Red pill or blue pill?

Spent time searching the subject of who your social media friends might be? Ever wonder what the intelligence agencies are up to with fake profiles? Driven mad at people who derail intelligent discussions? It’s simple. In information operations, the goal is to create people who ‘are what they think’ to the advantage of ‘the man behind the curtain’ or a center tower as described in Foucaults panopticon.

Bits and pieces from history

It doesn't take long or a lot of work to find dots and snippets of the recent past that give us glimpses of what was to come.

• In 2005 the BBC reports that the US military is planning to win the hearts of young people in the Middle East by publishing a new comic in order to "achieve long-term peace and stability in the Middle East" and reveals in 2006 US plans to 'fight the net': A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks .
• The Raw Story reports in 2007 that CENTCOM sent emails to "bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information" .
• More alarming seems to be the article from the Register on wargame simulations: Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale informing us that the US DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and artificial reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda .
• 2009 is the year the US Air Force releases ‘Counter-Blog’ marching orders to its airmen as part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force" .
• The tension was tangible through linguistic patterns in the IRC channels of the anonymous hives in 2011. An anonymous operation was starting up . Photos and messages kept appearing on atrocities commited by Ghadafi. Do-gooders jumped in, farts saw an opportunity for leadership. But all was not what it seemed as we'd learn later. Human rights investigations reported NATO bombing the Great Man-Made River , RT reported on the plundering of Libya by Goldman Sachs and two weeks later again, with the numbers . O aye, and many more lies behind the West's war on Libya appeared . It is not as if the anonymous operation made any real difference, but still the old adage goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice ...
• Also in 2011, Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and a US expert on crafting the perfect political message, said, "I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." Next Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share." Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do’s and don’ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement . And young turks followed up on that .

• In September of 2013 there was talk of banning Golden Dawn . This target could not have been chosen better if authorities wanted to introduce people to banning and proactive arrests becoming "normal" in Greece and Europe.

The larger context of the above bits and pieces is that of covert operations, psychological warfare, and propaganda, practices as old as warfare itself, the oldest occupation of mankind on this planet.

Related

• Covert operations
• Psychological warfare
• Propaganda