Baseline Cognitive Warfare

Mind control, somatic intuition, and the Flat Earth problem.

As a teenager, I had a mentor who used unethical means to indoctrinate me into an unworkable worldview. He fed me psychedelic drugs and convinced me that we were more enlightened than everyone else. Our acquaintance ended abruptly when he fled a police investigation into his illicit activities. You can watch a podcast about this or read more about it here.

Later, trying to make sense of things, I came to understand that my mentor had been applying techniques of persuasion to our interactions that were similar to the techniques used by high-demand groups, which is to say cults. Researching these techniques quickly revealed that our government had been running mind control programs since the end of the Second World War.

Although it sounds like bad science fiction, it is a matter of historical record that the CIA used hypnotism to train mind-controlled assassins. A 1954 MKULTRA document, MORI ID 190691, documents the program. Here's some of what it says:

Miss [redacted] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun at [redacted] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence.

I used an image of this document as the basis for AI art. The implications of the information it contains are as massive as they are unsettling. Along these lines, Jose Degado famously stopped a charging bull using a radio signal sent to a brain implant in 1965. If mind-controlled assassins were a thing in 1954 and remote control brain implants were a thing in 1965, imagine what's possible today.

Modern Mind Control

One of the highest profile cases of mind control in recent memory is Keith Raniere's NXIVM cult. Raniere, who is currently serving a 120 year prison sentence, took a skill set he developed doing multilevel marketing schemes and applied this to psychologically controlling a close-knit group of followers. Some of these followers were forced to receive a brand of Raniere's initials on their pubic area. From the Daily Beast:

Raniere didn’t just torment, torture and psychologically warp those in his orbit; he went one step further by turning his victims into victimizers. Be it with regard to the Salzmans or Mack, Raniere used his "curriculum" to prey upon people's insecurities, shortcomings and fears, breaking them down and then building them back up in his perverted image. ... For all his talk about morality, ethics, responsibility and trust, he cared only about twisting people into knots and making himself the sole (and always faultless) sage who could deliver them from their failings. ... Raniere coerced every woman in his orbit to do his bidding—including creating DOS, the secret sorority in which the branding, sex abuse and mistreatment occurred (all facilitated by the demand that participants, known as "slaves," hand over damning "collateral" to their "masters," so they could be perpetually blackmailed).

The collateral mentioned above was one of the more insidious parts of Raniere's operation. NXIVM members that were part of the DOS sorority had to hand potentially damaging information like naked pictures over to their masters, who then perpetually threatened to release this information in the event of non-compliance with NXIVM directives. This use of blackmail to secure compliance is reminiscent of what intelligence agencies have always done. And sexual blackmail has been currency in politics forever.

Although Raniere did horrible things, he was fortunately not all that ambitious. His cult was far smaller than the Jim Jones People's Temple. He was a sex offender, but nowhere near as prolific an offender as Jeffrey Epstein. It's uncomfortable to consider what might've happened if Raniere had aimed higher.

Most mind control programs in the modern era are more subtle. Subtle and diffuse. Yes, there are probably more advanced versions of the hypnotized MKULTRA assassins awaiting instructions somewhere. And there are definitely religious cults using mind control to perpetrate slavery and sex crimes. But these things are exceptional, and they take place in dark corners of society, far from public view.

The mind control programs operating out in the open are much more concerning. From my perspective, the entire covid response looked like mass mind control. First, governments lied about the virus and its origins while intentionally making people more afraid than they would've been otherwise. The powers that be lied so successfully that whole populations internalized the lies and used them to justify harming the reputations and livelihoods of anyone opposed to the insane policies imposed upon us. The policies themselves isolated people from each other, both physically and psychologically, while the economy was looted by consolidated interests.

Cognitive Warfare

A Guardian piece titled 'The professor trying to protect our private thoughts from technology' captured my attention recently. It was about Prof Nita Farahany's new book The Battle for Your Brain, which deals with the ethics of emerging technologies. Here's some of what the article says:

But aside from the many benefits, there are clear threats around political indoctrination and interference, workplace or police surveillance, brain fingerprinting, the right to have thoughts, good or bad, the implications for the role of "intent" in the justice system, and so on. ... Farahany, who served on Barack Obama's commission for the study of bioethical issues, believes that advances in neurotechnology mean that intrusions through the door of brain privacy, whether by way of military programs or by way of well-funded research labs at big tech companies, are at hand via brain-to-computer innovations like wearable tech.

The Guardian piece references a 2020 report titled 'Cognitive Warfare' by François du Cluzel, a project manager at the Nato Act Innovation Hub. Note that you have to scroll down to find the report. Here's a quote:

Cognitive warfare has universal reach, from the individual to states and multinational organisations. It feeds on the techniques of disinformation and propaganda aimed at psychologically exhausting the receptors of information. Everyone contributes to it, to varying degrees, consciously or sub consciously and it provides invaluable knowledge on society, especially open societies, such as those in the West. This knowledge can then be easily weaponised.

The report describes the human domain as the sixth domain of conflict, after air, land, sea, space and cyber. Core capabilities of information warfare, from which cognitive warfare arises, "include electronic warfare, computer network operations, PsyOps, military deception, and operational security." But operating in the cognitive space is somewhat different from information warfare. "Cognitive Warfare degrades the capacity to know, produce or thwart knowledge. ... The goal is not to attack what individuals think but rather the way they think."

This all sounds very dystopian. And evidence of cognitive warfare is already evident throughout society. The big tech firms are definitely degrading our capacities for knowledge and exhausting our receptors of information. And they're barely getting started.

I would even go so far as to classify the saturation of our environment with contaminants that impair thinking an act of cognitive warfare, in line with other widespread practices that dumb us down and make us easier to control. Authors like Nita Farahany rightly warn of a future when more and more devices interface directly with more and more brains. But I wonder about the wisdom in wrestling with the ethics of future tech when the ethics governing the use of present tech are virtually nonexistent.

