My two cents on this important article from @David_Philipps. I've been trying to tell people for years now that SOF has absolutely no special ability to resist attacks on their cognitive spaces. We have no special training to deal with this.
I first started noticing this during the Obama admin as I was watching Special Forces veterans (mostly on Facebook) jump onboard with clear Russian propaganda, the source was not even concealed. These were Cold Warriors, now worshipping Putin as a defender of Christianity.
It was absolutely bizarre watching people who I thought should know better salivate over a foreign dictator while they decried Obama as a usurper undermining the fabric of America. Putin was the strong white man, Obama was the secret Muslim. Their minds had been captured.
Then came Trumpism, QAnon, and you should know the rest of the story. I've written about it many times at this point, for example: radio.com/connectingvets…
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who retired out of the CIA, and he affirmed to me that Q believers are indeed in the building and present in the agency. Any type of person can end up joining a cult movement, it isn't a question of their background or IQ.
My Team Sergeant from my time in Special Forces is QAnon. My classmate and former Marine at Columbia University is QAnon. We have no special resilience against foreign propaganda or domestic conspiracy theories, full stop.
More info here in this interview I did with @_Shan_Martinez_ who interacted with many active duty soldiers who were neo-Nazis.
Amazing interview today w/ @_Shan_Martinez_ discussing extremism in the military. Shannon became a neo-Nazi as a teenager near a military base and knew over 30 soldiers involved before she left the movement. The interview will be on @starsandstripes but I wanted to share this 🧵
Me: I want to ask what your perspective is on this on why there are so many veterans involved at the Capitol Building riots this last week.
Shannon: there are lots of different folks that showed up that we saw there, that there are many different strains in iteration of things,
so to speak about the people who were there as any sort of monolith, or one sort of cohesive group would be a serious misstep in my opinion. I think, it's so much of what so many veterans experience and feel when they leave, you know, it's like this sense of
Bombshells inbound. Got a lot to say about this, especially after many Aussie SOF members assured me for years that this was, "no big deal" and that, "nothing will come from this." JSOC and 22SAS may have their reckoning as well. More below:
It is known in certain circles how and why Australian SAS operators began carrying hatchets on target. This article makes reference to the SOF culture of hero worship. SAS operators did exchanges with DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six) and saw them carrying Dan Winkler hatchets,
Which are used for war crimes. Monkey see, monkey do, guess what Aussie SAS guys are now carrying around in Afghanistan? This report due out appears spot on in regard to the rot with SOF and how it has spread and perpetuated itself.
So popular social media narratives aside, it turns out that in fact there are some differences between men and women and it isn't all just a social construct. I will never understand people who decry the Army for emphasizing fitness and lethality. Rant:
There is a movement to make changes in the military that starts off being perfectly well meaning, that wants to make the force more diverse. This is a good thing, because it reduces institutional inbreeding ie: "that's the way we've always done things here." However, it comes
with significant bandwagoning and is taken to ridiculous extremes. Many political entrepreneurs seek to use the military as a vehicle to advance progressive politics. This is quite odd because it is asking the military to be the one thing that it can never be, not at war anyway.
New GAO report on federal law enforcement tactical teams. I'm particularly interested in the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and the Coastie units. Here we get some interesting data on deployments and personnel. For instance, we learn there are 149 HRT members.
"FBI officials stated that the HRT was deployed to Washington, D.C., in response to the civil unrest and protests. The reported primary responsibility of team members was to protect federal facilities and potentially respond as a QRF in the event of injured officers."
Interesting stuff on DOE's nuclear transport security unit. A lot of ex-SOF guys there and have told me it is a boring job. Would not want to be one of those guys though. Had someone tell me the contingency if bad guys are about to capture a weapon is to just JDAM the vehicle.
"They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy." This was also said about BCCI decades ago. We all know this, yet we do nothing about it.
Meanwhile, I opened a LLC for my little podcast and I've had my bank up my ass about our business account. It was a pain to open it, they locked it down a couple times even though it does very small transactions at best. "What do you use this account for?!"
I'm swamped this weekend but wanted to take 2 min to say something about this story we broke about a CIA covert operation in the Pacific that led to four Maritime Branch employees being lost at sea. (thread)
My entry to this story was quite unexpected. I received a call out of the blue from a good friend who is a retired Green Beret and runs a charity helping out veterans. Super good guy. Calls me up one afternoon and says he had a family member there telling him a sea story.
Said his son died on some kind of classified operation in the Pacific Ocean, but would not say much more. My buddy thinks if anyone knows what the story is here it must be me (sorry to disappoint) but now I'm interested. All I got is the deceased sailor's name.