Ghosts in the Machine- A Critique

They are far away and yet close,
Some in the shadows,
Some in the front rows,
Some hide in plain disguise
…Away from all prying eyes.

Every State has agents to act on its behalf

One such shadowy wing of the USA, the 4th PSYOPs Group, released what appears to be an “advertisement” on May 3, 2022. I put the word “advertisement" inside quotes, since I believe the video to be a very well-designed and clever instance of psychological warfare. While a lot can be said about the USA and PSYOPs in general, I would like to focus on the video for now. Titled "Ghosts in the Machine”, (a reference to the mind-body dualism of Descartes) the video lays out the methods and beliefs of the 4th PSYOPs Group in clear detail.

Consider the opening of the video, where quotes from Sun Tzu flash onto the screen. Sun Tzu was a famous (possibly mythical) Chinese general who is said to have written ‘Art of War’, one of the founding works of Eastern military thought.

"If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant".

Strangely enough, both quotes apply to the video in question, though in different ways. Every single part of the video has been edited to near perfection, as if to convey a message to all watchful eyes that they are being watched. The purpose? To make the watcher uneasy. To irritate those of choleric temper.

And yet, the video is trying to portray the 4th PSYOPs Group as an omnipresent and omniscient entity which dictates the course of history.

It even asks us if we ever wondered who is pulling the strings. This is clearly not a case of pretending to be weak. To understand this, another quote from Sun Tzu helps :

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."

Perhaps the 4th PSYOPs Group is nowhere near as competent as the video portrays it to be. After all, only the weak need to convince others that they are strong. Or maybe they want the overthinkers to think that they are weak when they are strong. But that is just speculation on my part.

Considering the existence of things like MK ULTRA, who knows what the 4th PSYOPs Group is capable of?

The screen shifts to show an old television playing an old black-and-white cartoon. A clown is seen walking awkwardly, while the music starts playing. The choice of music here was very well-done. The visuals and the lyrics of the song complement each other perfectly. The first few bars of the song are nothing more than a series of eerie whistles. Perfect to set the tone for what is to come.

Words flash onto the screen:

"Have you wondered who's pulling the strings?"

The visuals switch across various city skylines as various clips from the radio are played. A segment of a news report from the Tiananmen square protests of 1989 along with the famous sound-bite of Reagan requesting Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall play, as the visuals show a conductor in front of an orchestra, telling us that they control the music.

Clearly, the 4th PSYOPs Group wants us to think of it being involved in the breakup of the Soviet Union and the protests in China. Ironically, the USA was quick to deny involvement in these events when accused of manufacturing crises to destabilize its geopolitical rivals. Now the 4th PSYOPs Group seems to be taking unofficial credit. Almost like saying "Come on guys, it had nothing to do with us!" wink, wink

The scene shifts to a chessboard, meant to represent how the 4th PSYOPs Group (like most intelligence organizations) sees the world:

A game played with patience and won with forethought, where one moves pieces around and sacrifices pawns to out-maneuver the opponent.

As the words "who's pulling the strings?" fades, the word "who" alone lingers. The attention to detail is showcased here - every editing choice being made to heighten the anxiety and paranoia felt by the viewer.

Wolves hiding nearby

Whispering 'do or die'

...Around me

These ominous lyrics play as the scene shifts to a forest and zooms in on a bush to show a medallion with a ghost-symbol hanging from a branch. A fire rages in the background. The scene cuts around showing cityscapes and subways till it stops at a house at night. The visual created by the small island of light cast by the lantern, in the ocean of darkness surrounding the house, is striking. The words "You'll find us in the shadows" flash across the scene as we see three special ops soldiers stealthily moving towards the house with their guns raised.

The implications are obvious.

You can run.

You can hide.

But you cannot escape.

The 4th PSYOPs Group will hunt you down, no matter which dark corner you seek refuge in. And when the 4th PSYOPs Group comes for you, they will come in the cover of dark with weapons drawn. The soldiers come in from the left as the words "You'll find us in the shadows" fades from the left, creating an illusion of the words being wiped away by the soldiers.

Every detail of the video is carefully managed. Nothing is an accident with the video editing, just as nothing is an accident in the world at large. Everything is orchestrated by the 4th PSYOPs Group, the video screams.

Am I reading too much into this?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But the choice to decide how the words fade was deliberate. By default, the words would have faded away all at once. Someone at the 4th PSYOPs Group made a decision to have them fade from left to right.

"At the tip of the spear" is presented as another location where one can find the 4th PSYOPs Group. The visuals shift to a military parade in China. As the soldiers salute and march past, their footsteps can be heard. They are loud and incessant, like those of an occupying army marching down the main street of a fallen city.

