Social Media & the National Security State with Alan MacLeod

In this episode, Whitney speaks to Alan MacLeod of Mintpress News about his recent investigations that explore the increasing fusion of social media companies, and more broadly Big Tech, with the National Security State.

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Alan Macleod - MintPress News

Originally published 2/09/23.

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Episode Transcript

WW (00:19):
Hey there and welcome to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your host
Whitney Webb. We're longer thanyou might think information
warfare has been a major concernof the US national security
state. In recent decades. One ofthe key battlegrounds in this
information war has not justbeen the internet itself, but
more specifically social medianetworks. Social media in the
modern era has become theequivalent of the town square

(00:42):
and these platforms have come todominate much of the
socialization and communicationin Western society and beyond.
Yet unbeknownst to most users ofsocial media, there are long
standing efforts by social mediacompanies, as well as the
national security state toinfluence social media users in
a variety of unsettling ways,ranging from emotional
manipulation to the propagationof specific narratives that

(01:03):
benefit big tech, and more oftentheir benefactors. A major theme
in my work for several years hasbeen how big tech in the
national security state haveessentially fused. Indeed, most
big tech companies today doubleUS military and or intelligence
contractors, and many of thesebig tech giants have origin
stories that are directly linkedto those same military and

(01:25):
intelligence agencies. In thecase of social media, this
fusion has also been takingplace in ways that are both
dangerous and insidious,especially now, thanks to recent
advances in artificialintelligence. One of the few
writers who has been doing greatwork on this topic for some time
is today's guest Alan McLeod.Alan is a senior staff writer at
MintPress news as well as theauthor of two books including

(01:47):
propaganda in the informationage, still Manufacturing
Consent. He has contributed tosites such as the Guardian, The
Groza, and Jacobin, and has alsopublished several academic
articles. Several of his recentinvestigations have worked to
expose the increasing fusion ofbig tech and the National
Security states of the US andIsrael, including meet the ex
CIA agents deciding Facebook'scontent policy, and revealed the

(02:09):
former Israeli spies working intop jobs at Google, Facebook and
Microsoft. So thanks for joiningme today. Alan, welcome to
unlimited hangout.

Unknown (02:18):
Great to be with you. Whitney. How are you?

WW (02:20):
I'm doing well. It's summer here. So nice and toasty down
here in Chile. I'm hoping you'refaring well. And in the UK. I
hear it's been a bit cold upthere this winter.

Unknown (02:31):
Yeah, it has been but I'm bearing with it. All right.
Well,

WW (02:35):
good to hear. So Alan, I'm sure you've heard about how one
of the big scoops of the Twitterfiles was to reveal the high
number of national securityofficials working at Twitter.
But when I first heard that Iwent, Huh, wait a second. I'm
pretty sure Allen wrote aboutthis long before the Twitter
finals were even a thing. Andindeed you did last June in an

(02:57):
article entitled, The FederalBureau of tweets, Twitter is
hiring an alarming number of FBIagents. So what did you find
back during your investigationlast June and has Twitter even
since the Twitter files has itchanged? Its hiring practices
under Emperor Ilan?

Unknown (03:16):
Yes, so what I find was basically, I'm not some sort of
incredible investigativejournalist with all these tools.
This was really research doneand very simple way in which I
just went to employmentdatabases, such as zoom info,
and LinkedIn, and startedgoogling some things about who
was actually on Twitter's board.Because, you know, we hear a lot

(03:39):
about how you know, Twitter,pools, people from its platform,
or takes, for instance, DonaldTrump away, but they never
really hear about who isactually making the decision. So
I really wanted to know, andthey're rather opaque about
that. And what I found wasbasically, that's an alarming
amount of people in Twitter'supper echelons, particularly in
politically sensitive fields,such as content, moderation,

(04:03):
trust, and safety or security,are actually ex FBI, ex NSA or
ex CIA. They are basicallyagents of the national security
states. And very, very oftenthese people actually leave
their jobs at the government,and then immediately are
parachuted into the higher ranksof Twitter, which suggests one

(04:25):
of two things, either thatTwitter is actively recruiting
from these agencies, or thatthere's some sort of deal
between the US government andbig tech. There's some sort of
quid pro quo going on wherebySilicon Valley agrees to bring
in these agents to help modifyand run these sites to cleanse

(04:48):
them politically orideologically. Either of which
seems to be very startling andhair raising something which
more people should know aboutit. So you know, just as an
example of this Are the peoplethat Twitter has been hiring in
2019, hired Don Barton, who waspoached from her job as the
senior innovation advisor to thedirector of the FBI, she became

(05:11):
Senior Director of Strategy ofoperations for legal public
policy and trust and safety atTwitter. And there are dozens
and dozens of examples of thisgoing on. Since Elon Musk has
come in, I don't think thehiring practices really changed
very much. We have seen Muskfiring 1000s of people, but from
what I can see a lot of thespooks and spies that Twitter

(05:34):
hired a year two years threeyears ago, are still for the
most part in their jobs. Andthat is, again, a little bit
worrying, especially if you areunder the impression that Elon
Musk is cleaning house and it'sgoing to, you know, remove the
deep state from politicalinterference. I really don't
think that that's going on atall.

WW (05:51):
Yeah, well, I think that's definitely clear from the
evidence. And we can talk abouta little later why that might be
because you as well as myselfhave been some of the people
pointing out Elon Musk, veryclose ties to the national
security, state of militarycontracting and things of that
nature. So one of the otherthings that was a scandalous,

(06:13):
supposedly scandalousrevelations at Twitter files was
the collusion between the FBIand Twitter, as well, as you
know, what we just what you justtalked about how Twitter is
hiring a lot of former FBIpeople. But in your article back
in June, again, well, before theTwitter files, you point out
that in September 2020, Twitterput out a statement thanking the

(06:34):
FBI, for their closecollaboration and continued
support about protecting thepublic conversation. And then
you know, that a month later, Iguess in October 2020, the
company Twitter announced thatthe FBI was feeding it
intelligence and essentially,issuing requests that, you know,

(06:55):
that certain accounts bedeleted. And this is
essentially, the big revelation,one of the biggest, I think, in
terms of how it was promoted,you know, revelations from
Twitter files, but here you aretalking about it well, before so
I'm very puzzled about how thiswas essentially out in the open.
And then, you know, the wholeTwitter file situation takes
place and acts like it's, youknow, a sudden, Revelation, I

(07:19):
guess, when, you know, peoplecould have found this
information, or, you know,Twitter itself was essentially
promoting it, you know, youdidn't need necessarily access
to, you know, private emails ofexecutives to know that this was
going on. So I'm wondering,Alan, what your thoughts are
about why someone, you know,what is the utility of making

(07:43):
these revelations, but then, youknow, keeping it as business as
usual, essentially, going backto the same model, like no
revelation, about the FBIsinfluence on Twitter had even
been made. And it just seems alittle weird to me. I don't know
what your thoughts are.

