Six points about the nefarious role of influence in American society
Yes, there are plenty of bad guys
TAT readers,
Recently I was invited to present my thoughts about my latest book, Modern Minutemen and Women: The Art of Influence: Narrative Strategy, A Voter Education Guide by Paul Cobaugh with a popular literary event in New York, this Sunday. I will sadly have to present digitally from here in San Antonio. The event is planned to be a little presentation and mostly, Q & A, with the audience.
This is my favorite type event and all because I find interaction with other curious Americans most rewarding. Most audiences are very bright and when well-informed, offer up insightful questions to pursue in discussion. The reason for the invitation to New York Story Night, is that hosts disclosed that there is genuine interest, in the threats presented by the role of influence in our political and national security landscape. The hosts are spot on. Americans are rightly concerned about this issue and wish to better understand what is happening to our nation and the citizens bearing the brunt of the assault by politicians, influencers, foreign and domestic enemies etc.
The role of influence by everyone from Madison Ave. to the Oval Office and Congress, is in my professional opinion, the most dangerous threat that we are now facing from a national security perspective. To be fully transparent, I’m beginning to believe that ethics in journalism and advertising are on life-support. The fact that many of America’s wealthiest corporations, billionaires and those legitimately defined as oligarchs, underwrite the corrosive and threatening influence campaigns being wielded by the likes of Trump, the Republican Party and even some of the same on the opposite side of the aisle.
My career in the profession of influence operations in support of US national security, have given me a great deal of professional insight into the pervasiveness of the threat. If allowed to continue, unregulated and without accountability, the US will go the way of every other nation that is subdued by powermongers and their greed. To make matters worse, every citizen will have their free will, slowly whittled away until it hangs by a tiny, unraveling thread. This is not the America I desire for my grandchildren.
I am most grateful to New York Story Night for the opportunity to help others better understand the severity of this threat from an “insider” view. These are the types of Americans whose curiosity leads to understanding and understanding to action, as did the patriots called “Minutemen” who rallied to the cause of independence at the beginning of our Revolutionary War. The more that understand the assault on our cognition, the stronger our nation becomes against the foreign and domestic tyrants, now terrorizing our constitutional republic, one ad, conspiracy theory, lie or otherwise, at a time.
In preparing for this event, I considered some of the issues that those new to my world, might be interested in. What is discussed in the six categories below, are my thoughts on what those new to my world would be interested in. I’d like to share those insights with all of you as well, and for the sole purpose of better informing my fellow citizens, just how much danger that we are all in unless we act now to put a stop to it.
Since Sunday’s event will be available online, tomorrow I will post the time and link to join should anyone be interested.
Onward
1. Where do we experience influence?
Everywhere in our lives, from our kitchens to sporting events, politics and world events. The reason is quite simple and it’s because our cognitive processes are wired this way. Each human being sees the world differently and this affects the meaning that we derive from, all that we experience. This is a rather long explanation, and I will gladly explain it more in-depth, for those with interest should you have questions. The real issue is what does the meaning we create subconsciously mean in our everyday lives, either individually or as a group, state, company, nation or simply as a human being trying to interpret the good from the bad we are experiencing.
2. Why is understanding the basics of influence important to us?
In our current environment, especially in our media feeds, influence permeates every aspect of the media, events and advertising we consume. Remember, influence can be both good and bad. Even truthful commentary and research contribute to influencing a person’s understanding of the world around them. This is an example of good influence. What concerns most of us, whether in my profession or the billions of media consumers around the world, is bad influence or influence that does harm to human beings and the world we live in. At this point in history, we are saturated with those wielding influence, for their own and often unhealthy or immoral selfish interests. This is why I wrote this second edition of this book and have begun my new book, Conned, the subjugation of America via influence operations. Simply put, professional influencers both foreign and domestic, are using influence operations for their own selfish reasons, while trying to convince us that it’s really for our benefit.
3. How do we know that we’re being influenced?
This is a tricky question to answer, and I especially look forward to talking with the audience about this critical vulnerability in our individual protective cognitive processes. The bottom line is that depending on the scholar and their discipline, somewhere between 80-90% of our daily decisions are made subconsciously. Yes, we often go through life making decisions subconsciously because as a species, since before we walked upright as human beings our minds have been programmed this way. Again, our own unique identity determines how we make meaning out what we’re experiencing, and this determines the decisions we make subconsciously. When professional influencers via a wide array of methods can determine the identities of their audiences, they can trigger predictable subconscious responses, that are favorable to them, even if it in some fashion, imperils you. This is what has been occurring to a point where it presents a severe threat to our nation and in some ways the entire world. This brings us up to talking about today’s threats.
