Don’t look too closely: America may be on computer-assisted policy auto-pilot and that could explain a lot of Trump actions lately.
A number of readers are confused by my outlook on the Trump presidency. So this being a semi-holiday, I thought it would be a good time to explain what MAY be going on.
If you don’t subscribe to our www.peoplenomics.com website, you may not be aware that as long ago as 2001 we postulated the existence of a “super-secret” government bureau that would advise the president on national matters using computational future analysis forcasting.
I even made up a name for the group. I called it (and still do) Directorate 153.”
In the Peoplenomics archives, you will find about eight articles on D-153 over the years that patiently offer up this “hidden bureau” as the “unseen hand” that explains much – if not most – of the seeming “drift” of presidents once they take office. Why Bush was like Clinton, why Obama was like Bush, why Trump is drifting toward more liberal.
We have been hard-pressed to get everything related to D-153 (the Computational Future Group/CFG) exactly correct because the agency would not be immediately known, except through changes in presidential behaviors and policies.
In other words, it’s a ‘back-fitting” exercise in mathematical terms. We get enough hard data spots in a “cloud” in model space and it’s implied that there is more than Trumpian randomness at work.
An example of “how we got things wrong” was in our pre-election coverage of how such a hypothetical group would have briefed the incoming president PRIOR to his taking the Oath of Office.
No, turns out that was wrong. Apparently, the group has only recently made itself known to Trump and – as a result – his behavior has changed – in some cases dramatically. And just in the past few weeks, so apparently the “group” doesn’t “reveal” until 60-days into a presidency.
Or, the new team takes that long to “find it.”
No end of confusion on the part of our readers, though. They are dazed and shaken by our apparent disappointment with the changing Trump:
“George, even you seem different lately in your view of Trump. As though you agree with his flip flops with your lack of criticism (or did I miss them), whereas before you were watching his actions with a squinted eye. Did some men in black visit you? LOL… but seriously, Trump has become the very person Hillary would have been, had she been elected. He’s saying he didn’t change, the facts did and he’s just reacting.”
No, disappointed in Trump is not the central idea. Disappointed that Directorate 153 may be real? Oh yeah…
In “George’s Alt-Reality” it is not that Trump has become the person that Hillary would have been. It’s that he may – in effect – have had no other course of action except to change his behavior.
Let me lay out how Directorate 153 likely came into being.
We can go back to the era of the Cuba Missile Crisis in 1962, then closely follow that with the Vietnam War and the release (at that time) of the :”Report from Iron Mountain: On the accessibility and desirability of peace…”
The book Iron Mountain established the concept of government doing a lot of “futuring” back when it wasn’t even on the table in the public mind.
It’s still not.
At least not in a “run the country” way. Future myth and comic books, that.
But the existence of a Computational Futures Group would be quite useful both in short-term decision bounding as well as securing the long-term continuation of these United States. Remember how much has been spent on COG – continuity of government?
It’s not that the Group would exactly tell the president what to do. Their job would be more like answering specific computational questions about the future. To which they would respond with timeline decisions and it would all be annotated in such a way as to guide the presidential decision-making processes forward.
On every apparent Trump policy reversal, we see the potential involvement of the CFG/Directorate 153.
Take any crisis – like the current mess with Syria, North Korea, China, and Russia.
If you are trying to make decisions at the “guts poker” level at say the Joint Chiefs, it’s like “anything can happen day.”
As we have discussed many times in past Peoplenomics reports, the operation of small executive groups is often changed based on the amplitude of the voices in the room. The human with the loudest voice and biggest physical presence will carry their decision to consent more often than the quietest, least imposing figure.
In the art of “computationally based decision-making” certain techniques have evolved which you may not be aware of. One of our favorites has been the “Delphi Method” which came out in Addison-Wesley Advanced Books in the 1970s if memory serves.
If you Wiki it?