Unknown (07:57):
It really is remarkable. Actually, what the
Twitter files really exploredand put a bit of meat on the
bones that I've been putting outthere for a couple of years, was
that we really have this absurdsituation whereby current FBI
agents will be monitoring socialmedia, and then phoning and

(08:17):
emailing former FBI agents whowork at Twitter and telling them
to delete or demote or D rank orD list certain ideas, certain
people, certain stories, etc.And this is actually going on
pretty much quietly in theshadows. And yet, we still talk

(08:37):
about Twitter as if it's aprivate company. This is like a
quarter step removed fromgovernment control over the
means of communication. And itreally is a First Amendment
issue. And we should be talkingabout it like that. As you said,
in your introduction, Twitter,and these big social media
companies really are a globalTime Square. And the fact that

(08:59):
the United States and itsgovernment has such a close,
close and firm grip over ourmeans of communication really
presents a national securitythreat to pretty much every
other country in the world. Whythis is coming out right now. I
mean, I actually talked to someof the journalists who were
putting out the Twitter filestuff, and it did seem that they

(09:20):
had been influenced by what Ihad written. I think Elon Musk
has his own agenda, when itcomes to the Twitter files,
settling certain scores. But hereally invited a whole diverse
group of journalists in therewho started picking apart and
started looking at things thatthey were particularly
interested in. And so I thinkonce that door was opened, the

(09:41):
floodgates kind of came throughand perhaps some things that
Musk maybe didn't exactly wantout in the open have now come
out, and those for me tend to besome of the more interesting
revelations from the Twitterfiles.

WW (09:54):
All right. So what you just touched on a minute ago, I think
is a really important pointbecause for a long time that
argument about social media, andI guess content curation, you
know, which is sort of a fineline between that in and
censorship, the argument hasbeen made, right that these are
private companies. So they'renot, you know, public companies.
And so if they were publiccompanies, there'd be, you know,

(10:16):
a certain amount of regulationthere on what they can and can't
do, in terms of censorship,because of what you pointed out
First Amendment issues. But whatwe essentially have is Twitter.
And of course, a lot of theseother social media companies
that we can get to in a second,are very much populated with
people from the government. And,you know, at this point, we

(10:37):
know, at least in the case ofTwitter are colluding with
people from the government. Soit seems like that argument that
these are just privatecompanies? Well, it's kind of
hard to make that anymore at theat, you know, at best, they're
public, private. And at worst,they're, you know, just tools of
the national security state. Sothis makes the whole censorship
debate very, I don't know, a bitmore complicated than it has,

(10:58):
you know, it's been treateddifferently, you know, in the
media for some time, but I thinkit's becoming increasingly hard
to maintain what is really, Iguess, the illusion that these
are just private companiesoperating unto, you know, as
independent private entities,you know, they're tentacle the
tentacles of the nationalsecurity state are intimately

(11:20):
throughout all of theseorganizations. And I think your
work speaks to that.

Unknown (11:25):
Yeah, thank you very much. I agree completely with
what you were saying there, it'svery difficult to see the line
at which the, you know, SiliconValley ends and national
security begins. Theseorganizations are now
fundamentally intertwined, tothe point where it's very
difficult to tell them apart.And this has happened over a
number of years, you know, thesebig platforms have been boosted

(11:49):
by the US government. It comesat a cost to the point where,
you know, we could talk aboutany of them, but we periodically
see, you know, sorts ofintimidation from the US
government talks aboutregulating them talks about
breaking them up. You know,there was a point, let's switch
to Facebook, for instance, thatin 2018, people were talking
about, nationalizing Facebook,breaking up and even jailing

(12:12):
Zuckerberg for his role in, youknow, helping crazy conspiracy
theories elect Donald Trump aspresident. And just a few weeks
after that, Facebook suddenlyannounces a new partnership with
The Atlantic Council, which isNATO, and all but name.
Suddenly, Facebook's upper ranksare just filled with these ex

(12:33):
NATO guys, who are now decidingcontent moderation for 3 billion
people online. So I thinkclearly there comes a point
where these big Silicon Valleygiants become too big to get
ignored. And that's kind ofwhat's happening right now.
Well, let's

WW (12:47):
turn to Facebook for a second. So one of one of your
best articles on this topic, inmy opinion, is the one you did
about Facebook and the ex CIAagents deciding Facebook's
content policy. And I was reallyblown away by this, especially
this Aaron Berman character whois a former pretty high ranking
CIA guy. And of course now he'sgotten to be one of the top guys

(13:10):
at Facebook. So who is AaronBerman? What's his background?
And what is his role atFacebook's parent company?

Unknown (13:18):
Well, I guess if you're looking at Facebook's website
itself, Aaron, he's just calledout and is a very nice homely
guy who wears purple sweaters,and is in charge of content
moderation at Facebook. He'sbasically the face of content
moderation there. There's manyvideos on fb.com, where you can
listen to him chat in very welllit rooms about his philosophy

(13:41):
on content moderation, and howimportant it is to allow a wide
range of debate while alsotackling hate speech. It's very
important to him apparently tobe open and honest about this.
But the thing is, is that at nopoint is he or Facebook, divulge
that he was until just a coupleof years ago, one of the highest

(14:02):
ranking members of the CIA. Sountil 2019, Aaron Berman was
senior analytic manager at theagency to the point where he was
actually writing the President'sdaily briefs for President Obama
and President Trump, meaningthat that's the sort of thing
that those presidents would haveread out to them every day in

(14:23):
the Oval Office. So he waspretty high ranking member of
the CIA. He was a mover andshaker there. And suddenly he
drops that job at the agency andjust gets parachuted into this
extremely important position atFacebook, to the point where
he's essentially deciding what 3billion people around the world

(14:44):
see, and crucially don't see intheir news feeds. But when it
comes to the CIA and Facebook,it's really not just our
environment. In fact, I was ableto find dozens and dozens of
examples of people just fromgoing on places like zoom in
thought and LinkedIn and writingthings like Facebook CIA and,

(15:04):
and it is extraordinary theamount of matches you get. So of
course, that's not the fullamount of people who are working
at Facebook who used to bespoofs. This is just the people
who actively and openly admit iton their social media profiles.
I think one of the mostextraordinary cases of Facebook
CIA collusion is Scott Stern.Until 2013, he was the chief of

(15:29):
targeting for the CIA, for theMiddle East. And if you're
wondering, what does that meanis does that mean like he was
deciding where drones get struckin which Yemeni villages get
bombed, that is exactly what hewas doing. But today, He is the
senior manager of riskintelligence or meta, where his
targets are misinformation andmalicious actors. And so it is

(15:51):
really I can barely think of abetter example of the fusion of
the national security state andbig tech to the point where one
can just one guy like Scott scancan go from being one of the
most important and you know,bloodthirsty members of the
military industrial complex, andis now sitting in a position in

(16:13):
Silicon Valley, where he isdeciding what everybody sees all
the time, and what contentyou're allowed to see what
content you're not allowed topost. It is really incredible
what's going on right now.

WW (16:23):
So one of the things that really stood out to me about
Aaron to go back to him for asecond is that in terms of how
he describes his time at theCIA's, one of the things he
focused on when writingintelligence briefs for senior
US officials, including thePresident, was the impact of
influence operations on socialmovements, security and
democracy. So to me, thatsuggests an interest while at

(16:44):
the CIA in social media. Andthen, of course, he gets
headhunted and joins Facebook,which has a history of hiring
people from the nationalsecurity state, as you just
pointed out, but also, you know,there's another situation that I
wrote about a few years ago,where they hired a former DARPA
director, for example, to be incharge of what was then building

(17:06):
I think, now it's calledsomething like Facebook reality
labs. They renamed it a year ortwo ago, but they they tend it,
this is a long pattern forFacebook. And when one considers
the history of Facebook, and howit became the company it is
today, you know, you have thereally the guy that put Facebook
on the map is Peter Thiel, whoat the same time he was becoming

(17:28):
the top investor. Early on inFacebook, was also creating
Palantir, which was designed tobe a program a software product,
explicitly designed with the CIAin mind. This is attested to by
Alex Karp, Palantir, CEOhimself. And of course, Palantir
for its first three years as acompany exclusively works for

(17:50):
the CIA. They go to CIAheadquarters, every two weeks,
they're their productdevelopment managers, to have
the CIA tweak their products,you know, very close collusion
there. And then at the sametime, you have that same network
developing Palantir for the CIA,you know, developing Facebook to
a significant extent. And youhave people not just like Peter

