The Battlefield of Digital Addiction

By Sean Alexander Carney

A dangerous shift

Digital addiction is a socially transmitted “disease” of our times arising from our “subjectification” which is the process of constituting you or I as an object of knowledge by power relations acting upon us.

We see widespread digital addiction from excessive internet engagement. Excessive video gaming (VG) time causes a condition recognised in 2019 by W.H.O. called “gaming disorder.” There has been growing aggression in children addicted to violent social online-gaming. Mental health issues from excessive screen time are crippling society. According to a 2020 study of internet addiction on mental health, “The excessive use of the Internet leads to psychological injury, mental health damage, and other health problems.”

In our current context industry figures, non governmental organisations (NGOs), intelligence agencies, politicians, the military, celebrities and other poles of influence are shaping society into a tool of technology. This “steering group” of stakeholders in our future of “subjectification” mediates our technological attitudes and addictions for the purpose of achieving influence and mastery over human beings across the spectrum of society. They sell “digital transformation”, but it is more a metamorphosis of the psyche towards a state of surrender, and possession, as if some virulent contagion or parasite is at work upon us.

Technocratic interests are meticulously mediating our experience online as a continuous social experiment transforming our society in the same way a war would if it were waged by non-kinetic means. A silent and silencing war to dissipate resistance, for the object of achieving compliance. Through managing this experiment it has proven possible for these interests to non-kinetically drive society’s addiction and to “crave” its own disempowerment. This is because society addictively craves the technology that is disempowering them. It is leaving people “strung out” as if it were “electronic heroin” paving the way for unimpeded societal transformation while swathes of society are feeling digitally induced health impacts and symptoms of digital addiction.

Society’s intensifying digital engagement makes the problem of digital addiction-related mental health issues seem almost insurmountable. Digital addiction is a condition that is normalised and reinforced by the technocracy the addiction serves.

There seems a curious “need” for people to protect coveted technologies from attack or criticism. It is stark in our society. Their devices have a deep and tight hold on their lives, and “feel” part of them and their very identity.

People feel integrated, empowered and “normal” by owning an internet-connecting wireless digital device, also privileged, progressive, and socially accepted. However, by normalising society’s addiction to technology, and defending technology as if it were our very being, we have moved from being a society that perceives itself empowered by world of digital tools, to becoming the tools of the digitally-created worlds that we have empowered. In that transformation, the attitude of consumers appears to have shifted to not what we might expect of industry, but to prioritising what industry expects of us in our consumption of technology.

It is a dangerous shift, for as we’ll discover, industry is driven by the priorities of powerful intelligence agencies and military imperatives concerning data (intelligence) acquisition for strategic cognitive operations, profitability and sustained power and influence.

These intel-obsessed forces have from the beginning shaped the internet, its purposes, and the tools to access it. They continue to do so because it represents the battlefield for our minds and control of it can mobilise society’s will through optimised surveillance that offers the prospect of instantaneously changing the target’s beliefs via internet connected devices. Digital addiction is therefore politically “desirable”. The casualties are mounting as if struck by a contagion, spurred by the “convenience” digital devices clearly offer. Addiction and contagion are concepts that properly describe mental and physical impacts injurious to society from exposure to the myriad “viral” technologies, epitomised by the smart phone.

The “chemical wedding” of you to your digital device

You might know how to use a smart phone but do you know if you are addicted to it, or why? Smart phone addiction has been called “smartphone dependence” and also nomophobia, meaning NO MObile PHOne phoBIA – the fear of being unable to access a smart phone or other internet connected smart device. If you feel disempowered when you are parted from your smart phone, then you have let it have the power to control you. That small object? How can that happen?

The smart phone is a portable, hand-held device that can easily disempower you, because of the chemical changes it causes in the brain. A smart phone can potentially leave one with a weakened immune system and toxicity in the body leading to degeneration, fatigue and illness – but not before altering your “chemical” relationship to this wireless internet-connecting smart device. Our attitude to it matters.

It is fruitful to view the device as a “smart” parasite that fools us into thinking it is “part of us” for it chemically infiltrates us. The analogy of the parasite is apt. Consider, for example, that the parasite Toxoplasma gondii has been linked to “addictive and obsessive behaviours” (and other neurological and psychiatric disorders).

