Thread by @MikeBenzCyber

🧵 Here’s a thread on DOD’s psychological operations social science research program, the Minerva Initiative, and its connection to the censorship industry:

https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1636813750752690177

A lot of people may look at the following social science research grants and wonder: what the heck is the US Department of Defense doing funding all this?

It’s odd enough that the government is spending taxpayer dollars, but why the Pentagon, specifically?

A lot of people think of DOD as being about guns, missiles, tanks and bombs.

So they see DOD funding on climate change and say “that’s woke!” Or funding on alternative governance and say “that’s WEF!” Or funding on stopping conspiracy theories online and say “they hate speech!”

Actually, much of the warfare DOD gets involved in is not kinetic warfare. It’s political warfare.

And 2 specific types of political warfare: (1) insurgency & (2) counterinsurgency.

This is not hot war. And it’s different than counterterrorism. The war is for “hearts & minds.”

With the “liberal rules-based international order” in late 1940s, gaining territory by conquest became banned under int’l law. Maintenance of “vassal states” by empire nations moved from a military occupation model (think Philippines 1898) to a political domination model (1947+)

In any conflict zone / territory of interest to State, DOD enters to play one of 2 roles in political chess game of that region:

- Insurgency to create political threat of regime change or destabilization.

- Counterinsurgency to “stabilize” ruling party from political threats.

Both roles - insurgency & counterinsurgency - require domination of the hearts and minds of the population in that territory whose ruling party State is trying to regime change (politically attack) or “stabilize” (politically defend).

Here’s why:

When DOD plays insurgency side (ex: Mujahideen in Afghanistan in 70s), the hearts and minds of the Muj had to be galvanized & mobilized to overthrow Soviet governance.

When DOD played counterinsurgency there to protect Hamid Karzai, the task was to flip hearts to reject the Muj.

Just so you see how formulaic and well-worn our DOD insurgency doctrine has been for generations, compare the clip above (Democrat Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979) with the clip below (Republicans Lindsay Graham & John McCain in 2017):

As a secret decoder ring, whenever you see the word “democratization” about a country overseas, DOD is backing a political insurgency against the ruling party.

Whenever you see the word “stabilization,” it means DOD is backing the ruling party to stave off political challengers.

Before we turn to Minerva Initiative specifics, one more primer on World Empire Management 101: the political intrigues of population management & DOD counterinsurgency work.

The win condition is *political legitimacy* of the preferred ruling party in the eyes of the populace.

The main reason DOD counterinsurgency (political warfare against the population itself) even exists is bc, often, the population is extremely upset with US destabilization & exploitation of its country. Its resources, its sovereignty, its public assets, etc.

The populace sees a propped up puppet dictator mismanaging their homeland. So they often have very justified grievances against the installed US-backed gov’t.

People with grievances are expensive to govern. They have nothing. Best for DOD is they have nothing, but they’re happy.

And this is what $30 million a year in Minerva Initiative psyops research goes toward: building scientific models for how best to direct an entire population’s social response, when they would naturally have serious grievances with a US State Dept agenda item or operation.

Consider this: Graphika, a Minerva Initiative grantee, was as one of the very first censorship orgs to mass report online political opposition to masks, lockdowns & Covid origins debate.

Graphika started their censorship ops on Dec 16, 2019 when the virus was just 4 days old:

Graphika, a tiny company given $7 million in DOD grants/contracts, somehow knew to start monitoring & mass reporting online "conspiracy theories" and dissent about Covid-19 on Dec 16, 2019.

WHO didn't even officially learn of Covid until Dec 31, 2019:

public-assets.graphika.com/reports/Graphi…

Even darker, looking at Minerva Initiative grantees, you see their main role is to help the US military manage the thoughts & beliefs of a populace in a conflict zone.

DOD wasn't focused on "wokeness" in Minerva climate grants. They were focused on control of government:

To make it clearer: Minerva Initiative grantees aren't doing "woke" research on, i.e., climate change.

They are reporting to DOD about how to stop citizen opposition to USG crisis governance measures, to stop people from undermining legitimacy.

That's counterinsurgency 101:

Other Minerva Initiative classmates of Graphika got DOD funds to help establish "citizen buy-in" during "those precarious moments when the state needs to (re)establish itself as the accepted authority."

DOD funding how to make citizens accept Daddy Gov't as supreme authority: