Thread by @davetroy

🧵 1/The biggest sleight of hand pulled by “Q” was to imply the existence of a top-down hierarchy when, in fact, it was an emergent networked insurgency.

Washington and the media think in terms of org charts. Instead this was a supple, shape-shifting effort.

2/So everyone was asking “who is Q” when the better question was “what is this network and how does it work?” Flynn and the other military folks who became involved in this had experience with this kind of insurgency. They knew they could get networks to do things.

3/One might want to see a certain message get out to a network; tell some mullahs, and maybe that happens. Maybe your work gets done for you, through the power of suggestion. Maybe minor celebrities emerge who each are pulling in the same direction.

4/This is in fact the basis of what some have called “5th Generation Warfare,” an evolution of prior ideas of “4th Gen” war. With instant global communication, hierarchy is effectively unnecessary. All individuals can be given general orders and allowed to execute.

5/In the event they stray off message, they can be corralled by socially normative messaging, or in some cases by “gang stalking” — directing the insurgency to correct or cut out an apostate voice. This is all well-understood.

6/The delay caused by the failure to understand this as a networked structure allowed the insurgency to advance to a “boom” moment — January 6th. Had we been able to expose this sooner the boom may have been avoided, and lives saved.

7/It wasn’t for lack of trying. Many researchers had a well-developed conception of this networked effort by September. But people looking for hierarchies, looking for “Q”, had cognitive biases that made it difficult to see the network instead. It was also hard to document.

8/Because there was no one central figure to focus on, narrative accounts are furry, rambling affairs. Even now some might be inclined to say “Q is/was Ron Watkins,” and while that was always plausible, to say only that denies the scope of the effort. Q himself is but a footnote.

9/I reserve special scorn for those who diverted attention from the military and intelligence networks in favor of gawking and laughing at the phenomenon, all while claiming to be opposed to it. I consider this bad faith engagement. You bought them time.

10/The blood of Capitol police is, in part, on your hands. You had the chance to help stop this. Those of you who may have willingly and knowingly aided this operation, my contempt for you is strong. You know who you are.

11/However, our attempts to expose these networks did have an effect and may have made the “boom” less bad than it might have been. We are now in a position where we can actually do something about this in the future.

12/And going forward we can look for networks and not hierarchies; we can monitor bad actors; we can listen when things are complex; we can act faster. And we can expose and marginalize people who seek to minimize and gaslight those aiming to get at the truth.

13/We are not out of the woods yet, but the more truth is exposed, the more we can return victims to a healthier social and information milieu, and the more we can heal society and grapple with hard problems in good faith, as we must. Next time we cannot be so naïve.