The NASA War Document
This will be the third entry in an ongoing series wherein I examine documents reported to be about plans to destroy America or massive cover-ups that would otherwise interest the public. These are all documents that I have seen making the rounds in conspiracy circles for many, many years.
First of all, if you have not read my previous articles in this series please check them out, I am neither a “debunker” nor a capital ‘S’ skeptic (you know the type who write books psychologizing at a distance about why people have weird beliefs and so on). In fact, I am a fan of conspiracism and conspiracy theories. Following the lead of Murray Rothbard, I think that conspiracy theories help the libertarian cause because they get people to step back and ask critical questions about State (or government) power and the often complex interlinking relationships between global corporations and the State power structure. Beyond that, conspiracy theorists often serve an important social role in that they have a tendency to be outliers with an interesting hyper-awareness of potential threats to society that others have a propensity to ignore.
I started this process of making YouTube videos/podcasts and writing more detailed articles about controversial conspiracy documents with a very simple goal in mind. The goal was to answer a couple of questions: Is it true and how can we know? The task, however, has been much more difficult than that. One of those things that is easier said than done.
Obviously one can take the simple route of name-calling and insults. This is actually the most common way of approaching controversial material. One frequently reads debunkers, skeptics, self-labelled rationalists slinging around terms like “tin foil hat,” “paranoid,” and a host of manufactured -isms and -phobias. This is all despite the fact that virtually none of them are professional psychologists or psychiatrists who have the relevant expertise to diagnose people who are not their patients. In fact, were they to do so, it would be an obvious violation of basic ethical practices. So really what it boils down to is that certain people hate the idea that others make claims that about which they are dubious. I think this “problem” of dubious claims is rather trivial instead of a threat that must be stamped out. That is because I am a big believer in free speech and reasoned debate in that each side presents their evidence and allows others to decide. No self-appointed gatekeepers, no obsessive deplatformers, no thought-controllers. This is breached when one side hurls personal insults and labels those they do not agree with “pseudo” this or that. You will note that is yet another common tactic of the debunk/Skeptic crowd. A historian they disagree with makes some claim and they will derogate them as a “pseudo-historian” or “pseudo-scientist” many times completely ignoring the accused person’s academic credentials or serious publications.
That is only one aspect of my critique. The other is that I have deep questions about and real problems with the epistemology (theories of knowledge or how we know) of conspiracy theories. I try to always nail it down with a clear approach: it is not about what you can claim, it is about what you can prove. Connected to this, I always encourage people to return to common sense. Sure common sense can be wrong, however, the way I approach extreme claims is that the information, data, facts, and so on must be overwhelmingly in the favor of an extreme claim to overturn our common sense. I apply this in philosophy, ethics, science, history, and conspiracy theorizing.
Another thing that cannot be ignored, is that the conspiracists also need to learn a lesson similar to that of the debunkers. The insults and name-calling do not advance whatever it is they wish to move forward. For example, everyone who disagrees with some particular conspiracy theory is not a “shill” or a “disinformation agent” or a “limited hangout”. It is imperative to understand that it is not enough to simply say some accused conspirator is a 33rd degree Freemason (lots of people have family members who are Freemasons and have never been involved in nefarious Illuminati/New World Order misdeeds) and so on.
Origins
This series began by taking a look at a document called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. It was supposedly written in 1979 and discovered in 1986 and came to international prominence with Bill Cooper’s 1991 underground bestseller ‘Behold A Pale Horse’. I concluded from a series of clues that the document is a probable fraud or forgery. Yet I keep an open mind about it and could potentially be convinced otherwise.
Next, I looked at the 1967 document called ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’ which was a New York Times’ bestseller that largely disappeared from public consciousness for many years until (again) brought to international prominence by Cooper’s book. My conclusion is that Iron Mountain was an elaborate hoax. Still I keep on open mind on the matter.
Then I moved on to what is known as ‘The NASA War Document’. This document was offered as a presentation in July of 2001. Once again, this was largely forgotten in the fallout of 9/11 which spawned hundreds of conspiracy theories from both the public and the U.S. government as well. ‘The NASA War Document’ is titled ‘Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare’ for the era of 2025 and beyond.
The Planned Destruction of America?
Probably the most difficult thing to face when researching this particular document is that it is treated within conspiracy communities in exactly the same way that ‘Silent Weapons’ and ‘Iron Mountain’ are treated: largely uncritically and as an absolute plan to take us out. For each of these documents, I not only read the documents, researched the relevant time frame in which they were produced, looked into possible authors of the unknown ones, but also watched 10 to 15 or more YouTube videos on the documents. What I found was a very clear tendency in two directions.
One side says there is nothing to any of them and nothing to worry about and that all is fine. The other side says the elite want to kill us and these documents represent their plans on how they will go about doing so.
