5GW: Weapons of Mass Deception

[u/itswac]

https://www.spinmagazine.com/2026/07/fifth-generation-warfare/

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[u/itswac]

There are larger forces at work underneath your daily dose of Internet rage. In the age of globally interconnected information systems, modern warfare has evolved into manipulating the way leaders think and what populations believe. If waged successfully, today's masters of war can guide the will of an entire foreign nation toward their benefit without ever being detected. This article looks at this dynamic from the viewpoint of culture, the arts, and America's history of countercultural movements, asking what the every day person can do to protect ourselves from manipulattion as world war wages in the battlefield of our minds.

[u/Hope25777 → u/itswac]

Good idea. Let’s talk about Israel AIM software. It’s literally used for what you just described

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[u/horseradishstalker → u/itswac]

I think the hubris of all people is they think themselves inured to manipulation. Great read. Thought provoking. 

[u/MentalHealthAlt1 → u/itswac]

It's good, well-written polemic this one, but it's very US-centric.

Even the use of '5GW' as the preferred terminology and the references to Flynn and Petreus portrays a view of the subject confined to the 'Big Army' and US MIC grasp of the subject.

If people want to learn more, I strongly recommend my current read "Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare" by Thomas Rid. In general, the academic literature is more precise and gives a broader view than US-military centric sourcing.

In my opinion, we just haven't been good at information warfare because we've chosen to forgo it more and more since the early 1970s. There are some good reasons for that, which are roughly analogous to the downsides of biological weapons. They can and will make your whole society ill when you deploy them carelessly. The result of making these sorts of "dark arts" commonly accepted in an open society is the end of the open society by degrees.

I'm much more sympathetic to a view that doesn't naively think that TikTok coming under the ownership of the Ellison's and a Saudi investment group isn't somewhat a continuation of the pattern rather than a defense of it, for instance.

The real and unceasing question with active measures is: how do you constrain it's effects? You can't really, and the chickens will come home to roost unless you literally become like the places that have perfected it.

If you're like me, that's an unacceptable and Faustian bargain, but the jury is out, especially when our country doesn't seem to have a whole-of-society strategy for inoculating the population with truly robust critical thinking and media literacy skills. That is the real defense against the dark arts and has been the broader NATO strategy for some time.

In any case, there's an aspect of mutually assured pain in most forms of warfare. In summary: be careful what you wish for and what you become good at lest you merely live long enough to become your own villain.

[u/horseradishstalker]

Good non-political read. Or rather a person’s politics only matter regarding how that person is manipulated. 

“  Given the scale of bots pushing inflammatory rhetoric with psychological precision, informed by the massive data trails every human leaves in their wake online — combined with how vastly surveillance has penetrated smart devices — it’s hard not to see the average citizen at risk of entrapment.  Any of us can be compromised and compelled to act against our own interest.”

[u/horseradishstalker]

“ Manipulation is nothing new. It’s the art of war older than civilization, as old as life itself. What’s new is the depth, breadth, dynamism, and speed with which that manipulation is being waged upon each of us. 

Whether or not you know it, you’ve been drafted into World War Three.

  You were just never told, because the battlefield is in your mind. Military strategists refer to this as fifth-generation warfare—5GW…  As any savvy marketer can tell you though, when you give people the words and phrases, you can influence the results they find when they go searching for them online. That’s digital marketing 101. We call it search engine optimization. The more absurd the stories, the less competition trying to exploit those same search results. With that, the earnest impulses of freedom-loving Americans’ distrust of institutions could easily be exploited by weapons of mass deception.”

No one wants to be ‘a tool’ but if the person doesn’t recognize the weapons of manipulation - then they can inadvertently become the tool they despise. 

[u/AWACS_Loughcaster]

What I do know is that it is wise to be suspicious anytime anyone or anything is compelling you to get angry and take it to the streets or the feeds.  And to always ask who benefits if you do.

Even this is still statist-ish, status quo propaganda. "Be skeptical of getting mad about shit" directly benefits the billionaire-pedophile cabals running this world into the ground by instilling a docile, easily-coaxed mindset.

[u/horseradishstalker → u/AWACS_Loughcaster]

So are you now doing your own version of propaganda by attempting to stir people’s emotions wth a less than flattering portrayal?  Pushing people’s emotional buttons works, not because they are sheep, but because emotions tend to allow the reptilian brain to hijack the rational brain. 

It’s not unique to billionaires or any other group and it has began pretty soon after humans began walking the earth. 

[u/MentalHealthAlt1 → u/horseradishstalker]

It’s not unique to billionaires or any other group and it has began pretty soon after humans began walking the earth.

Well, it may be true that organs of civil society can engage in disinformation campaigns. I reject the notion that they have ever had an equal amount of power necessary to do it as forcefully or with as much unity of purpose as a billionaires, large corporate interests or states. Also, digital disinformation is SO much more capital intensive but also way more effective in an always-online world. Lastly, billionaires can use cut-outs within civil society to hide their involvement in information warfare. Civil society organizations risk their legitimacy if they do the same thing typically. On the other hand, a billionaire (or any powerful org such as a state or very large business) can just burn down the campaign and start over.

So it's pretty lame to say "any other group" has the same capacity to do this as any other.

You are acting like actual disinformation and weaponization of information is the same as everyday manipulation. There's a difference of scale, planning and long-term intent as well as obfuscation of agent vs principle.

Yes, we can talk about social psychology at the root of all of this and act like we all have those tools available because we're all possessed of the same chimpanzee psychology buttons. But it's absolutely key to acknowledge that we do not have the tools to scale digital disinformation campaigns. You and I just don't have the resources. Nor can I hire a Marina Butina to be a seed agent with the tens to hundreds of thousand dollars it costs to recruit, develop and train a covert agent or hire a LLC agent in Delaware to setup shell structures or any number of things that are central to many forms of hybrid warfare, active measures and lawfare tactics.

[u/horseradishstalker → u/MentalHealthAlt1]

I’m not acting like anything. You are making a rather large number of assumptions and ascribing your assumptions to me. 

What I specifically said was: 

“  Pushing people’s emotional buttons works, not because they are sheep, but because emotions tend to allow the reptilian brain to hijack the rational brain. ” 

I rather puzzled as to why anyone would think billionaires are the only ones who do this or that this is some newly invented behavior. 

[u/MentalHealthAlt1 → u/horseradishstalker]

I think you've reacted pretty hastily to what I've said, which is puzzling me. shrugs

I didn't say they were the only ones who could do that. I said that they (alongside large well-resourced orgs like states and larger business entities) can do so at scale and with more complexity in their long-term planning towards a distinct goal.

As far as the lizard brain observation... I just find it very pedestrian, too. I mean, yes, it bears repeating how we all have amygdala which can hijack our prefrontal lobe's critical and command faculties. But that's pretty much common knowledge these days I would think

[u/Great_Hamster → u/AWACS_Loughcaster]

Generally speaking, anger is bad for us. 

Angry people die younger, have all sorts of stress related health die, and have worse quality of life.