(18:12):
Thiel, but the guy that broughtin Peter Thiel, to Facebook,
Facebook, Sean Parker, who wasrecruited by the CIA after as a
teenager actually because he wasinvolved with Napster for people
that remember that as as a teenand then admits it himself was
approached by the CIA as aresult of that situation. So
it's just interesting to seeFacebook, and some of these

(18:34):
other social media companies inlight of the fact that a lot of
their origin stories have theseelements there as well. And if
you if you follow it, it'scontinuous From their inception
as a company, to now and itreally makes you wonder about
social media in general, becauseI've written a lot, for example,
about a program that is nowdefunct, of course, it didn't

(18:57):
really get off the ground, butit was pitched and was going to
be implemented by DARPA,specifically the Pentagon's
researcher arm after 911 calledtotal information awareness. And
they tried to rename it later,terrorist information awareness,
to sound less light, less like agiant machine of, of dragnet
surveillance, and totalinformation awareness was trying

(19:21):
to get Americans essentiallyprofiled them based off of data
about their daily lives, wherethey're going, who they're
meeting, things of that nature,and some of the programs that
were related to this, you know,like the Lifelog program was
shut down in 2004. It looks anawful lot like Facebook today.
And I think what's interestingabout looking at companies like

(19:42):
Facebook and Palantir, and howthey come out of similar
networks is that you know, a lotof the uproar about total
information awareness was thatthe military was directly
involved. And Peter Thiel andsome of these other guys gambled
correctly, I think that peoplewould willingly give up their
data if it was seen as upClearly private enterprise, and
not as part of the state. Butwhat your work has shown in some

(20:06):
of this earlier, you know, someof the earlier history shows as
well is that it was never reallya private venture from the off
in the way that most people havebeen taught, you know, told
about it, these origin stories,a lot of these Silicon Valley
companies, whether it's true ornot, you know, a lot of people
imagine it as oh, these theseguys were just tinkering in

(20:26):
their garage in California, andall of a sudden pops out this
giant company. Well, for Google,we know that's fake for
Facebook. We know that's fake.So I don't know what what are
your thoughts about that? Alan,about, you know, the utility of
this? For the national securitystate? You know, from the off?
Was this something that some ofthese companies were intended to
do From their inception, youknow, for the national security

(20:49):
state? Or was national securityfusion, something that that came
along later?

Unknown (20:54):
Well, I guess it depends on which example you're
going to pick, certainly, Ithink it's pretty natural,
that's coming out to theinternet that we are have these
machines that really appear inour homes and the 90s and 2000s.
Across the world, there was thisincredible potential for
connection and community to bebuilt. And so I think some level

(21:16):
of social media was kind ofnatural, that this was always
going to happen, but whoactually rises to the top of the
pile is not necessarilycompletely random. I think in
some cases, the sort of rags toriches story of these, these
platforms is pretty much true.But in other cases, as you
pointed out, it's really notquite the case, there's a lot

(21:39):
more going on. And a lot ofthese companies did have their
hands held by the nationalsecurity state. From the outset.
I don't know too much aboutFacebook's origins. That was
very interesting what you weresaying. But I have written at
length about Google's origins.And so a lot of people really
are not aware of how Googlereally fundamentally started as
a CIA project. In fact, SergeyBrin, his research at Stanford

(22:04):
University, according to a greatinvestigation by Dr. Anna fees,
Ahmed showed that the CIA andthe NSA were bankrolling his
research there, and that hisresearch there with the laser
produce Google, not only that,they weren't only bankrolling
it, but his, his, hissupervisor, there was a CIA

(22:25):
person. So the CIA actuallydirectly midwife Google into
existence. In fact, until 2005,the CIA actually held shares in
Google and eventually sold them,which, you know, if we're going
to talk about business deals,probably not a great idea to be
selling your Google stock in2005. But okay, whatever. So

(22:46):
we've seen

WW (22:46):
well, if you don't want to be seen as directly linked to
the company, yes, going forward,then that's probably what you
do. And I did forget to mentionthat the CIA also was the big
investor early on and Palantir.Besides Peter Thiel, I guess,
Another commonality betweenthem, but go on, sorry.

Unknown (23:03):
Yeah, well, I was gonna say, when we talk about Google,
with the CIA, we have to talkabout company called into detail
which is the CIA's venturecapitalist for arm. A lot of
people will be surprised to knowthat the CIA has a venture
capitalist arm. But yes, in quetal has midwifed and birthed and
help nurture a huge amount ofbig tech and other important

(23:30):
high tech industries in theUnited States. The point of it
is from the CIA's perspective,is they go around finding small
companies, or maybe not so smallas well, but companies that are
on the cutting edge of varioustechnologies, and try to work
with them and develop them andget comparative advantage over
their rival countries likeRussia and China, so that the

(23:52):
national security state of theUnited States can stay one or
even two steps ahead of itsrivals. And for a small company
that's just starting inCalifornia say, the draw of
working with the CIA is hugebecause that is like an
unlimited source of moneybasically, it transfers a lot of

(24:15):
you know, kudos to your companya lot of governmental backing it
you know, more I don't want tosay ensure success, but it
certainly makes the likelihoodof you succeeding in a very
competitive and difficultindustry to break into makes it
much more likely and so I cansee it from both ends why
companies would want to workwith the CIA and in Q tel and

(24:36):
why in Qatar would want to workwith these companies.

WW (24:38):
Well, I think it's important to point out really quick about
inky tell that it's it you know,it's it's definitely the CIA's
venture capital arm of course,the CIA claims it's fully
independent, blah, blah, blah.But if you actually look into
how in Q tel structured, that'snot really so but the thing I
did want to point out is that inQ tel from its inception, has
had a very close relationshipwith weapons manual. acteurs on

(25:01):
because the person that createdAnkita for the CIA was the exact
top executive at what atLockheed Martin, I think it was
Lockheed Martin, actually at thetime and went through some
mergers in the 90s. To becomeLockheed Martin, the company
does today. But it was NormAugustine was the guy that was
in charge of Lockheed Martin atthe time that the CIA chose to
tap to create, and Q tel forthem. So an interesting

(25:25):
connection worth worth keepingin mind, because as I mentioned
earlier, in the intro for thispodcast, a lot of these
companies, specifically Googleis our major contractors to the
US national security state,whether it's the Department of
Defense or the intelligencecommunity, or, you know, several
intelligence agencies, like inthe case of Palantir, that I

(25:45):
talked a little bit aboutearlier, all 18 US intelligence
agencies contract with Palantir.So, you know, it makes sense, I
guess, for them, that therewould be some sort of revolving
door there. But it's juststunning, when you start to get
engaged with this, this type ofinformation in this research,
the extent of the overlap, and Ireally think there's no word we

(26:07):
can really use for it beyondfusion, you know, you really
can't tell where one and oneends and one begins at this
point, you know, maybe youcould, potentially a decade or
two ago, depending on thecompany, but But these days, you
know, it's really hard not tosee them as one in the same. So
as since you were talking aboutGoogle, you, of course, have

(26:27):
also written about Google insome of your recent work,
meaning last year, you wrotenational security search engine,
Google's ranks are filled withCIA agents. Can you tell us a
little bit about your articlethere and what you found and
what the implications of thatare given that Google is
essentially a monopoly on majoron major facets of how people

(26:52):
around the world accessinformation, particularly
through the supremacy, I guess,of their search engine?