Like the addictive smart phones the Toxoplasma gondii species affects serotonin and dopamine levels, taking control of you. Serotonin influences emotion and impulse control, sleep, and wakefulness while dopamine relates to mood, and addictive behaviours. Toxoplasma gondii dramatically increases dopamine levels (like when you are scrolling through internet content on a plasma touch-screen). Dopamine is a chemical that also affects mobility and behaviour, “regulate[s] emotional responses, and increases stimulation to your pleasure seeking and reward centers, much like addictive substances do.”

It is fascinating how the parasite (found in feline excreted waste, wild game and contaminated food and water) alters the behaviour of the host, much like the internet-connected smart phone does.

Scientists have linked the smart phone (and Toxoplasma gondii) to obsessive-compulsive disorders, and other forms of mental illness. Like the popular smart phone, which has fuelled chronic use of “brain-hacking” social media – leading to impacts like FOMO (fear of missing out), negative body image, and other damaging influences on mood and feelings – the Toxoplasma gondii parasite lowers serotonin levels in the host, chemically hijacking wellbeing and brain function. Low serotonin (a neurotransmitter) is linked to obsessive-compulsive behaviour and can cause physical and mental health problems.

Behaviour and mood problems, sleep and appetite issues, high stress levels, anxiety, and depression are some of the symptoms of lowered serotonin. Lowered serotonin caused through digital addiction compels craving more dopamine influx, from more internet and social media engagement. Riding the dopamine “wave” leads to crashes and cravings whereby person can easily become addicted to their devices, caught in the vicious cycle.

Sleep is another thing smart phones deprive people of (by suppressing melatonin, a hormone that makes you feel tired and regulates sleep, while raising serotonin, the neurotransmitter that keeps us wakeful and alert). Getting a good night’s sleep has long protected us from all manner of disease, including parasite infections. Sleep is an investment in our immune systems, however the blue light emitted from smart phone screens in the evenings can hijack our circadian rhythm and disrupts it. In 2015 a Deloitte survey found “that around 59% of smartphone users checked a social media platform in the five minutes before going to bed, and within 30 minutes of waking up.” According UNICEF, “screens hijack attention spans.”

Digital addiction not only alters the brain but causes physical detriments. As Apple Insider notes, “excessive…screen time has been linked to the development of myopia — or nearsightedness…looking at screens for too long can physically change the structure of the eyeball, causing it to elongate from front to back….Some experts believe that by 2050, over 50% of people will have myopia. This is especially true for children whose eyes are more likely to deform with increased screen usage.” Screens bring radiation. The LED (Light Emitting Diode) frequencies radiating off screens are bombarding our retinas. We have invited an unpleasant parasite into our lives hijacking our health in countless ways.

Parasite resistance is part of our evolution and in the short time we’ve been exposed to mobile phones during that evolution many people in our society register that there is a problem of addiction and can see the parasite is destroying lives. They are realising it is time to purge the digital parasite’s influence by reducing screen time and use of the internet to focus on real-life interactions and quality time. This pursuit is known as a “digital detox.”

The following excerpt will make it clear why a digital detox is worth considering:

“:…research has shown that smartphone use affects health and well-being, performance, and social interactions. Regarding health-related problems, studies have found that smartphone use is related to higher depression rates and anxiety (Lepp et al., 2014), sleep difficulties (Thomée, 2018), and also musculoskeletal problems in case of smartphone overuse (İNal et al., 2015). Furthermore, a predominance of empirical results indicates a negative association between smartphone use and academic performance (Amez & Baert, 2020), which corresponds with results showing that smartphone overuse is related to lower work productivity and engagement (e.g., Duke & Montag, 2017). Moreover, smartphone use also increases negative affect or stress and reduces the quality of interactions when individuals focus on their own smartphones during social interactions (so-called phubbing; McDaniel & Radesky, 2018; Nuñez et al., 2020).

