Fifth Generation Warfare, Part 2
So now, as the COVID crisis winds down and the propaganda/fifth generation warfare continues to ramp up, we are starting to see additional battle strategies emerge
One new strategy that seems to be cropping up is the circulation of fake documents and videos.
These come in many versions, and as usual are designed to exploit human behavioral and psychological weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
Having successfully cultivated a political/public space environment in which rampant lying has been normalized, and the logical consequences of widespread skepticism and mistrust have therefore also become the norm, the chaos and propaganda agents have intentionally compromised public discourse with a form of highly infectious mind-virus which is rapidly propagated on both social and corporate media.
People with time on their hands and no clear mission or purpose seem to just love to gossip. The more salacious, the better. It is often observed that a good joke must be based in reality. A good gossip topic is the opposite – it contradicts reality.
The most potent and viral gossip story lines are the ones that seem at odds with the public persona which is being projected by someone. They imply, often indirectly and fraudulently, that a person or organization is not sincere or otherwise acting in ways that are at odds with their mission or public persona.
For example, spreading unfounded rumors that a non-profit founded to protect children, staffed with prominent physicians is actually associated with a pedophile ring, now THAT will get reposted and retweeted, and will generate a lot of views and clicks.
In my experience (having been subjected to intensive disinformation, propaganda, and censorship campaigns over the last two years), there seem to be three general categories of chaos agents that interact in the public square (usually under protection of Section 230 of Title 47 of the US Federal Communications Decency Act of 1996) to actively deploy these sorts of propaganda and disruption methods.
One category consists of paid shills, haters and trolls who serve a third party agenda. Often these parties serve a governmental actor (typically as “subcontractors”), but also may serve a surreptitious corporate or other non-state financial interest (ergo Pharma or others).
These may include hired-gun “journalists” that are being paid for “advocacy journalism” attack articles.
Then there are the lone wolves (“trolls”), who sometimes swarm or form loose, transient on-line packs or flashmobs, and typically take a perverse pleasure in causing pain and suffering to others.
This has developed into a subculture that celebrates spreading hate and causing psychologic pain. There is a fundamental darkness in these sorts of activities, which are typically grounded in a variety of personality disorders and dysfunctional/maladaptive behaviors.
Examples of such disorders of thought include sociopathy/psychopathy, narcissism, free-floating aggression, anger, and self-loathing. These “lone wolves” often have some unresolved/unresolvable conflict/insecurity or cognitive dissonance in their own lives, which they seek to resolve by scapegoating, projection, or just plain bullying.
Many of these seem to have a need for interpersonal conflict-based engagement in their lives. Often, these tend to be more transient hate mongers, and if you can stand to ignore them they eventually go away or find another target that will fulfill their need for engagement and conflict.
However, their energy and hate are often exploited by the first category of paid propagandists or by those in the third category.
The third and most insidious category of social and corporate media propagandists who actively deploy and exploit hate and fear are those who have found a way to monetize their activities. This has long been a favorite strategy of corporate media. “If it bleeds it leads”. I have previously written about the FearPorn business model, which is a chronic staple of CNN broadcasting.
See the following essays for examples:
Monkey Pox. Truth versus Fearporn.
MonkeyPox FearPorn Update. Pretty much as predicted. Yet again. When will they ever learn?
Even more corrosive and pervasive are the many small podcasters and substack authors who strive to spread sensational gossip and to generate anger and outrage.
This is absolutely a business model, and many of these parties occasionally slip the veil of pretense and acknowledge the fact by bragging about how many followers, comments, or “likes” they are getting using these methods.
In some cases, these small but very loud (on social media) actors pick up sponsors who have an agenda which is aligned with these smaller and less cohesively organized chaos agents. The shouting voices of these small actors can then be coordinated and amplified by selective sponsorship, and by use of the usual bot and troll strategies in which an astroturf movement is generated by deploying groups of agents which amplify the desired false narrative.
In some cases, these agents work at bot farms, but typically use of bot farms is a strategy/tactic employed by larger state, non-state/NGO, and corporate fifth gen warfare campaigns.
In the case of the coordinated smaller players, most of these are typically decentralized networks of individuals who have been recruited over time – perhaps for some other cause- and are connected to a central communication point (typically via e-mail list) and can be provided a (false) narrative and directed towards an on-line target (typically by exploiting paranoia, fear, hate and outrage).
In other cases, a modest investment in free burner phones distributed through a network of contacts (family, friends, trusted associates) can yield what appears (to outside observers) to be a decentralized spontaneous response. This is a favorite astroturf strategy to “make something (or someone) go viral”.
Here is how that general ecosystem works:
The internet and social media are non-scalable systems. What I mean by that is that by far the vast majority of internet or social media nodes have relatively few connections. In the case of social media, connection nodes consist of “followers” and “followed”.
