so I try to connect the dots.  When there are gaps and missing connections, I seek the missing puzzle pieces before coming to a conclusion.  Research requires effort and deep diving.

Being open to new ideas and concepts, critical thinking, and independent thinking, rather than just following the crowd, ultimately  leads to wisdom and strength.  Becoming aware of subconscious programming through meditation or self-hypnosis are methods to uncover beliefs that no longer serve you well.  While it feels good to talk to like-minded people, remember that everyone we listen to influences us and we influence them.   Honor uniqueness through discernment and reaching for truth.  It’s is ok to be unique and not everyone’s truth has to be the same.  In fact, we are all unique with our experiences, yet all one in the universe and Source or God.

The US intelligence community (IC) is composed of 18 known intelligence agencies, an unknown number of fully covert organizations, three letter administrative agencies and military branches that rarely make their internal workings public.  The IC acknowledged annual budget allocations exceed $80 billion.  The CIA has a black budget that even Congressional oversight committees do not have access to, estimated to exceed $50 billion. The CIA also has legal authority to siphon off funds from other agencies such as HUD and Homeland Security.  The US defense budget is the largest in the world by a large margin.

They all use misinformation and propaganda to hide what they are doing and influence public opinion.  Policies of compartmentalization, need to know and classification of documents are integrated throughout government.  Even government employees and military officers often don’t know the purpose of what they work on or what others in their own department are doing.  They all must sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).  Advanced technologies have been hidden from the public and frequently confiscated from innovators. 

Many obvious assassinations are called suicides and never investigated.   Millions of people disappear every year.  Autopsies were not allowed on people who died from COVID.  Information is withheld from Congressional Committees who are supposed to oversee agencies.   The CIA is not accountable to anybody, even the president.  The president of the United States does not have the highest clearance level and we don’t know who does or who controls much of government.  Ruling elites behind the scenes are referred to as Deep State.  Influencers who publish information that is different from the government official story are censored from social media platforms.

 In other words, the status of transparent government is long gone. Anyone wanting to know more about what is going on must intensely investigate in order to uncover the information because it is usually hidden in the fine print and details for those who look for it.  Easy, up-front answers are commonly a mixture of truth and lies or not the whole story.  That’s why critical thinking is necessary to sort it all out. 

There have been many lies by the American government to its citizens.  At the end of his administration, President Eisenhower warned about the growing power of the military industrial complex and danger of it going out of control.  The CIA was given powers that exceed that of the president and Congress and was most likely involved in the assignation of JFK.  The Regan administration and National Security Council (NSC) ran a secret weapons program, known as the Iran-Contra Affair.  The “official storyline” about 911 is the real conspiracy.  NOAA, the US Army and  US Navy have been conducting weather modification since the 1940’s but few people know of it.  We have a secret space program, contact with ETs and advanced technology that has been hidden from the public.  All this secrecy and lies have grave consequences on freedom and democracy.  It’s all done in the name of “national security”.  National security means protecting the ruling elite.

Robert W Malone, MD, MS published a very descriptive and well written article on Jan 14th on his rwmalonemd.substack.com newsletter titled 5th Generation Warfare Terms and Tactics.  His work adds significant depth to discernment skills by explaining psyops and advanced methods of information warfare, which he calls 5thGeneration Warfare. Below are excerpts from his essay.

The basic idea behind this term fifth generation warfare is that in the modern era, wars are not fought by armies or guerrillas, but in the minds of common citizens.  5th-Gen warfare is an extension of Asymmetric and Insurgent Warfare strategies and tactics, whereby both conventional and unconventional military tactics and weapons are incorporated and deployed, including exploitation of political, religious and social causes. This new gradient of warfare uses the internet, social media and the 24 hour news cycle to change cognitive biases of individuals and/or organizations. It can be conducted by organized or unorganized (ergo decentralized) groups; it may be led by nation states, non-nation state actors and organizations, non-governmental organizations or even individuals. A key characteristic of 5th Gen warfare is that the nature of the attack is concealed. The goal is to disrupt and defeat opponents by creating new cognitive biases.

The most effective 5th Gen warfare strategies employed by those lacking integrity are not purely based on pushing false narratives, mis or dis information. The most effective strategies mix truth with fiction, and act to increase confusion and disorder in the thoughts and minds of those being targeted, so that they are not sure what or whom to believe.

Some have written that the term 5th-Gen warfare should only be applied to those opponents with fewer resources (asymmetric warfare), but this is not consistent with current practice. Large and small governments, transnational corporations, globalist organizations as well as ordinary citizens have learned how effective the 5th-Gen toolkit is and have utilized 5th-Gen warfare tactics to their advantage.

