The Deep Desert Civilization
The information landscape is filling up with post-logos, post-human defenders of civilization. The civilization they defend is not yours, it has no living humans. It has only robots and lizards and feral wizards in coyote skins. It is an invisible society in the deep desert that oversees the “human domain” with artificial intelligence, affective computing chatbots, predictive algorithms, and billions of dollars in DoD funding. Tax dollars. Your money. You are funding the speciation of a new mutant race: the COGSEC skinwalker.
The Cognitive Security industry is slowly becoming a breakaway civilization, completely divorced from reality. It has its own narratives and culture, little of which overlaps with simple hu-man concerns like ethics or the natural right to cognitive autonomy. Gestating in the deep-state desert, that liminal wasteland where the entire ecology subsists on DARPA and DoD grants, it has grown into a $30 billion grift based on one simple game— first, define people’s activity online as the product of automated influence operations. Then, use this as casus bellum to deploy all the techniques in your “disinformation kill chain,” essentially, all-out cognitive warfare against the domestic population.
A March 2021 leaked DARPA memo titled "Extremism and Insider Threat in the DoD" revealed the Pentagon's criteria for identifying extremists within the military. According to the document, groups such as patriots, white advocates, Christians, anti-feminists, anarchists, environmentalists, and animal welfare activists are classified as extremists and may face punishment or expulsion. Black Lives Matter or chemically castrating children was not included in this classification.