These node connections define the cloud of first and second degree interrelatedness associated with a primary node (a person, user, account etc.), and therefore define the ability of the primary node to influence others. Low node connectivity = low influence. The vast majority of internet sites and social media nodes are low complexity/connectivity and therefore of low influence.
As the complexity of the web of node connections increases for any one node, then the probability of that node continuing to develop additional connections increases. This is how “followers” and influence develop, and this cycle is typically non-linear (unless constrained or “throttled” via shadowbanning etc.).
In other words, connectivity gives rise to ever greater connectivity. As a consequence, if one assesses the interconnectedness of internet and social media “platform” nodes, there is a vast plain (valley of death) of low complexity nodes interrupted by “spikes” or mountains of highly connected nodes which typically become more connected over time.
These are examples of non-scalable systems. Connectedness is an unpredictable, emergent and typically exponential phenomena of these types of networked systems.
Because of these “non-linear” decentralized structural characteristics of the internet, the interconnectedness and functionality of the web could be almost completely destroyed by eliminating less than 10 percent of existing nodes- the highly interconnected ones.
Likewise, the webs of communication and impact on society at large associated with highly connected social media nodes can be destroyed by targeting those nodes and the individuals or organizations associated with them. Of course, this is most readily accomplished by directly eliminating the node.
Eliminating a node is most easily achieved by blocking a static IP address or a particular URL for example (in the case of the internet), or “banning/deplatforming” an individual account (or the person responsible for the “account”).
These are basically methods for killing or surgically terminating a source of disagreeable content as well as the entire network of interconnected individuals (or idea space) who share a particular node (and belief system) as a common junction.
These methods are readily available to governments, very large corporations and NGO, and to the organizations which either control the internet (ICANN, for example) or control the major social media sites.
Major social media sites are themselves examples of the emergent non-scalability properties of the internet. You can think of this as akin to the observation that “success breeds success”.
If you seek to influence the general public information and idea square, to impact in some way on current knowledge and thought, you will tend to seek out the major social media platforms for your interactions.
As a consequence, social media platform innovators have great difficulty in establishing themselves, unless there is some characteristic of the larger platforms which make them distasteful to a critical mass of individuals. Audience, influencers and authors migrate to the most successful platforms.
Frankly, I am amazed at how successful the Substack business model is, given these forces, but this success illustrates two general truths. First, Substack took off in large part as a consequence of the rampant censorship occurring on virtually all other social media platforms.
In a way it redeploys an older internet business model – direct email distribution. However, to build a Substack audience, your either need an extraordinary event (in my case, simultaneous deplatforming by Twitter and Linked In, coupled with Joe Rogan # 1757), or you need some other way to reach an audience – typically by leveraging a social media following (which is really what largely happened with me – my followers went looking after I was deplatformed).
The problem is that if your business model (or fifth gen media warfare objective) is based on internet traffic (clicks, likes, views, or paid subscriptions), then you face a challenge. You cannot escape the low node connectivity problem, the valley of death, unless you can find someway to attract attention to your node.
This is sort of like the problem of how to reach and sustain the critical velocity required to escape the pull of gravity if you wish to reach space. How can you distinguish your “node” from the vast terrain of other low-connectivity nodes that inhabit this valley of death? How can you reach the threshold of critical connectivity which then will enable you to benefit from the non-scalable nature of these systems?
There are people that make a LOT of money from their internet sites, podcasts, substack essays, and youtube videos, but they all had to solve this problem. In some cases, and Joe Rogan appears to be one example, this can require years and years of sustained effort to build an internet following.
However, in almost every other case, these success stories involve capitalizing on some event which drove viewers to their node, and then conversion of that traffic into “followers” and some sort of revenue stream.
Advertisers are one common source of revenue, merchandise (T-shirts, caps, coffee cups) is another, and third party sponsors are another. But first the node must reach that critical mass of connectivity, the escape velocity required to overcome gravity. That is the art and science of monetizing the internet and social media – and any media, for that matter. Building connections.
Just like any small business, one way to grow an audience is to provide value. In this model, followers and subscribers are treated like valued customers. Like any small business (or consulting practice), this strategy requires hard daily work.
Creating original content that people wish to read (or watch), day after day after day, is hard work- take my word for it; Jill and I live it. Like any small business, vacations and time off are a luxury that comes at a high price of lost revenue, followers/subscribers, and customer satisfaction.
And just like any other small business, the author/artist/videographer/influencer confronts a competitive landscape, including competitors that will employ a wide range of aggressive strategies- including attempts to undermine or delegitimize others perceived as competition.
And then there are the ancient and ever present seven deadly sins- envy, gluttony, greed or avarice, lust, pride, sloth and wrath.
Haters will hate. Humans will always remain human.
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here substack.com
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