The position of my blog has generally been oriented towards viewing Russia as a rogue and China as a peer – such that they respectively merit foreign relations approaches weighted towards war and diplomacy. Despite this, the informational evidence shows that the idea of an inevitable “Thucydides Trap” between China and the US has been exacerbated by Russian disinformation and active measures. Now it seems many very fine people on both sides are eating a similar tainted “Chinese meat” of disinformation sourced from Russian intelligence which will lead to Chinese-US hostility if carried to a logical conclusion.
A long time to go and a fallacy from far away (Approved for Chinese and US audiences)
Maciej “Matt” Makowski is a veteran of An Garda Siochana (Ireland’s National Police and Security Service), where he specialized in intelligence and cyber-crime. He was the first foreign national to be admitted to the highly selective police service and worked there over a decade. After retiring early in 2019, he currently is employed in the private sector in the information security industry. Matt operates the very interesting OSINT ME (osintme.com) blog which has a focus on open source intelligence methods (I’ve even found the site useful for my day job).
In order to promote continued awareness about Nostradamus’ use in Russian information warfare, I reached out to Matt to share some of my papers. A question and answer session over email ensued about my perspectives on the subject. I found this an enjoyable experience and hope you will visit Matt’s blog to check it out. You may also learn a lot about open source intelligence in the process.
As parcel to my 30 day trial of Netflix (to watch ‘Tiger King’ of course, so I could compare it with ‘Cat Dancers’), I also thought to catch up on Surrealist director David Lynch’s seminal series from April 1990-June 1991: ‘Twin Peaks’. I also watched his 2020 short film ‘What Did Jack Do?’ which seems to be a Netflix exclusive.
A common theme at this blog has been studying the cultural movements of Communism, Theosophy, and Surrealism as they may relate to the currents of Russian information operations. I am not sure you could find many television shows which embodied all these concepts if you looked – but Twin Peaks would absolutely be one of them. (It also has a memorably eerie and yet hopeful soundtrack. To paraphrase the series’ dialogue, I am not sure if it represents a nightmare or a beautiful dream.)
The story is posed in a geopolitical and Christian-apocalyptic context. It closes with a comment on the supposed relation of Jesus Christ to the Merovingian dynasty of France. The idea of a Merovingian dynasty is primarily associated with ideas of Pierre Plantard, and the so-called Priory of Sion, which influenced author Dan Brown’s novels most notably, ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
Most charitably, the matter of the Priory of Sion has the appearance of being a French attempt at creating a Holy Grail mythology for France similar to that for example of King Arthur in Britain; on the other hand, this hoax also seems to have many hallmarks of fascistic propaganda linked to historical Russian influence.
The interesting thing about the cultural background of the milieu of prophecy related to COVID-19 in the Veteran’s Today article is not only its ‘Duginesque’ apocalypticism, but the idea that Plantard’s purposeful efforts to create the Priory of Sion hoax were largely based on his work with espionage-linked occultists and Surrealists. His efforts seem intended to prove that he himself was heir to the Merovingian bloodline – predicted by none other than Nostradamus – and therefore himself a descendant of Jesus by the logic of the false prophecy.
Not to praise myself, but there are many examples of Nostradamus conspiracy now being discussed in the context of disinformation and information warfare around COVID-19 (1, 2, 3). I see this as a replication of my prior efforts to some extent. (Once again, the Nostradamus piece of this conspiracy is only a facet of the total disinformation.)
I’ve been sitting on most of the below analysis for a while, but I think it is complete enough to post in light of the use of such ideas in COVID-19 disinformation.
Given the unprecedented nature of both the true public health risk and accompanying informational hysteria associated with ‘coronavirus’ (a.k.a. COVID-19 / nCoV2019), I have some hesitancy to blog this because I think it is potentially irresponsible given the current public anxieties. In the worst case, it could be wrong and amplify conspiracy thinking about the crisis, which is certainly not my intent. That said, based on my research, this crisis reminds me of Russian information warfare associated with the AIDS epidemic as well as 9/11 conspiracism; and the informational profiles of modern warfare campaigns in Syria and Ukraine as well. Despite the potential for contributing to conspiracy thinking with this analysis, I think talking about things like this openly is important to improve our informational (and apparently public health) security posture.