Coincidentally, the lyrics match ‘Goodbye’.

The words "A threat rises in the east" appear. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the USA has enjoyed its position as the sole superpower in the world. Meanwhile, China grew at a slow but steady rate.

"Hide your capabilities and bide your time"

- Deng Xiaoping

With the rise of China and Russia, the world moved from being unipolar to being multipolar. References to threats in the east could be a way of psychologically priming the public for a war in East Asia against China. Taiwan is a flashpoint, and China has an excess of young people of military age. While one hopes that war can be averted, the 4th PSYOPs Group seems to believe in the idea of Thucydides' trap, i.e. the idea that war is inevitable when the dominant power is challenged by a rising power.

"You say your last goodnight..." says the song…

...The text says "Warfare is evolving"

We are treated to a montage depicting the stages of warfare from knights on horseback to soldiers rushing out of a truck to a drone targeting scurrying figures to a hand holding a Molotov cocktail as the music reaches a crescendo.

The last image we see is that of a hand scrolling down a phone. The message here is clear.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Times change, and we change with the times. Before continuing, I would like to take a brief pause to explain the idea of generations in warfare.

The first generation relied on large numbers of troops armed with melee weapons, as used in ancient times. The knights on horseback wearing chainmail is an example shown in the video. The second generation is marked by the use of firearms, ranging from muskets to machine guns. The gun-wielding soldiers in the second panel of the video is an example.

The third generation is characterized by the importance placed on speed and stealth, with combatants trying to out-maneuver their enemies. The drone feed shown in the video serves as an example here.

The fourth generation blurs the line between state and non-state actors. The protestor about to throw a Molotov cocktail is the common image which comes to mind when one thinks of state-backed coups.

The fifth generation, described as a "war of information and perception", involves the increased use of non-violent tactics like social engineering and disinformation. It is a battle for hearts and minds. The visual of the hand scrolling down the phone is a clear example of this. The 4th PSYOPs Group seems to be saying that in the age of information, they are the experts in the mostly non-violent tactics required for the 5th generation of warfare.

"Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting"

-Sun Tzu

The music is briefly cut as we see a tape explaining the idea of psychological warfare begin to play.

"There is another very important facet of warfare. It has as its target, not the bodies, but the minds of the enemy."

The whistling starts again as the voice continues:

"It is words and ideas...ammunition used by psywar."

Three images flash across the screen in quick succession:

A mic

A paintbrush on paper

Someone editing a song

"Everything we touch is a weapon", the text says.

It has long been alleged by conspiracy theorists that popular culture and mainstream media is controlled by intelligence agencies who use them to manipulate public opinion to serve their own interests.

Operation Mockingbird was an alleged CIA program to drip feed information to journalists and manipulate overall coverage of key issues in the media. The video seems to vindicate these conspiracy theorists. When suspicion is cast on every piece of culture, one is forced to assume that every painting, every song, every poem, every news article is created by people with ulterior motives. Maybe this very article is nothing more than another psyop. "I am not a CIA stooge" is exactly what a CIA stooge would say. Is this a Kafka trap, where denial of guilt is evidence of guilt? This shows the brilliance of this strategy.

When someone films a video of themselves licking an ice-cream tub and putting it back into the fridge with several others, every single tub of ice cream has to be discarded. Merely by insinuating that something is tainted, one destroys trust in it without actually having to taint anything. The 4th PSYOPs Group now forces us to question every piece of media we consume, without having to corrupt any media.

"We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire" ,says the text…

…The voice says "It is expected and encouraged to study foreign languages and the social sciences such as history, economics and sociology.".

It is said that truth is the first casualty in war. There is much that can be said about this statement. Firstly, I propose that there are two distinct definitions of "truth". The first definition, which I call "truth", is the commonly understood one of a quality possessed by a factual statement. A true statement is a "truth". The second definition, which I call "Truth", is the set of beliefs commonly accepted as being true. PSYOPs does not meddle with the concept of "truth"; it instead meddles with the "Truth". To kill "Truth" is to make it false. The statement about "Truth" being the first casualty in war is somewhat misleading - it is not an unintentional casualty in wartime, but is actively targeted at all times. PSYWAR is simply the struggle to control "Truth". PSYWAR does not start or end concurrently with what we would conventionally consider "War"; it is waged constantly by groups like the 4th PSYOPs Group. This is best exemplified by the visual of the phone as the fifth generation of war. The 4th PSYOPs Group tells us that it has always been at war, engaging in a constant perversion of "Truth" to support its interests. "If you don't want your mind to be a warzone, log off Twitter and go touch grass." it seems to be telling us.

