Information or Psychological Bioterrorism
A strategic weapon deployed by fifth generation warfare practitioners
In a 2017 published interview, the concept of “Information bioterrorism” was defined and introduced to the West by former Soviet-Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) intelligence officer Dr. Alexander Kouzminov as a new type of global operational influence and manipulation over people. He suggested that another name for this could be ‘information biological black-mail’. Recognizing that deployment of this strategic approach is a component of the larger domain of modern psychological warfare (or PsyWar), I propose an alternative term for the same strategy: “Psychological Bioterrorism”. Since psychological bioterrorism operates on both conscious as well as subconscious levels, this form of mental manipulation is an example of both PsyWar (targeting the conscious mind) as well as Cognitive warfare (targeting the subconscious).
What’s the purpose of Psychological Bioterrorism? The specific, pre-planned outcome varies based on the interests and desired outcomes of the bioterrorist. In some cases, this may involve selling a technology platform or a product (such as mRNA vaccination and gene therapy), in others raising or otherwise obtaining capital and wealth, it may involve an aggression, hostile economic and/or political objective, or it may merely involve boosting viewership, readership, clicks, likes or “follows” for various media providers or social influencers.
According to Dr Alexander Kouzminov (2017):
The basis of ‘information bioterrorism’ is the use of fear over people. This fear is based on pandemics of very dangerous diseases, for example when a pandemic is a threat that arises from a viral outbreak in animals. The main components and aftereffects of such new form of mass manipulation of a “threat” are:
Time factor: practically immediate and globally-spread panic through electronic means of communication.
Vulnerability factor: helplessness before the threat, due to lack of effective means of defense. This creates panic among the general population.
Uncertainty factor: The lack of factual information about the source of threat and its spread; the side who initiates the threat thereby has a new opportunity for mass manipulation.
The lack of control factor: each person who finds himself ‘out of control’ because he/she is a suspicious object, liable to have the disease, is a threat to everyone else.
Information bioterrorism (or ‘information biological blackmail’) is enacted by the means of methods organized by secret services; and is implemented as an ‘active operation’ in target countries. Such an active operation can be determined via the following means <or actions, as described in the following definitions>.
‘Active operation’ - this is an activity of a secret service (usually of foreign intelligence), which is aimed at a ‘Target audience’ (an object it wants to influence), and is carried out at the request of an ‘Interested party’ with ‘Supporters’ and ‘Auxiliary means’ to reach required ‘Planned impacts’.
‘Active operation’ is carried out with the support of agents, supporting persons and interested organizations. Usually, secret services conducts ‘active operations’ using ‘false flags’ – that is, it hides its main objectives under the cover of a (politically) neutral organization, or hides its goals under some kind of a falsely crafted problem.
‘Interested parties’- During the times of Cold War, ‘interested parties’ were usually the government or its special (secret) services, normally foreign intelligence. Today, the ‘Interested party’ could be: a big conglomerate, pharmaceuticals, bank, private and political groups, lobbyists, etc.
‘Target’- Objects or target audience of an ‘active operation’ may be governments, high ranking military officials, secret services of the enemy, political parties, banks, companies, etc. as well as ordinary populations, where the aim is to cause some kind of an impact and effect.
‘Executor’: This is secret service, as a rule foreign intelligence. Usually, the ‘Executor’ carries out ‘Active operations’ using a ‘false flag’, which means that it masquerades the true operation by covering it up with a false story or threat.
‘Supporters’: They might be agents of influence and neutral third parties [the latter are not with the secret service]; these can help the ‘Executor’ to realize the ‘Active operations’.
‘Mass media’: The role played by mass (corporate and/or social) media is to implement “active operations” by ‘Auxiliary means’. Mass media is one of the key ways that an ‘Active operation’ is implemented. The ‘Executor’ uses mass media to achieve the maximum impact on ‘Target audience/Object of influence’. For example, to raise a threat, to spread rumors and false information, etc. all of
this is really for disinformation, in order to take away the attention from the true operation, to masquerade it.
‘Planned impacts’: Information sent out for a specific audience has to be ‘sharp’. It is important to influence the intended object. Information is put together purposefully, usually as a threat or a big problem, as if it’s a real problem. The target audience should never doubt it.
Main stages of the ‘active operation’
The approach that is used to carry out the ‘active operation’ is based on a crafted
strategy: first the problem, and then its solution.
The main stages of the ‘active operation’, through which ‘information bioterrorism’ can be created, are as follows:
Phase 1: the ‘Executor’ (e.g. secret service), with the help of ‘Supporters’ (e.g. agents) and ‘Auxiliary Means’ (e.g. mass media), throws out false information (in our case, - imminent pandemic) onto the ‘Target Audience’ (e.g. public) with a pre-tense that it’s real.
Phase 2: ‘Executors’, ‘Supporters’ and ‘Auxiliary Means’ accelerate the problem, making it a hot topic (maximum interest needs to be created). Once the false problem is created, it grows like a ‘snowball’, rolling and rolling independently as though it’s becoming legitimate.