It is inarguable that Russia is spreading disinformation about the coronavirus in multiple sources, accusing both China and the United States of releasing it as a bioweapon. Resultingly, there seems to be evidence that public officials in China and the US have accused the other respective nation of strategically orchestrating this crisis for warfare purposes. Allegorically, conspiracy theories about the virus as a bioweapon seem popular online, and I’ve heard them in personal conversations as well.
To give this unprecedented crisis the unique definition it deserves, I think it is clear that the Russian activity around coronavirus may classify the outbreak as a ‘hybrid biothreat’ – a mashup of the terms ‘hybrid threat’ and ‘biothreat’.
A hybrid threat has been described by NATO as: “Hybrid threats combine military and non-military as well as covert and overt means, including disinformation, cyber attacks, economic pressure, deployment of irregular armed groups and use of regular forces. Hybrid methods are used to blur the lines between war and peace, and attempt to sow doubt in the minds of target populations.”
A biothreat has been described in military academia as: “Biological threat agents or, more colloquially, biothreats or bioagents are pathogens and/or their toxic products that pose a substantial threat to human health. They are a diverse group that includes viruses, bacteria, and toxins from biological sources, and indeed that diversity is reflected in the extraordinary range of transmissibility, infectivity, and lethality that they exhibit. Bioagents encompass both naturally occurring and engineered pathogens and the threat they pose originates from natural outbreaks as well as from their intentional release.”
Thus, a ‘hybrid biothreat’ could be seen as such a biothreat which supports a hybrid threat kind of warfare campaign, but which does not rise to the level of perceived threat which is likely to result in a direct military confrontation.
The question is whether Russia is simply exploiting an impromptu opportunity to sow international discord – or whether the disinformation is supporting actual biowarfare as a component of a higher-order hybrid warfare campaign. There’s no hard evidence that the novel coronavirus is a Russian bioweapon, but perhaps I can persuade you circumstantially that the Russians have masterfully exploited the crisis to the benefit of their broader ‘portfolio’ of operations. Maybe it is common sense.
So just to note, there is a clear precedence in this idea of blending disinformation with a public concern about a viral biothreat as an ‘active measure’ – accusing the U.S. military of criminally bioengineering the disease as a weapon – and it is a tactic historically attributable to Russian influence.
The offending ZeroHedge article claimed that the novel coronavirus contained inserted HIV genes. Although the scholarly paper they cited in the article was withdrawn because the same gene segments could be found in a variety of organisms, ZeroHedge seems to have continued to amplify this debunked theme over time. (This is a site I’ve been watching a while for its far-right ideology, financial apocalypticism, and bitcoin promotion. It’s the kind of Russian disinformation site which apparently “promotes Trump” (like Infowars) in order to achieve Russian objectives.)
According to ZeroHedge [highlighted as disinformation]: “The theory is that the virus, which was developed by infectious disease experts may have originated in the Wuhan-based lab of Dr. Peng Zhou, China’s preeminent researcher of bat immune systems, specifically in how their immune systems adapt to the presence of viruses like coronavirus and other destructive viruses. Somehow, the virus escaped from the lab, and the Hunan fish market where the virus supposedly originated is merely a ruse.
Now, a respected epidemiologist who recently caught flack for claiming in a twitter threat that the virus appeared to be much more contagious than initially believed is pointing out irregularities in the virus’s genome that suggests it might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon, and not just any weapon but the deadliest one of all.
In “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag”, Indian researchers are baffled by segments of the virus’s RNA that have no relation to other coronaviruses like SARS, and instead appear to be closer to HIV. The virus even responds to treatment by HIV medications.”
Examples pointing to the use of Nostradamus and Baba Vanga prophecies in these coronavirus hoaxes by Russian state media and influencers are also closely in line with my prior observations.
Italy, home of Roman Catholicism – a faith which Russian Orthodoxy is historically adversarial to – is one of the hardest hit areas by both the migration crisis and the epidemic.