Multiple visuals flash across the screen, but I would like to focus on one in particular. It is of a corpse floating on water just off a hilly coast. I believe that this is a reference to Operation Mincemeat, one of the grand successes of British intelligence during the second world war. The story goes as follows:

An unclaimed corpse was taken from a morgue by intelligence officials and dressed up as a Royal Marines officer. False intelligence in the form of fake letters which suggested that a planned attack on Sicily was a feint, was placed on the corpse before the corpse was released near the southern coast of Spain. Spain, despite claiming to be neutral, shared the recovered intelligence with Nazi Germany. The plan seemed to work, with the Axis powers refusing to send reinforcements to Sicily.

This subtle reference is inserted into the video as an image lasting less than a second. One has to respect the amount of thought that went into making the video.

"Gripping at my skin

The walls of night close in

….Around me"

goes the song as the text says "We come in many forms".

The visuals take us back to the ominous forest at the start of the video. "We are everywhere" says the text. We are back to the chessboard seen earlier as the music says "As I wait to see my last goodbye". On the word "goodbye", the visuals show the TV playing the cartoon shown earlier.

As the music once again reaches a crescendo, the clown is revealed to be a puppet controlled by a grotesque ghost (one of the ghosts in the machine, another reference to the video title).

The camera zooms out to reveal that the TV is on fire.

The cinematography here is top-notch. The visuals continue to cut to show various scenes while the eerie whistling returns.

We see soldiers from the earlier scene entering the house, we see riot police on the streets, we see protestors storming a building, we see the final move from the chess game, we see a box being dropped from a US aircraft and exploding to release thousands of pamphlets in mid-air, and we see the riot police from earlier locking shields and launching a missile.

Suddenly, we are back at the ominous forest, and see black-clad figures with white masks rising from the bushes around us.

The words "Ghosts in the machine" appear on the screen as we once more cut back to the burning TV, to the infamous clip of a lone protester standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen square and to the clip of Saddam Hussein's statue being toppled before going back to the forest.

The whispering wolves have revealed themselves.

The walls of night have closed in

Time to say our last good night.

Note how every thread opened in the initial part of the video is given a solid conclusion here.

The forest, the orchestra conductor, the chess game, the cartoon on the TV...The video comes full circle. Each scene is like a small allegory.

The masked figures in the forest, the orchestra conductor and the ghost in the clown suit represent the 4th PSYOPs Group.

The singer of the song represents the target of the 4th PSYOPs Group, almost like a warning. As the singer says her last goodnight, the masked figures appear in the forest and the clown suit is removed.

The 4th PSYOPs Group reveals itself

The video ends with the logo of the 4th PSYOPs Group on the screen. A gray cloud with three thunderbolts with the motto:

"Verbum Vincet"

"The World will Conquer"

"These are the psywar soldiers" says the voice as a link to the recruitment web-page flashes on the screen.

The reactions to the video were interesting. Some of the top comments:

"This glows harder than a Christmas tree in February"

"Me: “No way could I trust the government less than I already do.”

4th PSYOP Group: “hold my beer”

"Finally saying the quiet part out loud.

WE are the targets just as much as an enemy.

Question everything.

Think for yourselves without the sphere of societal or social media influence."

While the 4th PSYOPs Group must be commended for leaving the comments section open, it must be admitted that the general public did not take this well.

What lesson can be learnt from this debacle?

Firstly, an army recruitment ad needs to be very well crafted. The focus must be on protection, not on attack. Listing war crimes committed by the army and saying "how cool is that?" is not going to motivate people to join the army.

The ad here has been well crafted, no doubt. But the story it tells is that of a shadowy group controlling things via manipulation. Not one of a group that the average person can sympathize with. The use of threatening statements like "We are everywhere" and "Everything we touch is a weapon", while making the video sound cool, just alienated the audience from the 4th PSYOPs Group.

That takes us to the next lesson. There must be an attempt to reassure the target audience that this one is on their side. When the tactics used to manipulate individuals psychologically are brazenly boasted about, the audience wonders whether such tactics have been used against them. It is one thing to wage PSYWAR, it is another thing entirely to brag about doing so and rub it into the faces of your targets.

In conclusion, I don't think the ad was a total failure for the 4th PSYOPs Group. They generated attention and got people talking about them, which probably translates to increased application rates in the future. However, the 4th PSYOPs Group, being so eager to quote Sun Tzu, might appreciate this particular nugget of his wisdom.

“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness.

Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness.

Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”

-Sun Tzu

Psychological operations are best carried out by the formless and soundless.