No money for energy? Warm yourselves with some billion-dollar biotech research!
ARPA-H is modeled after similar agencies that advance innovation in their sectors, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is known for contributing to achievements such as the internet, GPS and even Moderna’s vaccine for COVID-19.
If you’re not familiar with DARPA yet, please see these posts first.
What all these ARPAs do is one thing: spend countless billions from public money to do research that’s later handed to private companies through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scam. Universities used to provide these services, they still do to a smaller scale, but they can’t be as secretive and can’t be involved in some highly sensitive projects from a national security perspective.
ARPA-H launches path to speed public-private partnerships
The mission of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is to advance better health outcomes for everyone. To realize this mission, innovations sparked by ARPA-H must be able to transition into the real world. Transition strategies are often left to the last phase of a program, which significantly reduces the likelihood of a solution to reach the people that need it. ARPA-H seeks to facilitate public-private partnerships for accelerating technology transfer and transition by launching an effort to form Partnership Intermediary Agreements (PIA) that will make transition resources available throughout the entire program life cycle.
“Since the launch of ARPA-H almost a year ago, we have been building the team, tools, and capabilities that each program manager will need in order to launch audacious programs capable of advancing the state of the art in health innovation,” said Renee Wegrzyn, inaugural director of ARPA-H. “The PIA capability is critical to ensure that incoming program managers can hit the ground running and pursue big challenges in health.”
A PIA is an agreement established with a nonprofit partner with deep commercial sector and transition expertise, to engage academia and industry on behalf of the government. Speed and flexibility are the two main advantages of PIAs. PIAs allow for novel approaches that mirror commercial practice to get solutions to market. PIAs are authorized under 15 U.S.C. §3715 to create public-private partnerships.
“We at ARPA-H care deeply about getting solutions to everyone, and this is a powerful tool to ensure those solutions survive in the wild,” said Craig Gravitz, director of ARPA-H’s Project Accelerator Transition Innovation Office (PATIO). “This ensures ARPA-H programs address the market dynamics that matter for success, early and often.” PATIO is ARPA-H’s transition and commercialization office and focuses on ensuring that technologies developed through ARPA-H programs are readily accessible and scalable.
ARPA-H’s PIA application is designed to be easy to understand and implement, enabling potential intermediaries from all eligible communities who may not have deep government expertise to rapidly submit.
The PIA application is now closed. Awards will likely be made approximately 30 days from release date.
Dr. Renee Wegrzyn serves as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), appointed on Oct. 11, 2022, by President Joseph R. Biden.
Previously, Wegrzyn served as a vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks and head of innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo, where she focused on applying synthetic biology to outpace infectious diseases – including COVID-19 – through biomanufacturing, vaccine innovation, and biosurveillance of pathogens at scale.
Wegrzyn comes to ARPA-H with experience working for two of the institutions that inspired the creation of the agency – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).
As a Program Manager in the DARPA Biological Technologies Office, Wegrzyn leveraged the tools of synthetic biology and gene editing to enhance biosecurity, support the domestic bioeconomy, and thwart biothreats. Her DARPA portfolio included the Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules, Safe Genes; Preemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements (PREPARE); and the Detect it with Gene Editing Technologies (DIGET) programs.
Wegrzyn received the Superior Public Service Medal for her work and contributions at DARPA. Prior to joining DARPA, she led technical teams in private industry in the areas of biosecurity, gene therapies, emerging infectious disease, neuromodulation, synthetic biology, as well as research and development teams commercializing multiplex immunoassays and peptide-based disease diagnostics.
Wegrzyn served on the scientific advisory boards for the National Academies Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs, National Academies of Science Board on Army Research and Development, Revive & Restore, Air Force Research Labs, Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the Innovative Genomics Institute. She holds doctoral and bachelor’s degrees in applied biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, was a fellow in the Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative and completed her postdoctoral training as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Heidelberg, Germany.
With ARPA-H’s billions in Congressional funding and broad mandate to solve intractable health challenges, several audience members asked Wegrzyn what success might look like for the nascent agency. In addition to accelerating breakthroughs in disease prevention and health care delivery, “We want to create tools and products that people want to use,” Wegrzyn said. “We want it to be so obvious to the rest of the world why ARPA-H is here. … So that’ll look like success.” “And paradoxically,” she added, “success should also look like failure.” If the agency doesn’t experience failure, she argues, it may not be taking big enough risks. Another key indicator of success for ARPA-H will be in its diversity — in the problems it solves, in the communities it serves and in the program managers it hires. Spreading the word to people around the world, including those in underrepresented communities, will be pivotal.
The acceleration of COVID-19 testing platforms and vaccine development has demonstrated the possibility of expediting research for similar biomedical breakthroughs. However, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lacks a framework to regularly sustain this type of research. A new federal agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), offers a unique opportunity to capitalize on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and drive federal investment into high-risk, high-reward biomedical research. ARPA-H will mirror the flat bureaucratic structure of the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the employment of independent project managers. ARPA-H is also unique in how it centers equity in the agency’s core mission. These unique traits could enable the agency to fill the gaps in current biomedical research under the NIH. Nonetheless, ARPA-H’s implementation is not without challenges: its incorporation within the NIH has raised concerns regarding its ability to specialize in high-risk research and the diversion of funding away from the rest of the NIH. These worries can be mitigated through the separation of ARPA-H and the NIH. Successful implementation of the ARPA-H framework would supplement current NIH work, diversify the US federal research strategy, accelerate promising breakthroughs, promote equity in health, and transform the nature of biomedical research in the US.
And this is not the last ARPA you’ll hear about. We’re in a world of ARPAs.
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
The notorious Lock Step Scenario, proposed by The Rockefeller Foundation in 2010, is just one chapter in a larger document titled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development”. As the Covid narrative is being buried in the bomb craters in Ukraine, it felt like a matter of common sense to ask myself if we’re entering another chapter of the same book.
This scenario may seem, for now, not as consistent with what’s going on as Lock Step is. It will probably never be, because they learn, change and adapt faster than us. However, I find it chillingly close to the mainstream narrative. Many of he predictions that are not confirmed yet seem very likely to occur in the near future, in my assessment. After all, we’re just starting transitioning out of Lock Step into something new. It’s up to everyone’s awareness, experience and wit to identify analogies and decide how relevant this document is, I’m just gong to add one more dare: My bet is that if you find the good tips about the present and near future developments in this reading, you will be ahead of the curve just like the people who picked up on the Lock Step scenario early 2020.
NOTE: Their narrative starts in 2010, the real world events started 2020. And there’s more reasons you should ignore the years in their timeline, that’s not supposed to be exact science, focus on the succession of events and their mechanisms, rather.
HACK ATTACK SCENARIO
An economically unstable and shock-prone world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous innovations emerge Devastating shocks like September 11, the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake had certainly primed the world for sudden disasters. But no one was prepared for a world in which large-scale catastrophes would occur with such breathtaking frequency. The years 2010 to 2020 were dubbed the “doom decade” for good reason: the 2012 Olympic bombing, which killed 13,000, was followed closely by an earthquake in Indonesia killing 40,000, a tsunami that almost wiped out Nicaragua, and the onset of the West China Famine, caused by a once-in-a-millennium drought linked to climate change.