Unknown (26:58):
Yeah, sure. So again, no, an investigative journalist
with a huge amount of resources.Again, this was literally just
publicly available data onsocial media sites like
LinkedIn, just taking thingslike CIA, Google, and seeing
what happens. And I wasabsolutely astonished by the
dozens and dozens and dozens ofresults from people who were

(27:22):
clearly Google employees andhigh positions, who are openly
admitting that they were onceCIA agents. This is the sort of
thing that, you know, you wouldhave been laughed at 20 years
ago for even considering, but itseems to be a total reality.
Now, what's a bit moreinteresting, and a bit more
nefarious about this is thatwhen you actually go through

(27:44):
these Google employees that werex spooks, none of them are
really being put into positionsof political unimportance.
They're not working in fieldslike marketing or customer
service. They're going intofields like trust and safety,
security and content moderation.And so that really clearly

(28:05):
suggests a political motive forthese sorts of these sorts of
hires. I mean, if you look at,you know, the people who are
actually involved in trust andsafety, it's very important to
understand who these people are.So you know, just an example,
Jacqueline loop, where she spentmore than 10 years at the CIA,

(28:29):
where she served as a leading USgovernment expert on security
challenges in the Middle East.In her own words, she joined
Google in 2017, and is now thesenior intelligence collection
and trust and safety manager. Soshe's basically in charge of
intelligence, and the brains ofGoogle, as you might be able to,

(28:50):
say, another CIA employee,between 2010 and in 2015. Jeff,
Lazarus was a political analystat Langley. In 2017, he was
hired as a policy advisor fortrust and safety at Google,
where he works on suppressing,quote, extremist content,
unquote. He now works at Appledoing a similar job. There are

(29:13):
dozens and dozens of examples ofthese people who now work at
Google, who formerly were CIAagents, who have just been
parachuted into these positionsof extreme importance. And this
is all happening silently. Youknow, we're we've been talking
about Facebook and Twitter. Andto a certain extent, if you're

(29:34):
not on these platforms, you canignore them. But Google is
really too big to ignore.There's no way that your life
isn't affected by Google. It'ssomething we use daily, even if
we're not really, you know,super online. What you know,
what comes up in a Google searchhas huge implications for how
people think for politicalmovements for public opinion.

(29:59):
The The sort of power thatGoogle has over modern society
can barely be over, oversimplified, and you know,
overset, this company has becomea behemoth in just 20 years, to
the point where it might be themost important and influential
company in the world. Yeah. Andso it's close. Its close ties

(30:22):
with the US national securitystate should really be alarming
people in all over the world,especially foreign governments,
who often rely on Google forneutral and professional
services, all the while, theyare entrusting their data and
all of their most importantinformation to a company that

(30:43):
has intimately close ties toWashington, DC.

WW (30:46):
Yeah, I mean, it's really astounding when you think about
Google's influence. So you know,you have search, which we've
talked about and around theworld, most people including
where I live in Chile, you know,it's Google dominates search
period. And most people use alsohere, Google's browser Chrome.
And of course, if you don't havean iPhone, most people have a
Google enabled Android phone.And the only way you don't have

(31:09):
Google on your phone using anAndroid is if you use a D
Googled Android operating systemlike graphene Alas, which a lot
of people you know, don't knowhow to really set them up, set
themselves up with an operatingsystem like that. So you have a
lot. I mean, Google really iseverywhere. And in addition to
that, what gets left out a lot,of course, is YouTube, which is

(31:30):
owned by Google and managed by,I guess, the sister in law of
Sergey Brin. Because he'smarried to forget her name,
though. Shiki sisters. So thehead of YouTube is one of those
sisters and the other sister is?Well, there's three sisters. But
one of one of the other two ismarried to Sergey, Brandon runs
23andme, the DNA testingcompany. So YouTube, as people

(31:54):
know, obviously, listening tothis podcast, was probably even
more censorship happy, since, Idon't know 2016 or so as
Facebook and Twitter, if notmore so. And one of the people
that you listed in your articlethat's, you know, she went from
working for the CIA for over adecade, as a political and

(32:15):
leadership analysis. She is nowthe intelligence analyst lead
for trust and safety at YouTube.So she's, you know, the person
essentially saying, This is whowe censor, these are the topics
we censor? And these are theones we don't. And that's a, you
know, longtime CIA veteran rightthere. And it's a I don't know,
pretty astounding. I mean, youwould think if so many people

(32:38):
were scandalized by some ofthese Twitter files Revelations
we talked about earlier aboutcollusion between the national
security state more specificallythe FBI, and the social media
company, Twitter, why would theynot be concerned about the CIA
and Google or any of these othercompanies like Facebook? It
seems? I don't know, it justseems a little weird that the
discussion was so limited onTwitter. And, you know, I don't

(33:00):
want to pick on anybody, becauseI'm sure, you know, people that
were writing that stuff, we'refocused, you know, on the
revelations themselves, but atleast some people reporting on
that, if not, the people thatdid the original reports
themselves could have pointed tohow this is industry wide
problem, you know, this is notexclusive to any one social
media network, you know, this isreally what's going on with all

(33:23):
of them. And I would considerYouTube to an extent social
media, because it's, um, there'sa lot of engagement with
comments and people posting backand forth. And a lot of people
for years have used YouTube as asubstitute for cable television,
because of course, cable newsviewing has gone down. YouTube
views have gone up, it's become,you know, in for many people,
essentially a replacement for TVto an extent. And, you know,

(33:45):
that adds another level to itsdominance of, of information.
And it's really not surprisingyou'd see the CIA there because,
you know, a quote attributed topeople like CIA, former CIA
director, William Casey, the CIAdirector under Reagan, was about
the need to have large, wideranging disinformation campaigns

(34:06):
to manipulate the Americanpublic national security policy
unimpeded, because it would beagainst some of the
sensibilities of the Americanpublic at large, which, of
course, you know, that type ofbehavior on the part of the
national security state has notchanged since the 80s or before
then. But obviously, having atool like Google, if you're the

(34:27):
CIA is something that's going tobe incredibly useful for you as
an agency. But it's frankly,very, very disturbing. When, as
you noted in your article, wehave people like former CIA
directors like Mike Pompeo beinglike, yeah, we lie and we cheat
and we steal like that's normalhere. So, you know, and of

(34:48):
course, not to mention the CIA'slitany of historical crimes
against humanity and evenagainst American interests, not
to mention the interests of youknow, other states and As you
know, election integrity andother countries election
meddling, what have you. Andwhat's worth pointing out to
with Google is, I don't rememberthe specifics of it so much. But

(35:09):
I do know that back during theArab Spring events of 2011 2012
or so, Google played a majorrole in a lot of that, from what
I from what I remember, andefforts to sort of manipulate
and for what information wasbeing seen to boost certain
oppositional movements incertain countries. and things of

(35:30):
that nature, Google played amajor role in that. And during
that same period of time, youhad DARPA, funding extensively
social media for the purpose ofstrategic communication. And we
can talk a little bit about thatlater. But some of this
eventually made its way into theGuardian and other newspapers
about how the US militarystudied how to influence Twitter

(35:50):
users, and DARPA funded researchfocusing specifically on
manipulating Occupy Wall Streetprotests, and then protesting
them in the Middle East,specifically referring to the
Arab Spring. So this issomething that's been going on
for a long time. And asobviously, I think, you know,
from what I've laid out herepretty clearly, and Sidious. But

(36:10):
I'm wondering, Alan, what yourthoughts are about how, how this
type of activity, this patternof activity and how entrenched
these agencies are in thesecompanies today? Um, how do you
see that impacting things fromhere on out specifically, when
we're considering that thetechnology they've been
utilizing is much more advancednow than it was 10 years ago?

