Nazi-saluting billionaire Elon Musk’s X app will be pivotal in a new wave of pro-US propaganda spread through American embassies. A cable sent to embassies around the world encourages staff to use X for psychological influence operations.
Commenting on the directive, a report by the Guardian, which has seen the document (signed by secretary of state Marco Rubio), states it instructs:
embassies and consulates [to] work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation.
This likely means substituting foreign propaganda with American disinformation.
The Guardian’s Washington correspondent, Joseph Gedeon, also noted that the cable:
endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it …[and]… lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.
The news comes as the US is getting spanked daily by Iranian memes and AI videos.
The message highlights five areas where US propaganda will focus:
countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls “telling America’s story”.
The US will recruit Influencers, academics and community leaders in target countries And also develop an approach designed:
to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed.
This already sounds very convincing…
A direct threat to US interests?
The cable also states that ‘enemy’ campaigns seek to:
shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms
The paper warned that:
Using digital platforms, state-controlled media, and influence operations, they pose a direct threat to US national security and fuel hostility toward American interests.
The cable also instructs embassies to work with:
“the Department of War’s Psychological Operations” – the military unit more commonly known as Miso, or Military Information Support Operations, formerly Psyop, which is part of the Pentagon.
The US State Department told the Guardian that Sarah Rogers, the new under-secretary for diplomacy, had made countering foreign propaganda a priority. A spokesperson reminded the Guardian that leftwing groups were being framed as linked to foreign powers and targeted for US influence operations:
The state department also noted that Rogers had already drawn attention for a separate report to Congress identifying Code Pink and several other leftwing activist organizations as vectors of Chinese influence operations inside the United States.
The fact this information is now in the public domain may disappoint situational analysts who love to refer to everything as a PSYOP.
Presumably this particular guessing game is much less fun when the US publicly announces its running PSYOPs. Hate that for you, lads.
Though maybe—just maybe— the announcement is itself a PSYOP…*plays X Files music.*
Featured image via the Canary
