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This article was originally published on Korea IT Times on November 4, 2021.
1. Making the Information Crisis into an Opportunity for Brave Reform
The crisis in intelligence in the United States has reached an extreme today as the multitude of contractors that feed on massive, and often obscure, budget, clamor to be fed without any concern for the long-term interests of the citizens of the United States, the constitution that defines that nation, or the security of our brittle planet.
The question of what to do, however, is not so simple.
No matter how much intelligence agencies are maligned or rebuffed, it is a fact that the covert gathering of information by governments, corporations, and other organizations has gone on for thousands of years and, granted human nature, will continue to be a reality in the future. The process can be regulated, to a certain degree, and it can be given a higher purpose, but it cannot be eliminated.
But the current situation is unsustainable and dangerous. The commercialized exaggeration of the term “intelligence” so as to extend into the field of human experience has distorted and diluted its meaning. Both creating deep misunderstandings when it is applied inappropriately and suggesting that anyone and his uncle can engage in intelligence.
Sadly, although there were remarkable figures in intelligence in the United States who have stood up for the accurate and scientific analysis in intelligence and who have opposed the abuse of authority by intelligence agencies for profit, (some going to jail, most simply disappearing into obscurity), such moral commitment has declined perspicaciously over the last decade.
The entire intelligence community has been radically privatized so that those in senior positions merely oversee the granting of contracts to contractors and have little sense of camaraderie with others engaged in a global battle for the wellbeing of our citizens.
Intelligence agencies that once played a critical role in keeping politicians and other government officials, up to date on the true threats facing the nation, have been carved up by jackals and hyenas working for multinational corporations.
Essential analysis has been outsourced over the last two years to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and other multinational corporations that cannot be said to be “American” in any sense of the world. These lumbering leviathans are owned by banks and private equity funds around the world, many of which are happy to sell short the United States at any time.
The result? The entire intelligence community has been transformed into an appendage of big tech that abuses the authority of the Federal Government to advance the corporate agendas of these monopolies.
Not everyone is in on this game. Some bravely fight against the silent takeover. Nor is this battle entirely new. Terrible internal conflicts have wracked the intelligence community before—often completely unknown to the man in the street.
But this destruction of “intelligence” is far more serious and must have been in the context of the greater act of menticide, the murder of the human mind, undertaken against all American citizens by shadowy multinational finance.
Whether it is journalism or education, entertainment or advertisement, the goal is to reduce us to instinctive animals that are incapable of anything but a desire for food, sex, and superficial distractions.
The conspiracy channels would have you believe that it is intelligence agencies that are driving this war on the citizens. This interpretation, although not entirely without basis, is a serious misunderstanding.
Although intelligence agencies have always had corrupt elements happy to do the bidding of the powerful, they have also had pockets of the brave and the committee who have the technical and geopolitical understanding and the training that allows them to stand up when professors, NGO leaders, and politicians hide in fear.
The evidence of criminality within intelligence agencies is overwhelming, but the ultimate source of those orders remains obscure. The massive privatization of intelligence means that the line between government, corporations, and organized crime are blurred, or completely disappears. Sadly, the super-rich is able to misuse these organizations and then redirect all blame to the CIA.
The breakdown of intelligence is taking place at precisely the moment that we desperately need a system that can assure the integrity of information in the United States, and around the world, for our citizens.
This intelligence crisis is taking place at the moment that we must assure that those in positions of authority have access to accurate scientific information, not distorted commercial media, or the slick brochures of lobbyists and persuaders.
We have an obligation in intelligence reform the citizens of the United States and to the scientific truth. We have no obligation to conform to corrupt practices in Washington, D.C. that are accepted as reality.
2. Intelligence and the Crisis in Governance
Professors and researchers, ethically committed citizens and journalists, should lead the charge in the search for scientifically verified information that will serve as the foundation for ethical governance. At the same time, we must recognize that the search for scientific truth is not a democratic process. If we are voting on the truth, treating all opinions as equal on Capitol Hill, then we are no longer engaged in ethical governance and democracy is impossible.
It would be the best tit we could limit the role of intelligence agencies to specific intelligence-gathering missions in the diplomatic and security fields, and to small-scale counter-intelligence operations. We should cut back the massive bureaucracy that benefits from creating, and expanding, problems, and create a small focused group of experts.
That vision, often articulated by experts, is not readily available to us today.
First, the intelligence apparatus has grown so bloated over the last twenty years as a result of the deliberate misinterpretation of the legitimate imperative to respond to the vast implications of the information revolution. We must recognize that the sprawling fields of intelligence subcontractors that surround the CIA, NSA, and now most branches of the Federal Government, will not simply disappear by magic. A complex transformation must take place in which new roles are established and a new institutional culture put in place that holds up high ethical principles, not the pursuit of budgets for private profit.
Moreover, the simple pursuit of truth in the post COVID-19 era is a matter of life and death.
The level of risk involved in speaking the truth in the face of multinational corporations and other shadowy organizations that defend the interests of the global rich is far too much for the timid likes of professors, journalists, and other researchers to take on.