Unknown (36:28):
Yeah, I think, if we go back 10 years, and the reason
YouTube group was, as YouTube,by the way, started off as a
competitor to Google Video,which was Google's own brand,
YouTube, which failed to reallycapture the public's
imagination. And the reason itgrew was because it was an
alternative to what you saw onthe television, it was really a

(36:51):
golden age for people who wereworking in alternative media,
you could put up videos on thereand get real traction and you
know, really reach a broadpublic build an audience and do
really well. And it wasabsolutely shown when the
algorithms back then were muchmore neutral, people would click
on the alternative media stuffrather than the stuff from CNN,

(37:14):
or Fox, or CBS or whatever,specifically, because it was of
a higher quality. And peoplewould be actually covering
topics that you couldn't see, ifyou just turned on a television.
Unfortunately, that golden agereally came crashing to a very
quick halt in the wake of the2016 election, whereby the
Clinton campaign and manyothers, besides in the

(37:37):
intelligence community as wellclaimed that basically fake news
on the Internet sponsored by aforeign power, specifically
Russia, was the reason thatTrump was able to beat Hillary
Clinton. And in the wake ofthis, we saw YouTube, Google,
Facebook, and all the other bigsocial media platforms, change

(37:58):
their algorithms radically topromote what they said was
authoritative content, andsuppress what they called
borderline content. But theproblem with this is that the
outcome of this wasn't to kickaway really low quality
conspiracy theories, what itwas, was ultimately, the

(38:19):
opportunity and yeah, theopportunity to kick away high
quality alternative mediawebsites that had been kicking
the ass of corporate media onthe Internet for years and
years. So for instance, the eyeworkout MintPress news lost over
90% of its Google searchtraffic, and more than 99% of

(38:39):
its Facebook traffic, within aperiod of just a few months,
even much more establishedwebsites like the intercept.
Last 19%, democracy now lost 36%of its Google traffic overnight.
And so what I really understandthis big algorithmic change that
happened in early 2017, to bewas basically a coordinated

(39:01):
campaign, which was in theinterests of big corporate
media, and the Democratic Party,and also the national security
state to kind of re tightentheir grip over the means of
communication, which had reallybeen flagging for the last 10
years with the rise of theInternet. And the fact that
social media really did offer analternative place to try and get

(39:25):
information news and views from.So unfortunately, now we've seen
as we've been laying out for thelast 20 minutes or so, the real
sort of powerplay from the USgovernment trying to retake
control over the means ofcommunication. Unfortunately,
there's very few people talkingabout this. So I think it's

(39:46):
probably going to get worserather than better. Even though
when people do talk about thisin print or online anywhere.
There is a lot of interest fromthe public because I think a lot
of people sense that this iskind of going on, but they don't
actually have The details.

WW (40:01):
Yeah, I think that's, that's fair to say. But the problem is,
you know, a lot, there's so muchdependency for communication now
on a lot of these platforms thatI think even when people who use
them become outraged, they'relike, Well, what can I do about
it, I either stop participatingin, you know, stop using these
platforms, but then I can'tcommunicate with people or watch

(40:21):
this content or do this or that,you know, because, you know,
there are alternatives for youto write, that I think are
becoming increasingly morecommon. But some of them too,
like rumble, for instance, isvery much aligned with one
particular political ideology,which tends to be those who feel
most censored by YouTube, forexample. But there are some

(40:42):
robust alternatives there. Butfor things like Twitter and
Facebook, there have beenefforts to create alternative
social media networks. I mean,there's loads of them at this
point, but none of them havereally ever caught on and it
seems like people have sort ofbecome dependent on these
platforms in a sense, and that'snot necessarily good, if you
wish to change major aspects oftheir, of their policy or hiring

(41:06):
practices and things like that,or you want to European opposed
to them fusing with the nationalsecurity state, you know, it's
kind of hard as a, as a singleuser to really have any
influence on on on thosedecisions. So, Alan, if it's
okay with you, I'd like to turnto another social media network
that we haven't talked aboutyet, which does tend to crop up

(41:27):
and alternative media to anextent but largely over claims
of its utility for you know, theChinese I guess, military
industrial complex, tick tock.So for example, most people are
probably familiar with soundbites here and there from Joe
Rogan and other podcasts of thattype, talking about how tick
tock is basically a surveillancemachine, though, unfortunately,

(41:50):
for people like that, I wouldsay they, to their detriment
ignore the fact that, you know,the NSA, for example, and other
you know, surveillance companieson the other side of
surveillance entities on theother side, are very much in bed
with some of the social medianetworks and social networks and
other companies we've alreadytalked about today, like
Facebook and Google, you know,going back to the some of the

(42:12):
revelations from Edward Snowdenand others was that, you know, a
lot of pretty much all of bigtech was openly collaborating
with the NSA with very littlecomplaints from the private side
about, you know, essentiallyundermining American
constitutional rights. Butanyway, you know, the claim is
often made about tick tock inthat, in that lens that, you
know, it's being used by theChinese government for the

(42:33):
purpose of surveillance. Butwhat you notably pointed out in
your article, the NATO, the TickTock pipeline, why is tick tock
employing so many nationalsecurity agents? There is, of
course, a lot more to thisnarrative, as, as the title
pretty much points out, ticktock is hiring a lot of former

(42:54):
intelligence people. And I don'tknow, why do you think that
might be? Alan?

Unknown (43:00):
Yeah. So it's, it's interesting to note that Tiktok
is one of the only major socialmedia networks in fact, the only
one that is not actually anAmerican company. We'd like to
think of social media networksas these kinds of transnational
entities which don't really arenot defined by borders, and

(43:21):
they're, you know, internationalconglomerates. But in reality,
they usually have bricks andmortar homes in Texas or
California, and they are subjectto American laws, tick tock was
a little bit different, becauseit was started by a Chinese
company bytedance. And I thinkbecause of that, that really

(43:41):
sparked huge, huge concern inthe United States that perhaps
tick tock wasn't going to be asofay wasn't going to be as easy
to manipulate as the other ones.And so in 2020, you might
remember this big push by theTrump administration to force
tick tock to even sell, itspretty much its entire business

(44:01):
to an American company likeMicrosoft, or Oracle, or face
being totally shut down in theUnited States. In fact, the
company actually had secured adeal with Bill Gates for I can't
remember the exact amount, butGates was basically going to buy
the US operation of Tiktok tokeep it afloat. Suddenly,

(44:24):
though, this big hysteria over aChinese surveillance of your
kids was just dropped. It waslike almost overnight, we just
had stopped hearing about it. Infact, Gates himself was very
surprised to hear that his hispurchase of the company was
basically nixed, and he didn'teven know why. And I didn't know
why as well for the longesttime. But I did start to put two

(44:46):
and two together when I startedto look at who is actually being
implied in the higher echelonsof tic toc. What I found was
that at exactly the same pointthat the US government stopped
making noise about tick tockbeing a Chinese surveillance
tool was exactly the same pointwhereby a ton of people from
NATO and other big nationalsecurity state organizations,

(45:10):
were being hired by tick tockinto very important roles in the
company to run its mostimportant operations. And again,
like Google and Facebook, theyweren't being employed in
marketing or customer service.They're being employed in
content moderation, to controlthe algorithms and trust and
safety, and insecurity. And Ithink one of the people that I

(45:32):
think is most blatant, andprobably is worth knowing about
is Greg Anderson. So accordingto Greg Anderson's own LinkedIn
profile, until 2019, he workedon quote, psychological
operations and quote for NATO.And he left his job and

(45:53):
immediately got put into Tiktok,as the new feature Policy
Manager. So basically, you know,deciding what sort of policies
the company would, would goahead with. And Greg Anderson is
just one of many, many people Ifind, all of whom are working in
these politically sensitivefields, it takes up at exactly

(46:14):
the same point that the USgovernment stops making such a
noise about tick tock beingforeign controlled. Now is the
Chinese government, perhaps, youknow, has some sort of backdoor
into ticks off? Well, maybe thatis possible. It's not like
they're averse to surveillingtheir own citizens. So, you
know, perhaps that's the case.But really, this is a case of a
huge, enormous example of thepot calling the kettle black

(46:38):
here. The real danger in termsof surveillance comes from the
US government, and not someforeign entity. And that's the
thing we should really befocusing on if we are Westerners
ourselves.