Just to be clear, the concept of 5th generation warfare as being traditional “warfare” is not accurate. When the term “war” is applied, the concept of a physical war as a battle for territory using kinetic weapons looms large. This is not the case with 5th-Gen warfare.  For my own use, I find the term fifth-generation psyops as being perhaps more accurate for what is happening across the web. But 5th-gen warfare is the term people know, so there it is.

Abbot’s seminal “Handbook of 5GW”, published in 2010 defines 5th generation warfare as:

·         A war of information and perception

·        Targets existing cognitive biases of individuals and organizations

·        Creates new cognitive biases

·        Is different from classical warfare for the following reasons:

o   Focuses on the individual observer / decision maker

o   Is difficult or impossible to attribute

o   Nature of the attack is concealed

The Radio Research Group/grey dynamics has developed an excellent example list of 5th-Gen warfare weapons, tactics, and technologies. I have expanded on that list and added definitions for the lay person.

·        Misinformation (Data Driven)

o   Deep-fakes. Deep-fakes are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deep-fakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content that can more easily deceive - Wiki

·        Cyberattacks

o   Honeypots (not the sexual entrapment kind).  In computer security terms, a cyber honeypot works by baiting a trap for hackers.  It’s a sacrificial computer system that’s intended to attract cyberattacks, like a decoy.  It mimics a target for hackers, and uses their intrusion attempts to gain information about cybercriminals and the way they are operating or to distract them from other targets.

·        Social engineering. Social engineering is any manipulation technique that exploits human behavior and error in order to gain access to sensitive or confidential information. Where some scammers would steal someone’s personal information, social engineers convince their victims to willingly hand over the requested information like usernames and passwords. “Nudge” technology is actually applied social engineering.

·        Social media manipulation (Data Driven)

o   Decentralized and highly non-attributable psychological warfare (memes, fake news).

o   Controlled opposition, disruptors and chaos agents. Historically, these tactics involve a protest movement that is actually being led by government agents. Nearly all governments in history have employed this technique to trick and subdue their adversaries. However, in 5th-Gen warfare, controlled opposition often may come in the form of disruptors and chaos agents. Either “real” people or bots that generate outrageous claims that delegitimize a movement (examples currently may (or may not be); “snake venom in the water” or “everyone is going to die who took the vaccine within two years”. Another tactic is placing agents of chaos whose job is to basically disrupt organizations and events. This may also come in the form of “reporters” who assert fake or highly exaggerated news stories, and who most likely are funded by the opposition. “Undermine the order from the shadows " is the tactic here.

·        Mass surveillance

o   Open-source intelligence

§  Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (covert and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence.

o   Tracking surveillance software such as COVID trackers and cell phone keyword searches.

o   Commercially available Social media analytics.

o   The use of publicly available raw data and surveys to sway public opinion by use of memes, essays and social media posts.

o   Grey and dark market Data Sets (a grey market or dark market data set is the trading of information through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor).

o   Commercially available Satellite / SA imagery

o   Commercially available Electromagnetic intelligence

o   Cryptographic backdoors (this is any method that allows an entity to bypass encryption and gain access to a system).

·        Electronic warfare, with the rapid reduction in cost and availability thereof

o   Open source encryption/ DeFi (decentralized finance)

o   “Community technology (Community technology is the practice of synergizing the efforts of individuals, community technology centers and national organizations with federal policy initiatives around broadband, information access, education, and economic development” -Wiki)

o   Low-cost Radios

·        Traditional protest tools combined with 5th-gen warfare. An example would be a large rally combined with social media tools to create synergy or opposition for a movement.

·        The synergistic use of mixed media to build excitement or to create outrage.

Asymmetric warfare is a conflict in which the opponents' resources are uneven. When it is the people against a government or governmental policy, the people have numbers behind them, but typically fewer technology, financial, and physical assets (vehicles, kinetic weapons, intelligence gathering capabilities). Late 20th (Viet Nam, for example) and current 21st century (Afghanistan et al) history of warfare clearly demonstrates that by coordinating their efforts, very effective asymmetric battlefield campaigns can be deployed.

Another recent example involves shifting the vaccine narrative to acknowledge that post-COVID vaccination myocarditis occurs in athletes and children. In the case of this example, when a new victim is identified, posts are shared both openly and via semi-private direct message to influencers, and the word spreads very quickly. These posts reach not only those who already believe that there is a problem, but those who are unaware. This is why social media has taken to extreme censorship over such posts and even direct messaging (and as now verified by many). Unfortunately, at the operational heart of these anti-free speech policies we often find agents of the US government.