Even though some of the negative associations between digital technology use and health and well-being are small (Dienlin & Johannes, 2020; Orben & Przybylski, 2019a; Orben & Przybylski, 2019b), smartphone users are concerned about their own smartphone use. For example, research has demonstrated that smartphone users blog about the need to spend time away from their smartphones (Jorge, 2019; Kuntsman & Miyake, 2016), or even search for strategies to better manage their online time, e.g., with the help of applications such as iOS Screen Time, Android Digital Well-Being, Moment, Forest, Quality Time, Detox, Space, or OffTime. Furthermore, groups have organized an annual National (and Global) Day of Unplugging, which have been held for several years now with many followers (National Day of Unplugging, n.d.). Thus, it is not surprising that mass media present unplugging from smartphones as a trendy way to reduce the negative impact from smartphone use on health-related outcomes. Self-help tips are available on many platforms, such as social media, websites, and books with titles such as 24/6: The power of unplugging one day a week(Price, 2018; Shlain, 2019; Syvertsen, 2017). The concerns expressed in these texts reflect general concerns about smartphone use, and advice is given on how to rebalance one’s life by restricting smartphone use (Syvertsen, 2017). In a similar vein, holiday tour operators promote so-called digital detox camps or centers and “mobile free” holidays. All aim to help people escape from everyday digital connectivity. Particularly in Asia such holidays and events are booming (Collier, 2009; Dickinson et al., 2016; Syvertsen, 2017).”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20501579211028647

How smart phones and other digital devices wirelessly connected to the internet have evolved within society has become a health crisis in the making affecting learning, productivity, and mental health. It is out of this crisis that people are striving to become set free from the hold digital technology has on their lives by digital distancing.

To illustrate the hold it has, the smart phone has been regularly portrayed as the purveyor of society’s “electronic/digital heroin.” When the Blackberry (marking the beginning of the smart phone era, and providing the addictive blueprint) was released it was dubbed a “crackberry” because of its addict-ability. It was even marketed as “always on, always connected.”

I have likened the smart phone’s hold and effects to a“parasite infection” controlling the host. It has also been regarded as an “electromagnetic weapon” for other aspects of its mental and physical impacts on people. It’s a very interesting shortlist of characteristics for one of the most popular digital devices. How the device is influencing wellbeing and health should give us every reason to consider digital distancing in the form of a digital detox.

Perhaps you know someone reducing their screen time, maybe you are for the same reason – there is a life of fresh potential beyond the “parasitic” consequences of living life through a smart phone.

Inheriting our symptoms of “tech” envy and digital addiction

The above shortlist of three analogies for the detrimental impacts of smart phone technology is interesting because it looks like a set of research criteria that have profoundly obsessed the military. Today, technology is preying upon military soldiers in the form of digitally induced “gaming addiction” which “may be particularly problematic in a military context, in which task performance often requires optimal physical and mental functioning.”

It is somewhat ironic to realise even the military is buckling from technology addiction. Particularly when we ask the question “where does our technology come from?” That question holds the key to all technology addiction, because military innovations in technology drives the industries and Big Tech companies who mediate products like smart technologies and sell it to the public in its very addictive consumer forms.

All of our technology is developed and handed down courtesy of the military, and intelligence agencies, who continue to guide Big Tech in the development and direction of the internet and the smart phone as well as the other military-grade technologies that society craves.

The military has an addiction to technology, or is it technological supremacy? That has become the fate of most people in our society as well. In our society, people buy into the social status of technological supremacy, competing against others to enhance their image and flaunt the best tech money can buy. Governments are also doing this, and encouraging it.

Integral to all our lives?

We are told digital technology is integral to our lives, but whose lives? Not all of our lives. Digital developments have created a “digital divide”, a strategic and political tool where the phrase “don’t be left behind in the race” keeps affluent consumers of “transformative” technology feeling superior. The lower income classes are conversely “in line and waiting” and the divide also keeps the developing countries needy, open to bribes and groping for a foothold on the digital economic ladder.

The divide also creates a justification for changing laws, accelerating roll outs, seizing municipal infrastructure for 5G small cell distribution and to erect transmitters in rural and other previously inaccessible, protected, or even “holy” spaces (including church steeples and even 5G mobile network expansion in the Holy Mosque in Makkah). But can such an aggressive “race” even close the internet accessibility gap a.k.a. digital divide, and at what price?

In the UK 5G infrastructure was legislated into law as a national security concern, and in the US the National Strategy to Secure 5G was launched with CISA (which works with industry leaders). This move in both countries was justified by pointing to Chinese network provider Huawei’s potential to collect intelligence for the Chinese government by supplying network technologies in these countries. (What about the UK or US government potential to collect intelligence from network usage? 5G’s “Internet of Things (IoT) has been called a “hackers paradise,” making it all too easy.)

