Military Psyops On X: Now Sanctioned By the State Department
A cable from Marco Rubio is a portent of open psychological warfare—on us.
When I began my work nearly six years ago, I had no particular interest in psychology, much less psychological warfare. I approached my investigation as a game designer and technologist at first but quickly found those tools to be inadequate. I began to suspect that the behavior I was seeing was not just a psychological phenomenon but deliberately induced through a systematic process.
As I said in my documentary in February 2021 about QAnon: “It had every component of a psyop, a psychological operation.” As I’ve come to learn, the result of this psychological warfare campaign also includes the entirety of MAGA, and Donald Trump’s undue influence over a third of the U.S. population.
Since I shot that documentary, I’ve learned a lot about how it all works. The tragic reality is that America has been, at least for now, defeated by psyops, both foreign and domestic.
As I’ve warned in countless articles, the former Twitter, Elon Musk’s X, is nothing more than a massive psyops delivery system. It is a fully customizable information weapon that can target people by any demographic you can think of—gender, race, party, and opinion on any subject. It is a central node of Russian propaganda—and an efficient way for the PayPal Mafia to pump up their stock prices and push their nihilistic, anti-American agenda.
But now, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, Marco Rubio wants the Pentagon to run psyops directly on X—to “counter anti-American propaganda.”
This is deeply disturbing on multiple levels.
First, the accounts of the federal government on X are already some of the most vicious propaganda sources on the internet.
But now the government plans to use “every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an ‘innovative’ tool to help do it.”
Notably, the cable tells diplomatic offices to coordinate their work with “the Department of War’s Psychological Operations” – the military unit more commonly known as Miso, or Military Information Support Operations, formerly Psyop, which is part of the Pentagon.
This is no longer 20-something DOGE kids manning the DHS or Dept. of Labor account. We are now talking about trained military psychological warfare personnel being tasked with changing people’s opinions through psyops online, on an American platform owned by the richest man in the world—and Donald Trump’s biggest donor.
The tactics suggested in the cable are common in psychological warfare operations in foreign theaters when preparing the battlefield for kinetic action, or to attempt regime change. What’s not common is that this is being done in public, on American social media.
The cable instructs those embassies and consulates to pursue five broad goals: countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls “telling America’s story”. Embassies are told to recruit local influencers, academics and community leaders abroad to carry counter-propaganda messaging, an approach designed to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed.
The alleged goal of the psyops campaign is to counter what the State Department sees as “alternate worldviews antithetical to America’s interests” but this language is hardly distinguishable from what the Trump regime has said about an alleged “radical left network” including the boogeyman “Antifa.”
“These campaigns seek to shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms,” the cable says. “Using digital platforms, state-controlled media, and influence operations, they pose a direct threat to US national security and fuel hostility toward American interests.”
There is nothing to stop this from expanding to covert operations designed to “counter anti-American viewpoints” domestically. And there is no way for the psyops being deployed on X to be limited to their targets. It is an open platform; everyone sees everything. By the nature of its delivery system, the psyops will be affecting American opinions as well. This is a dangerous, slippery precedent.
The effort is apparently being coordinated at the State Department by Sarah Rogers who is highly problematic herself.
A state department spokesperson told the Guardian that Sarah B Rogers, the under secretary for public diplomacy nominated in March, had made countering foreign “anti-American” propaganda “a top priority”, and that the department would take “an assertive stance on this pernicious issue” by “fully harnessing every tool in our diplomatic toolkit”.
This is a real tweet by Sarah Rogers, responding unironically to a blatant Nazi account about whether Jews are at fault for letting “the browns in.” Does this seem like the right person to run psyops on X? Or to have a job in the government at all for that matter?
The State Department activity is, in theory, covered by the Smith-Mundt Act which says propaganda “may not be used to influence public opinion in the United States.” However, there is a giant loophole in the law because it does not prohibit State Department propaganda from being exposed to American citizens in the process of influencing others. So, the military can run psyops on X against foreigners, and as long as the government claims they’re not targeting Americans, they can do anything they want.
In a world where the president is using the FBI to seize ballots, and starting wars to distract from the Epstein files, there is no reason to believe Trump will not use this capability to try to change opinions in elections, both American and foreign. A desperate Elon Musk will be glad to oblige with the free use of his compromised website.
While I’m glad to see psychological operations finally being exposed in the media as a serious weapon instead of a conspiracy theory, unfortunately the mechanisms to wield them are already in place. There is very little we can do to stop them from being deployed against us while Trump is in office.
However, if you understand how psyops work, how they affect your brain, and how to avoid being tricked, it gives you a superpower, a defense that most don’t have. Share your knowledge with others. Information is the weapon, but it is also the shield.
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It looks like Iranian State Media is doing a little meming and psyoping of its own. They've released an animated series of 'Lego' music videos. I found some of them on YouTube right here. I'll leave it at that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGH4UVS1z4w&list=RDlGH4UVS1z4w&start_radio=1
With regard to X: Why is anybody still on X? Okay, maybe some knuckleheads but if you know any knuckleheads try to get them off.
With regard to psyops, I'm guessing MISO is really really upset about Iran's Lego propaganda.
Finally, wasn't USAID the department that garnered goodwill and positive press around the world?