The name “Delphi” derives from the Oracle of Delphi, although the authors of the method were unhappy with the oracular connotation of the name, “smacking a little of the occult”.[9] The Delphi method is based on the assumption that group judgments are more valid than individual judgments.
The Delphi method was developed at the beginning of the Cold War to forecast the impact of technology on warfare.[10] In 1944, General Henry H. Arnold ordered the creation of the report for the U.S. Army Air Corps on the future technological capabilities that might be used by the military.
Different approaches were tried, but the shortcomings of traditional forecasting methods, such as theoretical approach, quantitative models or trend extrapolation, quickly became apparent in areas where precise scientific laws have not been established yet. To combat these shortcomings, the Delphi method was developed by Project RAND during the 1950-1960s (1959) by Olaf Helmer, Norman Dalkey, and Nicholas Rescher.[11] It has been used ever since, together with various modifications and reformulations, such as the Imen-Delphi procedure.[12]
Experts were asked to give their opinion on the probability, frequency, and intensity of possible enemy attacks. Other experts could anonymously give feedback. This process was repeated several times until a consensus emerged. Members of the group didn’t know who one-another were so the physicality and booming voice were eliminated. So was rank, political power, and so forth. Damn fine art.
The gist of it is a survey which looks for consent within the interquartiles. In other words, poll people, toss out the top and bottom 25% of answers and feed it back to the same group some odd numbers of times.
With the physical presence off the table, the central tendency of the group emerges.
So, no way around it, the Computational Futures Group we hypothecated in 2001 (and have used as an ongoing thought model/tool to better understand the bounds of decision-making) has been extremely useful.
And, if the Directorate 153 group did nothing more than “expert Delphi’s” it would be a very useful tool.
It likely went further. A hell of a lot further.
Econometric modeling would have entered the equation in the 1980’s when computing horsepower became important as it applied to Cold War era continuity of government thinking.
By the early 1990’s, the feedback from the KG-series of satellites would have given an additional data stream that could forward-project when enemies (or more properly challengers) to the U.S. global dominance would be able to complete work on projects visible from space.
“What would Russian recovery time and strength be if we….” – that kind of question.
Then came the arrival of HAARP which allowed for radio tomography to map tunnel systems in places like Afghanistan and, pertinent today, North Korea. This was a kind of “bonus” on top of the baseline work on weather modification that lead to the “Owning the Weather” once-outlandish concepts outlined in the Air Force 2025 report some years back which one of our…ahem…contributors on military affairs is rather expert in.
Then came the A.I. and A.L. inputs.
A.I. – artificial intelligence – is everyday stuff. But A.L. – artificial learning – has gotten little public attention.
One of the centers of work in this regard with occasional references and nods in the direction of the U.S. Army War College, was the “Disciple Project” at George Mason University. Their Learning Agents Center has been up and in operation since 2001 and you can start learning about it here.
Yu can begin to see now the terribly important role yet fairly compact footprint that our “hypothetical” Directorate 153 of Computational Futures Group would have.
With “artificial intelligence” to parse spy satellite, NSA phone and email data, as well as econometric models running when markets are trading, then all this married up into a “learning agent” with some specific goals in mind, well the idea of a president operating within a bounded decision-making setting becomes rather clear.
The most difficult thing to comprehend is that America may already be – for all intents and purposes – under the direction of a super-secret and tightly controlled forward-looking A.I./A.L. platform.
We only owe an apology to Peoplenomics subscribers for suggesting that the existence of such a platform would have been explained to president Trump PIOR to taking office and indeed before the election. We were wrong. it comes after..
As I thought about it more and more, letting Trump roll in the “unbounded mode” gave the A.L. component time to assess the Trump personality and how it was – in turn – viewed by major media and governments around the world. the “learning agent” would use RSS and other “news” inputs as feedback monitors to see how policy calls are going and further intuit rule sets for future policies…
With its (hypothetical) presence revealed, the least surprised people in the world are those Peoplenomics readers who have, over the years, become accustomed to “thinking the unthinkable.”