The defence of 5G was deemed a national security “priority” essential for military strategy and keeping society in line online, for war in the future is cognitive, non-kinetic, cyber warfare (and most likely waged on native citizens to keep hearts and minds in the latest war game). The military’s purpose after all is effective influence over the status quo, and it is done less by force and more by wireless technology and internet access these days. NATO, for example, are now intimately entwined in the public’s “digital addiction” and are geared to wage cognitive attacks through the internet’s information streams. The internet has become the theatre of war.

The “theatre of war” is the laboratory for testing the technological products of the military industrial complex and parading them to the public in the drama of a national or international military emergency. The second world war was like a “Great World Fair” for accelerating social and industrial transformation, and for shaping public opinions and expectations about future wars. 

The “shock and awe” of technology and accelerating societal transformation amidst the trauma and uncertainty of the Second World War established a template for all wars that followed. Defeating fascism was pushed forefront in the public mind, to protect culture, freedoms and values rooted in history, however, the architects of that war and future warfare didn’t really see eradication of fascism as their chief goal. Technological innovation helped to fuel a powerful narrative of cultural perpetuation that the public wanted to believe in, and it worked to oil the wheels of the war machine – still does.

The Second World War was a symptom of compulsive international “tech” envy that has become fixed and defended in our society, and manifests now as digital addiction and its associated mental health problems are blossoming.

The priority of the allies in WWII was not so much to defeat the German fascist ideology (Nazism) but the theft of German Nazi (Axis Powers) technologies for the prospect of better controlling populations in the military strategic realm, and the consumer realm, which would be reinforced by the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to come as the enchantment of technology for social control took firm root.

Technological addiction for ideological imperatives of social control

At the close of WWII the allies acquired their haul of Nazi technology. German research facilities were seized. A selected group of captured Nazi scientists with their families, many of whom were working on atomic and electromagnetic research were treated like a venerable “prize” and were distributed between the allies to further develop their work (see Operation Paperclip).

Operation Paperclip was a program run by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA which assisted in their recruitment “…by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records”.

The nonprofit media organization, NPR reports, “They all had different trajectories, but none of them seemed to have been held accountable for what happened and what they were involved in during the war. Dr. Benzinger, who was one of the Nazi doctors, came here, and when he died at the age of ninety-something he had a wonderful obituary in The New York Times lauding him for inventing the ear thermometer. Entirely left out of the story was the work that he performed on concentration camp prisoners….Wernher von Braun, who went on to design the rockets [for NASA] that took man to the moon…[was not only] a Nazi, but a member of the SS. And not only was he running the underground slave labor facility where his rockets were being built — he wasn’t running the facility but he was in charge of the science there — but when they were running low of good technicians, Wernher von Braun himself traveled nearby to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he hand-picked slaves to work for him as laborers.”

The “trusted” allies made it all look so easy, protecting perpetrators of warcrimes. The allies consisted of countries now formally referred to as the United Nations (UN) which included the “Big Four”: the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union and China. Tech envy, not the desire from liberation from fascism, ensured “more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945–59. Some were former members and leaders of the Nazi Party.”

Being major players in that war, the UK, USA and USSR all gained what they needed to develop nuclear power programs, nuclear weapons, ultrasonic weapons, and surveillance, broadcasting, communications and radar capabilities using electromagnetic waves, with many of the captured Nazis (including high ranking SS officers) working in NASA and the CIA, even at the UN gaining highly influential posts that had significant impacts on our society, technologically and ideologically, as well as guiding the trajectory and nature of electronic technology for public consumption.

Sustaining technological addiction

Was it really a war for sustaining technological addiction? We know that was the absolute priority and not the defeat of fascism, the Final Solution, or the rescue of victims of concentration camps, because documents have since revealed the US at the time knew of the camps and what was going on but did nothing to intervene until it was maximally impacting and flattering for US public relations and the image of a “just” globalising superpower. Consider that as early as “November 25, 1942, many American newspapers published reports that 2 million Jews already had been murdered.”

With their technological booty, and public image as “liberators of Jews” the allies soon parted ways with their partners in crime, the Soviet Communists in the pursuit of wealth and technological supremacy from a planned revolution in military innovation and technological consumerism. The ensuing “The Cold War” saw globalist allies and the Soviet Union both accelerate a nuclear energy and technological arms race and engaging in technology-advancing conflicts in the process to parade their ideological and technological prowess to the public.

