A FRAMEWORK FOR DETECTING PSYOPS
The playbook hasn't changed. Only the costumes have. Here's how to read it.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” -Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd
Something useful today, particularly if you spend any meaningful time on social media...which I suspect most of you do, even reluctantly.
What follows is a systematic methodology for identifying psychological operations before they fully materialize. Five analytical phases. Run through them in sequence and you’ll start to see what’s actually happening behind the curtain, rather than reacting to whatever they’ve decided you should be reacting to this week.
Let me be clear upfront: I’m not interested in arguing for or against any specific cause célèbre...BLM, ICE, fill in your preferred tribal flashpoint. That’s the noise. The whole point of this framework is to stop getting dragged into the noise and start watching where the pressure is building. The probability that those in power have our interests genuinely at heart is, to put it charitably, vanishingly thin. History makes this point rather forcefully. It’s not cynicism...it’s pattern recognition.
PHASE ONE: WHERE’S THE PRESSURE BUILDING? (SORAM)
Watch for pressure accumulating across five areas simultaneously.
Societal - moral panics, us-vs-them language.
Operational - drills and simulations (always a tell, always).
Regulatory - laws being passed “just in case.”
Alignment - when government, media, tech companies, academia, and NGOs all start singing from the same hymn sheet.
Media - everyone using identical language and talking points.
Here’s what these look like in practice right now.
Societal. The pressure shows up as manufactured division...framing resistance to official agendas as dangerous extremism, softening the population for whatever control measures come next.
California’s 2026 education laws mandate gender-neutral bathrooms, require LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, added The Trevor Project to student IDs, and created a new state Office of Civil Rights to investigate gender/LGBTQ “discrimination.”
Parents raising concerns are implicitly cast as threats to “inclusive environments” or child safety. Classic us-vs-them.
Meanwhile, anyone who questioned the 2020–2023 mass-vaccination rollout still gets quietly grouped with “conspiracy elements” in polite institutional discourse. These people are nothing if not persistent.
Operational. The drills and simulations deserve particular attention...Event 201 preceded COVID, and anyone paying attention at the time could see what was being rehearsed.
In 2025–2026: WHO-led pandemic preparedness simulations in Bhutan and Korea (fictional virus, rapid vaccine development), Operation Outbreak (used by FBI and CDC for student and government scenarios), avian influenza tabletop exercises in the Netherlands, BioHub expansions for mpox and SARS-CoV-2 variants. All running alongside the May 2025 WHO Pandemic Agreement and September 2025 IHR amendments. The script is familiar. Whether the sequel matches the original remains to be seen.
Regulatory. California’s AB 715, SB 760, AB 727...civil rights offices, gender-neutral bathroom mandates, LGBTQ resources on student IDs...all passed under the banner of “protecting vulnerable youth”.
Some jurisdictions are also quietly retaining COVID-era emergency infrastructure, the tools conveniently kept sharp for the next “public health” moment. Laws passed “just in case” have a funny habit of being used exactly as intended.
Alignment. When disparate institutions suddenly harmonize, pay attention. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther (2025) coordinates public-private efforts to brand broad criticism of Israeli policy as “Hamas support network” activity. Targeting, defunding, deportation, and professional ostracism is their strategy. Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Antisemitism, State Department briefings, and IHRA-style definitions pushed across academia and NGOs...all running on the same track like they were all racing the same 100 meter dash.
On the pandemic side: WHO’s Pandemic Agreement, governments, academia, and NGOs coordinating on “equity and preparedness,” building on the original institutional lockstep of 2020–2023. The word “coordination” does a lot of heavy lifting here.
Media. Watch the language. “Israel’s right to defend itself.” “Hamas support network.” “Gender-affirming care is lifesaving.” “Inclusive learning environment.” “Safe and effective.” “Politicization of science.” These phrases don’t emerge independently across hundreds of outlets. Identical talking points appearing simultaneously is not a coincidence...it’s a distribution network.