For everyone else our message is simple:
The technology to apply A.I. to econometric, social, and national “technical means” data has been around for 10-30 years.
The tech to learn – as in “imply rules of how the computation future will behave” has also been implicit at GMU’s L.A. work and presumably elsewhere for an equal amount of time.
With Trump buckling in now to the bulk of his term, we expect that the odds are at least 50% that some lash-up of A.I. is already “advising” the White House and Congress on which courses of action to take and where at least the ‘Detroit Barriers” of given policies and actions lay..
And what if the reason we do not have genuine progress on many of the Trump campaign promises is that they “don’t model well” for now?
Welcome to the “shared-ruling paradigm.”
We foresee many, many more Trump reversals to come as the U.S. is likely NOT the only country which is tinkering with advanced computer decision-support or outright direction of national policy.
At least two others (China and Russia) likely have the brainpower and technological horsepower to cobble up something that could give us a real run for our money. Who has how many humans in the loop? Key question, that. But you won’t find it on any U.N. Agenda. All hush-hush.
As long as the lights are on, you may rest assured that computational parity or superiority by the U.S. is being maintained. Once the EMP goes off or the grid goes down, then the learning agent software would likely infer only one outcome. We would launch preemptively and then it’s an automated Finis.
When that happens, you won’t want to be within 100 miles of anything worth dropping a MIRV on.
Just thought you’d like to look behind the curtain. Thinking the unthinkable stuff isn’t generally wheeled out on this site. But we will have some futther speculations this weekend for subscribers.
Write when you get rich,
George@ure.net
Interesting stuff. I always thought there was a group running the show that told the incoming president do this or we wipe you and everyone you know from the planet.
You have tickled me with the thought of AI and AL advisors.
It is interesting how each president comes to power with great ideas but then they all end up the same after they get to office.
It’s called “external bounding”
Ive read there are three main groups pulling the strings, The Bilderberg Group, The Round Table and CFR-Council on Foreign Relations. AIPAC also plays a lesser role.
I’d like to know what each president is told that makes them conform, as you noted “…but then they all end up the same after they get to office.”
And what makes the MSM be mostly on the same page. Is it that most are all affiliated with the MIC?
Even our local newspaper now errors on behalf of anti-Trump forces. There’s no balance or reasonable alternative commentaries. There was a recent article about the immigration crackdown as it related to the city and surrounding areas I live in. It made the arrest of these unlawful immigrants out to be something that’s never happened like this before. I asked the author if she would write a story about past roundups under Obama and how they compare in numbers to the current events. She said, good idea and thank you for reading the story, and that she’d run it past her editor. Wouldn’t a real journalist have presented that info from the prior administration’s comparable actions, in the same article for comparison value? It seems the new media model is to promote incendiary narratives, not knowledge or facts.
Robert: You left out the Trilateral Commission… ;-)
It seems reasonable that a self-selected group of extremely powerful and well-moneyed individuals would be the actual puppetmasters, however I’ve not been able to find any actual connection between any such group and the stage loft. The conspironuts have, of course. I discount the majority of their stuff, for simple lack of logical continuity, while recognizing it is that same lack of continuity which propagates any given conspiracy theory.
That said, I DO recall the CFR pulling Clinton and Obama off the campaign trail for a secret meeting during their annual hoedown, and weeks before the Democratic Convention in 2008, after which Hillary chilled and Obama agreed to cover her ~$20mln campaign debt. I also recall McCain and Huckaby teaming up do derail Romney (whom I believe had not, at that time, “bought in” {or “sold-out”} to the Masters’ Plan) during the Republican primary season. It was these two occurrences which convinced me there was a hidden hand, somewhere, pulling the strings of government — for many years previous, such had been merely my suspicion…
I thought Laurus came up with the concept of the directorate back twenty or so years ago from one of the universities .. I wasn’t sure if they combined the delphi to it or not.. just curious though it totally seems logical.. back in the day I use to call it the head bumping method..