Consider privacy. Our lives are already radically transparent to government agencies and big companies. The US doesn't have a legal system capable of protecting the privacy of individuals, nor is it ever likely to. Maybe things will drastically change to begin protecting brain privacy. Maybe that's where we'll draw the line.

I've looked into brain computer interface (BCI) technology extensively in researching treatments for the headache disorder I live with. The commercially available tech is primitive and the latest brain implants don't look much better. Although there have been some success stories where BCIs helped provide motor function to the disabled, I feel like it'll be 20 years before people are using brain chips to make phone calls or do other routine stuff.

At the same time, it's likely that the military and its contractors have much more advanced neural interface tech. And they definitely have weapons that can impair cognition remotely. The LRAD, given to police departments across the country by the pentagon, is perhaps the most obnoxious of these. It's difficult to think when you're being blasted with an acoustic weapon.

Whether we like it or not, cognitive warfare is increasingly a feature of our information environment. Everywhere we turn, there are forces trying to influence our behavior. Most of this influence is towards obvious ends. Buy more. Change brands. Vote blue. But some of it has purpose that isn't as obvious. Like Big Pharma sales pitches masquerading as public health messaging.

Somatic Intuition

It took me many years to root out all of the bad information my childhood mentor had programmed into me. And that was just the nonsense from a single man. The nonsense programmed into us by the control regime is far denser stuff. It's deeply encoded, such that it can become indistinguishable from our own thoughts and beliefs.

Rooting out this kind of bad information isn't an entirely conscious process. At least, it isn't for me. Sure, the process has a strong psychological component. But there's also an equally strong somatic component. Somehow, outside of conscious awareness, my body informs the process of identifying and untangling bad information from my mind.

Imagine a world where social and environmental issues were addressed as they came up, as a matter of routine, by people informed by the endless wisdom of their own biology. By people who understood themselves to be a living language of nature itself. I don't think this is an impossible dream. I think it's achievable, and much more realistic than attempting to improve society without first reconnecting with the body's wisdom.

One thing that becomes immediately apparent when imagining such a world is the problem of trauma. We're all traumatized in some respect, and this can be a barrier to positive change in a variety of ways. It can be a barrier, but it can also be an invitation to show up more authentically with each other. My sense is that we're in a societal moment where just showing up authentically can make a huge difference.

From my perspective, nature is not a thing that progress has freed us from. The natural world was never Hobbes' war of all against all. It's a part of us and we're a part of it. Societal progress hasn't disconnected us from the environment. It's deepened the intimacy of our relationship with the environment.

Whether we're aware of it or not, there's magic in this intimacy. Magic that our biology naturally makes accessible to anyone able to draw breath. Yet becoming aware of this magic isn't comfortable or popular. It puts you in contact with information that challenges assumptions and sometimes demands difficult action.

At this point, society is filled with people who can't even feel their own bodies. Like, they don't understand how to listen to their biology, the same biology that mediates their connection to the ecologies they inhabit. This absence of awareness is largely manufactured for political and economic reasons in my opinion. But its origin is less important than the question of what to do about it.

Instead of listening to their somatic intuition, many people listen only to mainstream media, which makes the situation worse by encouraging partisan tribalism. There are ways to facilitate conversations across party divides, and ways to help people tune into their intuition, but these mostly come down to interactions between individuals. There is no mass solution that I'm aware of.

The Flat Earth Problem

Over the last few years, I've known several unrelated individuals who suddenly became certain that the world was flat. No amount of easily verifiable evidence can convince these people that the world is round. They think the whole idea of a round Earth is the product of a vast conspiracy. These Flat Earthers, at least the ones I'm familiar with, all appear to have one thing in common. Before they turned to Flat Earth, they had lost faith in the official story.

We all need meaning and purpose in our lives. And any observant person by now understands that the official story dramatically misrepresents reality. Yet when we reject the official story, there's no easy replacement for it in our lives. This can lead people to Flat Earth. More commonly, though, it leads people to self-censor and conform.

This has the unfortunate effect of lowering the visibility of legitimate dissent throughout society. It also sows quiet division, as those who do question the mainstream are silenced and isolated by countless tiny societal mechanisms. And then there is the thorny problem of most people actively believing in a false reality.

Buying into the status quo isn't exactly like believing in Flat Earth. But in some ways, it's not so different. I used to think that status quo misperceptions could be corrected with contrary evidence. Eventually I came to understand that the facts had little bearing on most people's beliefs.

The thing I keep coming back to when considering our situation is humanity. Showing up authentically and recognizing each other's humanity creates a kind of communication space that's hard to manipulate. A protected space. It is possible to create this manner of space online, but it's much easier in person.

In my own life, my views often directly conflict with the views of people I'm interacting with. We rarely fight about it. Instead, we find common ground. Like people living in different worlds having a phone call.

Given the manipulative influences in our information environment, it's possible and even likely that we're all being used in ways we're not aware of to influence one another for the benefit of corporate or governmental interests. I've definitely been guilty of this. During the pandemic, I repeated claims that the virus had a natural origin. I cited a _Nature_ paper that turned out to have been manipulated by the government. When it later became clear that the virus probably leaked from a lab, I realized that I'd been unwittingly helping the control regime perpetuate a lie.

Fortunately, the stakes were low for me. Admitting my mistake cost me little. Those who made big decisions on the basis of official lies may have much more to lose. Many have doubled down on their folly, behaving as if their decisions were sound all along. And when the next crisis arises they'll have learned nothing.

For more of my writing, check out my scifi novels and my Hive blog. And just for fun, here's the latest version of my conspiracy rap: