Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noah.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer Paul. Mission control decads. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 2: want you to know. You know, thinking about this evening's exploration, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: we're kind of on a mission of preservation because we're
Speaker 2: talking about a story that might fall away from the headlights.
Speaker 2: It's no secret here in the US things have been
Speaker 2: kind of embarrassing. You know, there's a political circus, doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what side you're on. You know, everybody appears clownish.
Speaker 2: They're bizarre rulings from the US Supreme Court. And in
Speaker 2: all of this, there's a proven conspiracy that just went
Speaker 2: public a few days ago, as we record.
Speaker 4: That's right, the Pentagon ran a completely terrifying propaganda campaign
Speaker 4: that actually killed innocent people.
Speaker 3: Well well, hey, now, hey, now hello, that's a it's
Speaker 3: a weird thing to say but it's true. But it's
Speaker 3: it is right.
Speaker 2: It's like we don't know. We know that it is
Speaker 2: statistically likely, if but not certain to that point, not certain,
Speaker 2: that innocent people died as a direct result. It is
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly statistically likely that that is the case. It is
Speaker 2: also impossible to prove right in terms of naming deathle
Speaker 2: and individuals one by one. But the thing is, this
Speaker 2: propaganda campaign was not intended to kill people. The idea
Speaker 2: of killing people wasn't really part of the equation. It
Speaker 2: was all the score points in the dirtiest and greatest
Speaker 2: games controlling the world. And how far would you go
Speaker 2: to accomplish that greater good?
Speaker 5: What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Speaker 2: Especially the Klondike bar was hegemony? Careful, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 2: We're going into the deep water tonight. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2: All right, this might sound elementary, but I believe these
Speaker 2: statistics are still mind boggling to the four of us, right,
Speaker 2: and hopefully do you playing along at home? The US
Speaker 2: Department of Defense, by any conceivable metric, is huge. It's
Speaker 2: a kaiju. It's gargantuan. It is uh, just my invisible
Speaker 2: mel Brooks tie too.
Speaker 5: Big to fail. Absolutely true, and I believe it was.
Speaker 4: At one point the had the dubious the honorific of
Speaker 4: being the world's largest office building, which sounds like the
Speaker 4: dullest you know, accolade one could bestow. But even that's
Speaker 4: not true anymore because I think there's one in India
Speaker 4: now that that's bigger.
Speaker 2: The Surat Diamond Borse took the prize in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three up until from nineteen forty three up until last year,
Speaker 2: as we record, You're absolutely right, the Department of Defense
Speaker 2: was the world's largest office building. Such a is that
Speaker 2: one of the most boring Guinness World records.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I think i've I've I've made
Speaker 4: my case or at least drawn my line in the
Speaker 4: sand there.
Speaker 3: It is kind of weird. And most office buildings the
Speaker 3: people inside are making money for a corporation in the Pentagon,
Speaker 3: They are just spending it.
Speaker 2: That's a great point.
Speaker 4: But to the ultimate end, to your point, Ben, of
Speaker 4: that great klonduc bar in the sky or you know,
Speaker 4: the argument politically speaking rhetorically is they're protecting us. They're
Speaker 4: doing God's work in there, making sure that we as
Speaker 4: American citizens are safe from those who would do us harm.
Speaker 2: Every powerful group I have ever interacted with, at least
Speaker 2: in my experience, has always said, or always maintained, the
Speaker 2: world is chaotic and evil and dangerous, and the only
Speaker 2: way for it to be safer is for someone to
Speaker 2: be in charge. And surprise, the people who say that
Speaker 2: always picture themselves as the person in charge or the entity.
Speaker 2: So this place, you know, we often hear news about
Speaker 2: the Pentagon, and when people are saying that, they're really
Speaker 2: talking about the Department of Defense, it's called mentotomy. It's
Speaker 2: the same way, you know, the reporters will say the
Speaker 2: White House when they're talking about president.
Speaker 5: Or xerox as a stand in for photo copy, you know.
Speaker 2: Similar, Yeah, like an epnonymous, apotymous trademark. It's so it's
Speaker 2: so stupid, cartoonishly big. It's like such an American idea.
Speaker 2: And I don't say that as an insult. It's seven
Speaker 2: story behemoth. It takes up more than six point six
Speaker 2: million square feet just of office space just to people
Speaker 2: walking around, as you said, Matt, spending a lot of
Speaker 2: taxpayer money. And it has a new stat I found
Speaker 2: it has sixty seven acres of just parking lots Wow,
Speaker 2: how still not enough? How long would that take just to.
Speaker 4: Traverse by foot? It's a lot of football fields. I
Speaker 4: always find it interesting that the pentagon is in fact
Speaker 4: shaped like a pentagon, you know, and the idea that
Speaker 4: they're protecting us the pentacle or the pentagram you know,
Speaker 4: is often lumped in with being like an image of
Speaker 4: satanic demonic worship or whatever, but really, in WICCA and
Speaker 4: various other belief systems, it is a protective sigil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this protective sigil has its human circulatory system
Speaker 2: is somewhere north of twenty six thousand people in that
Speaker 2: building on any given day, where there permanently on a
Speaker 2: long term basis, twenty three thousand military and civilian employees
Speaker 2: and then three thousand what they would call support personnel.
Speaker 4: And that balance or at least in terms of like
Speaker 4: how you know, safe they are in their jobs could
Speaker 4: change if that program that we discussed in a recent
Speaker 4: episode goes through and no longer are there these long
Speaker 4: term bureaucratic positions that are you know, have stasis through
Speaker 4: different administrations. There could be a whole new regime anytime
Speaker 4: someone new comes into power that could flip flop and
Speaker 4: no longer are we dealing with long term experts, but
Speaker 4: we're dealing with people who are affiliated with political ideologies
Speaker 4: filling those roles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, probably just scary. I'm sorry, scary, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Pentagon as an idea is both awe
Speaker 2: inspiring and terrifying. The DoD is an idea. This number,
Speaker 2: this twenty six thousand dish also doesn't count the many,
Speaker 2: many visitors who pass through on a daily basis, or
Speaker 2: a weekly basis or quarterly basis. And look, if you
Speaker 2: are a long time conspiracy realist, folks, you know well
Speaker 2: that the Department of Defense has been accused of all
Speaker 2: sorts of for being careful, let's say, unethical activities over
Speaker 2: the years. Not necessarily illegal all the time, but definitely shenanigans, right,
Speaker 2: And a lot of those accusations that were treated as
Speaker 2: wild conspiracy theories were later proving correct when different things
Speaker 2: got declassified, when journalists dug in, and when you know,
Speaker 2: enough time it passed for individuals to not get in trouble.
Speaker 4: Well, and with the bureaucracy of that size and all
Speaker 4: of the secret programs various levels of classification, you have
Speaker 4: programs within programs and ones that certain personnel aren't even
Speaker 4: aware of, you know, up to the highest levels. So
Speaker 4: many like wheels within wheels taking place within this building.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you think about the combination of different military
Speaker 3: branches and operations that are kind of joint in nature,
Speaker 3: and then if you imagine like the spaghetti that is
Speaker 3: all of those special access programs that's been you need
Speaker 3: a seven story building that's you know.
Speaker 2: Giant, right, and uh it is. It is, no fooling folks,
Speaker 2: And we checked right before we recorded this. Uh, the
Speaker 2: Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the world,
Speaker 2: which if we played with statistics, I guess technically that
Speaker 2: would mean that if you picked a random person right
Speaker 2: then they would most likely be working for the Department
Speaker 2: of Defense.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. Now, that doesn't include like, if you are
Speaker 3: a member of let's say the Army, you are not
Speaker 3: a part of the Department of Defense. That's a whole
Speaker 3: separate thing.
Speaker 2: Or there you're you're under it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, okay, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's weird. It's like it's like how f x X
Speaker 2: is part of FX, which is part of Fox.
Speaker 5: Or HBO, Max Now Squared.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I still don't know I'm subscribed.
Speaker 4: It is almost a parent company type flow chart situation
Speaker 4: in an interesting way. And so as the commander in
Speaker 4: chief is the president technically the big big boss over
Speaker 4: the DoD or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because DoD is, DoD coordinates. It's an executive department,
Speaker 2: so it's under the executive branch. It coordinates all the
Speaker 2: agencies and functions of the US government related to national
Speaker 2: security and the armed forces. That means over one point
Speaker 2: three four million active duty service members, and that also
Speaker 2: means almost a million, almost eight hundred thousand National Guard
Speaker 2: and reservists, and then seven hundred and forty seven something
Speaker 2: thousand civilians. So the total is over two point eighty
Speaker 2: seven million employees.
Speaker 3: Need we need a lot of tax dollars for all
Speaker 3: those salaries.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure there's a ton of folks that work
Speaker 4: remotely as well, right like the Yeah.
Speaker 5: Can you even imagine that outside of it?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I'm trying to imagine the Department
Speaker 3: of Defenses work from home policies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they're very well.
Speaker 4: We did we did talk about how you know there
Speaker 4: they had to I guess loosen their regulations on drug
Speaker 4: policies because they couldn't get good enough hackers because they
Speaker 4: wanted to be able to stay home and drink their
Speaker 4: diet mountain dew and smoke their weed. So they had
Speaker 4: to to some degree compromise with that.
Speaker 2: Mm. Yeah, I mean that that is That is a
Speaker 2: true story, folks, if you haven't heard it before. Most
Speaker 2: of the good hackers are kind of fig.
Speaker 5: They're in that floating you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're microdosing for America.
Speaker 5: I love dude.
Speaker 4: That's a T shirt right there. Microdosing for America.
Speaker 2: Officer. You have to look at the bigger picture here.
Speaker 5: Uh so I'm not on drugs. I'm doing my page
Speaker 5: periodic duty. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We could keep throwing around statistics like this all evening.
Speaker 2: We love bizarre statistics, but we're bringing all this up
Speaker 2: to establish one key point. The size of the Department
Speaker 2: of Defense or the Pentagon can be as much a
Speaker 2: weakness as it is a strength. With so many things
Speaker 2: happening all at once, everything everywhere, all at once, it
Speaker 2: is normalized and expected that not everyone will know what
Speaker 2: everyone else is doing. The right hand doesn't know the
Speaker 2: actions of the left in a very real sense here,
Speaker 2: and so the DoD literally cannot be a monolith. It
Speaker 2: fights itself constantly, classification, like you said, secrecy, separated budgets,
Speaker 2: the endless turf wars, the endless wars over budgets, and
Speaker 2: just the size of the overall operation. It's not a
Speaker 2: unified set of actors. It is not like two point
Speaker 2: eighty seven million people all get in some big room
Speaker 2: and then steeple their fingers and come up with a
Speaker 2: super villain scheme.
Speaker 4: I mean that may happen from time to time, but
Speaker 4: it's usually a little more, you know, one of these
Speaker 4: subgroups kind of situation. You did mention that they're the
Speaker 4: largest employer.