During the Cold War the Vietnam War stands out for its subjectification of military forces into a set of statistics, and clandestine operations involving the intelligence services. It wasn’t not just an ideological conflict, but an opportunity to put into practice elements of the unethical CIA experiments such as MKULTRA. It proved opportune for advancing technological innovation, along similar unethical trajectories. Many secret operations and psyops, such as Operation Popeye, Operation “Wandering Soul” and the Phoenix Program are now not so secret.

During the Vietnam War, electronic data was highly valued (although the extent of its strategic application was often controversial). As Donald Fisher Harrison highlighted in Archivaria 26 (Summer 1988), “Historians will highlight discussion of [digital] computer use by the American military establishment during this period…[where] data was used to analyze every facet of the war effort.” Operation “Igloo White was the first real-time, computer-driven surveillance operation program, set up during the Vietnam War…The US military sought to build a virtual fence dividing North and South Vietnam.”

The protracted conflict not only proved crucial for developing strategic computers and data analysis, military operations were also being guided by wireless surveillance, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s and National Security Agency (NSA)’s initial forays into electronic eavesdropping, (radiofrequency surveillance) and other electronic military support for the Department of Defense (DOD) which heralded international deep surveillance projects like Eschelon, PRISM and XKeyscore.

In the Post-Cold War period electronic security exploded, and included massive homeland surveillance emerging from 9/11’s “Patriot Act” which assisted the “the Bush Administration…tapping Americans’ phones without warrants.” The infamous electronic surveillance of the public through track and trace apps and AI hijack of internet activities during the recent “pandemic” further exemplifies the “addiction” to our surveillance inherent in the military industrial complex assisting in the “subjectification” of society.

During the Cold War society lived in the shadow of a technologically induced nuclear threat; but it didn’t come. The real threat has since proven to be rapidly evolving technological surveillance and loss of privacy in the “digital age”. Digital addiction is rampant from heightened dependency on and engagement with the digital technology that assists in advancing the surveillance society through the assigned consumerist goal of complete self-surveillance for state, industry and military control.

Society’s subjectification through technology is full-blown in China, an meanwhile the UN seeks centralised global of governance, often called a “new world order.” NGO control of all “stakeholder” governments has become increasingly obvious from the way UN, WHO and WEF together influence policy and drive international governments to institute rapid reforms for the expansion of technology and the restriction of and culling of human roles in society.

The technocratic ideology dictating change has modelled progress on its judgements of and mistrust of all human beings, expressing this paranoia in the hiking surveillance of the population in the stakeholder countries that play a game of divide and rule through internet-connecting technologies and the media. Society is addicted to the incessant consumption of self-defeating technologies.

Trusted actors are expected to mobilise everyone (stakeholder engagement) supportive of the United Nations (UN) 2030 green-washed technology-based agendas, which are shaped by and steered by industry including the public face of industry the World Economic Forum (WEF) assisting the rebranding of capitalism for assisting public consumption of technology and ultimately a technocratic global government.

Out of the UN-WEF relationship “The UN-Forum Partnership was signed in a meeting held at United Nations headquarters between UN Secretary-General António Guterres and World Economic Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab [both are socialists who are indoctrinated in parasitic Communist ideology that bans property, purges difference of opinion, and diverts all profit and power to the state through coercion and deprivations]. These actors are venerated by governments, many of which are headed by WEF-indoctrinated “Young Global Leaders” accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (which embeds not only demands befitting of Communism but emphasises The UN Digital Cooperation Roadmap to achieve it all).

At the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are specific industry-led technology recommendations as well as guidelines to help “protect people in the digital age.” However, it can’t work because “the digital age” is defined by smart phones and smart technology ownership. Also, it is being spoken of as if it might become a threat when it is a threat already.

Neo-feudalist notions of globalisation blended with Communist themes of “utopia” from the influential NGOs are sustaining the digital divide and spurring the affluent to a digital addiction health crisis that is part of the “transformation” of society which raises specters of the “Five Year Plan,” “Great Leap Forward”, and “Cultural Revolution” where the disempowered and purged populaces paid a heavy price for the goals of industry and the paranoid Communist states venerating its technologies.

The smart phone: tool of the rapidly evolving technological surveillance state

According to the media, and widely accepted narrative, it was in the name of “protection,” not “addiction” that the rapidly evolving technological surveillance state grew. With the fall of Communism and cessation of the Cold War, and the fall of the Twin Towers cognitive bandwidth shrunk amidst fear and uncertainties to fit the propagandised terrorist threat that brought countries into alignment with technological surveillance agendas.

