Logic-bombing world events?

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I just wonder how much our CIA has actually thought about this? I think it can be done. There are enough people, I think, with enough creative ideas, who could think of ways to infiltrate enemy organizations, give them red-meat ideas, things they'd love to dive head over heals for which would in turn completely eradicate all credibility they have with the groups of people they treat as hosts.

Its really a Sun Tzu concept - warfare of the variety of bombs falling, machine guns pumping, is a sign of failure by Sun Tzu's standards. The second best thing is to attack an enemies alliances and food supplies/resources before they attack. The best thing though is to undermine them before they ever get enough of a grip on the population to have swollen enough heads to want to try their hand at taking over the next kingdom.

So what do you guys think? Is modern society capable of, say, putting plants in something like radical Islam to carry it off to the loony bin and into its own obscurity, or to plant certain other dynamics and ideas, against it? We've come to - obviously - know certain things about human nature. We've come to learn many things about persuasion. We've also come to learn many things about slight of hand and mentalism (which I'm amazed just stays in parlour tricks - the fact that mentalism isn't already huge in black ops or even good martial arts training is beyond me). We have so much knowledge that I'm amazed we haven't marked wackaloon ideologies and planted fatal errors in them from the beginning.

Is that kind of thinking too advanced for the human chimp or do you think we're actually doing well at it by some other means?

Most of the world's diplomatic and intelligence institutions were tuned during the Cold War. The design of these institutions emphasized a defensive outlook that slowed emergencies down so that they could be dealt with without resorting to violence. This design has a variety of benefits, one of the losses however, is that they cannot make bold actions very well. The modern international system and most attached institutions associate inaction with peace, over the need for response. This makes assertive action through these institutions very difficult.

Sounds a bit like Asimov's psychohistory.

It might be doable, but I suspect it would be rather hit-and-miss. After all, people will decide to go for all sorts of idiotic things:

There's no telling what people will go for. There's bound to be something that will be too over-the-top, but figuring out what it is would be hard.

The other issue is the ethics of this. The United States could, and I suspect would, all to easily use this technique to try to turn all other societies into a clone of their own. As hard as it might be to believe, not everyone wants to live in an ultra-capitalist, Christian-dominated, environmentally-insensitive world. And maybe their wishes should be respected on that. I think that it is up to a society to decide for itself what it wants, and that there shouldn't be interference from a third party.

Maybe I'm not understanding, but isn't that already happening all over the place?

It seems like most ideologies, when taken to an extreme (as they are usually intended to be taken) are ultimately destructive. And they're usually attractive & compelling ideas, in offering a vision of some sort of utopia or ideal situation -- "communism will end poverty," "the free market always makes everything right." (So, they're infectious & destructive.)

And, even being extremely opposed to an ideologically is destructive -- McCarthyism, "any socialism is a bad thing," "religion is always bad."

I guess from my POV ideologies are almost always automatically destructive and infectious. The problem seems to be how the jump from concrete-reality to abstractified-theory seems adequate to a lot of people, but is usually seriously flawed.

So, I think it's a matter of which logic bombs mess up who worse than all the others.

As far as Al Qaida and the like, maybe we could carpet bomb them with Rock & Roll CD's and porn, and make their young people think that being rebellious against their parents' values will make them cool, and that someday they can come to America and have endless porn, Nikes, and Rock & Roll forever. (And we're basically already doing that -- artist who has sold the most CD's internationally in all of recorded history: Madonna.)

This is how I'd explain it, when bunk ideologies draw young people in for decades or centuries after not withstanding any decent intellectual tests, regardless of how moronic some people might find a particular ideology, they have to realize that there are still plenty of people for everyone who's like themselves who would think differently and buy it hook, line, and sinker. Hence the problem - it doesn't dismiss itself simply because you or I don't believe it, if it has a big enough appeal to keep itself going then it has that appeal. Planting a societal logic bomb would be doing something to deliberately, lets say, take a really whacked out ideology and make it blow up and desist as a fad of the week rather than a movement that grabs root and lasts over several centuries do you see where I'm going?

IMO it cleans house and it can only go so far as a brainwashing technique on its own because, ideas that will win the intellectual market place can't be suppressed unless there is a very dumb set of ideas being artificially pressed out on the populace to where the better ideas aren't able to compete. Even if someone had some ill political motivation toward someone who had the next major breakthrough for society and joined their group to use this against them, people would still look back and say "Yeah but, that was apples and oranges", not so much with an idea that should have failed and did fail.

I remember it being said early on after 9/11 that this one carefully planned attack by a handful of people would be enough to provide the psychology to destroy the economic structure of the US.

The question becomes were they smart enough to know that we would use it as a justification for war in Iraq, and economic incentives that we could not afford, while denying any danger to ourselves that these actions might precipitate.

Maybe it is all coincidence, but I don't think we would have near the economic woes that we have today if it wasn't for that one event. It is likely that another terrorist attack would once again bind Americans together for a common purpose, but why would it be necessary if the psychological and destructive financial remnants of the common purpose generated from the first attack continue to dismantle us day by day.

I think per Apple in my Eyes comment we already unwittingly fall under the ideology of logic bombs because of our complex culture and the inability to come together or even care about coming together for a common purpose as it relates to the future of our country.