Not surprisingly, this opening series of deadly asynchronous catastrophes (there were more) put enormous pressure on an already overstressed global economy that had entered the decade still in recession. Massive humanitarian relief efforts cost vast sums of money, but the primary sources—from aid agencies to developed-world governments—had run out of funds to offer. Most nation-states could no longer afford their locked-in costs, let alone respond to increased citizen demands for more security, more healthcare coverage, more social programs and services, and more infrastructure repair. In 2014, when mudslides in Lima buried thousands, only minimal help trickled in, prompting the Economist headline: “Is the Planet Finally Bankrupt?”
These dire circumstances forced tough tradeoffs. In 2015, the U.S. reallocated a large share of its defense spending to domestic concerns, pulling out of Afghanistan—where the resurgent Taliban seized power once again. In Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, more and more nation- states lost control of their public finances, along with the capacity to help their citizens and retain stability and order. Resource scarcities and trade disputes, together with severe economic and climate stresses, pushed many alliances and partnerships to the breaking point; they also sparked proxy wars and low-level conflict in resource-rich parts of the developing world. Nations raised trade barriers in order to protect their domestic sectors against imports and—in the face of global food and resource shortages—to reduce exports of agricultural produce and other commodities. By 2016, the global coordination and interconnectedness that had marked the post-Berlin Wall world was tenuous at best.
With government power weakened, order rapidly disintegrating, and safety nets evaporating, violence and crime grew more rampant. Countries with ethnic, religious, or class divisions saw especially sharp spikes in hostility: Naxalite separatists dramatically expanded their guerrilla campaign in East India; Israeli- Palestinian bloodshed escalated; and across Africa, fights over resources erupted along ethnic or tribal lines.
Meanwhile, overtaxed militaries and police forces could do little to stop growing communities of criminals and terrorists from gaining power. Technology-enabled gangs and networked criminal enterprises exploited both the weakness of states and the desperation of individuals.
With increasing ease, these “global guerillas” moved illicit products through underground channels from poor producer countries to markets in the developed world. Using retired 727s and other rogue aircraft, they crisscrossed the Atlantic, from South America to Africa, transporting cocaine, weapons, and operatives. Drug and gun money became a common recruiting tool for the desperately poor.
Criminal networks also grew highly skilled at counterfeiting licit goods through reverse engineering. Many of these “rip-offs” and copycats were of poor quality or downright dangerous. In the context of weak health systems, corruption, and inattention to standards—either within countries or from global bodies like the World Health Organization—tainted vaccines entered the public health systems of several African countries.
“WE HAVE THIS LOVE AFFAIR WITH STRONG CENTRAL STATES, BUT THAT’S NOT THE ONLY POSSIBILITY. TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO MAKE THIS EVEN MORE REAL FOR AFRICA. THERE IS THE SAME CELLPHONE PENETRATION RATE IN SOMALIA AS IN RWANDA. IN THAT RESPECT, SOMALIA WORKS.”
– Aidan Eyakuze, Society for International Development, Tanzania
In 2021, 600 children in Cote d’Ivoire died from a bogus Hepatitis B vaccine, which paled in comparison to the scandal sparked by mass deaths from a tainted anti-malarial drug years later. The deaths and resulting scandals sharply affected public confidence in vaccine delivery; parents not just in Africa but elsewhere began to avoid vaccinating their children, and it wasn’t long before infant and child mortality rates rose to levels not seen since the 1970s. Technology hackers were also hard at work. Internet scams and pyramid schemes plagued inboxes.
Meanwhile, more sophisticated hackers attempted to take down corporations, government systems, and banks via phishing scams and database information heists, and their many successes generated billions of dollars in losses. Desperate to protect themselves and their intellectual property, the few multinationals still thriving enacted strong, increasingly complex defensive measures. Patent applications skyrocketed and patent thickets proliferated, as companies fought to claim and control even the tiniest innovations. Security measures and screenings tightened.
This “wild west” environment had a profound impact on innovation. The threat of being hacked and the presence of so many thefts and fakes lowered the incentives to create “me first” rather than “me too” technologies. And so many patent thickets made the cross-pollination of ideas and research difficult at best. Blockbuster pharmaceuticals quickly became artifacts of the past, replaced by increased production of generics. Breakthrough innovations still happened in various industries, but they were focused more on technologies that could not be easily replicated or re-engineered. And once created, they were vigorously guarded by their inventors—or even by their nations. In 2022, a biofuel breakthrough in Brazil was protected as a national treasure and used as a bargaining chip in trade with other countries.
Verifying the authenticity of anything was increasingly difficult. The heroic efforts of several companies and NGOs to create recognized seals of safety and approval proved ineffective when even those seals were hacked. The positive effects of the mobile and internet revolutions were tempered by their increasing fragility as scamming and viruses proliferated, preventing these networks from achieving the reliability required to become the backbone of developing economies—or a source of trustworthy information for anybody.
Interestingly, not all of the “hacking” was bad. Genetically modified crops (GMOs) and do-it yourself (DIY) biotech became backyard and garage activities, producing important advances. In 2017, a network of renegade African scientists who had returned to their home countries after working in Western multinationals unveiled the first of a range of new GMOs that boosted agricultural productivity on the continent.
But despite such efforts, the global have/have not gap grew wider than ever. The very rich still had the financial means to protect themselves; gated communities sprung up from New York to Lagos, providing safe havens surrounded by slums. In 2025, it was de rigueur to build not a house but a high-walled fortress, guarded by armed personnel. The wealthy also capitalized on the loose regulatory environment to experiment with advanced medical treatments and other under-the-radar activities.
Those who couldn’t buy their way out of chaos—which was most people—retreated to whatever “safety” they could find. With opportunity frozen and global mobility at a near standstill—no place wanted more people, especially more poor people—it was often a retreat to the familiar: family ties, religious beliefs, or even national allegiance. Trust was afforded to those who guaranteed safety and survival—whether it was a warlord, an evangelical preacher, or a mother. In some places, the collapse of state capacity led to a resurgence of feudalism. In other areas, people managed to create more resilient communities operating as isolated micro versions of formerly large-scale systems. The weakening of national governments also enabled grassroots movements to form and grow, creating rays of hope amid the bleakness.
By 2030, the distinction between “developed” and “developing” nations no longer seemed particularly descriptive or relevant. •
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“I have pondered for years, how they [Carlyle Group] achieved this unbelievable performance during their private equity years. Part of the answer had to be in Carlyle’s connections. Over the years, they hired former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, George HW Bush, James Baker, John Major (former British Prime Minister) and numerous others. “
The biggest private investor in the world, deeply entrenched in the weapons’ sector, is a discreet group that cultivates dealings with influential men, including Bush father and son.
One year ago, May 1, 2003, George Bush, strapped up in a fighter pilot’s suit, landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham-Lincoln along the coast of California. The image became famous. Under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”, the president prematurely announced the end of military operations in Iraq and his victory. Back on dry land the next day, he made another martial speech, not far from San Diego, in a United Defense Industries’ weapons factory.