Speaker 2: In the world, right, Yes, that's it.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: That is mind boggling. And to your point, Ben, seems
Speaker 4: a little more like a weakness than a strength. How
Speaker 4: much siloed stuff goes on and how you know, maybe
Speaker 4: it's just spy movies and stuff, but how so often
Speaker 4: this stuff seems to have the potential to go off
Speaker 4: the rails without oversight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see this also, Not to pick on the
Speaker 2: DoD just yet, but we see this in any large organization.
Speaker 2: You know, there's an organization that has a unified goal.
Speaker 2: In the case of the Department of Defense. The goal
Speaker 2: is the projection of power to protect the United States
Speaker 2: and the interest of the US overall. But the issue
Speaker 2: is people disagree on how best to achieve that goal,
Speaker 2: and they don't always talk through their strategies. We work
Speaker 2: in a large media company, and you see similar things
Speaker 2: in large media companies. Large any company, right who is
Speaker 2: the number one manufacturer of sunglasses, for example, Luxotica. They
Speaker 2: fight all the time, you know what I mean. There's
Speaker 2: some guy who's coming home and he's just like punching
Speaker 2: the wall or something about some ray band policy that
Speaker 2: he disagrees with. The issue is in our sort of
Speaker 2: echelon of companies, mission creep and contradictory strategies and mission fracture.
Speaker 2: For us that leads to things like unnecessary zoom calls,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. But for the departm Defense,
Speaker 2: this means people can die.
Speaker 4: Serious collateral damage, you know, no no question about it.
Speaker 4: And to your point, Ben, you know, the larger the organization,
Speaker 4: the more kind of broad the unilateral.
Speaker 5: Sort of philosophy ends up being.
Speaker 4: And then they're sort of within those subgroups we're talking
Speaker 4: about different you know, philosophies and ideologies, and sometimes they
Speaker 4: don't jibe with the big one, you know, it's it
Speaker 4: gets real crazy, real quick.
Speaker 2: What a beautiful point. You know what I'm thinking of
Speaker 2: guys with that idea of like the larger the organization,
Speaker 2: the simpler and more vague the philosophy. Google, he'll be evil,
Speaker 2: he'll be evil, whatever that means to you.
Speaker 4: And and and whether or not you think they've succeeded it,
Speaker 4: you know or not?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: I think they ditched that one, didn't they They ditched
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 4: It was a little too buzzy. It felt like it
Speaker 4: was making too much news.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe they did well. There's a world of difference,
Speaker 2: as we said, between not being and being good.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, very good point.
Speaker 2: Well tonight, as we set this up, we want everybody
Speaker 2: to travel into the past with us. It's twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The COVID pandemic is still in full swing. Spoiler, it's
Speaker 2: still happening now. China and the United States are just
Speaker 2: as beefed up then as they are today, maybe even
Speaker 2: more so, because in twenty twenty, China is waging a
Speaker 2: heavy information war to deny the origin of COVID, and
Speaker 2: the US and China are going back and forth, trying
Speaker 2: to discredit one another, trying to curry favor with other nations.
Speaker 2: They're trying to scapegoat each other to win the race
Speaker 2: for the most effective vaccine. So how far would factions
Speaker 2: of the Pentagon go to accomplish these goals. We'll tell
Speaker 2: you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
Speaker 2: gets crazy. They went far. They went pretty far. I'll
Speaker 2: be honest. They went much further than I thought they
Speaker 2: would go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this comes to us via Reuters, a very
Speaker 3: large investigation that they've been putting together for quite a while.
Speaker 3: Two journalists Chris Bing and Joel Scheckman s ch E
Speaker 3: C T M A N. They posted on June fourteenth
Speaker 3: of this year, just a bombshell that I think is
Speaker 3: rocking everybody. And they have been reaching out to the
Speaker 3: DoD according to them, So it's not like they took
Speaker 3: them by surprise when they wrote it or when they
Speaker 3: published it.
Speaker 5: At least.
Speaker 3: There are probably a lot of people in that Pentagon
Speaker 3: getting calls and they're going, guys, guys, guys, they know
Speaker 3: about the thing, which thing though the thing is a
Speaker 3: thing thing too?
Speaker 5: What are we talking about a thing? Four?
Speaker 2: I don't know four point they're read on to thing four.
Speaker 5: Yes, we're screwed, evacuate.
Speaker 3: This is a part of as Ben said right before
Speaker 3: we went to break, there a huge back and forth
Speaker 3: between China and the US about who made COVID, how
Speaker 3: did COVID get out, what's the origins of it, who
Speaker 3: is to blame basically, and then who has the answer
Speaker 3: to COVID? Right, So, this was a clandestine program by
Speaker 3: the United States military parts of the DoD to discredit
Speaker 3: China's vaccine that they were trying to roll out that
Speaker 3: was actually available to a wider public way before any
Speaker 3: of the US made vaccines.
Speaker 4: Well, and to your point then about this seeming to
Speaker 4: not be top line news right now. Maybe that's because
Speaker 4: of all the election stuff or whatever, But I think
Speaker 4: we're all pretty keyed into this stuff, and I haven't
Speaker 4: really seen much of this back and forth at all.
Speaker 3: We can get into it, but I think a lot
Speaker 3: of the back and forth ended up happening in these
Speaker 3: small ways, Like from the US side, it was often
Speaker 3: when then President d Trump would get up and make
Speaker 3: a statement.
Speaker 5: China the China flu or.
Speaker 3: The flu, calling it the China virus. At least according
Speaker 3: to a lot of sources was a move because there
Speaker 3: were there were disinformation campaigns aimed at the United States.
Speaker 4: And think about historical pandemics like the Spanish flu, like
Speaker 4: that's what history ends up calling it.
Speaker 5: There is at some point a war that get an
Speaker 5: information war that.
Speaker 4: Gets waged, and at some point one of those things
Speaker 4: wins out and it doesn't just happen in a vacuum.