WW (46:49):
Yeah, I think that's, that's fair to point out. And it sort
of makes me think also, they'llhave. So I don't know if you're
familiar with Eric Schmidt, theformer CEO of Google, he's been
described by The New York Timesas the new Kissinger, meaning
Henry Kissinger, which isunsettling, but he actually
wrote a recent book with, withKissinger, about the future of

(47:11):
AI and what it means for theworld. And Schmidt also had
previously it's concluded itswork now but had headed the
National Security Commission onartificial intelligence, which
was basically a meeting ofintelligence agencies, the
military, and big tech. And whatthey had argued, and sort of
what he argues with Kissinger'sin his book with Kissinger, is

(47:34):
this idea that in order to avoidwar with China, there should be
an effort to essentially bringtogether so, you know, we've
been talking a lot about how thenational security state and big
tech in the US had been fusinghe wants to, what he talks about
when he talks about China, EricSchmidt, is that he wants to
advance that fusion even more.And he sort of refers to China

(47:59):
as that, you know, talking aboutwhat they ought to left, a lot
of times these people in the USgovernment refer to as the civil
military fusion model. But it'sreally not any different than
what has been going on in the USfor some time, there's just sort
of like a semantic difference orhow its publicly treated, that
makes it different. But whatSchmidt is trying to say is that
in order to avoid war withChina, this national security

(48:20):
state, big tech fusion in theUS, that nexus should merge with
the equivalent in China, andthat we should develop this sort
of system together. Which is abit odd, isn't it when you
consider that a lot of the sameentities within that National
Security Commission, you know,for example, are very much into
the brinkmanship between the USand China, this idea of pushing

(48:42):
us toward, you know, world warthree, and some of the stuff
that's taught up touched on, forexample, and John Pilcher
pillagers documentary on thecoming war with China, you know,
there's a huge segment of thatin the national security state,
but then you have these big techpeople like Schmidt, who were
very much plugged in to the USgovernment right now. And
they're, you know, looking tosort of have, I guess, you could

(49:03):
say, groups like, tick tock workmuch more closely, you know,
with sort of their equivalentsin the US. So in the case of
what you're talking about, inthis article, you have, you
know, tick tock Canada and ticktock us, you know, these are
subsidiaries of this Chinesebased company that's been
accused of being, you know, asurveillance tool, but it's,

(49:23):
it's merging essentially, withsome of these actors,
relatively, you know, very muchin mesh with the national
security state. I mean, it'spretty, it's pretty weird. And
to me, it ultimately speaks tohow some of these people just,
you know, want to see thismodel, I guess, sort of expand
for the purpose of controllinginformation not just in the US

(49:44):
but beyond and also how a lot ofthese countries around the
world, regardless of what sideof the political divide, they
may be on are very interested indeveloping any sort of
technology regardless if it'sfrom enemy state number one, or
whatever, you know, if it servesthem for the purpose of domestic
control, they seem to beincreasingly on board with that
kind of stuff.

Unknown (50:05):
That's very interesting. I haven't seen Eric
Schmidt's new book, we shouldactually just say that Schmidt
actually left a job and thenational security state to
become CEO of Google. And whileat Google, he took a job at the
Defense Department as well. Sohe's Yeah, fundamentally, very
closely revolving door guy. He'svery closely linked with
Washington, I have read anotherbook by Eric Schmidt, it was

(50:26):
called the new digital age, itcame out in 2013. And in it,
there's this incredible quotethat I use very often, when he's
talking about what informationtechnology really is. Schmidt
says, and I've got the directquote here, what Lockheed Martin
was to the 20th centurytechnology and, and
cybersecurity companies likeGoogle will be to the 21st and

(50:50):
quote, so what he's saying thereis that big tech is the
ideological tip of the spear forthe US Empire going into the
21st century. So before it wasall about the power of the US
military, and now it's all aboutthe power of us social media,
and the tech industry ingeneral, that will further

(51:11):
advance Washington's interest.And I think that's maybe what
we're seeing here. As regards toChina, I really don't know, it
does seem much more likely thatthe US is preparing for war with
China rather than cooperation.But, you know, perhaps
cooperation would be well,

WW (51:26):
I'm not, I'm not saying that they're that views necessarily
going to win out, I just find itinteresting that there's people
like Eric Schmidt, propagatingthat idea, you know, within
their specific circles, and yet,you have Kissinger sort of
saying similar things, becausehe's, you know, styles himself
these days is sort of like aChina expert. And it's this idea

(51:48):
that this is the only way toavoid war. That's the claim
anyway, made by these guys, youknow, how influential that is on
a military industrial complexthat spent billions and devoted
a lot of time and energy toputting bases all throughout the
Pacific and NATO bases allaround Russia for some sort of
power competition war at somepoint. You know, I think it's
pretty clear that there's acompeting interest there. But

(52:11):
it's worth pointing out thatthat is a policy vision that's
been articulated by some ofthese people that stand at this
sort of this area that bridges,big tech and national security,
I just think it's worth them,you know, pointing it out,
because you do see some sort ofcollaborations, it seems like
between entities you want toexpect like NATO and the US

(52:32):
national security state andTiktok, based on the narratives
that most people are familiarwith, you know, it seems
illogical to some perhaps whythat collaboration might take
place, right? Oh, yeah. But

Unknown (52:43):
listen, the social media is now enormously
important. It really decideswhat we think about what we see
what we don't see, it informseverything about our being. And
so whenever an entity becomesthis powerful, it's natural,
that powerful organizations,whether they're corporations, or
governments will start to lookat that and try to understand

(53:05):
how they can hack it, how theycan use it for their own
benefits, or how they can eveninfiltrate it. And that's what
we're seeing. Sure.

WW (53:13):
Yeah, good point. Okay. So, in coming up to the last bit of
the podcasts, there's a coupleother articles of yours. Well,
really one in particular that Idefinitely wanted to touch on
today, which is about a companycalled grafica, spelled with a K
at the end, and you call it thedeep states beard for
controlling the Information Age,which I found pretty amusing.

(53:36):
But grafica is doing all sortsof stuff, as you know, in the
article, they're cited veryfrequently by mainstream media,
their claims are usually withoutany sort of analysis on the part
of mainstream media justrepeated, as fact. And as you
point out, they have a lot ofnational security, connections

(53:58):
and all sorts of, you know,weird, weird things about them,
I guess I'll throw it to you tosort of explain what graphic is
and its importance. But there'sactually, as we can talk about
after, there's a lot ofcompanies trying to fit this
exact same mold that grafica is,you know, the niche, it's sort

(54:18):
of created for itself. There's afew other companies that are are
quite similar. So who isgrafica? How are they tied to
the CIA? And how are theyinfluencing, you know, in what
information is able to beaccessed by people today?