Phase 3: the actual task of the operation is realized (secretly) – monetary gains are already there, government stability is undermined (e.g. economic loss), and other unfortunate impacts.
For the general target (general population), they are told that the problem is being solved and risks are contained. This is done with side-line information (news stories, etc.). However, the problem is left ‘hanging’, so that the ‘Executor’ can use it again. It would be easy to resurrect it.
In practice, “information bioterrorism” can be realized using these means:
I – Creating a problem
First, there needs to be a local outbreak of seasonal influenza or some contagious disease, which the interested party can use for its own interests. This of course is false information. There can also be a case, that it’s a supposed ‘leak’ from a secret military-medical laboratory or army ‘bio-defence research’ centre. Such a situation can be crafted by the ‘Executor’ (secret service) deliberately, to create great interest, awe and fear.
II – Snowballing a problem
Media (‘Auxiliary means’, also including ‘Supporters’, e.g. agents of influence) starts to ‘heat’ the public. Front pages of newspaper, TV channels, internet, social media, – are already there with alarming titles – ‘highly pathogenic virus’, ‘new contagious disease’, ‘new flu outbreak into a pandemic’, ‘be ready for corpses, flu plan says’ – all heightening the threat and scaring everyone! Mass-media and interested organizations issue warning signs/messages like ‘the disease breaks human-to-human barrier’ and “predict” that “the disease would infect up to millions people globally”. For example, “A super-flu could kill up to 1.9 million Americans, according to a draft of the government’s plan to fight a worldwide epidemic”.
III – Problem becomes hot topic
Health authorities/senior officals/experts/agents of influence express concerns that a virus will mutate into a form that can spread from one human to another and this could lead to a world-wide pandemic, and claimed that an influenza pandemic would likely lead to high rates of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death). For example, “…the death toll from a human pandemic of avian influenza could be anything from 5 to 150 million”. Also, “There is no time to waste. The virus [bird flu] could ignite the next human flu pandemic. I do not need to tell you of the terrible consequences that could bring to all nations and all peoples”.
IV – Aggravating a problem and starting to gain planned results.
Soon after World Health Organisation (WHO) may announce a new influenza,
a public health emergency of international concern, and soon an influenza pandemic alert is raised to five on a six-level warning scale meaning that a pandemic is considered imminent. The governments around the world have little choice, but to respond to the WHO’s pandemic declaration by spending billions on drugs, and throw all available resources at fighting the disease, once the WHO has declared the pandemic is under way. This triggers a wave of “panic buying of vaccine and antivirals” by governments around the world, in many cases involving far more money than hundreds of million dollars.
Authorized and interested organizations recommend national governments to use specific antivirals and flu-fighting drug(s) and inform them that an ‘effective vaccine’ is being developed and will be ready to use shortly.
Please keep in mind that this amazingly prescient interview was published in 2017. Dr. Kouzminov then offered a brief example to illustrate how this operates:
The secret WHO emergency committee
For example, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) highlighted the existence of a se- cret WHO emergency committee that advised the WHO Director-General on when to declare the pandemic. It was claimed that “WHO was being advised by a group of people who were deeply embedded with the pharmaceutical industry, and had a lot of gain by beating this epidemic into a pandemic”. The BMJ reported that WHO had, in February 2009 (about a month before the first cases of the 2009 ‘swine flu’ outbreak were reported), amended the definition of the pandemic by removing that pandemic can cause “enormous numbers of deaths and illness”, lowering the bar for pandemic announcements.
Achieving results
What is to be achieved? Weakening of the economies and losses, bankruptcies and threatens to vulnerable businesses (e.g. loss of trade, inbound tourism, international travel, etc.), destabilisation (or even paralysis) of governments and their public services. Production of antiviral drugs and vaccines creates hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. For example, the Council of Europe’s report about the ‘2009 swine flu outbreak’ claimed national governments, the EU and the WHO for the “waste of large sums of public money” and for fueling “unjustified scares and fears” over what the report’s author termed a “pandemic that never really was”.
This new form of mass manipulation – “information bioterrorism” as a ‘weapon of mass-manipulation’ can become an instrument of big politics, if the ‘pandemic’ threat will be used in the future, deliberately.
Info-bioterrorism as a form of global influence
Information bioterrorism – this is a form of global influence. It can be even more effective, from the view of consequences and harm, which it can cause. Firstly, info-bioterrorism, in comparison with an act of bioterror is not and does not apply for strategic or military applications, political assassination, and acts of sabotage – to disrupt local infrastructures, to harm the health of local population, animals, or disrupt the environment of a certain country.
Secondly, its organizers and interested organizations, use the potential pandemic threat, in order to reach certain results– I’ve already mentioned such examples, above.
Thirdly, in the case of info-bioterrorism, such ‘threat’ is not hidden, as in the case of bioterrorism attack, but in contrast is widely publicized in the mass media. The wider the spread of mass media stories, the better it is for the organizers of ‘information bioterrorism’. However, the organizers of bioterrorism will never tell about their plans.