This company is one of the Pentagon’s main suppliers. It manufactures, among other things, missiles, transport vehicles, and the light Bradley armored vehicle. Its main shareholder is the biggest private investor in the world, a discreet group, called Carlyle.
It’s not listed on the stock market and doesn’t have to show its accounts to any but its 550 investors- billionaires or pension funds. Carlyle manages eighteen billion dollars today, invested in defense and high tech (notably biotech), space, security-linked information technology, nanotechnologies, and telecommunications. The companies it controls share the characteristic that their main customers are governments and administrations. As the company wrote in its brochure: “We invest in the opportunities created in industries strongly affected by changes in government policy.”
Carlyle is a unique model, assembled at the planetary level on the capitalism of relationships or “capitalism of access” to use the 1993 expression of the American magazine New Republic. Today, in spite of its denials, the group incarnates the “military-industrial complex” against which Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people when he left office in 1961.
That didn’t prevent George Bush senior from occupying a position as consultant to Carlyle for the ten years ending October 2003. It was the first time in United States’ history that a former president worked for a Pentagon supplier. His son, George W. Bush, also knows Carlyle well. The group found him a job in February 1990, while his father occupied the White House: administrator for Caterair, a Texas company specialized in aerial catering. The episode does not figure in the president’s official biography. When George W. Bush left Caterair in 1994, before becoming Governor of Texas, the company was in bad shape.
“It’s not possible to get closer to the administration than Carlyle is,” asserts Charles Lewis, Director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan organization in Washington. “George Bush senior earned money from private interests that worked for the government of which his son was president. You could even say that the president could one day profit financially, through his father’s investments, from the political decisions he himself took,” he adds.
The collection of influential characters who now work, have worked, or have invested in the group would make the most convinced conspiracy theorists incredulous. They include among others, John Major, former British Prime Minister; Fidel Ramos, former Philippines President; Park Tae Joon, former South Korean Prime Minister; Saudi Prince Al-Walid; Colin Powell, the present Secretary of State; James Baker III, former Secretary of State; Caspar Weinberger, former Defense Secretary; Richard Darman, former White House Budget Director; the billionaire George Soros, and even some bin Laden family members. You can add Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, former SEC head; William Kennard, former head of the FCC, to this list. Finally, add in the Europeans: Karl Otto Poehl, former Bundesbank president; the now-deceased Henri Martre, who was president of Aerospatiale; and Etienne Davignon, former president of the Belgian Generale Holding Company.
Le Monde – April 29, 2004
Carlyle isn’t only a collection of power people. It maintains holdings in close to 200 companies and, above all, provides returns on its investments that have exceeded 30 % for a decade. “Compared to the five hundred people we employ in the world, the number of former statesmen is quite small, a dozen at most,” explains Christopher Ullmann, Carlyle Vice-President for communication. “We’re accused of every wrong, but no one has ever brought proof of any kind of misappropriation. No legal proceeding has ever been brought against us. We’re a handy target for whoever wants to take shots at the American government and the president.”
Carlyle was created in 1987 in the salons of the New York eponymous palace, with five million dollars. Its founders, four lawyers, including David Rubenstein (a former Jimmy Carter advisor), had the -limited- ambition at the time of profiting from a flaw in fiscal legislation that authorized companies owned by Eskimos in Alaska to give their losses to profitable companies that would thus pay reduced taxes. The group vegetated until January 1989 and the arrival at its helm of the man who would invent the Carlyle system, Frank Carlucci. Former Assistant Director of the CIA, National Security Advisor, then Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Mr. Carlucci counted in Washington. He is one of current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s closest friends. They were roommates as students at Princeton together. Later, their paths crossed in several administrations and they even worked for a time at the same company, Sears Roebuck.
Six days after officially quitting the Pentagon, January 6, 1989, Frank Carlucci became Carlyle’s Director General. He brought trusted lieutenants from the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense Department with him. Nicknamed “Mr. Clean”, Frank Carlucci has a sulfurous reputation.
This diplomat was posted during the 1970s to countries such as South Africa, the Congo, Tanzania, and Portugal, where the United States and the CIA had played a questionable political role. He was the number two at the American embassy in the Belgian Congo in 1961 and was suspected of being implicated in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He has always firmly denied it. The American press has also accused him of being implicated in several cases of arms trafficking in the 1980s, but he has never been prosecuted. For a while, he directed Wackenhut, a security company with a hateful reputation, implicated in one of the biggest espionage scandals ever, the hijacking of Promise software. Frank Carlucci had the mission of cleaning up after the Iran-Contra affair in the Reagan administration and he succeeded John Pointdexter as National Security Advisor. As he took over his new position, he chose a young general to be his assistant… Colin Powell.
Frank Carlucci’s name attracted capital to Carlyle. In October 1990, the group took over BDM International, which participated in the “Star Wars” Program and constituted a bridgehead to it. In 1992, Frank Carlucci allied himself with the French group Thomson-CSF to take over LTV’s aerospace division. The operation failed, Congress opposing the sale to a foreign group. Carlyle found other associates, Loral and Northrop, and got hold of LTV Aerospace, quickly renamed Vought Aircraft, which contributed to the manufacture of the B1 and B2 bombers.
At the same time, the fund was multiplying its strategic acquisitions, such as Magnavox Electronic Systems, a pioneer in radar imagery, and DGE, which owns the technology for cruise missile electronic relief maps.
Three companies specializing in nuclear, chemical, and biological decontamination (Magnetek, IT Group and EG & G Technical Services) followed. Then, through BDM International, a firm linked to the CIA, Carlyle acquired Vinnell, which was among the first companies to supply the American army and its allies with private contractors, i.e. mercenaries. Vinnell’s mercenaries train the Saudi armed forces and protect King Fahd. During the first Gulf War, they fought alongside Saudi troops. In 1997, Carlyle sold BDM and Vinnell, which had become too dangerous. The group didn’t need it any more. It had become the Pentagon’s eleventh biggest supplier by gaining control of United Defense Industries that same year.
Carlyle emerged from the shadows in spite of itself on September 11, 2001. That day, the group had organized a meeting at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel with five hundred of its largest investors. Frank Carlucci and James Baker III played masters of ceremony. George Bush senior made a lightning appearance at the beginning of the day. The presentation was quickly interrupted, but one detail escaped no one. One of the guests wore the name bin Laden on his badge. It was Shafiq bin Laden, one of Osama’s many brothers. The American media discovered Carlyle. One journalist, Dan Briody, wrote a book about the group’s hidden side, “The Iron Triangle”, and takes an interest in the close relations between the Bush clan and the Saudi leadership.
Some ask about George Bush senior’s influence on American foreign policy.
In January 2001, while George Bush junior was breaking off negotiations over missiles with North Korea, the dismayed South Koreans intervened with his father. Carlyle has important interests in Seoul. In June 2001, Washington resumed discussions with Pyongyang.
Another example: in July 2001, according to the New York Times, George Bush senior telephoned Saudi Prince Abdullah who was unhappy with the positions the president took on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. George Bush senior reassured the prince that his son “is doing good things” and “has his heart in the right place.”