Unknown (54:32):
Oh, sure. If so, I mean, if you read corporate
media, you will understandgrafica as this privates, people
led intelligence operation,which is really shining a light
on the dark corners of theinternet, and trying to do good
in this world. They describethemselves as the cartographers
of the Internet age. Sobasically, they are this trendy

(54:54):
Manhattan company that doessorts of investigations,
supposedly to try and bringyou're owed more freedom online.
But that when you start lookinginto the company starts to
really crumble, not only becauseof who is working for the
company, but who is actuallyfunding this company as well. So
first of all, they have veryglitzy offices in Manhattan. And

(55:17):
it turns out these are beingpaid for by the Pentagon's
Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency, DARPA, DARPA,
and the Department of Defense,and also from grants from the US
Navy, and from the US Air Forceas well. They've also had
funding from the AtlanticCouncil, which is NATO and all
but name. So it's really quiteremarkable where this money is

(55:40):
coming from that already shouldstart raising alarm bells in
your mind. But when you actuallylook at who works for grafica,
it becomes clear that thesepeople are just ex military
intelligence, or ex nationalsecurity state agents going back
for many years. So I mean, oneof them, for example, is the

(56:02):
head of investigations. BenNimmo, who's, you know, he is
absolutely notorious. He wasactually NATO's press officer
for many years. And he's nowhead of intelligence for
Facebook as well. So again, thisis the you know, this fusion of
think tanks of social media, andof the national security state

(56:23):
all at once. We've got so manypeople, when you look at food,
who actually works there, whathis strategy executive service,
Chris Bing, he spent 24 years atthe CIA, then seven years in the
US Army, and then moves into,you know, working for this, you
know, people led, you know,private organization, which is
shining a light on everything.Joanne Perry's spent three and a

(56:46):
half years as a CIA intelligenceanalyst, before moving to
graphical, Lauren pen check, whowas who is graphic, as vice
president of financial andoperations worked at the NSA. In
fact, she became the Director ofCorporate Strategy at the NSA,
she also worked for NorthropGrumman. And now she works, you

(57:06):
know, at this place. So thereare just dozens and dozens of
examples of extremely spookycharacters working for
graphical. And when you look atthe reports, graphic of pumpout,
it's all about Russianinterference in US society, or
Chinese interference, or Iranianor the threat from Iran or
Venezuela, or whatever. Andultimately, when we see this,

(57:30):
this is basically propagandaabout propaganda is what I'm
saying. There is a huge stateled effort by the United States
to try to convince Westernpublics that there is an
enormous state led influenceoperation going on, at the hands
of Russia, or China or Iran,that is really the perfidious
and the source of all sorts ofconflict in the United States.

(57:54):
It's not the internal classcontradictions, it's not the
fact that people at the top ofsociety are stealing trillions
from people at the bottom isactually just pesky Russians, or
a pesky Iranians, you know,standing well fake memes around
which has got people so worriedand anxious.

WW (58:11):
Well, the the idea of that narrative, though, is completely
insane on its face, because theit's the idea that people that
don't agree with the officialgovernment line of the US and
like, its allies are, must beforeign. You know, bots are
like, you know, people paid forinfluenced by foreign entities,

(58:32):
when there's plenty for peopleliving within the US or the UK,
or any of the five eyescountries to be in an uproar
about how their governments arebehaving and doing, you know,
whether it's foreign policy,domestic policy, whatever, it's
essentially, as I've writtenabout in the past, it's, it's in
a way, it's a war on dissent. Byclaiming that, you know, anyone

(58:53):
that propagates narratives thatare deemed unfriendly to the
state are treated as foreignadversaries, or at least
adjacent to foreign adversaries,which is, you know, remember in
this in the concept in thecontext of this being an
information war and information,warfare and all of that, you
know, that those narratives arethe enemy. So it doesn't really
matter. If you actually areaffiliated with the foreign

(59:14):
countries, or you're just aregular person, you know, that's
the narrative they want totarget. And if they have to use
a broad brush to paint everyoneis a Russian bot, or a Chinese
spy, or, you know, whateverfits, you know, they tend to do
that. And I think it's veryinsidious, because, um, this is
actually in the Bidenadministration's policy papers
for the war on domestic terror.It frames any sort of narrative

(59:36):
that undermines trust in the USgovernment, as you know,
essentially an act of domesticterror, which is just totally
insane. At the idea that theonly way to not have domestic
terror is to have everyone inthe US agree about everything. I
mean, it's just nuts because thewhole idea is that this is all
all this has to be done. Theysay also to protect our

(59:58):
democracy but if your homelandcentralizing discourse and
making everyone have to say thesame stuff. How democratic is
that? There's nothing democraticabout that at all. I don't know
your thoughts, Alan.

Unknown (01:00:09):
Yeah, this sort of tactic is actually quite an old
one. You know, if anyone'sinvolved in the peace movement,
they'll know that, you know,people who were criticizing the
US government's role in startingthe war in Iraq, or trying to
campaign against that, actuallyhappening were called Secret
lovers of Saddam, they weredoing Saddam Hussein's work the,
they love the dictator, or maybeif it was in Libya, they were no

(01:00:32):
secret admirers of Qaddafi, orif it was in Syria, they were
talking about, you know, notwanting the US to get involved,
they were actually in a status.Now very few people who were
criticizing the US governmentover these things, Americans, I
mean, actually had any love forthese three characters. But that
was the the paint which was usedto tar these movements. And if

(01:00:54):
you go back even further, itgoes on. If you were criticizing
the US government's role inlet's say, Latin America, in the
1980s, you were secretly a red,and you were a communist agent.
This is how Martin Luther Kingand the whole black liberation
movement of the 60s was tired.They were secretly communists,
they were getting direction fromthe Kremlin. And so this sort of

(01:01:16):
McCarthy's nonsense really goesback for decades and decades, if
not centuries in the UnitedStates. But we are seeing a new
kind of twinge to it a new spinon this in the digital age. And
as we're seeing a sort of slowdecline of American power, this,
I suspect might get worse andworse rather than better.

WW (01:01:37):
Yeah, I definitely think that's true. So to add what you
said about graphic earlier, Isort of mentioned a little bit
there that there's a lot ofother companies trying to do
similar things for the sameentities. And one of the groups
that I've written about in thepast has been this company
called primer or primer AI,which, in 2020, became a

(01:01:58):
contractor for the US Air Forceand US Special Operations
Command. And in that pressrelease, it says primer will
develop the first ever machinelearning platform to
automatically identify andassess suspected disinformation.
So that's a very interestingterm suspected disinformation,
because based on what, you know,we just laid out if you are

(01:02:22):
saying anything that is againstthe government line, right, as
the narrative has been set up,you can just be treated as a
Russian bot, or whatever. Soessentially, any narrative that
runs counter to the statenarrative can be treated under
these metrics based on whatwe've seen thus far as suspected
suspected, disinformation, youdon't actually have to have
proof it's disinformation only,suspicion must be introduced

(01:02:44):
about what you're saying Forprimer AI and the Air Force to
take it. You know, take it outof the news feeds and whatnot.
And they're very, just like alot of the companies you've
talked about. They have a verylarge amount of CIA and NATO
people and all sorts ofconnections like that. And in

(01:03:06):
this interesting blog post thatwas published by primers founder
and 2020, who by the way, hisname is Shawn Gourley. I think
he's a New Zealander. But whathe did before primer was a he
created a programs for the USmilitary to track insurgency,
and post invasion Iraq. Yeah.And so now he's turning that to
domestic disinformationcampaigns. And he says, he said

(01:03:28):
in April 2020, computationalwarfare and disinformation
campaigns will and 2020 become amore serious threat than
physical war, and we will haveto rethink the weapons we
deployed to fight them. He thengoes to argue that there must be
a quote, Manhattan Project fortruth. Yeah, where he says there
should be a Wikipedia styledatabase written by country's

(01:03:50):
intelligence agencies, andthat's going to be the baseline
for what's true or not. Sothat's pretty insane. And then
at the end of the blog post,this last sentence says and 2020
we will begin to weaponize thetruth and this is a guy you
know, this company is workingwith social media all sorts of

(01:04:12):
other companies that are verymuch involved with the
information people can or can'taccess again you have in que tal
backing these guys as well asMike Bloomberg and a lot of
people that previously wereinvolved with Iraq War, the Iraq
War surge people tied to Neocons like the Kagan family, Air
Force Intelligence us NATO. Imean, all these guys we've been

(01:04:33):
talking about are the peoplethat stuff primer AI in this
effort to go afterdisinformation and in the
context of the Air Force beingthe contracting group for
primer. What I find interesting,there's this 2014 article from
Ars Technica, it says Air ForceResearch colon, how to use
social media to control peoplelike drones. Pretty interesting.

