In March, the United States Special Operations Command, the section of the Defense Department supervising the US Special Forces, held a conference on the theme of "Sovereignty in the Information Age." The conference brought together Special Forces officers with domestic police forces, including officials from the New York Police Department, and representatives from technology companies such as Microsoft.
This meeting of top military, police and corporate representatives went unreported and unpublicized at the time. However, the Atlantic Council recently published a 21-page document summarizing the orientation of the proceedings. It is authored by John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the US Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.
[...] The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. "Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important.... In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public's increased trust in them as institutions."
But this is only the beginning. Online newspapers should "consider disabling commentary systems—the function of allowing the general public to leave comments beneath a particular media item," while social media companies should "use a grading system akin to that used to rate the cleanliness of restaurants" to rate their users' political statements.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/pers-o05.html
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Tuesday October 09 2018, @06:25PM
When I read this I don't see some evil plan to combine corporations and military. They already work in tandem, and have forever.
I see the Military doing what it does. I then see it being bifurcated, and use as talking points for someone else's agenda to further polarize the electorate.
As long as the Democratic party and the Republican party both continue to fund the Military Industrial Complex, this is a bi-partisan result from a well funded military.
Isn't the bottom line about our information sovereignty? I have not been able to reconcile the folks that don't like immigrants, 'cuz they talk funny, but want to shoot the shit with propagandists from around the world.