If it were not for the support (often hidden or tacit) of those in intelligence agencies, the hard-hitting alternative media would have been suppressed long ago.
Thus intelligence, a combination of the capacity to gather and analyze information, to promote a perspective even the most hostile environments, and to take action to respond to threats (real or perceived), is what makes these agencies so dangerous and at the same time so necessary in the face of the massive degradation of information taking place today around the world.
The above intelligence capabilities have often been employed by the rich and powerful to suppress alternative views and enhance their influence. That part of the story is well known. The manner in which intelligence agencies have used these three capabilities to defend people is virtually unknown. Yet that is precisely the role that is demanded by today’s crisis.
Reforming intelligence into a reliable and ethically committed institution that addresses directly the misuse of information by techno-tyrants is made even more difficult by the burgeoning conspiracy industry.
When I use the term “conspiracy industry,” am not assuming, as some would, that the various conspiracies discussed on the alternative media are specious and unfounded. There are numerous conspiracies that have taken place or are taking place, around the globe. Any intelligence professional must first accept the remarkable depravity of humans and accept that the battle for a better world requires us to pick our fights.
The conspiracy industry, however, often promoted by corrupt branches of the intelligence community, combines real evidence of the crimes by the global elite with fantastic, or exaggerated, narratives about Satanism, devil worship, Chinese and Jewish conspiracies for global domination, and other tales in a manner that misleads citizens as to the real interest groups behind these conspiracies and also makes it possible for authority figures to dismiss real evidence because those presenting it also talk about UFOs and the Second Coming.
In an age in which you can easily lose your life trying to speak the truth (inside government or outside government), we need strong organizations, let us call them intelligence agencies, with the slap-down capacity, which protect those investigating the truth. Only if the search for truth has a real backbone can it serve as a compass in the cloud of information chaos.
The fact that many of the intelligence experts have previously thought only about their paycheck and consulting contracts should not discourage us concerning the potential for transformation. Profound crisis, such as we face today, makes such transformation possible.
We must start by turning back the privatization of intelligence. We have seen an exponential increase in this trend over the last five years, a shift that can be traced back to the weakening of intelligence organizations after the Vice President’s directives for privatization as an effort to crush resistance to that regime within the intelligence community.
I was shocked when a friend recently sent me postings for job openings in North Korean intelligence analysis at Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft. Positions that once had to be held by government officials on long-term contracts paid for by tax dollars are now controlled by multinational corporations loyal to short-term profits.
Suffice it to say that Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are not American organizations. Their stock is owned by the global elite, from Paris to Moscow, from London to Beijing, and they make decisions based on their interests.
Moreover, major investment banks like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, which have also played a big role in the privatization of intelligence, have decided to sell the United States short as part of a strategy for reducing domestic resistance to tyranny by outsourcing American industry, that produces educated and self-sufficient individuals, to China, India or elsewhere. We need intelligence officers capable of standing up to multinational banks, not serving as cover for their nefarious plots and ruses.
We never want to see again a scam of the global elite pinned on the CIA while the real culprits celebrate in luxury.
3. The Impact of Technological Change on Intelligence
Part of the problem can be traced back to technological change and is not the result of the evil done by individuals. The exponential increase in the capacity of supercomputers in accord with Moore’s Law has created a tremendous capability to manipulate the decision-making process on a global scale and give undue power to the very few who control such supercomputers.
The small group of billionaires who control the best networks of supercomputers has become a shadow government that is above all the politicians we see on television.
Just as Gresham’s Law suggests that debased coinage will displace pure coinage in the economy as people start to hoard, the degraded information we are being fed by the media and by multinational corporations has displaced accurate information completely in our society, leaving citizens to try to make sense of the garbage that they are fed by the corporate media, universities and research institutes now bought and paid for by multinational banks, and celebrities cultivated by those same forces.
As Arthur C. Clark suggests in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, technology is not simply a passive tool subject to the human will but is a force in itself that can determine human evolution and human thinking.
The exponential development of technology has created an environment in which new unprecedented risks are unleashed. The few can amass detailed information about all individuals in the world and also control the information that is presented to the citizens so as dumb-down the population (making democratic process impossible) and to slowly reduce us to slavery. The Constitution ceases to be of meaning in that process and the government becomes tyranny.
This process is already well underway in the United States, and the super-rich who are pushing the buttons follow the strategies of menticide outlined by Joost Meerloo in his classic study The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing (1957).
Government is not prepared to respond to the radical degradation of, and manipulation of, information that underlies the true information warfare we witness today. We are not talking about Chinese spies who steal secrets, but rather multinational equity funds (including Chinese and Russians, but also Japanese and Americans) that intend to destroy the capacity of citizens to think for themselves.
Government is the first victim of the systematic manipulation of information by global technology tyrants. In fact, the tyrants who have launched this world war like to hide behind the façade of government and to attribute their evil acts to government officials.