Emotional responses to media are often a telltale sign of an intent to influence. This means that we must carefully examine other credible sources and those who pay the bills for those sources. There is deep oligarchical investment in convincing us of issues that favor them. We have only ourselves and those individuals or credible sources we believe, that will tell us the truth. This will be covered a bit more in the answer to the sixth question.
We also must look at who is being positively or negatively impacted by the media we are questioning. This is a telltale sign as well. As my Army community liked to say, “If you are not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
4. How does a minority of Americans control the American political landscape that firmly believe in conspiracy theories, false narratives and overt dishonesty?
The simple answer is professionally called, Narrative Warfare, my professional specialty.
“Narrative Warfare is the cognitive battle between influencers, to control the identity of their audiences.”
- Cobaugh, Paul
- 2018
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the old Soviet Union, America and our allies largely stopped all of their efforts to influence in support of Western Democracy, against the propaganda of the former Soviet empire. We won the Cold War and lost everything since. To add to these losses, former Soviet influence operators became Russian influence professionals, working for Putin and his state approved oligarchs, in their pursuit of power and wealth. Putin, who to this day bemoans the loss of the Soviet empire, did what he was trained to do as an uninspiring mid-level KGB officer, to destroy the West as roadblock to his quest for restoring the empire and expanding it.
Background reading for those interested
Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists (truthaboutthreats.com)
Without factoring “brainwashing” into the equation for 2024, we’re doomed to another far-right, extremist administration, no matter what pollsters say. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Christian Nationalism and theocracy are the antithesis of democracy, not the foundation, as Putin and the US right would have us believe (truthaboutthreats.com)
The GOP war on women and all things gender. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Project 2025; part cheerleading, part war plan and all, bullets of BS, aimed at the heart of American Democracy. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The real Axis of Evil in the US is Russia, the MAGA controlled GOP and spineless Republican voters, putting party over country. (truthaboutthreats.com)
This restack from March, is the first of two TAT essays today: Oligarchy is an acute threat to democracy (truthaboutthreats.com)
Thugs, Despots, Dictators and Populists - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)
Yes, extremist politics increases the threat to a nation’s national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Iran, Mike Flynn and MAGA, Christian Nationalists or.... (truthaboutthreats.com)
The west, especially the US, is now defenseless and this allowed the seeds of divisiveness planted decades prior by Soviet and Russian influence operations, to grow without resistance. The Soviet and now Russian seeds of divisiveness continue to exploit the differences in the human fabric of US and Western societies, hence racial, religious, ethnic, social and income differences, in order to undermine our cohesiveness or unity against authoritarian regimes. Putin’s worldview of far-right authoritarianism, then became the ideology pumped into US and Western nations, which included the platform of the Republican Party. The most insidious aspect of this effort is that GOP influence and campaign operatives then willingly joined in the effort, for their own political reasons, and while still maintaining the far-right ideology of Russia. They concurrently pumped other false narratives and conspiracy theories into the left, to drive hostility between right and left. Today, we see this on a wide variety of issues, mostly in the incessant culture wars of the right.
4. What’s the role of the marketing industry in our current threat from political operatives?
American marketing professionals have long conditioned Americans to believe in false knowledge via unethical methodology, and exclusively for their profits, regardless of any harm done to individual consumers. Many of us remember extensive campaigns by the tobacco industry to convince Americans that smoking was healthy and good for us, despite the addictive nature of what is put into commercial tobacco sales. The oil industry crowd has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to drive the climate change is a hoax conspiracy theory. Pharmaceutical manufacturers convinced us that hydrocodone was so good for us despite the massive debilitating and addictive consequences of their product.
Now, so many of these marketers have altered their client list to include political parties and candidates and not only billionaire investors but the extreme version called oligarchs. Not only the content that they produce but also the ads themselves are deceptively infused with themes that advance the agendas of those who would profit from our misfortune. Magazine pages, news copy, organizational content and more, include subtle and dishonest tactics and meanings that do not support a healthy version of our constitutional republic. And the ads are inescapable.
Most everything we do now, whether reading, driving, walking, going online etc. are so full of ads infused with influence tools and tactics, that they soak into our subconscious. I have so many websites that I would read if they were not inundated with ads. I simply refuse. FOX News for example assaults us with everything from reverse mortgages to buying gold. Their intent is simple, drain every resource from an unassuming nation, conditioned to believe based on the dishonest tactics employed, all manner of self-debilitating products and services.
5. Why do we see a constant barrage of disinformation that undermines credible sources?
Influencing human beings is as complicated a mission as one can be engaged in. Influence operations, often using the strategy and tactics of Madison Avenue, have long known that if you wish to influence an audience, discrediting the most opposition concurrently, pays dividends. Our foreign adversaries have always done this, and they have achieved results via complex operations that promote their product while diminishing the credibility of their adversaries and/or competitors.
