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Comment by rurounijones | Hacker News Reader

I know the value of propaganda but the idea that a mlitary trains to produce patently false propaganda targeted at its own civilian in the guise of the civilian government without its knowledge is disturbing.

Especially when the training has nothing to do with military matters and, as in this situation, is completely untrue and impersonates part of the civilian government. This seems like a massive violation of ethics.

Given what happened (Actual loudspeakers deployed) I doubt the official "Tt was as an internal training aid and never actually meant to be put into practice" explantion, that seems to require a set of steps that requires extraordinary levels of stupidity to the point that I don't believe Hanlon's Razor is adequate reasoning.

And if it is just colossal levels of stupidity / lack of oversight / lack of process then I do not believe the military should be trusted with such operations in the first place, training or no training.

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>I know the value of propaganda but the idea that a mlitary trains to produce patently false propaganda targeted at its own civilian in the guise of the civilian government without its knowledge is disturbing.

You ought to look up Operation Mockingbird, the Nariyah testimony, there are other examples. The activities you describe are widespread in the US. There was also someone did a study of some cable news network that found 92% of guests were current or former government officials, retired generals etc (AKA likely on CIA or military intelligence payroll)

I always wonder if the US is an outlier in stuff like this with Mockingbird, MKUltra etc. or if they are the ones that get caught and publicised the most in relation to other countries.

I'm guessing US is one of the very few countries that have enough money flowing to the military and intelligence that they can afford such projects. Most other countries probably prioritize their limited budgets on less... exploratory endeavors.

At least the US military does not use propaganda on the people of the country they are sworn to protect. Don't forget to thank them for their service.

Surely you're being sarcastic?

Operation Northwoods too ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Nothing like killing a few of your own to give your propaganda legitimacy.

And the repeal^Wmoderisation of the Smith–Mundt Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...

This made me remember the story that early Nazi Party was full of government spies tasked in destroying Nazi Party, Hitler being one of them.

They were supposed to act like true Nazi and infiltrate them heavily until they had enough information to dismantle it... but the spies quickly overran real members (seemly when Hitler and others were sent, the party had 15 members or so... and for a while the party had more spies in it than real members), the spies, that weren't "real Nazi", while trying to blend in introduced more and more ludicrous ideas and ended convincing people for real, seemly including themselves...

> Especially when the training has nothing to do with military matters (...)

This assertion is patently false. The goal of the military is to force your will onto others while stopping others from imposing their own will onto you. You don't achieve that exclusively by killing. In fact, arguably propaganda and intelligence is far more effective than military action.

Please bear in mind, for example, that the Normandy invasion, and consequently WW2 and the preservation of liberal democracies in Europe and the world, was won due to the role of a single man in posting this sort of propaganda: Juan Pujol García.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa

Was won due to the role of one man? No. Effective, perhaps, but your claim is far over the top of the reality.

>> Especially when the training has nothing to do with military matters (...)

> This assertion is patently false.

I am referring to the use of "Lets convince our OWN civilian population that wolves are a threat by impersonating our own government" - This is so far out of military matters that it is absurd that it is used as a training aid. Why is the military using training aids (that are theoretical and never supposed to be implemented remember) based on targetting their own civilian general population.

This should not be the role of the military, it should not even be in the list of aids. If you have to have stuff like that then at least make the training aids focus on psyops against populations of probable adversaries.

>Given what happened (Actual loudspeakers deployed) [...] that seems to require a set of steps that requires extraordinary levels of stupidity

Note they say "a loudspeaker" and "the loudspeaker" (singular) in the article, so the setup needn't have been arduous: it could have been as simple as a single person walking through the woods with handheld equipment.

It's sick. We didn't elect people to be their puppets. No respect for others, and no shame for themselves.

Thumbs up for the use of the appropriate word “disturbing” instead of more shriek-y terminology.

Thumbs down for the term “massive” for the ethical concerns. “Massive” violations of ethics occurred during the Nazi regime.

Thumbs down for the term “colossal”. “Colossal” stupidity was shown by governments during the 1940s Bengali famine and the 1960s Chinese famine. Nothing here reaches “colossal”.

Never underestimate the folly of large organizations of any stripe. They are all comprised of individuals who are just as silly as you are. There are just more of them and sometimes they have greater firepower.

Don’t know what you mean by “such operations” in the final sentence. Do you mean no “psyops”? Talk-talk is almost always better than bang-bang. If you were targeted with both, I think you would agree as well...

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