PHASE TWO: WHAT SEEDS ARE BEING PLANTED? (PRISM)
Five things to look for:
precursor anomalies (weird stuff happening that makes no sense yet),
repetition cycles (same slogans on loop),
introduced villains (suddenly there’s a simple enemy),
symbolism injection (branded messaging everywhere), and…
manufactured urgency (act now or die).
The goal is to plant acceptance of top-down restructuring...economic, behavioral, financial, technological...so that populations eventually demand or at least tolerate “the fix.”
Precursor anomalies. The ECB completed preparatory work on the digital euro by late 2025, and India expanded its e-rupee pilot...up 334% in circulation, now the second-largest CBDC program globally. The BIS Innovation Hub ran cross-border pilots (Rialto, Aurum 2.0), and the U.S. blocked retail CBDC via executive order while pushing stablecoin regulation. On the surface: modernization. In practice: building the rails for programmable money, behavior-linked payments, and financial surveillance. These are precursors that only connect once adoption is pushed. Also worth noting...the U.S. Genesis Mission, under executive order (November 2025), launched a coordinated federal AI push modeled explicitly on wartime urgency, alongside efforts to override state AI regulations in favor of a single national framework. Nothing suspicious there.
Repetition cycles. “Net zero.” “Just transition.” “Tipping point.” “AI dominance.” Pick up any institutional report from 2025–2026 and these phrases appear with metronomic regularity...IEA, WRI, OECD, UNEP, Davos. A UK study showed public support for faster-than-2050 net-zero targets has roughly halved since 2021. Doesn’t matter. The institutions repeat anyway. The point isn’t persuasion anymore...it’s normalization.
Introduced villains. A UK government educational role-play game, widely circulated in 2025, introduced the villain “Amelia”...a character proud of her heritage and worried about mass immigration...as the archetype far-right extremist for schoolchildren. Quite something. Meanwhile, another villain, “climate deniers”, remain a reliable institutional punching bag, and China plays the existential villain in the AI narrative. Simple enemies, simple solutions, no nuance required.
Symbolism injection. Corporate ESG badges, “net-zero aligned” product lines, circular-economy logos, sustainable packaging...everywhere, on everything, regardless of whether underlying policy support is strengthening or collapsing. The 2026 Kantar marketing trends show green branding accelerating even as the politics fragment. The association being built is compliance = virtue = modernity. Whether you’ve noticed it or not, you’ve been marinating in it.
Manufactured urgency. The WRI 2025 report declares “we are not on track,” “irreversible cascades,” “shift into emergency gear,” and “angels must step in where governments fall short.” The Genesis Mission is a “pivotal moment” requiring an effort “comparable to the Manhattan Project.” Davos 2026 warns: dominate AI now or lose the century to the villain, China. The window is always closing. It’s always the last moment to act. After enough iterations, you start to notice the pattern.
PHASE THREE: HOW LIKELY IS THIS? (NARS/PPI)
This phase turns your gut feeling into structured probability. Score the operation against five variables. High scores across multiple variables means treat it as probable coordinated effort, and not organic chaos.
Narrative volatility...hysterical emotional language.
Authority involvement...experts and officials are endorsing it.
Repeat historical patterns...we’ve seen this playbook before.
Cognitive load...the population is exhausted and overwhelmed.
Sentiment inversion...suddenly everything you believed is backwards.
On narrative volatility: climate “tipping points” hysteria is running at full volume...“emergency gear,” “irreversible cascades,” “we are not on track”...even as public urgency drops. The AI narrative swings between “transformative revolution” and “existential race against our villain, China.” Neither register is particularly calm.
On authority involvement: the ECB, BIS Innovation Hub, 137 jurisdictions representing 98% of global GDP...all coordinated on digital finance infrastructure. Federal agencies, Davos participants, and tech lobbying blocs all aligned behind Genesis Mission AI mandates. When central banks and governments and international bodies all arrive at the same “independent” conclusion simultaneously, it’s worth wondering about the meeting that preceded it.
