Pentagon Employing Top Scientists to Improve US Propaganda Machine

By Cassius Methyl

Throughout human history, governments have been interested in “mastering the human domain”—in fully understanding how to control the minds of their populations. In 2015, DARPA’s “Narrative Networks” (or N2) program is in full swing.

The project is intended to analyze how “narratives” play into human psychology, delving into the way these constructs affect the mind. A narrative is a way of phrasing something, a choice of words, for example, that is likely a biased strategy to frame information.

“Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts, emotions and behavior and can be particularly important in security contexts,” DARPA researchers said in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

They discussed “…conflict resolution and counterterrorism scenarios [and] detecting the neural response underlying empathy induced by stories is of critical importance.”

Mastery of “narratives” could potentially be used to manipulate the perception of a population using platforms of communication like television to subtly and potently make a person think a certain way. Many people know this tactic by a more familiar term: propaganda.

“Governments often use stories to present information, so understanding how we comprehend them is important,” said co-author Eric Schumacher, an associate professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In addition to narratives, the study focused on fear. Researchers observed a phenomenon of “tunnel vision,” or impaired reasoning, triggered in the brain when suspects processed, for example, a suspenseful moment in a movie.


As the Washington Post summarized,

When suspense grew, brain activity in viewers’ peripheral vision decreased. Schumacher called it the ‘neural signature of tunnel vision.’ Moments of increasing suspense were also associated with greater interference with a secondary task. In this case, responding by pressing a button when hearing a tone.

It is likely that predatory actions of war could come out of this particular accumulation of knowledge. The U.S. Military has a long history of funding psychological experiments, some entrenched in human rights violations (like the experiments performed during the Project MKUltra era).

Now we have the Pentagon-funded DARPA program, which pays researchers at colleges and other scientists millions of dollars to enhance and bolster methods of war. Such work places great technological power in the hands of a demonstrably criminal government and military.

DARPA paying geniuses to work for them could be considered an exploitation of intellectual capability to further consolidate government and military power.

This is but a sliver of information in the full timeline of the U.S. Military’s acquisition of propaganda techniques, but even that smallest sliver of information is a necessary piece of the puzzle.

Cassius Methyl writes for theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

Cassius Methyl joined Anti-Media as an independent journalist in March of 2014. His topics of interest include thinking, creating a future, deep spirituality, and astrology. He resides in Sacramento, California. Learn more about Methyl here!


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6 Comments on "Pentagon Employing Top Scientists to Improve US Propaganda Machine"

  1. I’m PSYOP and MEME proof. Of course it helps to be rejected by every tribe and herd ever made in CULT-ure. Give ya an idea…I don’t even fit in AA and probably actually drank and drugged to survive all the tribal herds. McKenna was 100% correct when he said CULT-ure is not your friend.

  2. This is a topic i have studied for a while now and yes the goverments are using this against the people . The best thing to do is get rid of your TV . tc all .

  3. The propaganda technique went to a quantum leap as of May 10th, 2012.

    U.S. media is mandated and subject to section 501 of the National Defense Authorization Act. It legalizes a longstanding federal law that made it illegal for the US Department of State to share domestically the internally-authored news stories sent to American-operated outlets broadcasting around the globe.

    In other words they could use propaganda everywhere but here on US soil against Americans. It’s section 501 of the NDAA or the Smith Mundt Modernization Act (HR 5736). It overturns the Smith-Mundt Act. It abolishes the stipulation that the U.S. Had to leave it’s propaganda just overseas. It now allows the government to use propaganda on it’s own citizens. People here criticize Russia, China and North Korea because their media is state run. Well now, since May 10, 2012 the USA’s is too!

    http://rt.com/usa/smith-mundt-domestic-propaganda-121/

    http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5#ixzz2Y7KbYyr1

    “Movies SHOULD be to entertain NOT to influence. News SHOULD be to inform NOT to spread propaganda. Governments SHOULD be there to assist NOT take over. MAN is here to bring change NOT to sit back and be changed.
    #WorldWideWakeUp”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYUUxIoFsDQ

    The self-declared champions of so-called “free markets” cannot tolerate a “free market of information.”