The intellectual response to this global takeover may come from journalists, university professors, community groups and other activists. But they are easily intimidated and cannot formulate the strategies for global information warfare.
As dangerous as it may be to turn to intelligence agencies in response to this global assault, we are left with no choice.
The critical point, the decisive aspect, of the proposed reforms, is severing the connection between global finance and intelligence and then creating out of the parts of the intelligence community a powerful force, like the Army of the Potomac, that adheres to the Constitution, creating a group of patriots devoted to the interests of the citizens, to the true, and to principles of the Constitution.
To be specific, that means that the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI and other organizations must be taken back by citizens of the United States, transformed into organizations that not only do not report to Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Vanguard—or to the superrich who lurk behind those organizations, but that are capable of frustrating, or even facilitating the arrest and prosecution of the heads of these organizations.
We know for a fact that normal courts do not have the spine, or the global structures, necessary to take on these global forces that claim to control wealth beyond that of most nation-states.
Once the sections of the intelligence community that is not hopelessly infected with the cancer of global finance are able to rally, they must first assert that they are the government, not the appendages of global finance and that they are empowered by the Constitution to use their awesome power to defend the citizens against slavery by technology, much as Abraham Lincoln did in 1860.
4. Defending the Intelligence of the Citizen at Home and Abroad
If we think more deeply about the future of intelligence in the United States, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that part of our role will be to defend “intelligence” in the other sense of the word: the capacity of citizens to think for themselves so as to play their sacred role according to the Constitution.
Although we have been so overwhelmed as to be unable to formulate our position, the current trend of “menticide” directed against citizens by the globally integrated AI systems controlled by the super-rich is an attack on the Constitution, and by extension, on the United States.
That is to say that a new role of intelligence must be to defend the ability of citizens to think, to serve citizens, and not to have their minds destroyed by pornography, video games, addictive apps, and the manipulative social media employed by dark forces to reduce them to passivity.
We must formulate a national and a global system to assure the accuracy of the information and to prevent its abuse that allows us to create a space for a regulated and public system for the control of information for the benefit of citizens that does not belong exclusively to multinational corporations, or to the rich. Current efforts funded by multinational corporations, directly or indirectly, to assert what is fake news have no legitimacy.
The question will be whether we can create, out of the ashes, new intelligence institutions that are “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Journalism will be a major part of this effort. The degradation of journalism over the last twenty years has been one of the most severe threats to national security. Much journalism today is a matter of opinion, with no application of the scientific method, no opportunity for alternative opinions, or for honest debate. Arguing that human activity does not impact the climate, that the Earth is flat, or that the Biden administration is Communist are allowed to pass without any scientific analysis.
The obvious answer for many is to intelligence out of journalism and to allow for a free press that is not force-feeding citizens the agenda of multinational corporations. Many citizens have rightfully demanded such actions and advanced powerful arguments for an end to this media puppet show.
There is another vision that deserves to be taken seriously, even if it seems counterintuitive at first glance. That is to argue that reformed intelligence agencies that represent the citizens and the Constitution should play a central role in the rebuilding of journalism in the United States and defending journalists.
Those who argue that intelligence should simply leave journalism alone are hopelessly naïve. Although it is certainly true that the influence of big money on intelligence, and on journalism, must be ended, we find ourselves in the midst of a hot information war on a global scale. Things may look peaceful for those sipping lattes at Starbucks, it is increasingly common for journalists who touch on sensitive topics to be threatened, or killed, around the world.
If we want to have journalism that presents accurate information in such a state of war, we must protect journalists and journals and make sure that they develop so as to fulfill their constitutional role.
In the current situation, it is necessary rather to rethink intelligence as a force that can fight for the integrity of information, and this transformation is possible.
It is not without risks, but nothing in war is without risks.
5. Moving Forward with True Intelligence Reform
We need to step back and take a new view of what the true challenges for the United States, its citizens, and the citizens of the Earth, are in this age of unprecedented technological change. We need to assure that that the United States has government agencies that provide the most accurate information possible to its lawmakers and to its citizens and that assures that the information in circulation is reliable. Such an institution does not exist now, even though it is desperately needed.
Such an institution can easily degenerate into a “Ministry of Truth” that suppresses the truth on behalf of the powerful. It does not have to follow that route, however.
In this age of fake news and massive mental manipulation, our citizens are subjected constantly to distorted information that are produced by the rich and powerful. The intelligence community which could protect them is assigned to an entirely different task and there is no other powerful institution to protect them.
The result is information anomy. The Internet is rapidly decaying into a ruthless jungle. Newspapers and TV news have degenerated into propaganda mouths.
It is essential that our citizens have accurate and objective sources for information about the world that assures stability in government policy and that will end the reliance of government officials on sensationalist media, or corrupt lobbyists, for information and analysis. True intelligence reform is not just about improving methodologies and policies, but about establishing a new vision for a healthy information ecosystem that makes its role critical to the wellbeing of all citizens. If done well, intelligence will no longer be a dirty word in our society.
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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.
Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