I worked at a shop that would give you a free two hour lunch once a month if you came up with an idea that would save the company ten thousand dollars a year and help production.
so I would submit.. worked for them for twelve years and when I quit still had six left.. lol someone asked me what my method was to get the free two hour lunch..( they hated to give out desert to but I had desert and my meal for twelve years another method LOL just before I quit they posted a sign saying absolutely no more deserts will be allowed LOL LOL).. I said the head bump.. you walk along and bump your head say god that hurts.. the second time you bump your head .. you say.. gee I wish someone would do something about that.. kind of like the thumb smash method. with a hammer and nails.. the computer program would have exactly the same action sequences.. and to me it makes total sense to follow that method with only one glitch that I can see.. take actions of variables and put them in get a set of normal responses and make a decision based on the responses.. the bad thing I see with this is by letting the computer make the decision it doesn’t have feelings and doesn’t care what happens to mankind by making the decisions. see the movie the terminator to get an idea on a possible outcome depending on how much authority you give the computer.
What I don’t think anyone is considering is when we had the lets sell it in chief in office he gave away a lot of our control.. we don’t check but a mere fraction of incoming containers.. we outsourced all our production with a five year minimum window to get production up and running.. Now consider this.. the Club-K defense system.. shoot they could be stationed in a container ship yard near you.. the influx of refugee’s.. Hmm. ten thousand warriors.. a religious base that teaches to overcome by deception.. and our military is out of the country to help some multi billionaire get more…. we are in how many area’s.. what would the chess move be. what was it that Divide and Conquer comes to mind and the Han Dynasty, They may have a smaller military but now divide ours up to what seventy countries.. just a random thought here..our military equipment is even made somewhere else. https://www.defensetech.org/2012/05/30/smoking-gun-proof-that-military-chips-from-china-are-infected/
BRAVO!
Thank you for putting this together for all of us out here in ‘scratch our heads’ land. This was key for me to get past all the noise and confusion coming from the knee-jerk, too quick to bash sites.
I read Iron Mountain a decade ago from G. Edward Griffin’s site, and I was in a state of shock and awe at that time. It takes years to put the pieces of this puzzle together to get a hint of the ‘picture’ it will begin to expose, and this article helped me so much to see things more clearly, and with a broader perspective.
We may not agree with or like what is really going on, but having an insight to the Truth is so important for our own tollerance/acceptance of what is being shoved at us on a daily basis.
Thank You!
Now just throw in the “Think Tanks” same as Delphi approach which play a HUGE role in corrupting US policy since they are paid by Major corporations usually. Then add a beefed up Watson (AI) behind the curtain computing TT results with some RSS feeds and then add all the disinformation and propaganda from the web. If Think Tanks like (RandCorp)can condition the US population to hate other nations to foment WAR, can’t they also feed the D-135 to formulate the same results?
Keith: In an actual AI/AL-modeled policy, the “think tanks” would neither contribute, nor would their findings hold either weight or gravitas. Would you take life-changing or possibly life-ending social or financial advise from a 2 year old?
ALSO, a mistake nearly everyone makes: The AI would DRIVE the news/propaganda, not react to it. Its RSS feeds would be limited to accurate data – ALL available accurate data on every facet of both our individual and collective existence – something we humans can no-longer hope to ever see…
Our world leaders are under the control of non-human entities and have been long before everyone reading this was born! I hate to be the objectionable material in the punch bowl, but David Ike is right. I don’t think Trump is a reptilian, just under their control.
Don’t most religions teach this stuff?
“control of non-human entities”
Well George if there is such a group then they should throw away their data and start all over,from the look on Lavrovs face after his meeting with Tillerson showed nothing has changed, and lets make a deal Trump just made the worst deal in his life by going along with the deep state.
From everything I have read we not only want a war we need a war, a big one to try to save the collapse of the empire and Russia full well knows it,as far as the turkey called Trump stick him with a fork he’s well done..