  4. Here is an anti-Pentagon propaganda – please, copy and spread it:

    In August 1995 one third of Croatia’s territory, called Krajina, was a protected Zone where UN’s blue helms were charged to protect Serbs who feared for their lives. When Croatian military forces attacked on August 4th the traumatized Serbs who where quasi exterminated in WWII by the very same Croatian forces – nobody protected them. In 48 hours, the entire Krajina was ethnically cleansed – here, you can see the greatest European that is Serbian exodus ever from Krajina :https://www.youtube.com/watch?… children, eldery… 800 000 people flee on tractors…

    Nobody has defended Serbian population. It was a GENOCIDE committed by the UN, US, EU and Vatican diplomacy!

    It was a real GENOCIDE over Serbian population – for to hide own crimes the Clinton’s administration invented the Srebrenica genocide over Bosnian Muslims ! Blackmailed, the very same Serbs who fled on tractors were bombed once again in 1999 with uranium charged bombs.

    On August 5th Croatia will celebrate 20 years its own crimes! One third of Serbian population in Croatia were killed in WWII, one third were expullsed and one third were catholized – now, there are no Serbs in Croatia that was the Nikola Tesla’s homeland (he was an Orthodox priest’s son in Krajina)

    After killing 700 000 Serbs in Jasenovac from 1941-1945 and creating the only concentration camp in the world for children, for Serbian children, Croatia was integrated in Yugoslavia without paying for victims, even without excuse (google: jasenovac).

    After cleaning one third of their territories from Orthodox Serbs in 1995, Croatia was integrated in the EU without any questions and without any problems! The Serbian lands, homes were robbed by new “democratic” state legally. Now, Croatia celebrates!

    How is that possible?

    Since the eleventh century when Vatican decided to leave the Christian Unity and create its own “universal /catholic” church, Western Slavonics (Slovenians and Croats) where under religious pression and took the Catholicism like Polish and Checks. But Serbs kept their original Orthodox faith for almost thousand years now. The Serbs were a barrier to Vatican’s “universality” and its priests tried to destroy the Serbs’ opposition through diverse perverse manipulations over and over again:

    -Vatican invented a new nation that is not one: there is no Bosnian nation because people who live in Bosnia & Herzegovina speak a kind of Serbian dialect, have all same origins and same roots – there are Orthodox Serbs, there are Catholic Serbs and there are Muslims Serbs in Bosnia! Vatican created illusion that Muslims from Bosnian where the only Bosnians and now, when you speak on “Bosnians” you forget that Serbs are Bosnians too. Very perverse illusion, indeed

    -the most ancient church in Dubrovnik, Croatia is an Orthodox church from tenth century – the illusion of a Croatian states was created by Vatican for to separate Serbs from Serbs and create a Catholic region among Serbs; a successful way for Vatican diplomacy ! Now, Croats, who speaks Serbian language (serbskohrvatski), have same origins and same culture, live in a separate state that is fully supported by Vatican-Washington-London axis.

    -there is no “Byzantin ” church – it’s the term invented by Vatican to hide Serbian origins and to dissapear the very notion of Serbian nation

    The masters of mental illusions are still free. Bill Clinton together with Vatican’s priests and UN’s diplomats should be tried for war crimes! Media too. Their obelisks in Vatican, Washington and London should be cut away. If American people do not support Serbian claims for Justice, Serbian wish to turn back in Krajina… then, Americans will all fall to further enslavement manipulations too.

    It’s about our sovereignty that is our liberty.

  5. In short, our MB/IS gov’t is paying experts, with our money, (not their phantom money) to devise better ways to brainwash the population. Windows 10 spying capabilities, cameras in smart TV even when it’s shut off, cell phone data collection, smart meters transmitting your household info back to the utility who (probably) gets to sell the info to the gov’t (pd for by our money?) so they can garner enough info to brainwash us. No wonder so many people are sick n tired of the crap in TV, don’t believe half of what’s on the internet and wants to go off-grid. Too much gov’t prying into our personal lives.

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