Speaker 4: So I think this is a really interesting case of
Speaker 4: seeing how that historical sausage is made. M hm.
Speaker 2: The US just got caught running an anti vaccination campaign.
Speaker 2: Oh geez, yeah, whose idea in particular? This is, you know,
Speaker 2: while all the fauci stuff is going on, this is
Speaker 2: happening while they're telling everybody in America to get vaccinated. Oh,
Speaker 2: we'll get into it. It's spooky, spooky stuff. We don't
Speaker 2: know who, which particular individuals, not to sound too idiocracy
Speaker 2: about it, We don't know which particular individuals came up
Speaker 2: with this idea. We do know that the majority of
Speaker 2: active officials speaking to these journalists Matt mentioned, they remained anonymous.
Speaker 2: We do know that this program, which has not been
Speaker 2: publicly named, did appear weirdly bipartisan. It began under the
Speaker 2: Donald Trump administration. It continued for months into the Biden administration,
Speaker 2: even after social media executives some of the suits from
Speaker 2: Facebook came to the government and said, Hey.
Speaker 4: Some of the disinformation we're flagging this, We're pulling this
Speaker 4: stuff from our platforms right as you.
Speaker 2: Guys told us we should do that, and we shouldn't
Speaker 2: encourage the spread of aganda like this. And they said,
Speaker 2: I think the military fire back, and they were like, oh, yeah, totally, dog,
Speaker 2: We'll get you. And you know, thanks for you know,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming to us with it, you know, mono amano.
Speaker 2: And then they just did they they continued to do it.
Speaker 3: Can can you imagine being one of the lower level
Speaker 3: employees at one of these social media companies looking at
Speaker 3: you like you're filtering through messages some of them are
Speaker 3: clearly anti vaccination campaigns that you've been warned against, just
Speaker 3: like they're saying you you try and track down these users. Basically,
Speaker 3: I guess you track down the users. I would think
Speaker 3: you would just block the user or nerve their account somehow.
Speaker 3: But they're tracking down these users and realizing, oh, hold on.
Speaker 5: Hold up, well wouldn't they cover their tracks?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 5: In a way right.
Speaker 4: It would be harder for them to like peg it
Speaker 4: directly to a government account quote unquote, these are like
Speaker 4: lot accounts, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, However, if you are, if you're working for the
Speaker 2: organization for the platform, get a little working for the Twitter,
Speaker 2: the Facebook, or the.
Speaker 5: Little more analytics that I suppose.
Speaker 2: It's a little there are breadcrumbs that you will have
Speaker 2: that the average civilian user does not possess. Uh, it's
Speaker 2: more difficult to hide the providence of things. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they came forward and they got ignored, just like a
Speaker 2: it's this old country anecdote. Right, the teacher tells a
Speaker 2: kid to stop chewing gum in class. You don't say no,
Speaker 2: you don't spit out the gum, and just say yes,
Speaker 2: and then keep doing what you are doing, to chew a.
Speaker 5: Little less aggressively, right right, for a little bit, and
Speaker 5: then tell you back.
Speaker 2: So Reuters, these two journalists, they interviewed dozens and dozens
Speaker 2: of US officials, contractors, social media oftens, professors. They also
Speaker 2: looked at social media post within depth analysis, they gained
Speaker 2: access to technical data like metadata you know, again, the
Speaker 2: bread crumbs, and they found documents that proved there was
Speaker 2: a bevy of fake social media accounts being used by
Speaker 2: the US military. We also know not everybody again to
Speaker 2: the model this point, not everybody's on board. The diplomatic
Speaker 2: class in the Southeast Asian theater was super pissed. They
Speaker 2: knew it was a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Let's go into just state. This is on Facebook, then
Speaker 3: it was called Twitter and Instagram. That's where this is
Speaker 3: largely occurring, and that's the that's the information they got, right,
Speaker 3: the metadata.
Speaker 4: So if I were a user, how would these posts
Speaker 4: be showing up? Would it look like it was coming
Speaker 4: from an individual espousing an opinion? Would it be fake
Speaker 4: news articles that were reposted.
Speaker 5: Like a combination, Like what would it look like to me?
Speaker 2: It would look like a civilian user and you would
Speaker 2: and then maybe later a news agency. But the big
Speaker 2: differentiator in the beginning is that you would have been
Speaker 2: identified as Filipido.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, what I don't know, Well, this is occurring
Speaker 3: in the Philippines or on mostly in the Philippines, right
Speaker 3: on the servers that are there. Yeah, And the understanding
Speaker 3: that we have is that some of these accounts, while
Speaker 3: they would look like individuals because these are varied, they
Speaker 3: look like individuals, but they would have thousands, if not
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of like at least it would look
Speaker 3: like they have that many followers right.
Speaker 2: Right, which helps them in the algorithm.
Speaker 3: Exactly, So they're showing up in feeds the way if
Speaker 3: you're scrolling through now you're just getting random stuff sometimes.
Speaker 4: Would they have to like click farm to get those followers?
Speaker 4: How are they legitimate followers? Are they getting a leg
Speaker 4: up from the platforms to like literally you know, fake
Speaker 4: falsify those numbers, Like I have so many questions.
Speaker 3: I guarantee you they just use one of those services
Speaker 3: that was part of the budget to get accounts with
Speaker 3: several thousands.
Speaker 5: Click click farming kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And then they had a budget argument where they said,
Speaker 2: why don't we start our own thing like this at home?
Speaker 2: And then someone said, or we could just buy that company.
Speaker 2: You know, these conversations happen.