The Cold War nuclear threat and 9/11 shockwave were “traumas” visited on society that were ripe for showcasing security-selling and technology-selling existential threats sure to shift novel consumer units like cell phones and CCTV cameras as if it were simply common sense to self-surveil and publish every moment digitally on a server somewhere.

It’s been copiously noted that each “terror” episode rewarded the National Security Agency (NSA) with sweeping powers to monitor and target individuals electronically, covertly and with impunity in the US. Other nations followed with their own heightened surveillance of the public. Surveillance of this electronically invasive nature is a subtle and silent, secretive abuse against health, privacy and human rights using microwave frequencies and beams, and digital means of tracking and tracing people, now including AI, to sift through the public’s personal information in order to target individuals anywhere, any time.

The NSA’s hubris and abuse of public trust was shockingly revealed by the NSA whistle blower, former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. He brought the earth-shattering issues to public attention as did Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, and many others in due course. As The Guardian stated in an article about him, “No government or bureaucracy loves a whistleblower. Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared.”

Society’s illegal surveillance (especially though our digital devices and internet), and levels of corruption and war crimes involved in the “national interest” were exposed by Snowden and Assange irrefutably pointing to the illegal pursuits of our governments. It still haunts the “trusted” intelligent services. The nature of the leaked documents left the CIA and NSA in complexities and public trust took a dive.

Bring on the global pandemic and the focus quickly shifted away, but the games without frontiers began again. In no time surveillance was rapidly advanced, and routed through internet-connecting wireless digital devices. The sifting of personal data by AI by the authorities and Big Tech companies interfacing with the intelligence services and military became normalised, “for public protection.” Once shunned as a Communist sin which emphasised freedom of expression as a glory of globalist countries, censorship also became normalised “to protect.”

From 9/11 to the 2007–2009 Great Recession, and then on through Lockdowns and the Pandemic restrictions, the overriding need of the authorities to rapidly enforce new technological forms of surveillance operations on the population stands out. AI integration was the big “showcase” of the pandemic “theatre of war” with social media being the prime target of cognitive warfare against “misinformation” as 5G masts burned and the pandemic narrative was ring-fenced. Facebook accounts became the new technocratic regime’s re-education bootcamps.

Hardwiring digital addiction

Hardwiring digital addiction as “a way of life” for society has been repeatedly achieved through the access point of trauma as technological immersion in the consumption of social media – and other information streams – steadily evolved into a dopamine “coping mechanism.” The need for dopamine was critical the fear-struck minds pouring over the details of media broadcasts during psychologically brutal and physically isolating Lockdowns. However, like all drugs, the effect wears off and more intensified screen addiction followed like A follows B.

It was not an accident that the 2007–2009 Great Recession brought the smart phone to a traumatised consumer as if it were offering a “way out” of the turmoils and that timing chained society to the new technology. The traumatising pandemic chained society tighter to digital devices and integration with the suddenly blossoming 5G infrastructure. The pandemic facilitated a commercial and culturally impacting “psychological experiment” with a clear strategic goal for industry and politicians banking on technological innovations:  wireless technology future connected to the internet called “the IoT (Internet of Things), a.k.a. Industry 4.0, and The Great Reset that gained remarkable attention as the military-controlled internet traffic (information as a weapon) to limit the public discussion about all that was happening to them, and instil paranoia on top of fear.

In the UK such operations to short-circuit democracy were achieved through 77th Brigade and in the US democracy was similarly suspended though the operations of Cyber Command with the compliance of Big Tech, and waged through the weaponisation of social media. This type of offensive is text-book “5th Generation Warfare” or “non-kinetic” warfare in which the addiction of the populace to technology is absolutely key for the mission of changing their context, targeting their beliefs and achieving military industrial strategic goals. We used to call it “mind-control.”

Technologically driven actors, like the intelligence agencies and industry influencers, have long been weaponising society’s addiction to, and faith in, information in a world dominated by wireless technology and the internet. We look less at our history books today than we do at a future dominated by “smart cities” and perpetually revised digital headlines that delete our history over time to stay “current” and “politically correct”.

Technocracy: a religion of sweet promises?