I think we have some problems here for both perspectives. To return to the ‘NASA War Document’, the document itself makes it explicitly clear several times that the intent of the document is for defensive preparation purposes. NASA’s chief research scientist, Dr. Dennis Bushnell, offered the presentation after much work had been done with the U.S. Army, Air Force, DOD, DARPA, and many others. Accepting that claim to be true, the document makes perfect sense to me. If in the future we are going to be facing the looming threats of: nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, the Singularity, cybernetics, information warfare, drone swarms, smart dust, advanced combinatory bio-warfare, chemical warfare, and radiological warfare…would it be not be reasonable for the U.S. government to research all of these possibilities?
The Turn
That is, of course, only one approach and one consideration. Things change a bit in light of the other documents and a host of additional articles and books that I found outside of these for the video reports. In fact, I find it very odd indeed that the ‘NASA War Document’ mentions a whole series of notions that also emerged in the previous documents: eugenics, population control, the idea of poisoning the food and water supplies, the idea of the keeping the public distracted with inconsequential nonsense, and so on.
This caused me to wonder why a possibly forged or fraudulent document, a likely hoaxed document, and a real document would have so many arcana in common. Why would one be able to find dozens of books from the 1960s and 1970s, accepted within the mainline of science, which suggest similar ideas advocating population control, eugenics programs, and often the same methods of implementation as these conspiracy documents? The fact that these themes align cannot be dismissed lightly.
Mirroring
This is important not only because the themes are common but also because within the conspiracy community there are particular methods of reading and interpretation that is not common within the history or scientific community. This is the notion of inversion. So when applied to one such as the NASA document, that would mean Dr. Bushnell was signaling the reverse of what one would assume. In other words, the document represents a plan of attack rather than a plan of defense.
In fact, the conspiratorial approach often accepts another related notion called the “Revelation of the Method”. This is the idea that the elites or globalists or whatever designation some particular conspiracy group happens to follow, are sort of bound within their own group to publicly reveal what their plans are prior to actually enacting those plans. This is why many conspiracy theorists find images, themes, signs, symbols, and codes in Hollywood films and television programs. They are not called “programs” for nothing.
I have been using these articles and videos to slowly bring the reader along into an understanding of the world that is very different than that which most people are ordinarily used to. As you have gone down the rabbit hole with me, I have as well by taking a look at these very odd and interesting documents which have helped me make discoveries too. In fact, as I researched more and more documents outside of the three in consideration, I found things which appear to substantiate some of the extraordinary claims.
Beyond the claims within the documents themselves, we have at least some real world evidence that could be related. For example, fertility and birth rates all across the Western world have been on the decline. This follows proposals within the documents in question (and suggestions made by Paul Ehrlich and others to reduce population) to have toxins inserted into the food and water supply which would cause diseases and reduce reproduction rates. We see certain chemical pollutants being used which possibly cause cancers at rapid rates and across widely dispersed regions. As I write this, a lawsuit has just been won against Monsanto (long a bane of conspiracy theorists and leftwing environmentalists) to the tune of almost $300 million dollars for the use of chemicals which many have claimed for years can cause cancer in humans. Obviously the case will be appealed and this verdict is not final. It rarely is when it comes to high-powered industries that often have deep ties with the government. This is a phenomenon known as regulatory capture and applies not only to the fact that large corporations are incentivized by the threat of the use of government regulations against but to other related affairs as well. Other toxins are in our plastics, in the air, radioactive waste leaks have polluted our environment in many ways, and a list of other problems that can be endlessly extended.
Critics will say this is simply because First World nations slow down reproductive rates naturally as economies advance. This, however, cannot possibly account for the indisputable fact that sperm counts among Western men also have followed a similarly declining trend. So, one must ask if this is simply a coincidence that several documents have promoted the idea of surreptitious and secretive plans for population control and population reduction quickly followed in the real world with precisely that which is called for in the documents? Odd to the say the least. I again remain both critical and open-minded on these matters.
Darkness Unfolds
In terms of the ‘NASA War document’, whether it is a document meant to wake up the military and defense outlets in the U.S. to emerging threats or if it is some evil plan to attack us, it is without question the most frightening document of the three that I have looked at so far. What is terrifying about it is that this is the world that is technologically over the horizon. The possibility of rapidly out of control nanotechnology, the possibility of terrorists attacking innocent public crowds with bioweapons, fields of robotic warfare, and the possibility of some rogue nation acquiring a miniaturized dirty bomb then using a drone swarm to release it on us. The horror.
This document offers us a glimpse into a possible (and all too likely future) where we see humanity eventually lose our pride of place as the most powerful entities on the planet. The machine world of androids, cybernetics, and AI will rapidly surpass every single human capability in radical fashion: superior strength, speed, and, eventually, thought. Even if one doubts “true” AI will ever be developed, just having something that closely approximates it will have huge and possibly dire implications for the place of humanity in the future.
Finally, reviewing this NASA document and recalling a possible connection between the ‘Iron Mountain’ document and an older one put out by The Brookings Institution led me to expand my search once again. In the next video and subsequent article, I will cover what is known as ‘The Brookings Report’, which is purported to have set NASA on a path for a ‘Dark Mission’.
(Part IV coming soon…)