Speaker 3: Let's get a let's get a bought farm in the
Speaker 3: Philippines to get us a bunch of followers in the Philippines.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Let's hide the hand. We don't want people to
Speaker 2: know that this originates in Tampa, Florida. That part's true.
Speaker 4: God shout out to Tampa and maybe some of this
Speaker 4: stuff is you know, click baity type stuff. But I
Speaker 4: have seen video and images of what some of these,
Speaker 4: like Southeast Asia click farms look like, and it's literally
Speaker 4: individuals with fifty iPads or like fifty computers just like yeah,
Speaker 4: or on a rack, like a wooden rack, you know.
Speaker 5: Is that accurate?
Speaker 4: I think that's the way that that's the only way
Speaker 4: to do it, unless you're packing the system, so I
Speaker 4: think you have to kind of physically do it. Well,
Speaker 4: they're far more, I'm sure there are, but those do exist.
Speaker 4: Those are those do those are in fact, I would
Speaker 4: say the norm, uh, if you're a non state actor.
Speaker 4: But the the United States military apparatus is not perfect,
Speaker 4: but it's it's weirdly smart at something sour yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and it's uh. We do know that they did contract
Speaker 4: out despite wanting to keep their circle close, which is
Speaker 4: always obviously ideal. Uh, they partnered with a company we're
Speaker 4: going to talk a little bit about later. We mentioned
Speaker 4: it in Strange News. General Dynamics Information Technology or get
Speaker 4: it to.
Speaker 5: Get it, y'all.
Speaker 4: And once again, the more innocuous the name, the more
Speaker 4: nefarious the activities. It's just General Dynamics, you know, it's
Speaker 4: just general.
Speaker 2: What kind of dynamics, you know, just like the general
Speaker 2: dynamics you know. And Reuters and also these journalists did
Speaker 2: such an awesome job. I can't say enough good stuff
Speaker 2: about them, and I hope if you guys are hearing this,
Speaker 2: you're staying safe. Reuter's got a lot of confirmation, and
Speaker 2: they got an official statement from the Pentagon, which doesn't
Speaker 2: always happen. They said, hey, what's going on with this?
Speaker 2: And the US military, through the spokesperson said, quote Uncle
Speaker 2: well said Uncle Sam basically quote uses a variety of platforms,
Speaker 2: including social media to counter those malign influence attacks aimed
Speaker 2: at the US allies or partners. So again, Department of Defense,
Speaker 2: we're doing this, but we're doing this in a protective
Speaker 2: capacity because the.
Speaker 4: Bad guys are like doing it. So therefore we got
Speaker 4: to get in the mud with the bad guys. I
Speaker 4: love that word malign because that is such a perspective,
Speaker 4: like that is so clearly the you know, a signifier
Speaker 4: of an agenda where it's like you're, yeah, these are
Speaker 4: this is the bad information that we are countering. But
Speaker 4: if you really dig down, is it you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? Or are we actually spreading misinformation. That's just
Speaker 4: as dangerous. But it's not about protecting our reputation, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Look, man, there's no Department of Offense in here.
Speaker 2: Okay mm hmm, Yeah, this is not the war you're
Speaker 2: looking for. Yeah, it's true. And there's also a little
Speaker 2: bit of like burned ex lover energy in this statement
Speaker 2: from the Pentagon because they had some tip for tat.
Speaker 2: The spokesperson also added that China is doing similar things
Speaker 2: well them too. They said, China is waging a quote
Speaker 2: disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the
Speaker 2: spread of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 5: But like it's.
Speaker 4: Almost irrelevant where it came from, you know, at a
Speaker 4: certain point, and it becomes more about what did you
Speaker 4: do about it? And I think a lot of this
Speaker 4: is covering the butts of officials who maybe didn't take
Speaker 4: it seriously enough quickly enough, right, And then it's like
Speaker 4: about like pivoting the blame from that to well, you
Speaker 4: guys put it out there in the first place, and
Speaker 4: it was your fault. Therefore anything that we did after
Speaker 4: the fact is irrelevant. It just seems to be a
Speaker 4: way of trying to control the narrative. In a very
Speaker 4: disingenuous way.
Speaker 2: I would agree with disingenuous, you know, or like an
Speaker 2: enforced cherry picked perspective. But they do have very valid
Speaker 2: points because the fancy term for what's going on in
Speaker 2: this weird digital ping pong war is asymmetric information warfare.
Speaker 2: The street name for it is propaganda, very first episode
Speaker 2: stuff they don't want you to know. Ever, did the
Speaker 2: end result of this whatever you want to call it
Speaker 2: is again the deaths of innocent people. We cannot prove it,
Speaker 2: but you'll see. Let's see, you know what, Let's see
Speaker 2: who agrees with us or disagrees at the close of
Speaker 2: this exploration.
Speaker 3: The thought is that these disinformation posts led individuals to
Speaker 3: not take the vaccine, which we'll get into, a very
Speaker 3: specific vaccine from China, which then led either them or
Speaker 3: their loved ones to contract COVID nineteen, which then led
Speaker 3: to their death. So, just to spell it out there,
Speaker 3: it's not it's not folks from the DoD killing people.
Speaker 3: It is them using this asymmetrical warfare you're talking about
Speaker 3: to eventually kill people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mousetrappy. It's like Ruben Goldberg esk. That's why
Speaker 2: they weren't planning on killing people exactly. They just didn't
Speaker 2: really think that. They didn't think it through. It was
Speaker 2: an irrelevant thing.
Speaker 3: Or they didn't care because there was a bigger picture
Speaker 3: at play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the point, you know, Like, look, it's
Speaker 2: not as though they would click on a link and
Speaker 2: then a stipe drone popped them in the back of
Speaker 2: the head. It wasn't that direct to your points there,
Speaker 2: Matt and Noll. Particularly, it's about motivation. We mentioned that
Speaker 2: this is we talked about a little bit on Strange News.