On repeat historical patterns: the net-zero cycle mirrors the 1970s global cooling scare, then the Al Gore “12 years left” era, then the current “tipping points” campaign...emergency declarations, missed deadlines, revised emergency declarations. The UK’s Amelia game echoes the post-9/11 “domestic terrorist” expansion playbook almost exactly. The scripts don’t change much because they work.
On cognitive load: persistent energy cost spikes from net-zero policies, AI-driven job displacement anxiety, CBDC uncertainty, geopolitical tension, inflation, policy whiplash. A population already battered and beaten down by overlapping crises is a population more receptive to “just let the experts manage the big transitions.” Authorities know this. After all, it’s by design. For example, the reports on waning public climate urgency explicitly note the burnout...and then leverage it.
On sentiment inversion: cheap reliable energy and secure borders used to be bipartisan common sense. Now one is “denialism” and the other is “extremism.” AI was a job-killer and surveillance risk; now it’s “essential for national survival.” Physical cash and financial privacy were defaults; digital programmable currencies are “modern inclusion.” The speed of these inversions is itself informative.
Score four or five of those variables and you’re looking at probable coordinated operation, not spontaneous social development.
PHASE FOUR: WHAT COMES NEXT? (TRAPN)
Predict the progression:
Tension (fear-based messaging ramps up),
Rally (coordinated calls to action),
Authority (enforcement and censorship kick in),
Polarization (you’re with us or against us), and…
Normalization (new habits form, old reality gets memory-holed).
Tension is running at full volume...“tipping points imminent,” “existential AI race,” crisis language across climate, digital finance, and geopolitical narratives.
Rally is underway...24 U.S. Climate Alliance governors coordinated new emissions initiatives in September 2025; corporations issued fresh net-zero pledges; the ECB rallied member states around the digital euro as a “strategic safeguard”; BIS coordinated cross-border pilots with public calls for adoption framed around “resilience.”
Authority has begun activating...California’s CARB opened enforcement dockets on climate disclosure laws; EU sustainability disclosure rules moved into enforcement phase; New York AG set precedent with settlements over “unsubstantiated net-zero claims”; the European Commission launched investigations into Meta and Google AI policies; U.S. executive orders directed agencies to override state AI rules and withhold funding from resistors.
Polarization is sharpening...the February 2026 IEA meeting ended without a communiqué, with the U.S. pushing to abandon net-zero while Europe doubled down. Binary framing is now explicit: “with the transition or blocking progress.” The UK educational materials cast national sovereignty concerns as the lone villain in an otherwise tolerant world.
Normalization is locking in...CBDC pilots and stablecoin frameworks are presented as inevitable modernization; cash and financial privacy concerns are quietly repositioned as quaint. Corporate ESG reporting has become standard business practice. AI integration in governance is framed as “essential,” not optional. Previous debates about energy abundance or unregulated innovation are already being treated as historical curiosities.
This operation is well into the back half of the playbook. That’s worth understanding.
PHASE FIVE: HOW DOES IT WORK ON PEOPLE?
Two models are useful here.
The FATE model...focus, authority, tribe, emotion. Under coordinated pressure, those four levers predictably narrow what people are willing to consider, who they trust, what group identity they’re defending, and what emotional state they’re making decisions from. When all four are engaged simultaneously, behavior becomes remarkably predictable.
The Six-Axis model maps suggestibility across focus, openness, connection, suggestibility, compliance, and expectancy. Exhausted, tribally activated, emotionally elevated populations score higher on the suggestibility axes. This is not accidental.
The practical takeaway is simple enough: if you understand how the manipulation operates on human cognition, you stop being quite so susceptible to it. You’re not catching yourself arguing about the individual wedge issues ... the BLMs, the ICEs, the Amelias ... because you’ve stepped back far enough to see them as components of a larger pressure system.
Don’t try to predict events. Predict where pressure is building.
And learn to tell the difference between solutions that actually solve problems versus those specifically designed to teach you to adapt to a new reality.
Those are very different things.