So certainly, from the standpoint of information warfare, synergy with existing campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, and potentially economic warfare as well, there may be a lot of good evidence to tie Russia to aspects of the coronavirus hysteria. It certainly seems to fit the definition of a hybrid threat.
Biothreat seems self evident in the case of coronavirus. But what about a bioweapon? Russia has accused both the US and China of having created coronavirus as a bioweapon, but has anyone asked if Russia may have? Russia is historically known not just to have an outstanding disinformation capability, but to have one of the most clandestine and advanced bioweapons programs in the world as well.
And for the record, it is actually not crazy to ask if the coronavirus had emerged from a lab.
As Scientific American reported on March 11, the Chinese bat coronavirus expert expert Dr. Shi Zhegli – who had discovered the origins of many former coronaviruses (including the previous Chinese SARS outbreak of 2002-2003) “had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China”, and remembered thinking “could [the coronavirus] have come from our lab?”. ‘Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses.’
It seems conceivable to me that a large-scale hybrid warfare campaign most likely linked to Russia (but possibly including some collusive involvement from China, North Korea, and/or Iran) is being waged around coronavirus.
It is interesting to wonder if the virus was actually engineered and released by Russia’s allegedly mature bioweapons program in order to achieve some kind of advanced synergistic hybrid warfare agenda. Russia’s accusations of both Chinese and American bioweapons activity are interesting in light of Russia’s purportedly more mature capabilities in biowarfare; not to mention past notoriety for its AIDS disinformation campaign.
I’d assume the very idea of discussing coronavirus as a bioweapon has become a taboo subject for most intellectuals because of the sheer face value stupidity of the Russian disinformation and its consumers. Followingly, I assume the ‘fog of falsehood‘ around the virus has made the idea of discussing it being a Russian bioweapon forbidden too.
However, maybe the idea of rejecting it as a bioweapon at the academic level is just what Russia wants, because then nobody who cares about how they look in the scholarly community asks if Russia is responsible. If nobody asks the question, then it is possible we could never be prepared for the scenario. So I think it is important to ask, especially of the ‘guy’ with a behavioral pattern of being guilty of the crime before – but who is currently pointing the finger at everyone else.
Certainly it is more parsimonious that the virus came from the outdoor market, or was a curated sample leaked from the Chinese lab, than it came from a Russian source. But based on Russia’s lies about the United States in the past on similar matters, and Russia’s strategic capitalization of the current matter to augment its warfare campaigns in Ukraine and Syria – or to ignite an oil price war simultaneous to the stock market drop on coronavirus – and I would say it is much more likely that Russia is responsible than America is, if it is a bioweapon afterall. Who benefits?
Neither China nor America clearly benefits, but I think Russia seems to be attempting to. It seems a masterful move to divide China and the U.S., along the contours of previously observed patterns associated with Russian strategy. Perhaps the location of the initial outbreak was perfect for both finger pointing and plausible deniability by Russia.
By these measures, I think even if the novel coronavirus is not bioengineered or a bioweapon, the simple fact of Russia’s weaponization of information, migration, and economics around the epidemic highlights the similar weaponization of the virus itself – placing it in the category of what I’d call a ‘hybrid biothreat’.
Attached is my most recent peer reviewed paper which was accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS) to be held on 12-13 March 2020 at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. The paper is based on an analysis of the online conspiracy theories which surrounded the 15 April 2019 fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. (While the paper was published I am not attending the conference for personal reasons.)
Included in the milieu of conspiracy theories circulated online were fake Nostradamus prophecies evoking a kind of conspiracism known as ‘popular eschatology’. The sharing of such conspiracies drove a large global increase in Nostradamus interest, as revealed by Google Trends.
The overall mix of the Notre Dame fire conspiracy theories – to include notions of false flags, Islamophobic sentiments, and Nostradamus prophecies – seem to be similar to 9/11 conspiracies, and may share commonality in their links to Russian influence.
