

Cognitive Infiltration

   


Obama Advisor Promotes ‘Cognitive Infiltration’
Cass Sunstein is President Obama’s Harvard Law School friend, and
recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs.
In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up
the question of “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” (J. Political
Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president’s ear.
This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What
does he here propose?
[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of
extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of
extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting
either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously)
will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts
about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups,
thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)
Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language
and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?
•It is “extremists” who “supply” “conspiracy theories.”
•Their “hard core” must be “broken up” with distinctive tactics. What
tactics?
•“Infiltration” (“cognitive”) of groups with questions about official
explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?
•“Government agents or their allies,” virtually (i.e. on-line) or in
“real-space” (as at meetings), and “either openly or anonymously,”
though “infiltration” would imply the latter. What will these agents do?
•Undermine “crippled epistemology” — one’s theory and technique of
knowledge. How will they do this?
•By “planting doubts” which will “circulate.” Will these doubts be
beneficial?
•Certainly. Because they will introduce “cognitive diversity.”
Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration
of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11
Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader?
Eat the Rich?
It’s easy to destroy groups with “cognitive diversity.” You just take up
meeting time with arguments to the point where people don’t come back.
You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand
revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.
We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents
are called “provocateurs” — even if only “cognitive.” One learns to
smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But
even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust
within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory
discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of
organization and communication” — which Sunstein applauds as
“desirable.” “[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the
group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides.” (p.225).
And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a
scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

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