Speaker 2: The United States has long considered, perhaps hypocritically, the Chinese
Speaker 2: government to be an expansionist power, and they think of
Speaker 2: China as an expansionist power because that is factually accurate,
Speaker 2: that is correct.
Speaker 5: But we also need.
Speaker 4: The hell out of them for so many aspects of
Speaker 4: our economy and our infrastructure and our you know, like
Speaker 4: supply chain and all of that. So it's always been
Speaker 4: this delicate dance and a lot of these sort of snipy,
Speaker 4: you know, spurned lover kind of vibes that you're talking
Speaker 4: about kind of have to happen underneath all of that, right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and in the end, it's all about who
Speaker 3: does the world look to when there's a crisis. Who
Speaker 3: is the figure that's going to come in and give
Speaker 3: you the solution to the big problem that your country
Speaker 3: is having or your people are facing.
Speaker 2: Right, who is trustworthy enough that previous grievances could be
Speaker 2: set aside for one moment, right to solve a global
Speaker 2: problem together. That is a very powerful position to attain.
Speaker 2: And when throughout human history, when institutions attain that level
Speaker 2: of power, it'll hold it very long. There's a reason
Speaker 2: King of the Hill is a kid's game and an
Speaker 2: awesome cartoon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they will grasp it as hard as they
Speaker 3: possibly can until the moment their hands slips off.
Speaker 4: Then, would you say a good example of that, like
Speaker 4: in history, would be America intervening, You know, when the
Speaker 4: Nazis proved to be exactly as real and horrible as
Speaker 4: people thought, and then they jumped in and made a
Speaker 4: big show of where coming in here to save the world.
Speaker 2: Up with the Up with the Financial Decisions of nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 2: The actions of the United States and privilege of its
Speaker 2: geography are the are the two biggest origin points in
Speaker 2: the story of this country becoming the number one superpower.
Speaker 5: For a time.
Speaker 2: But again, King of the Hill, there's always someone grasping,
Speaker 2: there's always someone pushing, right, And this is the larger
Speaker 2: context we're talking about. Uncle Sam way before the pandemic
Speaker 2: had been super beefed up about Chinese territorial claims in
Speaker 2: the South China Sea. If you look at the Chinese
Speaker 2: map of maritime borders and you look at the maps
Speaker 2: of any other country in the region, they don't agree
Speaker 2: at all. Other every other country in the area is like,
Speaker 2: pump your brakes, guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And with that, we're going to take a quick break. Here,
Speaker 3: a word from the sponsors, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: And we've returned.
Speaker 3: Well, and hey, Ben, just out of curiosity, why would
Speaker 3: the Philippines be interested in those borders in the South
Speaker 3: China Sea? And why would the United States have such
Speaker 3: an interest in the Philippines interest in those borders? Wow,
Speaker 3: I feel like we just talked about this on another
Speaker 3: episode a little while ago, about the strategic interest the
Speaker 3: United States has specifically in the Philippines.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Control control the rules of the game, right,
Speaker 2: the control the bounds of the playing field the US.
Speaker 2: If you look at the way US projects force in
Speaker 2: Eastern Asia for most of human history, it would make
Speaker 2: no sense, like why would a country so far away
Speaker 2: get give a tinkersdam? You know what I mean? Great expression,
Speaker 2: it's it's probably not a politically correct expression, but the
Speaker 2: very British Churchill would have said, I'm sure.
Speaker 5: He did right.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's a reason why it's such a
Speaker 2: that we have these common tropes in English, like the
Speaker 2: price of tea in China means something irrelevant, but this
Speaker 2: is very much relevant because to your point that the
Speaker 2: US has a heavy practice of attempting to contain the
Speaker 2: growth of China by partnering with other nations in the
Speaker 2: area South Korea, right, Japan, the Philippines establishing military footholds
Speaker 2: there so that they can have their own supply chains
Speaker 2: that are not necessarily bound to the long passage through.
Speaker 3: The paces at large, presences of lots of personnel, lots
Speaker 3: of equipment, of several actually dozens and dozens of bases.
Speaker 3: We're talking a lot of strategic interest on on the ground.
Speaker 4: So I think I understand that I just want to
Speaker 4: put this out there, maybe as a devil's advocate thing.
Speaker 4: There was another sort of rhetorical kind of or campaign
Speaker 4: where it was like we see you suffering, We've got
Speaker 4: your back. We're going to fast track this vaccine. We're
Speaker 4: gonna like make sure that the you know, the FDA
Speaker 4: allows this to go through so that we can get
Speaker 4: the most people, the most access as quickly as possible.
Speaker 4: And all of this is being spearheaded by Fauci. But
Speaker 4: you're saying that that while that was happening on one layer,
Speaker 4: this other thing is happening on another layer that is
Speaker 4: seemingly coming from somewhere else, but it's actually us presenting.
Speaker 5: Both of these campaigns at the same time.
Speaker 3: Different tentacles, differents, Like one technacle doesn't know the other
Speaker 3: ones doing that, but we do know that China was
Speaker 3: offering up its vaccine way before the United States was
Speaker 3: offering its vaccine.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, that is true, and that this goes this
Speaker 2: goes to this larger chess game. So you probably we've
Speaker 2: probably all heard the idea of carrot and stick negotiation. Right,
Speaker 2: You offer an incentive, right, you entice with one hand
Speaker 2: and you threaten punishment with the other. And China is
Speaker 2: very big, well, all states are very big on carrot
Speaker 2: and stick. For example, would be sure the stick, right,
Speaker 2: and the US actually has kind of a bad international
Speaker 2: reputation for leaning a little too hard on the stick.
