Operation Warped Science: Part 2
Disease Warfare in the Hands of the Intelligence Community & the DoD
In early 2020, a novel coronavirus swept across the globe. By the time the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, several red flags were already clear. One particularly troubling issue was the inconsistency in terminology from the start. During those first months, while the United States was still holding its breath, the name of the new pathogen changed multiple times—an issue that anyone prudent would try to avoid. Changing the name of a virus during the initial stages of a global pandemic, when accurate information is sparse but desperately needed, is a terrible idea.
The last thing health officials should have done was make the messaging confusing and inconsistent, but they did.
What was this new pathogen called? 2019-nCoV, nCoV-SARS-2, Wuhan-nCoV, or SARS2 Coronavirus?, I couldn’t help but wonder where all the other ‘novel’ viruses were—especially those that received the “n-” designation in their names. When MERS appeared in the summer of 2012, it wasn’t called “nMERS-CoV” or “n-CoV-MERS.”
MERS was a “novel” coronavirus, so why didn’t it get the novel title? What about influenza, which mutates every year, resulting in new variants? Are they not considered novel? What about Ebola, Zika, Dengue, or Nipah? Look at any “novel” pathogen from the past 20 years, and yet only 2019-nCoV (SARS-CoV-2) gets called “novel” in its nomenclature. The only reason the virus and the ensuing global pandemic should be called “novel” is when alluding to how much this pandemic has the tenets of a plot straight out of a James Patterson novel.
Confusing language isn’t just an “oopsie,” and certainly not in the midst of a public health emergency—it’s unprofessional and dangerous. Manipulated language is also a clear sign that someone is lying, and such grandiose obfuscations bear the scent of a psychological operation—more specifically, a form known as Cognitive Warfare.
We’ve all heard about Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), but what is cognitive warfare? According to NATO, “Cognitive Warfare includes activities conducted in synchronization with other instruments of power to affect attitudes and behaviors by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual, group, or population-level cognition to gain an advantage over an adversary. Designed to modify perceptions of reality, whole-of-society manipulation has become a new norm, with human cognition shaping up to be a critical realm of warfare.”
What is their agenda here? As NATO further explains:
“Cognitive Warfare focuses on attacking and degrading rationality, which can lead to the exploitation of vulnerabilities and systemic weakening.”
Since the start of the pandemic, we have been subjected to propaganda, rampant censorship, manipulation of language, dismissed civil liberties, and the vilifying of common sense and even “doing your own research.” Cognitive Warfare has been waged against the citizens of the world, and now virtually everything we hear, see, and read is geared not to inform us but to confuse us into submission.
Further examples of this cognitive mayhem came as the United States crafted a response to the pandemic. On May 15, 2020, President Trump and his administration created a Department of Defense (DoD) and Health and Human Services (HHS) public-private partnership called “Operation Warp Speed” (OWS). Less than a year later, President Biden renamed OWS to the COVID-19 Countermeasures Acceleration Group (CAG) on May 1, 2021. Nine months later, the Biden administration changed the name again, this time to The HHS Coordination Operations and Response Element (HCORE). This alteration of the title of our nation’s biggest and most expensive public health emergency was not just the result of a new administration—it was intentional Cognitive Warfare.
The goal here is for those who wish to be informed to end up confused.
The information inconsistencies were so rampant that it’s practically impossible to chalk it all up to mere coincidence. Operation Warp Speed was a public-private partnership with the DoD and HHS. The chosen leader for the DoD portion of OWS was General Gustav Perna, a four-star Army General known for his ability to manage logistics for the Army, successfully overseeing massive military projects. General Perna retired in 2021, no longer leading the DoD’s hand in OWS.
On the HHS side, leading the effort was Moncef Slaoui, former head of vaccines for GlaxoSmithKline, who had over 30 years of experience at the company before leaving in 2017. That same year, Slaoui became a member of the Board of Directors for one of the main COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, Moderna.
Former DARPA employee Matthew Hepburn was also chosen to help manage OWS. Hepburn, now at the Office of Science and Technology & Policy, was instrumental in how OWS was conducted, mirroring its structure and portfolio after that of DARPA’s. It is worth noting that Hepburn was responsible for being the program manager for DARPA’s ADEPT-PROTECT program.
ADEPT (the Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention Program) had been active since 2011 and aimed to shrink vaccine production time to just 60 days. The program also fast-tracked medical countermeasures like monoclonal antibodies and partnered with Moderna in 2013. DARPA gave $25 million to Moderna years before the young pharmaceutical company had even produced a single marketable drug.
With the pandemic response being largely overseen by the Department of Defense, the public had enough evidence to be apprehensive. Only a fraction of the conflicts of interest have been mentioned so far, but still, even those few would further fuel a skeptic’s concerns. All the while, we were being told that 2 million Americans could die by the end of 2020, the lab leak origin was a right-wing conspiracy theory, we had to mask, then unmask, but then double mask and embrace the “new normal.”
Fortunately, time has allowed for research to start catching up to the COVID-19 response, and we as a nation are beginning to wake up to the situation we’ve found ourselves in now. If NATO’s definition of ‘Cognitive Warfare’ is correct and their goal is “designed to modify perceptions of reality, whole-of-society manipulation has become a new norm,” then we are fortunate that one of the best ways to combat Cognitive Warfare is also the easiest,
All that is needed to ensure a strong defense is improving critical thinking skills. Social literacy is vital to empowering individuals to carefully question and inspect sources of information, making us more capable of naming and thwarting the manipulation tactics that come with a Cognitive Warfare attack.
Please check back in for parts 3 & 4 in this series
Sources:
https://archive.is/l3niV American Affairs, Adler, David. 2021
https://www.jwc.nato.int/application/files/7216/9804/8564/CognitiveWarfare.pdf
NATO NEW CONCEPTS JWC 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20200124175509/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/index.html 2019-nCoV CDC page: Archived from January 24, 2020.
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/JAMS_7_Packard.pdf CAG/OWS Journal of Advanced Military Studies vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 2022 || https://doi.org/10.21140/mcuj.20221301007
https://web.archive.org/web/20171201033302/https://www.amc.army.mil/Portals/9/Documents/Bios/AMC_BIO%20Perna%20OCT%202017.pdf?ver=2017-10-19-155832-190 General Perna Bio 2017
https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/29/operation-warp-speed-now-the-cag-is-here-to-stay/ Statnews, 2021
https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/ADEPTVignetteFINAL.pdf?ref=theflstandard.com DARPA
ADEPT PROTECT.
https://ispe.org/people/matthew-hepburn-md Matthew Hepburn Biography, 2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncef_Slaoui Slaoui Wikipedia, 2024
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/darpa-awards-moderna-therapeutics-a-grant-for-up-to-25-million-to-develop-messenger-rna-therapeutics-226115821.html PRNEWS Oct 2013 Moderna DARPA