Hmm.. the puppet masters hate to loose and historically it isn’t to healthy for anyone that has stood against them.
would I go along with them if I was in his shoes.. Probably I would bend.. it is futile to go against a Congress that is pretty much influenced by outside sources that don’t write the bills they vote in that affect all of us and absolutely refuse to read them.. even pass a bill so that they can fast tract them so they don’t even have to read the sales pitch paragraph.
So I can say that if I was in his shoes..and was the compromiser in chief I would make a deal so that those running the show could be in control yet allow me to make a few changes to make things look better..especially in a time where our financial outlook is pretty grim and in reality it doesn’t matter who is in charge at this point I think we are past the tipping point. what we should have done is let The Carter administration make the changes they wanted and gone through the trials then. if we would have done that the rough stuff would have been over and we would be on our way.. instead we pulled back and are standing on the edge of the grand canyon with a blindfold on..
George:
Today’s grim column calls to mind the 1970 sci-fi classic, COLLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT wherein U.S./Russkie supercomputers link themselves for absolute control of both nations. Scary stuff 46 years ago when we only imagined it was possible. Now, it’s downright terrifying as we understand the reality of its saturation in society.
I wonder if the AI models have accurate data on the cobalt 60 ploy? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
One freighter loaded with cobalt ore around a nuke could take out much of the continent. One ny nuke clad with cobalt 59 could take out Southern California or the PNW. A bunker clad with it would be a Strangelovian nightmare if nuked. And the nuke could be from an attack, or from an act of suicide. I hope we have lots of really cool secret weapons and delivery systems, but I fear that Trump is a newbie to the World of military and intel intrigue, hubris, etc. For some reason I can’t get the characters from Dr. Strangelove out of my imaging of what Trump is being told, these days, bigtime.
Watch this 16 minute video that explains how the oligarchs control society. It will make you furious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmIPK7DQh8
Very instructive and it brings home the point that I’ve made previously. Our future is determined by how we consume. Therefore, we all are to blame for that (issues!) we complain. Go figure.
“… as the U.S. is likely NOT the only country which is tinkering with advanced computer decision-support or outright direction of national policy.”
Indeed, if in doubt ask “WATSON.” I was thinking about that a long time ago. ;-)
Watson is a toy. It is merely the present-day version of a Cray or Silicon Graphics minicomputer. A real supercomputer would be, like, a million Watsons (actually 1048576) all linked together and buried in an underground vault within driving distance of D.C… not that such a thing exists, mind you.
“Skynet” – a la the Terminator Central – will become exasperated & irritated with us puny imperfect organic life forms with or without a foreign military blast. And last weeks 60 Minutes story on the Deliberately Increasingly Addictive design & coding of smartphones to cause brain Addiction / distraction (interesting story re: Silicon Valley Insiders & the response of Apple & Google)shows also how we are now enmeshed in a kind of Matrix, completely blind to how fast this is all happening – like a truck full of lambs off to their final destination.
@ DJ_at_east_coast
I don’t use a smartphone. It seems to make me both stupid and lazy, so I gave up my old I-phone3 years back. I have a quasi-smart flip phone, that can access my email and do very limited browsing, but browsing on a flipfone screen isn’t for those of us with weak eyes – so it rarely gets used.
That means I am not checking my email hourly, nor checking my FartBook account or my LatchedOn page. I either know something or I don’t – no faking it by using Wikipedia in the bathroom. No shuttling graphics files or other crap via 4G tech, as mine is 3G and gets done what I need to rather than what the Technosphere tells me I must have.
Just an old coot out in the woods trying to enjoy things rather than fret about them.
Not “Skynet”, the next phase of gearing up for Force 2025 is callet STARNET. Once all Satellites are in place, we will have beyond line of sight networking capability. This is detrimental to the success of our AI controlled autonomous swarming robotics covering the Air/Land/Sea triad.
