Wednesday Walk: The Military Disinformation Complex
Preventing vaccines and who owns our food?
Welcome to Willoughby Hills!
Every Wednesday, I offer a few short ideas that I hope will inspire you to do some more reading, thinking, and exploring. Let’s take a little walk together and see where the path leads…
Unnecessary Death
On Sunday, I wrote about the massive U.S. military presence in both our neighborhoods and in countries around the world. Well this week, I learned that our armed forces not only kill by deploying physical weapons.
In a new report for Reuters, Chris Bing and Joel Schectman reveal a secret anti-vax program that was run by the U.S. military at the height of the pandemic in an attempt to both weaken China and retaliate against the country for alleging that COVID may have come from an American service member.
The entire report is jaw dropping.
In mid-2020, as we were still understanding how to live with COVID, the Chinese Sinovac vaccine was released. The Philippines was one of the first countries to have access to the drug, but according to the reporting, the U.S. military worried that a successful deployment of the vaccine would cause a stronger allegiance between Beijing and Manila.
The U.S. military created fake social media accounts in local languages to spread disinformation and sow seeds of doubt about the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine. This seems to have led to a skepticism of not only Sinovac, but also of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that later became available:
“When [then-president Rodrigo Duterte] addressed the vaccination issue [in June, 2021], the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.”
Of course, a death toll in the tens of thousands didn’t seem to even register with the military brass who approved this program, despite opposition from diplomats in the region:
“‘We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,’ said a senior military officer involved in the program. ‘We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.’”
The people that died from COVID because of vaccine skepticism were people’s fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Rather than prevent unnecessary deaths in a global pandemic, our government let them die to “drag China through the mud.”
This program spread beyond just the Philippines too. The Pentagon engaged in disinformation campaigns throughout the world to sow doubt about the Sinovac vaccine and reduce the vaccinated population:
“Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.”
It should also be noted that this report describes how the U.S. government not only opposed the Chinese vaccines, but that it allowed profit to be the sole driver of getting U.S. alternatives into other countries.
“Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.”
During the height of the pandemic, I remember the feeling that we were all in this together; that viruses did not respect political borders and that we all were capable of spreading this disease to each other. Rather than focus on the public good and try to eradicate COVID everywhere, the U.S. saw the pandemic as a political opportunity to hurt a rival country and make a few extra bucks.
The full article is a long read, but a necessary one. It describes the trailers and other simple buildings at a Tampa military base where most of our weaponized disinformation is created and spread around the world. It describes similar clandestine disinformation campaigns that have taken place in recent history.
But most importantly, it makes me wonder which facts we don’t know and where else these disinformation campaigns are being used.
And as a reminder, the deaths of Filipinos and others targeted by these campaigns, were paid for with our tax dollars. Is this really how we should be spending our money?
Another Podcast Recommendation
Last week, I shared a few listening recommendations, including some new podcasts I had discovered. This week, I wanted to shout out another episode of the Real Organic Podcast from The Real Organic Project.
In an episode from March that I recently heard, author Austin Frerick describes his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.
I haven’t read the book yet, but the conversation was fascinating. It’s about consolidation in the food industry, and how we are often given an illusion of choice- dozens of brands on a supermarket shelf for example- but in reality, a majority of those brands are owned by a single conglomerate. This happens with peanut butter, coffee, berries, and several other large categories in supermarkets.
He also describes just how big Wal-Mart is when it comes to grocery retailing.
The episode is a good listen and Frerick’s book is on top of my “to read” list now.
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Other Wednesday Walks
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
I’m sitting with the grief of this too and of course how having today as a holiday is supposed to make me free, when freedom and liberation are being taken away in other ways for me.