(01:04:57):
Basically turn people intorobots that do their bidding, I
guess is what I sort of get fromthat headline, but you have this
idea from primary AI thatintelligence agencies need to
decide what's truth or not foreveryone. And it's conveniently
a company stuffed with formerintelligence agents. And now the
Air Force is contracting it tomanipulate what what is seen on

(01:05:18):
social media networks using AI.And previously, the Air Force
wanted to use social medianetworks to turn people into,
you know, their robotic drone,like slaves, I guess is how it
comes across. I mean, it seemspretty insane. The efforts
currently underway and using AI,which, of course is everyone
knows by now is advancing prettysteadily, not just to censor,

(01:05:42):
but to alter people'sperceptions with the end goal of
essentially brainwashing them, Iguess you could say, so that
they're easier to control. Imean, it's very insane and
insidious. And I just, you know,I'm blown away that more people
don't see social media for whatit is. I don't know. Do you have
any thoughts, Alan? Well, there

Unknown (01:06:03):
are so many hangers on these private companies that
we've been talking about thatare setting off, you know,
collectively, they're usuallyset up in the outskirts of
Washington, DC as a think tankin the region I call Raytheon.
Akers, which, you know,basically, they're just trying
to get that money from defensecontracts. And now they seem to
have pivoted towards this sortof misinformation angle, you

(01:06:26):
know, they're all offering to bethe guardians of truth, despite
the fact that they have noqualifications to do so. And
what I found so insidious aboutthis whole Russian bot
narrative, meaning that if yousay something that goes against
the, you know, collective willof the beltway in Washington,
that you're labeled a Russianbox, is that to bring it back to

(01:06:47):
what we were talking aboutearlier, the Twitter files, the
Twitter files have really blownthe lid open on this Russian bot
narrative, to the point where wenow know because we have the
emails that even people who arein positions at the very top of
Twitter, realize that thisentire Russian bot narrative
from the beginning wascompletely baloney. Really, you

(01:07:10):
know, the, the emails from URLRoth talking about this Hamilton
68 dashboard, which was this,which was this program that was
designed to find hundreds ofRussian bots spreading
misinformation, you will Rosswas talking about this, the head
of Twitter saying this iscompletely unnecessary horse vs.
And that we have to, you know,push back against it. That's

(01:07:33):
what he was saying in private,but in public, he was going
along with the narrative thatOh, yes, Russian bots are a
problem. When you actually lookat who was on this list, almost
all of them are Americans, andyou know, quite easy to figure
out who these people are. Andyou can, you know, give them a
direct message and talk to them.Most of them are on the sort of
Trump right, but there were someon the left as well, like people

(01:07:54):
like Joe Lauria, the head of

WW (01:07:58):
Yeah, so

Unknown (01:07:59):
this kind of happens, this kind of feels like this
whole proper knot thing all overagain. Yeah, this is quite a 16
thing where a whole bunch ofoutlets got labeled Russian
propaganda, despite the fact Ithink most of them were, you
know, based in the UnitedStates, and had were very
obvious who they were. So I justthink this is just a latest
chapter of this ongoinginformation war that goes on.

(01:08:21):
And it's important that peoplekeep abreast of it, because
otherwise, they will be fed,filling their heads with all
sorts of misinformation.

WW (01:08:28):
Yeah, and not just that, but it's so it's a war on people
like you and me and other peopleand independent media, that
challenge these narratives.There's major efforts to take us
out of play, you know, whetherit's through censorship, or you
know, financial censorship, oryou know, what you mentioned
earlier with what happened withMIT presses, Google traffic when
I was working at MIT Press whenthat happened, and it was just

(01:08:49):
crazy. The amount ofmanipulation and how it can just
be used to censor your reach andhow your information gets out
there. I mean, it's it's reallya war on independent information
on a massive scale. And thepeople behind it are, I think,
pretty clearly up to no good. Imean, they're certainly not up

(01:09:09):
to, you know, democratic value,the democratic values that claim
to be protecting right, um,which is about, you know, what
makes the US democracy great.The First Amendment, free
speech, all of the stuff I mean,obviously, there's an effort to
make it only the Free Speechcondoned by these powerful
entities in the Americangovernment. And, you know,

(01:09:29):
obviously, some of their theirallied states, I just find it
very, very unsettling across theboard. All right. Well, I think
we've been going for some timenow, Alan, and I want to thank
you a lot for your for your timetoday. And for of course, your
your important work on these onthese matters. Because I you
know, like I said earlier, Idon't think there's just enough

(01:09:49):
coverage about what's going onhere because ultimately, when
you consider the extreme powerthat Silicon Valley and big tech
and also, of course, sociallysocial media networks have in
our society. At and to haveessentially, the CIA and a lot
of these intelligence agenciesor entities with an awful track
record, whether it comes tohuman rights or democracy are
propping up the worstgovernments in the history of

(01:10:11):
the world dictatorships, whathave you, you know, these are
the people running thisoperation. And most people are
unknowingly, you know, in thisin this what is essentially a
war viewed by the nationalsecurity state as a war, but
they're unaware that they're inthe middle of this war, which is
ultimately a war for our heartsand minds in the war over over

(01:10:33):
human, you know, on humanperception, essentially. And
anyway, just thanks a lot foreverything you've done to bring
this to light. Because, youknow, the Twitter files did some
good in that sense, but reallyyour work even before those, and
despite of it has done a lotmore, I think, to really show
the true nature of what's beengoing on here. So thanks a lot,

(01:10:55):
Alan.

Unknown (01:10:56):
Thank you. It's great to speak with you. Likewise.

WW (01:10:58):
So anyway, how can people follow and support your work?

Unknown (01:11:01):
Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, we've been racking on
social media for about an hour,but I'm still on there myself.
You can find me on Twitter, AlanR McLeod, a la NRMACLEO. De, or
if you're on Instagram, and Alandots are dots McLeod. But the
best way to actually find mywork is to go to MintPress
news.com. And bookmark it justlike in the old days.

WW (01:11:24):
Yeah, absolutely. And I believe MIT Press also has an
RSS feed. So I've talked aboutthis in some recent podcasts and
in my recent ama forsubscribers, so RSS feeds, if
you're not familiar, please lookthem up. It's a great way to
curate your own censorship proofnews feed equivalent, taking big
tech out of the middleman as asyou know, the arbiter of what

(01:11:45):
you see and what you don't see.And a good way to sort of fight
back against a lot of theunsettling trends that we've
talked about today. So I knowthat MIT Press hasn't has the
ability to be tied to an RSSfeeder app just as unlimited
hangout does, and a lot of otherwebsites around there. So
consider adding MintPress and soyou can add to you know, your

(01:12:07):
RSS feed if you if you'd likebecause Allen's working is great
and a lot of other people at MITPress of course doing important
work. Alright, so thanks a lot,Alan. Again, appreciate your
time and your work. And thanksto everyone so much for
listening, especially peoplethat subscribe to unlimited
hangout and make this podcastpossible. Alright, thanks so
much, everybody and catch you onthe next episode.