Speaker 2: But this these strategies, what we're saying is they have
Speaker 2: similarities in structure, and China essentially leveraged an opportunity because
Speaker 2: when the pandemic hit, or when it went public in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the US enacted something called Operation Warp Speed.
Speaker 2: This was very talking about, right, yeah, it's very much
Speaker 2: American first. So they said, no holds barred. Uncle Sam
Speaker 2: is panicking. The wallet is open, pharmaceutical company, just get
Speaker 2: stuff out there, and we are prioritizing not the world's
Speaker 2: largest populations, not the ones most endangered by a pandemic,
Speaker 2: but the American population first. And hey, pharmaceutical companies, if
Speaker 2: there are leftover vaccines, you can sell them for whatever
Speaker 2: price you wish to someone else. And so other countries
Speaker 2: for a time literally could not afford the proven vaccines
Speaker 2: made by the United States pharma companies.
Speaker 4: Which is true for other remedies as well. You know
Speaker 4: a lot of times I mean big time, right, But.
Speaker 3: In this case, it was a global pandemic and the
Speaker 3: US was basically doing get they were operating in some
Speaker 3: really bad pr areas and levels doing this kind of
Speaker 3: thing when their theoretically ideological rivals in China are doing
Speaker 3: the exact opposite. Oh, no, we can be the ones
Speaker 3: that will give you vaccines. We just need you to
Speaker 3: help us a little bit.
Speaker 2: And the US said, we might be the world's police,
Speaker 2: but we're not the world's doctors. So good luck. And
Speaker 2: China comes in, you know, China swoops in. Let's keep
Speaker 2: going with the rom com thing. China swoops in and says, hey,
Speaker 2: that guy, what your guy's doing, Philippines, he's just not cool.
Speaker 2: You're in a toxic relationship. Let me help you. They
Speaker 2: called this, they said to the Philippines, they said, look,
Speaker 2: we are just going to give you the vaccines the
Speaker 2: Americans refuse to distribute. This is a new highlight in
Speaker 2: our bilateral relations Let's put this South China Sea stuff
Speaker 2: to the side for one second. Though it is ours
Speaker 2: to be clear, Let's put it aside to one second.
Speaker 2: We'll revisit that after we address this global crisis. The
Speaker 2: United States could have done the same thing very much.
Speaker 2: Operation Warp Speed not have to play out the way
Speaker 2: it did. But instead of prioritizing or distributing vaccines, to
Speaker 2: the Philippines. At this time, Uncle Sam looked into his
Speaker 2: handy star spangled top hat and pulled out real nasty trick.
Speaker 2: What the folks at Reuters found was at least three
Speaker 2: hundred accounts on Twitter that matched the descriptions they gleaned
Speaker 2: from former US military officials familiar with the Philippines operation.
Speaker 2: So again, one week point in this article, and it
Speaker 2: has to be this way one week point is that
Speaker 2: all of the officials speaking on record to confirm this,
Speaker 2: whether they're active or former, they're speaking on the condition
Speaker 2: of anonymity. But again, I kind of always assume that
Speaker 2: when someone's speaking anonymously that they've been given a green
Speaker 2: light somewhere in the chain.
Speaker 5: Oh you think so.
Speaker 4: I don't usually think that, which is very interesting that
Speaker 4: you say that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I usually.
Speaker 4: Think that it sometimes makes me suspicious of what they're saying.
Speaker 4: But I usually do think that they are covering their
Speaker 4: butt and that they are speaking out of school because
Speaker 4: they have a moral a feeling of a moral obligation.
Speaker 5: But maybe I'm being naive. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're being naive. I think that's
Speaker 3: one way to look at it, and another way to
Speaker 3: look at it is exactly. I feel very similarly, Ben,
Speaker 3: where it's like it's.
Speaker 5: A pr MOVI.
Speaker 3: This is a special secret program and not that many
Speaker 3: people knew about it, and if somebody's speaking, it'd be
Speaker 3: easy to identify.
Speaker 2: Them, right, That's the thing. It's a limited number of operators.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like it's kind of like when we
Speaker 2: see those hilarious laws coming out of Russia. Let's say,
Speaker 2: any Russian president, whomever that might be. This is just
Speaker 2: any Russian president in.
Speaker 3: General could run for six consecutive terms if they wanted to.
Speaker 2: Just again, a general dynamics any of them. Well.
Speaker 4: So, the majority of those body accounts that we're talking
Speaker 4: about were created and deployed in the summer of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty and often featured a hashtag China ong virus.
Speaker 5: What is the on, Ben, I don't think I'm what
Speaker 5: are they referring.
Speaker 2: To Tagalag language in the Philippines, The translation is China
Speaker 2: is the virus.
Speaker 4: So they're trying to really reach people where they live
Speaker 4: in that part of the world in terms of like
Speaker 4: let's start the campaign of hearts and minds here and then,
Speaker 4: and the hopes that it will spread and benefit us
Speaker 4: down the line.
Speaker 3: Yes, because China stepping in being you know, at least
Speaker 3: the good guy for the people who want the vaccine,
Speaker 3: need the vaccine.
Speaker 4: This is so tricksy. This is some freaking gullum ass
Speaker 4: stuff right here.
Speaker 3: But this isn't the first time there were vaccine sphears
Speaker 3: right in the Philippines. There was a campaign previously that
Speaker 3: led up to a lot of the fears, and it's
Speaker 3: this campaign was just playing on the preview.
Speaker 4: Saying certainly someone I said, oh, remember that other thing,
Speaker 4: let's jump on it.
