Information War: When the enemy is you

A huge thank you to the Truth Reporter for submitting this opinion piece.

When the enemy is you.

Just over a week ago the daily government coronavirus briefing was attended by General Sir Nick Carter. Some of the mainstream media have commented that they felt greatly reassured by his calm, authoritative delivery and that his military background and ‘can do’ attitude contrasted greatly with the weak platitudes and management-speak we have grown increasingly used to coming from our political class.

Superficially these points are valid. We are used to the army being doers and not talkers, this is surely what we pay them for, but there is a problem. The problem is that the army has, in conjunction with the politicians extended its remit far beyond rifles, tanks and soldiers filling sandbags to defend us from flooding in times of crisis. The army has expanded into the realm of information war.

Most people will understand the need for military intelligence, this has been around as long as there has been warfare. Information on the enemy’s plans and resources can be the difference between victory and defeat. The resources dedicated to information gathering have been colossal over the years. If you want to delve into such issues just google ‘manned orbiting laboratory’ – a cold war era project to put a manned spy observatory into orbit to spy on Russia. The budgets of projects like these were immense. 

This will not be pleasant for some but I must inform you that cold war era thinking has not gone away. The military is, using a very well worn analogy, a perpetual hammer looking for a nail. It is a self-perpetuating mechanism, once triggered it will fulfil only two objectives, first perpetuate itself, second eliminate threats. Think of the human immune system, we exist in a world filled with germs and dirt. Our immune system fights every day to eliminate the threats and protect the host. Most of the time this process operates in homeostatic balance but sometimes the immune system starts to turn inward upon the host, attacking and destroying healthy structures. Sometimes these attacks can kill the host in short order if you want nightmares google ‘giant cell myocarditis’ – it’s not fun.

Some might say that this negativity aimed at the military is unwarranted given that they are helping so much with the COVID19 response, distributing PPE and providing much needed logistical support when the NHS is stretched very thin. That may well be an argument but General Carter revealed that the army are doing more than moving supplies. The army has mobilised the 77th Brigade to assist the government’s efforts to combat the virus. 

The issue is that the 77th Brigade do not have guns, trucks or logistical experts, they have literally an army of information warriors. Make no mistake, they are operating right now as you read these words. I quote – 

We’ve been involved with the Cabinet Office Rapid Response Unit, with our 77th Brigade helping to quash rumours from misinformation, but also to counter disinformation. Between three and four thousand of our people have been involved, with around twenty thousand available the whole time at high readiness.

Yes, you read it correctly, up to 4000 ‘soldiers’ are online right now, they are on social media of all types, each one of these people may have 20 or more accounts posing as ordinary people from up and down the country. Their job according to Gen Carter is to ‘quash rumours from misinformation’. In addition to these regular 4000 operatives, they have access to 16,000 more if required. Imagine all those 20,000 people all with 20 accounts each. That’s potentially 400,000 fake users on social media whose principal task is to control what you see, think or understand online.

The problem I have with this whole operation is that it is conceptually based on conflict and the people on both sides of the argument therefore become combatants – what other conclusion could we draw? This is the 77th Brigade of the British Army we’re dealing with after all. Are we to infer that the British Army at war with the British public?

It would be naive in the extreme to think that government actors of all types are not going to try and shape public opinion via the internet and social media. If we refer back to the cold war thinking that still pervades the military we see that it is inevitable that one side is going to proactively increase its capability in the knowledge that their opponents may already be doing precisely the same thing. 

Again my issue is that the 77th Brigade’s concept of ‘the enemy’ has now been defined as anyone who questions the narratives that are being put forward by the government – that may well encompass you, me or anyone else who has questions about the COVID19 response. 

What makes this worrying is the lack of any real critique of the COVID narratives from the mainstream media. Currently the MSM seems to be intent on scoring pitiful points against the government instead of properly getting to grips with the real antecedent factors behind the outbreak. 

Here’s a couple of questions I would put to the panel, if I can think of them why can’t people paid £150,000 or more per year to think of them do the same? They have access to the internet as well.

‘Given the powerful evidence emerging that the Wuhan laboratory was experimenting with genetically modified corona viruses and that the same gene sequences that the researchers were using have been found in the COVID19 virus what is being done to hold this establishment to account?’

‘There is a significant body of evidence in scientific and healthcare journals that supports the view that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are powerful prophylactic agents which inhibit the ability of COVID 19 to bind to the ACE2 receptor which has been found to be its principal mode of infection. Why has this evidence not been acted upon?’

That’s just two off the top of my head, I am sure you can think of your own and I’m almost certain they would be more useful in the debate than what we are hearing from the mainstream media.

What we are dealing with in this case is a relatively new phenomenon called ‘fusion’ which is simply the combination of governments, armed forces, secret services and the media for the purpose of shaping opinion, manufacturing consent and making sure that the government narrative dominates the public discourse.

There is one simple question you must ask yourself. If the government’s narrative contained a sound, watertight set of measures balancing the risk to life from COVID19 with the carnage being inflicted on the economy that supports our very way of life then would they need a literal army of people behind computer screens trying to shut down debate, silence dissent and systematically drown out any voice that questions that narrative?

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