Larry Klayman, Director of Judicial Watch, a resolutely conservative organization, demands that “the president’s father resign from Carlyle. The group has conflicts of interest that can create problems for American foreign policy.” Finally, in October 2003, George Bush senior leaves Carlyle, officially because he’s nearing eighty years old.
It doesn’t matter that Carlyle put an end to all relations with the bin Laden family in October 2001; the evil was already done. The group, along with Halliburton, has become the target of Bush administration opponents.
“Carlyle has replaced the Trilateral Commission in conspiracy theories,” David Rubenstein acknowledged in a 2003 Washington Post interview. For the first time, the group put someone in charge of communications and changed its boss. Frank Carlucci became honorary president and Lou Gerstner, a respected executive who saved IBM, officially took the reins.
That operation seems mostly cosmetic. Mr. Gerstner doesn’t spend much time in his office; but Carlyle wants to become respectable.
The Group has created an Internet site. It has opened certain funds to investors bringing “only” 250,000 dollars (210,000 euros). It will have reduced its holdings in United Defense Industries, and asserts that defense and aeronautics represent no more than 15 % of its investments.
However, Carlyle continues to make intensive use of fiscal havens and it’s difficult to know the names of the companies it controls or its perimeter.
Carlyle is also increasing its efforts in Europe. In September 2001, it took control of the Swedish weapons manufacturer Bofors through United Defense. Subsequently, it tried, unsuccessfully, to take over Thales Information Systems and, in the beginning of 2003, to acquire those parts of France Telecom that are in Eutelsat, which plays an important role in the European Positioning System by Galileo satellite – a competitor of the American GPS. From 1999 to 2002, it managed a holding in Le Figaro. In Italy, it made a breakthrough, by taking up Fiat’s aeronautics subsidiary, Fiat Avio. This company is a supplier to Arianespace and allows Carlyle to be part of the European Rocket Council. In another coup in December 2002, Carlyle bought a third of Qinetic, the private subsidiary of the British military’s Research and Development Center. Qinetic occupies a unique advisory role with the British government.
“To anticipate the technologies of the future and the enterprises which will develop them is our first role as an investor. Pension funds bring us their money for that. You can’t blame us for trying to take strategic positions,” Mr. Ullmann stresses.
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
Sale of a Stake in QinetiQ PLC to The Carlyle Group
2002-014
London – The Ministry of Defence has agreed the terms under which The Carlyle Group will become its strategic partner to assist in the future development of QinetiQ, Defence Minister Lewis Moonie announced today.
Dr Moonie said: “The strategic partnership with The Carlyle Group keeps QinetiQ on course to become a leading science and technology company that aspires to be the envy of the world. The Carlyle Group shares our vision for the future of QinetiQ and is well placed to support the management team in building a company, which we expect to flourish commercially, based on its commitment to excellence.”
“QinetiQ will remain a British company based in the UK. MOD will retain a Special Share in the business to ensure that the nation’s defence and security interests continue to be protected. There will also be robust safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest and to ensure that the integrity of the Government’s procurement process is not compromised”.
“This is good news for taxpayers, who will benefit from the immediate sale proceeds as well as from QinetiQ’s potential increase in value over time. And it is good news for QinetiQ’s employees who will have the opportunity to invest in the future of the business through a staff equity scheme and will each receive a small free allocation of share options. Today’s announcement marks a new future for science and technology in Britain.”
The sale follows MOD’s decision in March this year to seek a strategic partner to invest in QinetiQ, and the selection of The Carlyle Group as preferred bidder in September. The transaction values QinetiQ at around £500m. Following adjustments to reflect current assets and liabilities, MOD will receive between £140 and £150m from the transaction (the final amount will depend on the company’s exact financial position at completion), in addition to £50m already received from QinetiQ as part of the purchase price for its assets. Subject to the satisfactory fulfilment of a number of final conditions, formal completion of the sale process is expected early in the New Year,
Carlyle will acquire a 33.8% economic interest in QinetiQ with a further 3.7% of the shares to be made available for the employees. MOD’s retention of a 62.5% current stake in the business will ensure that the taxpayer shares in the benefits of the growth in QinetiQ, which we anticipate will follow the introduction of a strategic partner. The MOD plans to sell its entire stake in QinetiQ within 3-5 years, probably through a flotation on the stock market.
Management control and responsibility for setting future commercial strategy will now lie with QinetiQ and The Carlyle Group, allowing them to make appropriate decisions to grow the value of the business. MOD will retain those rights which are conventional for a major shareholder.
QinetiQ’s Board of Directors, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, will be augmented by the appointment of two Carlyle nominees – Glenn Youngkin, a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, and Sir Denys Henderson. MOD also has the right to appoint two non-executive directors.
Sir John Chisholm, QinetiQ’s Chief Executive commented: “Working together, QinetiQ and The Carlyle Group will be a strong team with complementary experience. We can now be even more confident of achieving our ultimate goal of moving from a European leader to a global technological solutions provider for our diverse range of customers. Carlyle’s investment secures a bright, long-term future for our business, our employees and our customers.”
Glenn Youngkin, The Carlyle Group’s Managing Director in London, commented: “We are impressed with the quality of the business and are looking forward to supporting such a capable and ambitious management team. We can see enormous opportunities to grow the value of the business, harnessing innovation to create profitable commercial applications.”
The Queen’s military-industrial QinetiQ Group Plc (adjacent to The Pirbright Institute) was founded in Nov. 11, 2002 by:
62% UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) — UK
34% The Carlyle Group — US
4% QinetiQ employees
Note: On Nov. 08, 2002—3 days earlier, SERCO Plc bought SI International, Inc. and changed SI International’s name to SERCO, Inc. which had already been being awards massive contracts with the U.S. Patent Office, FEMA, OMB, Navy SPAWAR, OPM, State Department, DoD, Army, Navy, FAA, FEC, etc.
On Dec. 09, 2002—one month later, Leader Technologies’ patent attorney James P. Chandler, III, secretly merged CRYPTO.com with Markland Technologies. Markland was represented by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife Jane Sullivan Roberts as director of Major, Lindsey & Africa.
formation of QinetiQ and the sale of a controlling interest to The Carlyle Group. Controversially, his £106,000 investment in the company was later worth £20m at flotation. Approximately £6m worth were sold in January 2007.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t make it into the book, neither does Treasury Secretary during the GW years, Hank Paulson. But what’s a White House memoir without a memory of David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, who made George H. W. hundreds of millions after he left the White House ?
Laura tells us that not only did Rubenstein show up at the White House for a 60th wedding anniversary party for George H.W. and Barbara Bush, but he gave the toast!
Rubenstein informed the onlookers during his toast that George and Barbara are the only couple who have lived in the White House and have celebrated a 60th wedding anniversary. Nice touch by David.
Laura describes David as a “long time friend.” Translation: Anybody that can figure out how to exploit George’s connections for more money than any of them had ever seen before can certainly be a life long friend.
