Taylor Swift recently showed up in a Pentagon report. Why is the DoD reading about the world’s most famous pop star? The answer seems to be: Because people on the internet were talking about her and the Defense Department monitors the whole internet.
Journalist Ken Klippenstein managed to get ahold of an intelligence report that mentions the singer. The report comes from the Joint Military Information Support Operations Web Operations Center (JMWC), a little-known agency under Special Operations Command that is tasked with monitoring social media and “counter[ing] hostile propaganda and disinformation” through psychological operations work, Klippenstein writes, citing a government report.
The report found that there was “considerable anxiety among social media users” after the cancellation of several Swift concerts earlier this month. Those concerts were scheduled to be held in Vienna but were canceled after threats from alleged would-be terrorists. A number of young men were arrested in connection to an apparent plot to kill people en masse. The suspects had allegedly planned to detonate explosive devices at the concerts.
Understandably, those plots freaked out a lot of people, a fact that the Pentagon apparently had to monitor the internet to figure out. “A considerable number of netizens have voiced their apprehensions regarding the increasing global threats posed by ISIS,” the report states. If you’re thinking this all sounds like a tempest in a teapot and a waste of government resources, well, Klippenstein notes: “A Pentagon inspector general evaluation of the center’s effectiveness found that the team lacked clear policy and oversight” in 2023.
Swift has been tied up in all sorts of political intrigue over the past few months. As the presidential election has heated up, Swift has become a discursive pawn in both Democrats’ and Republicans’ battle to win hearts and minds. Earlier this year, Republicans were busy with the conspiracy theory that Swift was a Pentagon “PSYOP.” More recently, amidst rumors that Swift might show up at the Democratic National Committee to endorse Kamala Harris, the MAGA political sphere has been in a sort of panic. Not long ago, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image and seemed to imply that Swift had endorsed him. Upon finding out that the image was fake (and after it was made apparent that Swift could sue him for spreading the imagery), Trump denounced AI.
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