Speaker 2: Let's like we've already got a little knife to twist here,
Speaker 2: you know, right, that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: You take some you don't invent a new thing, and
Speaker 2: try to get people on board familiar identify a thing
Speaker 2: yes that is already familiar, and if it's not, if
Speaker 2: it's something people don't fully believe in, but they're familiar
Speaker 2: with it, then you have a much higher success rate
Speaker 2: as you simply radicalize those beliefs or extend them, right weaponize.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 5: Gross, it's so edward, it's so marketing all of this stuff.
Speaker 4: That's why I think it's so interesting that one of
Speaker 4: our earliest podcast episodes was about Edward Burnetz because he
Speaker 4: like took this kind of stuff and did it in
Speaker 4: the service of something sort of frivolous, like selling stuff.
Speaker 4: But it's a perfect look into this weaponization of psychology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he went from getting women to smoke and inventing
Speaker 2: bacon for breakfast to overthrowing Guatemala. He's got quite a
Speaker 2: career trajectory and it can't help. But Myra, there's one
Speaker 2: thing we can't miss before we move on. You're absolutely right, Noel.
Speaker 2: The majority of these body accounts in this as of
Speaker 2: yet unnamed operation were created and deployed in summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Yet some of these accounts were active for
Speaker 2: more than five years, like.
Speaker 4: Dormed, like ready to be deployed, like sleeper accounts.
Speaker 3: Almost Yeah, and they were playing on everybody's fears. Man,
Speaker 3: did we already talk about the pork yet?
Speaker 2: That's what we should talk about now. They amplified concerns
Speaker 2: in the Islamic demographic of the.
Speaker 3: Films, and it wasn't just aimed at the Philippines either.
Speaker 3: It was aimed at several other countries outside of Southeast Asia,
Speaker 3: specifically harping on that point that the vaccines from China
Speaker 3: contained pork gelatin, which would mean you cannot take these
Speaker 3: vaccines at all if you are Muslim.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Here, there are plenty of examples. Yeah, it started
Speaker 2: in the Philippine. Well, it started in Tampa, Florida. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: it started in Pentagon. It started in Tampa, Florida, and
Speaker 2: then it went to the Philippines and later expanded through
Speaker 2: Eurasia and the Middle East, targeting largely Muslim populations, leveraging
Speaker 2: the already pre existing distrust amid the Muslims of the
Speaker 2: world for the Chinese government.
Speaker 4: Wigers right due to their treatment of the week, absolutely abominable.
Speaker 3: Treatment, but pretty much any country that was going to
Speaker 3: accept China's aid, basically China's help in this major global catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's an example. You can see a lot
Speaker 2: of these translated tweets in Scientific American and Reuters. But
Speaker 2: when the expanded to Eurasia, they were targeting Russian speaking
Speaker 2: Muslims or countries with Russian speaking Muslims, and you can
Speaker 2: you'll scroll down. It's like a cool little infographic that's disturbing.
Speaker 2: It shows someone who is a Chinese official handing out
Speaker 2: syringes to mainly women right wearing jab and then he's
Speaker 2: standing next to her. This official is standing next to
Speaker 2: a curtain, a barrier like a theater curtain, and behind
Speaker 2: that curtain there's a bunch of very sick looking swine
Speaker 2: with a bunch of syringes stuck in them. The translation
Speaker 2: from Russia is can China be trusted if it tries
Speaker 2: to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatine and distributes
Speaker 2: it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many
Speaker 2: people consider such a drug hara.
Speaker 4: It's like a political cartoon, like a really aggressive political cartoon,
Speaker 4: with the one that made people realize Boss Tweed was
Speaker 4: a bad guy, because they.
Speaker 5: Just simplify visual.
Speaker 4: You know, boom that is it is smart, smart, diabolical guys.
Speaker 3: It's very close to South Park animation style.
Speaker 4: Well, I haven't even seen it, but the way you're
Speaker 4: describing it that that's what makes that's what it makes
Speaker 4: me think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's again. You know. One of the easiest ways
Speaker 2: to hack communication and conversation with people is not necessarily
Speaker 2: to give them a caption, is they show them an
Speaker 2: image because different parts of the brain process it. This
Speaker 2: is the real Sith Lord's stuff, we're telling you folks.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But well, and that that image, I would argue, doesn't
Speaker 3: need a caption. If you look at that image, you
Speaker 3: are going to understand what it's trying to say.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the point of infographics like that, so that
Speaker 4: it's for maximum intelligibility no matter what language you speak,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: And this campaign was, you know, as we said, it
Speaker 2: found fertile soil in the mind of many Muslim Filipinos
Speaker 2: and then people in the Filipino diaspora as well, And
Speaker 2: it was built on the back of the ghoulish accusations
Speaker 2: surrounding the treatment of the wigers. The campaign appears to
Speaker 2: have been successful because originally Filipinos were largely unwilling to
Speaker 2: trust China's vaccine Sinovak, and it first became available in
Speaker 2: the country in the Philippines March of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: What was ours called? Do you guys even remember?
Speaker 4: Was there? There was JJ, there was Maderna, Yeah, but
Speaker 4: those are the companies didn't have a clever name like
Speaker 4: Cinovak or was Sinevac the Chinese pharmaceutical company, like the actual.
Speaker 5: Vaccine didn't have some clever name. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think Cinovac is it must be the pharmaceutical company
Speaker 4: out of China.
Speaker 2: Maybe they just needed a snappier name for the American versions,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I don't think they associated a name with it. It
Speaker 5: was there was the Maderna one.
Speaker 4: They were like, they always just named it based on
Speaker 4: the company that was putting it out.
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