The World Economic Forum, the public face of industry’s urgent and rapid technological transformations stated during the technologically driven pandemic that, “Smart cities are a legacy of 9/11. After the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, New York adopted anti-terrorism and surveillance strategies that have been adopted all around the world. The ‘smart city’ movement is a global effort by city governments to harness technologies for improved city management.” Heightened surveillance in the city is to be admired, especially if it becomes “adopted all around the world”. I wonder why that is? Do Palestinians in Hebron admire the surveillance? Governments internationally are key in advancing smart developments with such devastating implications for freedom and human rights globally.

The mainstreamed worship of the technology future is like a religion making sweet promises. Karl Marx, whose views unleashed Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao (as well as Guterres and Schwabb) once said, “Religion is the opium of the people”. Today, the drug is technology, or more precisely, the screen of a smart phone. The smart phone is society’s “gift” from the globalist public relations “dealers” for digital technology, the UN, WHO, and WEF who preach their shared narrative of a sustainable future digitally managed with a secondary role for humans when AI runs the “smart world”.

Smart technology’s linchpin, the addictive smart phone has become “digital heroin” in our society, and the Globalists are Big Tech’s East India Company bringing an addictive cargo of digital heroin our way. Our addiction leaves us in a dopamine seeking cycle, as digital technology hacks into our bodies through our pleasure and reward seeking biological mechanisms. Today we hear sermons from the WEF’s electric-fenced fortress in Switzerland defended by the Globalist NGO’s personal army. Their prophecy is of a future where men, women, and children will be no more than “hackable animals” in their experiment. They welcome the population overdosing on screen time with many people becoming video game addicts in an automated technocratically mediated world takes root.

Strategic digital addiction: “Gaming disorder” hits the military

WEF believes video game play “builds new communities by connecting people…Brought together by servers and matchmaking algorithms, these strangers quickly learn how to work together to achieve a common goal.” The Globalists’s goals? WEF’s views came online shortly after the WHO announced video games can cause mental health problems and addiction after recognising “Gaming Disorder.” WEF may see how (video) gaming brings like-minded people together to solve imaginary problems, but they can tear families apart and leave people excluded from reality and responsibility. Among military personnel we see gaming disorder is on the rise as recruits and veterans alike succumb to the addiction in coping with military-related stress. Perhaps it’s the military’s own fault?

In 2017 we learned from The Conversation, that, “Violent video games have become embedded within American culture…For the U.S. military, the rise of first-person shooters has been a welcome development. In recent years, the military has encouraged many of its soldiers to partake in the thrill of violent video games as a way to continue combat training, even when not on active duty.” As the article also makes clear, “…psychologists Brock Bastian, Jolanda Jetten and Helena R.M. Radke were able to use brain scans to show that playing violent video games had the potential to desensitize players to real-life violence and the suffering of others.” What else do we learn? “…journalist Evan Wright wrote in his book “Generation Kill” that solders were on “intimate terms with the culture of video games, reality TV shows and internet porn.” 

Regardless of its cache or subject matter, gaming technology was introduced to the military to do exactly what WEF claims it does – get people to collaborate to achieve a goal. It’s also used as a ploy to recruit youth. As reported in 2022 by the BBC, the “innovative” use of gaming software that “allows real-life warfare scenarios to be recreated virtually and explored.” It seems the plague of addiction “infecting” the military can only become more hardwired. As the government sees video games as rehearsals for real-life military engagements, the public are right to feel a bit uneasy.

The British Army promoted gaming in order to engage the prospective recruits at the suitably named “Insomnia” gaming festival because, “competitive gamers do have skill sets the military wants – fast reactions, good communication and problem-solving skills.” Aren’t they also trigger happy and robbed of sleep? And what will they use to cope with military stress?

It seems addiction is inevitable and encouraged in the military, and the propaganda of the British Army is breathtaking, as a medic stops to comment: “Playing games, especially with friends back at home, is way to stay connected, prioritise mental health and get away from the day job for a bit [to cope with stress?],” he says. A charity outfit profiting from the military-video gaming trend claimed, gaming can help veterans in the transition to civilian life because in landing a job “mental health issues, are more surmountable.” The mental health casualties on “civvy street” and in the military pile up and the gaming drive continues. But we see where all that gaming propaganda was really leading in an article from 2024. Initial steps have begun to introduce generative AI to “transform the practice of war gaming as an exercise to train human commanders, perfect operational plans and doctrines and develop stronger strategic cultures.” Another aspect of AI integration is called Human Machine Teaming (HMT) defined as “human interactions with autonomous uncrewed systems and AI agents”. The Ukraine has been the testing ground for this type of “cutting edge warfare.” The military, like the political arena is increasingly in the hands of addictive personalities in control of the most dangerous technology in the world – AI, as admitted by many of those working to create generative AI. A new arms race in the making? What can go wrong?

