In addition, according to a Washington Post report this week, the Defense Department's now-exposed psychological operations are also aimed at influencing political, social and cultural decisions and trends, as if defending our country from attacks and winning wars has become a secondary function.
The exposure has led the Defense Department to order a sweeping audit of the PSYOPs, which included using bot accounts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as other social media platforms.
"Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter," the Post reported.
"The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory," the report continued. "While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations."
Keep in mind that in recent years, officials in Barack Obama's administration used secret email accounts to avoid detection and being subjected to laws ordering the cataloging and preservation of all communications. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously went so far as to put a secret email server in her Chappaqua, New York home, though Obama himself knew she had it because he emailed her at the server's address using a pseudonym.
The Post added:
The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries.
Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.
In a statement, Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the current Pentagon press secretary, defended the psyops, essentially, noting in a statement that the information operations "support our national security priorities" and are being conducted within the parameters of current relevant policies and laws. "We are committed to enforcing those safeguards," he lied.
The Post went on to cite the researchers' report, which said that several accounts that have been removed included a fabricated Persian media site that shared content that was reposted from Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe, the first of which is funded by U.S. taxpayers.
The report also said that another account taken down was tied to a Twitter handle that, in the past, pretended to operate on behalf of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), whose area of operations includes the Middle East and Afghanistan.
One phone account posted an incendiary tweet that claimed relatives of Afghan refugees who had died reported that bodies returned from Iran were missing organs, the researchers said. A video that was posted with an article published on a U.S. military-affiliated site was linked to that tweet.
The bottom line is this: The same left-wing government that claims only conservatives and Trump supporters post fake information and lies is posting fake information and lies in an effort to change public perception and drive false narratives.
Nothing is real anymore.
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