FROM THE ARCHIVES: ‘None of Us Demons’ - Revisiting my ‘Warfighting’ Thread

My parsing of a 2016 NATO ‘Handbook of Russian Information Warfare’ proves alarmingly prescient. We must not lose consciousness

Jan 27, 2024

Originally published December 14, 2022.

We Must Not Lose Consciousness

In the summer of 2019, I visited Tohono Chul at sundown. It was the one evening of the year when the elusive Queen of the Night chose to bloom. The beautiful desert gardens in Tucson, Arizona, are stunning to visit any day of the year, but on that special moment at dusk when the Night Blooming Cereus debuts its mysterious flower, crowds gather to walk the trails, admiring the blossoms by starlight. They know they will wilt before sunrise.

The Night Blooming Cereus is spindly, and to an unobservant eye might appear to be merely a bunch of decaying sticks, but on that one night, they all magically bloom. All the ‘Queens’ - which can’t self-pollinate - bloom on the same evening to ensure pollination. They are assisted by hawk moths, according to Tohono Chul naturalists.

As I made my way through the park to admire the delicate blossoms, something else caught my eye.

Thankfully, I was wearing cowboy boots as I looked down by my feet and saw a tarantula hawk wasp whipping a large, paralyzed tarantula around the trail. An entomologist happened to be nearby and explained to me what I was witnessing. She cautioned me to step aside and view from a distance. She told me that the hawk wasp had paralyzed the tarantula in order to lay an egg inside the spider’s abdomen, offering incubation. The egg then turns into larva, and as the tarantula slowly dies the larva hatches and awakens to a meal. The tarantula hawk wasp dragged the spider on the trail until it located an ideal burrow.

I found it all morbidly fascinating. When I learned a sting by the wasp could be excruciatingly painful to humans, I made my exit when another hawk wasp screech-buzzed my ear.

I am mad about the desert, but I am also aware that I am a guest, and when I am asked by its inhabitants to leave, I oblige.

I have spent much time in the past few years writing in the deserts of Southern California, Southern and Northern Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

I think I have a desert heart.

When I returned to Los Angeles after that first trip to Tucson, where I enjoyed monsoons, javelinas, and the incredible bird life of Tucson, the image of that paralyzed tarantula stuck with me.

I realized that America had been stung into a state of semi-unconsciousness.

On July 19, 2019, I received a message from a Twitter follower telling me that a NATO Handbook on Russian Information Warfare is essential reading. I checked the date of the report - November 2016. That the author knew the full details of the techniques used in America’s attack prior to the election of 2016 is both tragic and a failing of our intelligence agencies.

Two days later, while riding and writing on the L.A. Metro trains, I posted my ‘Warfighting’ thread, parsing the report for all to see how we were a target nation of Russian cyber terrorism, and how the attacks are ongoing. That I would become friends with the author Kier Giles, and write dozens of threads mining his expertise on Russian active measures, was a bonus. 500,000 people have read that thread - another reminder that Musk’s destruction of Twitter is an act of war, as I noted in a recent interview on Byline Radio.

In the first tweet in the thread I wrote:

WARFIGHTING: Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.

In 2016, two wks after the American election, this Handbook of Russian Information Warfare was published.

To cure the sickness, we must know what we are fighting.

I still believe that - to cure the sickness, we must know what we are fighting.

Among the thread’s highlights:

Information warfare is cheap
Russia is always at war
While the West is still trying to define cyber warfare, the Russians have gone all in
Russian IW is aimed at altering the mind of target victims, as well as the technical systems of entire countries
The goal is to erode the spirit of the target nation’s population
Deprive target nation sovereignty without the state’s territory being seized - regime change through destroying the organs of government
The Russian military mind works backwards from the objective - IW directs people to support aggressor, acting against their own interests
Lying is the message
‘Trusted media sources’ spread propaganda, history is revised, truth undermined
Puppet politicians, celebrities, paid hacks, journalists are used to push Russian propaganda, depriving the target nation its ability to fight

In the 8th tweet I wrote:

IW: Like a tarantula hawk wasp paralyzing its prey, Russia uses information warfare to “incapacitate a state as much as possible before that state even knows a conflict has started.”

New tech based on 100-year-old thinking.

And like the spider, citizens lose consciousness.

We have been losing consciousness for years. I try to revive those who I can reach by reporting the truth to the best of my ability. I, like, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, never underestimate the American people. I was raised by immigrants and immigrants make Great Americans.

‘None Of Us Demons’

In my recent investigation for Byline Supplement where I ran Trump’s 2024 campaign speech through a filter of Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works to expose the fascist playbook in his words, I ended with Stanley’s final summation in his book:

“By refusing to be bewitched by fascist myths, we remain free to engage one another, all of us flawed, all of us partial in our thinking..understanding, but none of us demons.”

Those beautiful words haunt me, as I think back to the before times, before billionaires were openly trying to stir up another civil war in America in fealty to a mafia state. To deny the Kremlin’s long game is to bury one’s head in the sand.