Damn George, you did it again. I’ve been a Skeptical watcher of many tin-foil hat theories over the years, and now you have provided the framework that could tie some of them together (MJ-12, Roswell, Antarctica’s secrets, etc.).
I’m gonna have to spend some more time digesting this, but thanks for the eye-opener.
Since we’ve seen examples of this sorta behavior with 2 presidents in a row (remember “Hope and Change”?), I think it’s actually Dick Cheney at Site R or some other bunker who is running the show. About 60 days in, the SS kidnaps the Pres, takes him down the elevator to the underground bunker, Cheney whips around to face him and gives him the “Directorate”. His only other choice is to take a “JFK dirtnap”. Hell for all I know the MIB (Men in Black) originate from this group
@ Robert –
When they removed the requirement that all networks provide news services as part of daily programming, then the news model instantly went into profit mode. Profit, in broadcasting and internet, is defined by the metric of clicks on an article or eyeballs on the screen. Hence everything is a crisis, because it gets clicks and eyeballs; everything is incendiary because it generates controversy or outrage and thus more clicks and eyeballs.
The best way to understand this is simply to STOP WATCHING OR READING NEWS for a week or two. The world will turn without your clicks or eyeballs or your blood pressure spiking – hell, it may make you happier…
Read some Mark Twain, so you get historical perspective on the politician class – there is nothing new under the sun. In days of kings and monarchs, politicians were called ‘sycophants’. Or read some history on old civilizations like Rome or China or the Inca – so you know that what is happening today isn’t new, but it is running at the speed of talk due to internet communications. Before, it ran at the speed of a horse or a ship.
Just some thoughts…
Just a thought. Plant a seed a day , releives alittle stress?
Relieves
Then the question becomes: Will the next Democrat that gets into office be given the same D-153 leeway? Or is this just the usual hypocritical bullshit excusing of behavior you don’t “get” when your “side” does it?
Tabs are being kept. 10 to 1 odds that you’ll drop the D-153 excuse as soon as a (D) President walks through the door in the next few years. (if we live long enough to see that happen)
Try to keep up with the class:
D-153 is a thinking tool we have used since 2001. It didn’t change under B2 or O and won’t change under T or whatever comes next.
I could however take your remark “ Or is this just the usual hypocritical bullshit excusing of behavior you don’t “get” when your “side” does it?” as an insult and personal affront and ban you. Which, comes to think of it, I have just done.
Oh my!
“explained to president Trump PIOR to taking office and indeed before the election”
I had hoped not, but I think Trump showed his hand with many of his his cabinet selections. Either he was the proverbial costumed wolf or someone got to him beforehand.
George, Quantum Physics has already proved this is a hologram and consciousness is at the controls. You just have’nt noticed because your immersed in the Holagram. When you really experience for the he first time that there is no “Out There” “out there” it will resolve everything for you.
“When you really experience for the first time that there is no “Out There” “out there” it will resolve everything for you.” That has me intrigued; Care to explain (if no drugs are involved)?
No drugs Bruno. Could’nt explain if I wanted to. Go to Butterfliesfreetofly.com and watch the 6 videos. That could be a good start. I watched them quit some time ago, but it started me on a profound journey.
Thank you Lou I’ll do.
You write entertaining prose, but too confusing when thinking about it, IMHO ;-). Perhaps we agree that there are just too many damn people on this globe who cause confusion?!
And somehow your candidate, Bernie Sanders, would know how to navigate all this mess and would not have made an about face on just about every thing he campaigned on, like Trump has?
Stop beating up the candidate and open your view to the fact that big money’d corps and the Military run this show with the help of agencies like the CIA and the NSA to act as enforcers, when anybody who could influence the masses to oppose their power gains too much prominence. Eliot Spitzer is a good example. He was in the process of bringing a case against the banksters on Wall Street for their role in the Great Recession, then it was outed he was seeing a prostitute.