The significance of digital addiction

The addictive internet connecting device, the smart phone allows people to play addictive video games anywhere and at any time. Today the device’s new image is “ruggedness” and “defense grade durability.” Military-grade technologies are being manufactured and sold through the military’s industry mediators, called Big Tech (Google, Facebook (Meta), Amazon Twitter (X)) in ways to encourage consumer addiction, and uptake of everything from smart phones to AVs. Big Tech’s links to military agencies aren’t a big secret.

The intelligence community and silicon valley have a long relationship. No surprise that, “The intelligence community wanted to shape Silicon Valley’s supercomputing efforts at their inception so they would be useful for both military and homeland security purposes. [The CIA and NSA sought] cooperation between the government and the emerging supercomputing companies…[to] gather huge amounts of data and make intelligent sense of it.” A chief goal was to make “massive amounts of information useful for both the private sector as well as the intelligence community.” How many people realise that, “The internet itself was created because of an intelligence effort[?]”

Integral to that achievement are The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is “the agency responsible for developing emerging technologies for military, intelligence, and national security purposes.” DARPA helped develop the “architecture and scaffolding of the World Wide Web” and is a key agency focused on technologies of war.

According to New Scientist, “DARPA likes to present itself as a uniquely nimble outfit. Unbound by the usual red tape, it can do the kind of “high-risk, high-reward” research way beyond the purview of other branches of government.” In 2011 Google bought Motorola, inventor of the first cell phone and based its “long-range research group, Advanced Technology and Products (ATAP), on an outfit known for delivering blockbusters like stealth bombers, autonomous cars, and the Internet.” Google and DARPA’s input created the Moto X smart phone, illustrating the overlap of military and industry to keep their technology integrated into smart phones. According to Quartz, “Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance.” It explains a lot about why getting the population hooked on the internet and addicted to smart phones has transpired, it has been necessary for the optimum generation of intelligence data (Big Data) for Big Tech, Industry and the intelligence networks. Society’s electronic heroin is the parasitic brainchild of the intelligence agencies.

Smart phone innovations, including apps, but also the marketing of military “features” and “looks” contribute to device obsession and overuse, which can bring the cognitive, physical and psychological side effects society is experiencing, the consequences of this “digital heroin” that are killing productivity, giving AI an upper hand in being justified, and leaves society strung out and dependent, with mental and physical injuries.

For the Globalists at WEF this is all necessary for reinventing capitalism through transformation of the economy (to digital ID and digital currency) and demolishing the current society “to build back better.” Part of the architecture is to be implanted. Kathleen Philips a WEF Agenda contributor said in 2022 that, “Technology will become more intertwined with the body in the form of implants” which extends the Internet of Things (IoT) into the Internet of Bodies (IOB), part of WEF’s desire to dehumanise humans into what WEF’s favourite historian Yuval Noah Harari has called “hackable animals.” Plenty laugh and get back to scrolling. Is it funny?

It seems like a war on humanity, but all attempts to publish the suggestion are fact checked and reframed as, you-know-what. What if technology isn’t the saviour that blissfuly engaged scrollers of social media imagine, but is the subjugator of society, as suggested by Big Tech’s involvement with the intelligence agencies and wider political concerns? 

At Davos in 2024 Klaus Schwabb of WEF stated that whoever controls AI will control the world, sounding like a military commander. WEF seeks to recruit through its propaganda and guides the addiction and the veneration technology that is a threat to democracy and humanity’s place in the future. We are part of the problem in consuming it and letting it dominate our lives enough to control our sense of reality. Digital devices, which are objects created out of a military necessity, clearly are a weapon causing untold harm from addiction and other problems.

Moving away from this type of smart technology is healthy, and it might help us see clearly that life beyond it is possible, we are not here to be demolished, dehumanised or integrated into a single myopic view or supremacist biosynthetic agenda. A digital detox can help us reclaim our humanity, piece by piece.

The “gift” of technology is a double edged sword and there is more than meets the eye concerning society’s digital addiction as revealed in the interplay of industry, intelligence agencies and military objectives.

Credit: image courtesy of Pixabay