Look, Rubenstein on a personal level is a nice guy. Whenever I have spoken to him, he has always been polite to me. When I have asked him a question out of left field to throw him off, he tends to really spend time to think about the question and give me a thoughtful answer, but of all the people George and Barbara have met over the years, and some probably truly long-term friends, it is remarkable that Rubenstein, who is roughly 30 years younger than George H. W., is giving a toast at at the Bush’s 60th wedding anniversary.
So it’s Klaus Schwab, The UK Royal Crown and The Rothschilds who won the gubernatorial elections in Virginia, as per normal. With technical and logistic support from The Military BioTech Complex, of course.
<<Pop singer Taylor Swift took another swing at billionaire investor George Soros on Thursday, condemning the “shameless greed” of the financier for partnering with her ex-manager Scooter Braun to release a new album of her songs.
Swift, who has emerged as an outspoken supporter of the Democratic Party, railed against Soros, a liberal megadonor, and Braun, who helped organize the March for Our Lives gun-control protest, after learning her former label Big Machine was releasing an album of a live radio concert she performed in 2008.
“It looks to me like Scooter Braun and his financial backers, 23 Capital, Alex Soros, and the Soros family and The Carlyle Group, have seen the latest balance sheets and realized that paying $330 million for my music wasn’t exactly a wise choice and they need money,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “In my opinion, just another case of shameless greed in the time of Coronavirus. So tasteless, but very transparent.”
Swift also attacked the Soros family in December as being the financial enablers of Braun’s takeover of her former label and her old music.
“After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and the Carlyle Group,” Swift said at Billboard’s “Women in Music” event. “Yet to this day, none of these investors have bothered to contact me or my team directly to perform their due diligence on their investment, on their investment in me.” >> – The Washington Free Beacon
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Remember: “The war abroad always comes home”. And this one “starts with hyper-connectivity”.
“Cognitive warfare, when practiced effectively has strength, an insidious nature and disrupts our ordinary understandings and reactions to events. The term, cognitive warfare, requires some dissection and interpretation in the context of national security; broadly defined it is a disinformation process to psychologically wear down the receivers of the information. It is strategically spread through information resources like social media, networking, Internet resources, videos, photos taken out of context, simplistic resources like political cartoons and even well-planned websites that encourage the making of disinformation.”
Canada – NATO Innovation Challenge Fall 2021: Cognitive Warfare – 2021
Informational webinar on October 5th as Canada hosts the Fall 2021 NATO Innovation Challenge organized by Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM), Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) and the NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) iHub. Innovators will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the concept of Cognitive Warfare as well as the Innovation Challenge’s eligibility requirements, application process and timeline.
Commenting on the video above, The Gray Zone notes:
The other institution that is managing the Fall 2021 NATO Innovation Challenge on behalf of Canada’s Department of National Defense is the Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM).
A Canadian military officer who works with CANSOFCOM, Shekhar Gothi, was the final panelist in the October 5 NATO Association of Canada event. Gothi serves as CANSOFCOM’s “innovation officer” for Southern Ontario.
He concluded the event appealing for corporate investment in NATO’s cognitive warfare research.
The bi-annual Innovation Challenge is “part of the NATO battle rhythm,” Gothi declared enthusiastically.
Gothi reassured corporate investors that NATO will bend over backward to defend their bottom lines: “I can assure everyone that the NATO innovation challenge indicates that all innovators will maintain complete control of their intellectual property. So NATO won’t take control of that. Neither will Canada. Innovators will maintain their control over their IP.”
The comment was a fitting conclusion to the panel, affirming that NATO and its allies in the military-industrial complex not only seek to dominate the world and the humans that inhabit it with unsettling cognitive warfare techniques, but to also ensure that corporations and their shareholders continue to profit from these imperial endeavors.
Since the early days of the Alliance, NATO has played an essential role in promoting and enhancing civil preparedness among its member states. Article 3 of the NATO founding treaty establishes the principle of resilience, which requires all Alliance member states to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” This includes supporting the continuity of government, and the provision of essential services, including resilient civil communications systems.
A Taipei think tank and observers in Taiwan say China is trying to influence residents with “cognitive warfare,” hoping to reverse opposition to Beijing’s desired takeover of Taiwan so it can be accomplished without having to go to war.
Taiwanese attitudes have been drifting away from the mainland, especially among the younger generation, whose members see themselves “born independent” with no ties to China.
China’s effort, these analysts say, includes tactics ranging from military intimidation and propaganda to misinformation spread by its army of online trolls in a bid to manipulate public opinion. They say the complexity and frequency of the effort puts Taiwan on a constant defensive.
“Its ultimate goal is to control what’s between the ears. That is, your brain or how you think, which [Beijing] hopes leads to a change of behavior,” Tzeng Yi-suo, director of the cybersecurity division at the government-funded Institute of National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told VOA.
Liberal democracies such as Taiwan, that ensure the free flow of information, are vulnerable to cognitive attacks by China, while China’s tightly controlled media and internet environment makes it difficult for democracies to counterattack, according to Tzeng.
China’s campaign has intensified since the outbreak of COVID-19, using official means such as flying military jets over Taiwan, and unofficial channels such as news outlets, social media and hackers to spread misinformation. The effort is aimed at dissuading Taiwan from pursuing actions contrary to Beijing’s interests, the report said.
China has used these tactics to attack Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration, undermine support for democracy and fuel Taiwan’s social tensions and political divide, it said.
NATO Releases Disturbing Stance on Cognitive Warfare
Cyber and economic warfare are often seen as the future of war. There is, however, a new type of warfare being discussed. It is called “cognitive warfare.”
Cognitive warfare, similar to information warfare, involves the the swaying of public opinion as a means of war. What differentiates the two, is that information warfare is simply defined as the manipulation of public opinion via propaganda. Cognitive warfare, on the other hand, involves the literal manipulation of the human brain. Seems far fetched? Well according to a NATO-sponsored study, it is now being classified as a “sixth domain” of warfare. While even acknowledging the horrific dangers of this type of warfare, the report goes on to claim NATO should develop the means to use cognitive warfare to get ahead of China and Russia. There is far from any proof that either countries are developing cognitive warfare capabilities, with reports of information warfare being falsely labelled as “cognitive warfare.” The NATO Association of Canada has even admitted that cognitive warfare is “one of the hottest topics” for the military alliance.
The fact that NATO is lying about the ambitions of its enemies when it comes to developmental warfare is not surprising. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has repeatedly exaggerated the threat of Russia in order to expand its influence eastward. Could the US government use these false pretexts in order to convince the public that cognitive control over our minds is necessary to defend ourselves? If you think that’s far fetched, then just look at how successful the government was in pushing for vaccines on children. Despite the overwhelming evidence that vaccines for children are unnecessary (studies have shown children are more likely to die from the vaccine than COVID-19 itself), the government has successfully manipulated a large portion of the public into believing they are indeed necessary. In the future, will some people be convinced to willingly volunteer to have chips placed in their heads, in order to protect themselves from “Russian cognitive attacks”?
Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Lu Li-shih, a former teacher at the Republic of China Naval Academy, said: “This staged photograph is definitely ‘cognitive warfare’ to show the US doesn’t regard the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] as an immediate threat. “In the photo, Commander Briggs looks very relaxed with his feet up watching the Liaoning ship just a few thousand yards away, while his deputy is also sitting beside him, showing they take their PLA counterparts lightly.” One Hong Kong newspaper reported that the photo sent one clear message to China: “We’re watching you.” The image comes as the US and the Philippines begin two weeks of military drills in a show of force against China after hundreds of ships anchored off Whitsun reef last month.
COGNITIVE WARFARE
By Emily Bienvenue, Zac Rogers & Sian Troath May 14, 2019– THE COVE (Australian Defense publication)
The term cognitive warfare has entered the lexicon over the last couple of years. General David L. Goldfein (United States Air Force) remarked last year we are “transitioning from wars of attrition to wars of cognition”. Neuroscientist James Giordano has described the human brain as the battlefield of the 21st Century. Cognitive warfare represents the convergence of all that elements that have lived restlessly under the catch-all moniker of Information Warfare (IW) since the term’s emergence in the 1990s. However, military and intelligence organisations now grappling with this contentious new concept are finding cognitive warfare to be something greater than, or as Gestalt intended, different than, the sum of these parts. Cognitive warfare is IW with something added. As we begin to understand more about what has been added, awareness is growing that western military and intelligence organisations may have been caught playing the wrong game.
As Martin Libicki explained, IW burst onto the scene in the early 1990s in line with the shift from attrition-based to effects-based operations and the increasingly digitised and networked infrastructure underpinning contemporary warfare. It overarched lines of effort in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic warfare (EW), psychological operations (PSYOPS), and cyber operations that in general raised the need to contend for and take advantage of control of information flows. These elements overlapped but remained disparate and lacked a unified concept and unity of effort. Despite the desire for integration being an ever-present agenda item, such unity did not eventuate and the individual streams continued to evolve, driven by more-or-less separate military and intelligence communities of interest.
The various elements under the IW construct were largely pursued throughout the ensuing period as adjuncts in support of objectives defined by the traditional remit of military organisations – namely, to deliver lethal kinetic effects on the battlefield. The War on Terror provided an unconventional sandbox for the refining of IW elements; but again, little impetus emerged for their drawing together under a unified concept. Influence operations across both cyber and human terrains remained episodic and an adjunct to a kinetic main effort – even while the separation between victory on the battlefield and the capacity for enduring political successes became starker. The disconnect should have been more unnerving for Western military organisations. The capacity for an adversary to contend for battlefield victory below the threshold of conventional conflict is only one aspect of asymmetry. The disconnect raises the more fundamental question of why, if battlefield superiority was demonstrably not resulting in political success, would a conventionally inferior opponent pursue such a pathway at all? What if strategic success – the causing of a preferable behaviour change in those with which we contend – could bypass the traditional battlefield altogether?
For the nation-state adversaries of the US and its allies, the disconnect provided an opportunity to observe and to learn. While the ‘winning without fighting’ ethos is a well understood heuristic of Chinese strategic culture, as Wirtz has suggested also, Russian strategic culture has consistently excelled at imagining some of the non-intuitive and strategic level implications of technological change. Much more than mere opportunism, Russia’s unfavourable geo-strategic circumstances, combined with its deep distrust of US intentions, forced it to render strategic level gains from a weakening hand. Here-in lies the temporary advantage it gained in finding and filling the gap between IW and cognitive warfare. As Clint Watts has surmised, where IW described a war ofinformation, the cognitive battlespace is a war for information as it is transformed into knowledge via the processes of cognition. The technologies of the networked digital age, conceived by the US and its allies as an accumulation of advantages on the conventional battlefield, and unleashed by the clamour for profit of the commercial sector, were transformed into a strategic gift for an imaginative adversary and thus presents us with the current dilemma. The convergence of IW into cognitive warfare has been forced upon us.
This gift emerged in the mid-2000s with the advent of hyper-connectivity, largely a product of the social media phenomenon and its attendant business model based on accessing the constant attention of the human brain. This phenomenon created the bridge between IW and cognitive war which has been exploited by an unscrupulous adversary. Hyper-connectivity created the opportunity to transform IW from a set of episodic activities, largely associated with operational lines-of-effort by military and intelligence practitioners in support of lethal and kinetic effects on the battlefield, into a single continuous effort to disrupt and deny the cognitive conditions in which whole societies are situated. Cognitive warfare gathers together the instruments of IW and takes us into the realm of ‘neuro-weapons’ – defined by Giordano as “anything that accesses the brain to contend against others”. When coordinated and directed at open liberal democratic societies, cognitive warfare has paid off in spades. The capacity of open societies to function – to sustain and renew the narratives upon which their superior material strength relies – gets quickly scrambled when certain cognitive processes are exposed to manipulation.
It remains an item of curiosity how American and allied military and strategic culture, imbued as it is with the insights of John Boyd and many others, has been slow to recognise the shift in orientation. Boyd’s OODA loop may be one of the most bastardised concepts in modern military strategy, but its central insights are absolutely prescient for the age of cognitive warfare. The loop’s second “O” – Orientation – subsumes each of its other points. Getting orientation wrong, no matter how well an actor can Observe, how quickly they can Decide, and how concisely they can Act, can nonetheless mean the actor is caught playing the wrong game. It centrality is made patently clear for anyone who actually reads Boyd, or any of a number of good biographies of his work. It is imperative that this strategic culture understands the way in which its own orientation has been turned against it.
As digitised and networked warfare has matured and evolved over the last 25 years into its contemporary iteration of Multi-Domain Battle (MDB), it has pursued better observation through superior ISR, better decision-making through big data and machine learning, and better action through the constant advance of military-technical capabilities. Its orientation, however, has remained the same. As Albert Palazzo has iterated, MDB remains oriented toward a military problem solvable by lethal kinetic means in which political success is considered as a follow-on phase and to which influence operations across cyber and human terrain remain adjunct lines of effort. What is becoming clearer is that the age of cognitive warfare is highlighting the joints and fissures in this basic construct to an unprecedented extent. General Michael Hayden has made this point in his 2018 book, The Assault on Intelligence.
Cognitive warfare presents us with an orientation problem. Adversary actors have strategised to avoid a confrontation with US and allied forces at their strongest point – namely, in high intensity conventional warfare. They have pursued gains in various domains that remain under the threshold of inducing a conventional military response. While US and allied forces have mused over ways to bolster below-the-threshold capabilities, the adversary has been busy changing the rules of the meta-contest. By denying, disrupting, and countering the narratives that underpin US and allied legitimacy, and by stifling our capacity to regenerate the preferred narrative via sophisticated and targeted disinformation operations, the adversary has changed the context within which force and the threat of force is situated. In other words, the diplomatic power of the traditional force-in-being of allied militaries to influence the behaviour of others is being diminished. Furthermore, the actual deployment of lethal kinetic capabilities will be subject to a similar reorientation where and when they occur. Simply put, lethal kinetic capability, as the traditional remit of military organisations, has undergone a reorientation at the hands of an adversary enabled by the hyper-connected digital age to manipulate its context to an unprecedented extent.