Fourthly, economic losses from information bioterrorism are quite higher, than the acts of bioterrorism. In the case of bioterrorism, the loss for an individual country – in monetary value – may range from a few hundreds of millions to some millions of dollars, taking into account the loss for the economy, expenses for the affected infrastructure, loss of exports, expenses for health service, etc. However, in the case of information bioterrorism, the costs are quite different – tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, economic losses that resulted from SARS outbreaks in 2002–2003 are evaluated by the World Bank as more than $15 billion in the Asian region alone. The SARS cost for the global economy was estimated as about $30 billion. Economic losses from the Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) pandemic in 2006–2007 were estimated at up to 20 times higher than SARS, and it estimated that it could cost the Asian economy up to $283 billion. The expected world-wide economic disaster would cost as much as $800 billion if a human pandemic lasts for a year. The same amount was spent by USA in Iraq.
Fifth, organizers of bioterrorism do not gain any money. This is because its goal – is first of all to ruin and harm government infrastructure, health of people, farm animals and the environment. However, the organizers of information bioterrorism yearn to actually gain some monetary value. Their aim is to earn on the fear of a world catastrophe – this is one of the main peculiarities of info-bioterrorism. Its organizers earn huge money – tens of millions of dollars, for example, through the manufacture and sale of antiviral drugs, vaccines and other protectives means; this is eligible, when the people are told that there’s (yet another) scary virus, which they cannot stop.
The idea of a pandemic and its trade is actively pushed and continues to develop with surprising persistence in mass media, and even on government websites–for example, on USA websites such as pandemicflu.gov or avianflu.gov. For example, the USA government puts in millions of dollars to support the idea of a global pandemic, that it may happen, putting hundreds of millions of dollars for the creation of vaccines against these ‘mass’ horrors. For example, Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics has been awarded a $487 million contract by the US Department of Health and Human Services, a joint venture totaling nearly $1 billion US in investment, to produce 50 million doses of seasonal trivalent flu vaccine, and up to150 million doses of monovalent vaccine in preparation for a potential pandemic.
For example, as a result of H1N1 ‘swine flu pandemic’, in 2009-2010, the U.S. Government initiated the most expensive national vaccination campaign in American history and purchased at least 160 million doses of vaccine against swine flu, costing $18 billion. According to the WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan, vaccine makers could produce nearly 5 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario. The main vaccine producer (e.g. GlaxoSmithKline) stands to earn about $50 billion per year from these vaccine recommendations. In a case of another ‘pandemic’ – the H5N1 avian influenza (‘bird flu’) in 2006-2007, UN officials (i.e. Dr David Nabarro, the UN coordinator on avian and human influenza) claimed that about $1.5 billion was needed as “a beginning to cope with bird flu and prepare for any possible pandemic.”
WEAPONIZING AND PROMOTING FEAR OF AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE FOR POLITICAL, FINANCIAL OR PERSONAL ATTENTION PURPOSES IS GROSSLY UNETHICAL.
Those who traffic in promoting this type of fear are clearly engaging in psychological bioterrorism.
This includes physicians and corporations which amplify fear of a pathogen like H5N1 in order to sell drugs, vaccines or nutritional supplements.
This includes individual scientists or virologists who assert that H5N1 will kill all COVID mRNA-based vaccine recipients when there are no data demonstrating active human to human transmission, let alone evidence of human H5N1 mortality in COVID vaccine recipients. This is attention seeking behavior and should be condemned. There is a human cost that is paid by the naive in terms of depression, suicide and mental health damage when these types of fear-based narratives are promoted.
This includes state governments which assert that H5N1 constitutes a public health emergency when there are no data demonstrating active human to human transmission.
This includes corporate media which build viewership and readership by broadcasting or publishing speculative and unsupported fearporn regarding H5N1. This includes governmental centers for disease control and drug regulators (FDA, EMA), NGO, and global "health" agencies and organizations (WHO) which promote misleading inflated high H5N1 human mortality narratives based on rare infection events.
This includes academic physicians and scientists whose careers are advanced by promoting irrational public fear of infectious diseases including H5N1.
These are all examples of psychological bioterrorists.
We need to learn to protect ourselves from the economic, social and psychological damage which is caused by permitting psychological bioterrorism. This is truly a crime against humanity, and one which can only be stopped when politicians with integrity and the general public become aware that they are being manipulated, refuse to play along, and socially, economically and politically shun those which promote and deploy psychological bioterrorism.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Dr. Alexander Kouzminov is a highly qualified and experienced biosecurity specialist. He has extensive track record of work in central government and private sector as a senior advisor, senior analyst, director, chief-executive. Dr Kouzminov has contributed to a number of environmental and biosecurity policy papers within New Zealand and internationally e.g. UNESCO policy forums, among others, and has several awards from New Zealand central government and international recognitions for his policy development work.
Dr Kouzminov is also an ex-intelligence operative of the Soviet-Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in 1980-90s, and dealt with intelligence operations with bioweapons related activities in target countries. He is author of ‘Biological Espionage. Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West’ (2005, Greenhill Books) and has over 50 published works on biosecurity e.g. bioterrorism, bioweapons, risk control and management, policy approaches.
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