A model of Russian information warfare based on ‘katechonic’ Russian Orthodox and nationalist ideology
In a related sense, conspiratorial Nostradamus prophecies attributable to Russian proxies are associated with the visit of Pope Francis to North Macedonia in early May 2019, causing a massive spike in Nostradamus interest there (leading it to be the second highest region in the world for Nostradamus interest, and having no apparent relation to the Notre Dame fire except in terms of influence on Catholic and Western Christian culture). Such conspiracies about Popes involving Nostradamus as reflected in Google Trends have been similarly observed during times of Papal transitions such as in 2005 and 2013, and seem similar to other instances where Nostradamus interest spiked in association with probable Russian ‘active measures’.
The new paper argues that Nostradamus prophecies can be seen as similar in how they promote Islamophobia and anti-Catholicism as to how the Russian secret police concoction ‘The Protocols of Zion’ may have been useful in promoting anti-Semitism in furtherance of fin de siè·cle Russian influence campaigns. It dives deep into a cultural examination of Russia’s apparent sense of hostility to Catholicism based on its historical legacy as a Russian Orthodox country, and it attempts to frame the described 2019 ‘anti-Catholic conspiracies’ within a framework of Russian disinformation sympathetic to such nationalistic ideas.
Since the time I wrote this paper, the most notable development in Nostradamus propaganda is the broader acceptance that Russia uses figures like Nostradamus or Baba Vanga in spreading coronavirus conspiracies. I’m very happy to see that disinformation researchers are beginning to accept the idea of Nostradamus (and similar ‘prophets’) as a kind of information warfare and are educating the public about it.
Given prior statements of Roman Polanski on the Dick Cavett show that he was a suspect of a criminal profiler in the murder of his wife – and good evidence he was a cruel husband – some of the quotes I’d seen referenced to Confessions of a Blue Movie Star seemed compelling and concerning in the potential context of both ‘murder as a fine art’ as well as information warfare. Having watched the film, it makes me think that snuff itself is likely a propaganda scheme designed to create a mass hysteria, yet around the usual kernel of truth (in these cases, murders or deaths linked to potential communists). In this sense, snuff as a genre and meme seems quite similar to – and derivative of – the satanism hysteria which followed the murder of Polanski’s wife and friends by the Charles Manson group.
“Yeah I do think a camera can be as dangerous in the hands of a ‘filmmaker’, in quotes, as a bazooka.” – Roman Polanski
Cover of the version of the movie I received. It apparently has several variations. In movie, the title seems to actually be ‘Confessions of a Blue Movie Star’, but you’ll most popularly find it cited as ‘Evolution of Snuff’. (VHSCollector.com)
It is interesting that Anger too was close to the Surrealist school of art which is considered as a possible factor in the psychological profile of the Black Dahlia murderer. Anger’s film making was inspired by the Surrealist artist Maya Deren, and his 1947 film ‘Fireworks’ led to his romantic involvement with older French artist Jean Cocteau, whom he lived with in France . (Much of the Surrealist school – including Deren – can be placed close to Communism, and Anger also seems to have boycotted Hollywood in the HUAC era, despite Anger’s precedence of using Nazi images in his films.)
Anger was also a lifelong friend of John Gilmore’s lifelong friend Curtis Harrington – a famous filmmaker associated with the occult scene in Hollywood. In addition he was connected to at least 3 of the Manson Family murderers. In this sense, Anger straddles both the Surrealist network hypothetically associated with the Black Dahlia case and the ‘satanist-cultist’ network which might be associated with the Tate-LaBianca murders.
A first at n01r today is a guest blog from Dr. Richard Spence, Professor in the History Department at the University of Idaho. Dr. Spence has one of the coolest sets of courses I’ve seen which complements a lot of the things I investigate at the site; such as the intersection of the occult, strategic disinformation, and espionage (like Theosophy).
Dr. Spence has done some great work linking Aleister Crowley to espionage networks, and was kind enough to offer a draft article of a circumstantial connection linking Jack Parsons to Soviet intelligence as well. He makes a great argument for how Parsons might have been manipulated by a skilled handler based on his (apparently narcissistic) psychology.