Most muslim cultures are extremely patriarchal with religious beliefs that are entertwined with government. In my opinion the biological and cultural desire to control women and ensure paternity of offspring drives some of the extremes against our western culture that is moving away from patriarchy to a destination of equality between the sexes. These same biological undercurrents may drive some of the ideological battles in our own country.

And do you think the paranoid hysteria that is invading every aspect of the USA and costing trillions in useless wars that settle nothing and are being more or less successfully opposed by primitive counter-forces and taking away funds desperately needed for health and education and infrastructure is not destroying the USA?

Without adequate resources for health, education, and infrastructure we cannot live as we do today and will cease to prosper and fall into decline; I see no other possible result.

The 24 hour news cycle was used for the purpose of starting this paranoid hysteria to justify those that benefitted financially and politically from starting and continuing the useless wars, in my opinion. The resulting economic woes continue to justify further insult to injury, reducing the livelyhood and even likelyhood of the future of a middle class in our country.

I no longer see significant differences in the political actions of either party, regardless of what point of view is expressed. I think that some enjoy the paranoid hysteria, more than the dire consequences of reality. You mind find this easier to see from your location.

I wish more Western leaders and politicians would read Sun Tzu.

It doesn't seem to me like this would work well with mentalities that have already been brainwashed to extremes and focused narrowly in life on an overriding mission. It might be more likely to work with people that have diffuse attention in their lives and very little attention span.

The logic bombs really do work on some people, but who has the time or attention that is necessary to take a serious second look at the merit of something that is appealing on a primal level? Pornography is an excellent example; I don't think anyone is intending it for the purpose you are relating, but, never the less, it is somewhat of a world wide logic bomb in the sense of how much time people spend in pursuing this rather than enriching other areas of their life that might lead to a greater potential for critical consciousness or productivity that might be the difference in the ability to actually survive and reproduce.

Who needs health care, education, or infrastructure, if they have access to 72 virtual virgins on their computer screen 24 hours a day? It is just a small piece of that pie, but part of the reason people have their minds on other things that have no purpose but to suit primal needs. And to be clear, I am not intimating any moral position on pornography, just the reality of the human condition.

One final thought on pornography, another unintended consequence, while it might seem like a patriarchal dream for some; it might benefit some women to get ahead in life because they are less likely to become addicted to this kind of visual stimulus.

Im sure the CIA is way ahead of you in thinking about this.
But there isnt much they can do.

As 91 pointed out, our whole intelligence and state dept infrastructure was aimed at the soviet bloc, and is only now being retooled to aim against radical Islam.

Further the Soviet Union was an actual country- a stationary target- it was not a loose knit bunch of terror cells within countries across the globe like Al Queda.

Further the old Soviet System actually unwittingly worked to our advantage by being easy to infiltrate. The lowest ranking soviets were the fanatacal brainwashed youths, the higher you went the less fanatical the people were. The people at the top of the soviet machine were aware of the futility of thier cause and so were theast fanatical and the most easy to corrupt. Moslem Jihadists are the exact opposite. The lowest peole are temporary recruits, the higher up you go the more fanatical and less corruptible they are.

But even if you did actually infiltrate AlQueda what exactly are you envisioning doing?
You get into the caves of Afganistan and endup hanging with Bin Ladin- then what?
Persuade him to embarrass the movement by singing off key on American Idol?

However one thing I would imagine we COULD do would be to exploit this very looseness and lack of authority in the Jihad movement by setting up fake terror cells to attract and keep tabs on would be terrorists- and draw them away from the real terrorists.
I believe that they actually did set up anti-terrorist sting operation in Canada like that that neted some arrests.

We already get alot of unwitting help with this.

Many diseffect moslem youths get recruited by the internet and travel to places like Yemen hopeing to become 'freedom fighters" for Islam only to find that the Imam that recruited them is a local criminal involved with drug smuggling or child prostitution ( just a common criminal and not a terrorist- what a bummer!).

Not "freedom fighters". But martyrs. It is Jihad they have on their minds.

ruveyn

Their lust for power of pomp will overcome any wisdom they might acquire by reading what the sage wrote.

People who rule, who feel they ought to rule or that they must rule are sick evil folk. In a sane and decent society we would all take our turn guarding the bounds and keeping the peace then we would return to the common group as we should. We would not make careers out of controlling and ruling our fellows.

ruveyn

Logic bombs requires one thing the western powers do not have anymore: human weapons.

By human weapons I mean agents that are inserted into the target societies. In fact, it is the western nations that have been logic bombed by the radical islamists for the past 20 years.

A muslim agent is hard to spot in a nation that has a large number of immigrants from the same culture. European or US agents need to be either recruited from the target population (which is not very effective) or must be inserted...which is very,very hard to do.

Logic bombs also require that the target population has access to some form of mass media. Free press is not exactly present in muslim countries and the internet is available only to those wealthy enough to afford it... which aren't that many and for a logic bomb to work you need to hit the bulk of the population with it. The only way to spread it would be through human contact...which again requires tremendous amounts of recruited and inserted agents.

The irony of it is that the current situation in Tunisia,Egypt and Lybia seems to be the result of a logic bomb delivered via the internet and tweeter. Perhaps not a designed logic bomb but an accidental one or home-brewed one...but the effect was the same.