Cognitive war is not the fight most professional military practitioners wanted. A little discussed aspect is the extent to which our military and strategic culture perceives it as a deeply dishonourable fight. A cultural bias – if not a genuine cognitive blind spot – is at work and has slowed our response. But national security, before it is about winning kinetic battles and before it is centred on the profession of arms, is at its core about ensuring that people are safe to live their lives: it is about keeping the peace and protecting the population from harmful interference. This includes the harm that disrupts our capacity to conduct our collective social, economic, and political lives on our own terms.
About the Authors:
Emily Bienvenue, Zac Rogers & Sian Troath
Dr Emily Bienvenue is a Senior Analyst in the Defence Science and Technology Group’s, Joint and Operations Analysis Division. Her research interests include trust as a strategic resource, the changing nature of warfare, and competition below the threshold of conflict.
The views expressed here are her own and do not represent the official view of the Australian Defence Department.
Zac Rogers is a senior researcher at the Centre for United States and Asia Policy Studies and PhD candidate at the College of Business, Government, and Law, Flinders University of South Australia.
Sian Troath is a PhD candidate at Flinders University, and a combined Flinders University-DST Group research associate working on Modelling Complex Warfighting (MCW) Strategic Response (SR) 4 – Modelling Complex Human Systems. Her areas of expertise are international relations theory, trust theory, Australian foreign policy, Australia-Indonesia relations, and Anglo-American relations.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Australian Army, the Department of Defence or the Australian Government.
Ownership of mainstream media and popular social media is imperative to control desired narrative during psychological and military operations. In the last 30 years, it has been the accessibility and freedom of the internet which has been invaluable for the communication of independent and objective analysis which is often evidence-based rather than information used in cognitive warfare for perception manipulation.
We now live in a time where the powers that shouldn’t be are scrambling to find methods to disrupt these free lines of communication without appearing to be an all-out assault on freedom-of-speech; so the current methodology is slow implementation of concepts like “community standards” violations to shut down people who are often disseminating information that government does not want communicated. When a new forum is formed that allows freedom of speech—that forum quickly attracts attention and efforts are quickly made to either buy out the forum and disparage it publicly — sometimes labeling it as politically “right-wing” which automatically loses most users who may identify as politically “left-wing.”
With the popular accessibility of the internet starting in the 1990s, the exchanges of information and ideas have been facilitated throughout the globe. Before internet popularity, channels of information were mainly held by mainstream media corporations. In the last twenty-five years, billions of people worldwide have been exchanging information instantly outside of official government and corporate filters. These developments have fractured the monopoly on information once held by government and corporations on behalf of elite interests worldwide.
A significant percentage of the global population still blindly trusts corporate mainstream media and prestigious academic sources of news and information without verification. These same people instinctively avoid ‘alternative’ sources of news and information. However, a growing number of people have awoken to the realization that mainstream media sources of information are agenda-driven and often purposely deceiving while engaging in systemic censorship. These are the people more inclined to seek alternative sources of information and communicate using channels free from corporate and academic monopolies. The current battle to disturb and eventually shut down these channels are extremely important to one-world-government social-engineers. This is a major battleground in today’s cognitive warfare.
As we enter the mid-2020s, it will likely be increasingly difficult to freely exchange evidence-based and independent research and analysis on the internet. There is a cognitive war against freedom of information in the emerging totalitarian global scheme. Unlike conventional warfare, cognitive warfare is everywhere a communication device is used. Independent researchers, analysts, and journalists are being disrupted and banned from forums like YouTube and Facebook.
To counteract cognitive warfare and ultimately avoid a one-world-government dystopia—engage your neighbors and build local and personal relationships of information exchange and commerce as opposed to relying on long-distance electronic communications. Get off the grid as much as possible and reverse the psyop of ‘social-distancing’ that the Covid-19 operation has promoted for the last year and a half.
OTHER ANGLES
Cognitive Electronic Warfare: Conceptual Design and Architecture – 2020
Computing revolution is heralding the transition from digital to cognitive that is the third significant era in the history of computer technology: the cognitive era. It is about the use of computers to mimic human thought processes, such as perception, memory, learning and decision-making in highly dynamic environments. In recent years, there is a growing research interest in the development of cognitive capabilities in radio frequency technologies. Using cognition-based techniques, a radar system would be able to perceive its operational environment, fine-tune and accordingly adjust its emission parameters, such as the pulse width, pulse repetition interval, and transmitter power, to perform its assigned task optimally. It is certain that traditional electronic warfare (EW) methods, which rely on pre-programmed attack strategies, will not be able to efficiently engage with such a radar threat. Therefore, the next generation of EW systems needs to be enhanced with cognitive abilities so that they can make autonomous decisions in response to changing situations, and cope with new, unknown radar signals. Because the system architecture is a blueprint, this paper presents a conceptual cognitive EW architecture that carries out both electronic support and electronic attack operations to synthesize close-to-optimal countermeasures subject to performance goals.
The cognitive warfare: Aspects of new strategic thinking
Combining the strategic observations on revolutionary war – those made by Colonel Trinquier during the war in Algeria, in particular–with US strategy regarding information warfare, the authors Harbulot and Lucas, leading experts at the French École de guerre économique, and Moinet, Director of the DESS (Intelligence économique et développement des Entreprises) – place their emphasis on the profoundly innovative and strategic role played by information warfare and on its implications for companies. Naturally enough, it emerges with clarity that the authors’ intention is to utilize cognitive warfare in defense of the interests of French companies against their US competitors.
It is undeniable – in the opinion of the authors – that the date of September 11, 2001, represented a change in strategic thinking of fundamental importance. Undoubtedly, the war in the Persian Gulf, the US military intervention in Somalia, and the conflicts in former Yugoslavia had already presaged – even if in terms not yet precisely defined – an evolution of military strategy in the direction of newer strategic scenarios. It is enough to consider – the authors observe – that at the time of the invasion of Kuwait, US public opinion was mobilized following a disinformation process planned at military level or more exactly, at psychological warfare level. In this regard, it is sufficient to recall how the televised landing of US troops on the beaches of Mogadishu, the televised lynching of a US Army soldier enabled the marginalization of the politico-military dimension of the civil war in progress. Yet the importance ascribed to the manipulation of information was determined by the conviction – which proved to be correct – that the absolute mastery of the production of knowledge both upstream (the educational system) and downstream (Internet, media audio-visual means) can ensure – the authors emphasize – the long-lasting legitimacy of the control of world affairs.
Yet in light of the American political-military choices and reflections on the revolutionary war in Algeria, French strategy felt the need to define in strict terms exactly what information warfare is. First of all, the expression used in the context of French strategy is the one of cognitive warfare defined as the capacity to use knowledge for the purpose of conflict. In this regard, it is by no mere chance that Rand Corporation information warfare specialists John Arquilla and David Rundfeldt assert the domination of information to be fundamental to American strategy. Secondly, the ample and systematic use of information warfare by the US creates the need – in geographical-strategic terms–for the European Union to do some serious thinking on cognitive warfare. On the other hand, the absence of legal regulation of manipulation of knowledge in the architecture of security inherited at the end of the Cold War can only lead to serious concern above all for economic security of European companies and must consequently bring about the formulation of a strategy of dissuasion and the use of subversive techniques that must be capable of creating barriers against attempts at destabilization.
The work is primarily done by CISA, a DHS sub-agency tasked with protecting critical national infrastructure.
DHS, the FBI, and several media entities are having biweekly meetings as recently as August.
DHS considered countering disinformation relating to content that undermines trust in financial systems and courts.
The FBI agent who primed social media platforms to take down the Hunter Biden laptop story continued to have a role in DHS policy discussions.
Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.
The Intercept
If it is the job of the US intelligence cartel to regulate society's cognitive infrastructure, then it is the job of healthy human beings to disrupt the cognitive infrastructure.https://t.co/KXrmaHX4SJ
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In fact, the headline is borrowed from Scientific Americanand I’m just following up with more knowledge from all sorts of “authoritative sources”, none of the claims are mine. The knowledge and vision that put them together are, not much else. The rest is “science”
FUNNY HOW JEFFREY EPSTEIN SPONSORED TED’S ‘BILLIONAIRES’ DINNER’ AND NOW HIS PRESENCE HAS BEEN SCRUBBED
The arrest of New York financier Jeffrey E. Epstein has resulted in many people trying to distance themselves from the registered sex offender, including scrubbing records of him attending high-profile events.
Epstein, 66, was arrested earlier this month at Teterboro Airport on charges that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein “exploited and abused” dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14.
In the early 2000s and as recently as 2011, Epstein, whose billionaire status is now under question, would hobnob with a who’s who of academia, literature and Silicon Valley at literary agent John Brockman’s gathering dubbed the “Billionaires’ Dinner,” an annual event held during the TED conference in Monterey, California.
In a now deleted post on Brockman’s nonprofit The Edge Group’s website, the “Billionaires Dinner” is described as one of Epstein’s “favorite events.” It added that Epstein “enjoys hanging with stimulating and provocative thoughtful minds, who have achieved a high degree of success in finance, company, high tech, and scientific research.”
A now removed post from The Edge Foundation shows Jeffrey Epstein.
The occasion is “a night where the large names in finance, business, philanthropy, and science gather together. For one night, the richest people in the world come face to face with the most intelligent individuals in history.”
The New York Times reported in 2002 that Epstein “flew a bunch of Tedsters to Monterey in his Boeing 727, outfitted with mink and sable throws and a high-altitude lunch catered by Le Cirque 2000.”
Photographed onboard the plane were Brockman, Steven Pinker, Daniel C. Dennett, Katinka Matson, Richard Dawkins.
Jeffrey Epstein flew speakers to California in February 2002. His name has since been deleted from photographs on The Edge Foundation’s website.
The original caption, shown above from a Yahoo Finance screengrab, has been altered to exclude the association with Epstein.
The caption has been altered to exclude Jeffrey Epstein’s name.
Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology and author was onboard that flight. He told Yahoo Finance that he has found himself at some of the same events as Epstein, but has no personal or professional relationship with him and has only spoken to him three times that he can recall.
“I first met Epstein a couple of years before that plane trip, when I was invited to chat with him over coffee with a few mutual friends who said he was really smart, intellectual, and scientifically curious,” Pinker told Yahoo Finance. “My own impressions were different.”
Pinker went on to describe Epstein as a “kibitzer.”
“[He] liked to hang out with [and] shoot the breeze with smart and famous people, but he was intellectually lazy and immature: abruptly changing the subject, dismissing people’s observations with wisecracks, considering his own intuition to be as valid as data from experts,” Pinker added.
Another passenger on that trip, the philosopher and author Daniel C. Dennett, described the flight as “uneventful” and that Epstein “pretty much stayed to himself.”
Two photos completely removed
While the Epstein mention in the plane photo caption was altered, two photos from the event are no longer featured on the Edge’s website.
At the 2002 dinner were guests like Dean Kamen, Linda Stone, Richard Saul Wurman, Steve Petranek, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kara Swisher, Nathan Myhrvold, Christopher J. Anderson, George Dyson, W. Daniel Hillis, Stewart Brand, Katinka Matson, Peter Schwartz, Ryan Phelan, Richard Dawkins, Louis Rossetto, Daniel C. Dennett, David Bunnell, Steven Levy, Charles Simonyi, Sergey Brin, and Marney Morris, according to the page.
At least one guest, in particular, stood out as not having major business or literary accomplishments. That person is Sarah Kellen who appears in two now-deleted photographs.
Kellen, who is now married to Nascar driver Brian Vickers, has been accused of recruiting young girls, maintaining Epstein’s schedule and handling travel arrangements for the young girls being exploited. She’s specifically identified in the controversially lenient non-prosecution agreement as a “potential co-conspirator.”
Sarah Kellen, named as a “possible co-conspirator” in the 2007 non-prosecution agreement for Epstein, attended the 2002 “Billionaires’ Dinner.”
For nearly 15 years, Epstein’s foundations have been major financial supporters of Brockman’s non-profit the Edge Foundation, Inc., contributing more than half a million dollars in that timeframe, according to Yahoo Finance’s calculations. In 990 filings, Epstein’s The C.O.U.Q. Foundation donated $25,000 in 2001, $50,000 in 2003, $55,000 in 2004, and $200,000 in 2005, to the Edge Foundation, Inc.
The Edge Foundation received multiple donations from Epstein’s Enhanced Education, including $30,000 in 2015, $50,000 in 2011, and $50,000 in 2010, 990 filings shows. The J. Epstein Foundation gave $50,000 in 2002 and $25,000 in 2001, records show.
The investigation into Epstein began in 2005 by the Palm Beach Police Department. As the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida began preparing federal criminal charges, Epstein’s attorneys began plea bargain discussions. On September 24, 2007, Epstein signed the controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office. In that agreement, he plead guilty to one count of the solicitation of prostitution and agreed that he would register as a sex offender. He also agreed to a 30 month sentence, including 18 months of jail time and 12 months of community control. In exchange, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to not pursue federal charges.
Epstein was released in 2009 from the Palm Beach county stockade after only 13 months spent in the private wing with six days of work release per week.
Attendees at the 1999 dinner included Richard Saul Wurman, Nathan Myhrvold, Linda Stone, Steve Case, Marney Morris, John McCrea, Joichi Ito, Katinka Matson, Jeffrey Epstein, Doug Rowan, Leon M. Lederman, Kevin Kelly, Jean Case, Pattie Maes, David Bunnell, Jeff Bezos, W. Daniel Hillis, Kai Krause, according to a cached version of the page. Another cached page for the 2000 event shows that guests included Marney Morris, Pattie Maes, Charles Simonyi, Kara Swisher, George Dyson, Linda Stone, David Braunschvig, Katinka Matson, W. Daniel Hillis, Dean Kamen, Stewart Brand, Kip Parent, Nathan Myhrvold, Jeffrey Epstein, Brewster Kahle.
Brockman, the founder of the Edge Foundation, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. – Yahoo News
Very good, productive thread on academics who lived off Jeffrey Epstein's dime. I'm not sure I'd endorse everything here but it draws some interesting connections & suggests a sociology that explains all this. https://t.co/X0QxnX5n3s
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