Can you create cutting edge”deep fakevideos, spying on people using home appliances and creating huge data dragnets? If so, the Pentagon wants to hear from you so it can ramp up its manipulation efforts.

US Special Operations Command (US SOCOM) has issued proposal requests for a slew of dodgy services, according to new documents obtained by The Intercept.

In particular, the Pentagon is looking for “power of the next generation ‘to take over‘ Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect data and information from local populations to enable analysis of which messages may be popular and accepted by filtering data as soon as it is received.”

With what purpose? “This would enable MISO [Military Information Support Operations] to draft and promote messages that are more easily received by locals in relevant peer/near peer environments,” according to the document.

Despite being publicly obsessed with the foreign meddling and propaganda of others, Washington now openly admits that it is actively seeking these new technologies for its own “influencing operations, digital deception, communication disruption and disinformation campaigns at the tactical and operational levels.” You know, the very same kind of thing, which it terrifies as a threat to freedom and democracy among the general public.

Earlier this year, a Washington-based consultancy OODA released a report warning that Chinese-made household items could not only spy on you, but could actually front the Chinese government. The report’s author called on the UK government to take action against claims that Chinese-made Internet of Things devices, and even car parts, can collect and transmit data over 5G mobile networks to Chinese companies, which then commissioned could get to pass it on to the UK government. government. The story went hysterical across the British media.

OODA describes itself as one “global strategic consulting firm with deep DNA in global security, technology and intelligence issues.” Indeed, the genetics run deep: straight to the Pentagon and Western intelligence communities where the executives, experts, and advisers have past or current working relationships.

So now it seems calls to ban Chinese home appliances because of their spying potential have turned into Washington wanting to get in on the action by getting the best front row seat possible while standing in front of your fridge at midnight drinking chocolate milk straight out of the box.

The Pentagon also wants to be able to create “deep fake”videos that can realistically portray fake events as real, in an attempt to manipulate the intended viewer(s). Or, as the Pentagon puts it, to “generating messages and influencing operations through non-traditional channels in relevant peer/near peer environments.” It’s hard to imagine a more glaring example of real fake news, but the Pentagon wants to produce it the way Netflix makes movies and TV shows.

Finally, the Pentagon says they want to get their hands on it “a next generation capability to collect disparate data across public and open source information streams such as social media, local media, etc. to enable MISO to influence operations and messages in relevant peer/near peer environments. ”

Some may be tempted to shrug this off as conventional practice, because when the military tracks down bad guys, they’ll naturally want to use every possible tool at their disposal – and continually try to expand that toolbox. But recent evidence suggests that military aggregation and subversion tools aimed at online and conventional information platforms are largely aimed at the average citizen to protect the establishment and its various narratives from dissent rather than for reasons of national security.

For example, Twitter CEO Elon Musk teamed up with a journalist last December to expose collusion between US government authorities and the social media platform to manipulate and censor public discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic. According to internal Twitter documents, one of the first meetings the Biden administration requested with Twitter executives was about Covid vaccines and specific high-profile accounts that deviated from the official narrative. According to the journalist, David Zweig, “Twitter did suppress opinions—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with official White House positions. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded public debate have disappeared. He added That, “With Covid, this bias has tended strongly towards established dogma,’ and cited examples of several experts, including prominent epidemiologists, whose views were censored for being labeled as Covid by Twitter staff “disinformation.”

Earlier this year, a British whistleblower also revealed that critics of Covid-19-related lockdowns and vaccine mandates — including prominent journalists and politicians — were being monitored by the British Army’s information warfare brigade. The 77th Brigade, formed in 2015 and described by the media at the time as being composed of “warriors who not only carry weapons, but are also adept at using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and the dark arts of ‘psyops’”.

The Canadian military was also caught using propaganda techniques honed on the battlefield in Afghanistan to shape the Covid debate by boosting the government’s narrative and trying to prevent any civil unrest over the hard mandates.

The Pentagon’s most recent wish list raises concerns that these tools will also be deployed on average Americans or Westerners for control and manipulation purposes. Last September, the Pentagon vowed to review its secret psyops, but only after public outcry when a group of investigators suggested collusion between US government agencies and US online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to monitor online stories with fake accounts. Has the lesson been learned to stop using psyops on ordinary citizens? Or was it just to keep it a secret?

Not that there is a shortage of western establishment cheerleaders demanding even more psychological manipulation efforts from the US government, if only to counter.disinformationfrom foreign opponents.

It seems we have now come to the point where sticking with Russia and China means actively encouraging the increasingly militarized efforts of our self-proclaimed defenders of freedom and democracy to brainwash their own people.