Beginning primarily with the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate, audiences on the right have been aggressively cutting the legs out from under credible sources. Now under this administration, little or no data from US government agencies is published, despite publishing data being the long-held policy of the US government, regardless of party. Sure, they have not always been perfect in this respect, but the overwhelming majority of the time, they have done an excellent job. Now, we cannot see monthly economic data, and this is one of the most important data sets for economic analysts and government planners. Without it, businesses and entire industries operate partially in the dark. This approach has helped the current administration to continually pull the wool over the eyes of the public during their intentional government shutdown. The data shows a weakening economy, and this explains why they wish to hide it.
Now, even as all Americans watched the January 6th coup attempt, the overwhelming majority of Republicans, claimed that it did not occur. Not even the J6 hearings convinced them, despite the volumes of credible evidence and testimony from observers, law enforcement or participants. They have all been conditioned via Narrative Warfare tactics to only believe the words of their GOP narrators, such as Trump and his GOP co-conspirators.
6. What is the role of each citizen in converting our nation from being under the influence, to being as our founders expected, a well and accurately informed citizenry, capable of making decisions based on reality.
The answer to this all-important question is as simple as it is difficult to do. It is to challenge information, fact-check, verify sources and depend on sources rather than those influencers, who have an agenda. The majority of my military career taught me the valuable lesson of what became a popular phrase, during the Reagan administration, “trust but verify.” If I made mistakes in seeing things clearly via intelligence and during operations, things could go horribly wrong, for the wrong person or people. This is a heavy weight that my community must bear, and every effort is made to get it right. American citizens must do the same in defense of our national security.
There are a couple of critical tactics that I recommend to help us all see things more clearly. They are not at all difficult to do, but initially difficult to acclimate to. Remember, we are all in many senses, Pavlov’s dog. Remember the lesson in 7th or 8th grade science classes that discussed a famous researcher named Pavlov, who by way of research and lab time, proved that he could alter the behavior of his dog, by way of slowly conditioning it to added stimuli. Human beings are conditioned over most of their lives. It is just how we have evolved.
If we grow up in a region, we strongly tend to be sports fans of the region’s sports teams. If we go to a religious service, we identify with the others who attend our regular services. Like the old blind taste-tests between Coke and Pepsi, we all too often found that we preferred the taste of the opposite of what we habitually drink. We are a tribal species, and all tribes share much of their identity, with the others in the same tribe. When influencers with an agenda pit one tribe against the other, there will be conflict, even if the reasons for it are not based on facts, but on identifying with your tribe.
We can all become Pavlov by conditioning ourselves to trust but verify. One indicator that often tells us that we are being influenced is that we have a emotional reaction to what we see, read or hear. A piece of news may irritate us or have us jumping for joy. Either way, when we feel emotion, and it is because we are being influenced. To make sure that your emotional reaction is valid, use that tiny high-speed computer in your hands, and check or verify through other credible sources that you are reacting to truth. If your emotions can be verified, that tells you that your emotions are telling you the truth and the opposite is true as well.
The other valuable tactic is to look at the sources for the information you are pondering. If the narrators are always in the company of those you do not agree with, don’t waste time with their opinions and statements. As most of us learned in our youth from parents and others influential in our lives, the saying, “tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are” is a pretty accurate compass for exposing frauds. I imagine that what I’m writing sounds a good bit like plain old common sense, and you’d be correct. The problem with common sense is that in our age of being bombarded with information, we train ourselves to listen to what we assume to be safe sources, even though they may not always be accurate. Individual responsibility is still the core trait, that keeps us from buying into “fake news,” conspiracy theories, false narratives, etc. We are living in a Yellow Journalism 2.0 era and it is wreaking havoc on our republic.
Summary
I do hope that today’s essay will both help my audience this Sunday in NYC and also to you, TAT readers. The thoughts above are far more important to putting this period of American history to bed, than most can imagine. I have dedicated most of my military career in this field, never once believing that I would have to employ this knowledge here in our nation, but here we are. When this is all over, we must remember that as frustrated as we are with those living on a steady diet of conspiracy theories, are our fellow citizens. Remember also, that they were conned and may not ever fully recover from being brainwashed. This is a known issue for those of us that have spent time in counterterrorism and dealt with violent extremists and their ideology. Still, we must find a way to heal, but first we must regain control and put into place, the methodology to make our nation safe from such influence operations. Considering the untold billions being tossed into AI, we must learn sooner than later, but that’s a story for another day.
My very best for your weekend,
Paul