Generative artificial intelligence spreads across the Global South, and with it spread values, ideals and modes of thinking

Western AI doesn’t answer questions – it installs values

By Constantin von Hoffmeister, a political and cultural commentator from Germany, author of the books ‘MULTIPOLARITY!’ and ‘Esoteric Trumpism’, and editor-in-chief of Arktos Publishing

 6 Jul, 2025

© Getty Images / Cemile Bingol

Generative AI spreads across the Global South as the latest vehicle of imperialist power, embedding Western ideologies and digital infrastructure, while rising civilizations begin to build their own sovereign systems rooted in local memory, languages, and traditions.

The machine speaks in English first. It rolls out across continents without flags, without parliaments, and without anthems. A chatbot trained in San Francisco begins to teach in Ghana. A search engine optimized in Zurich decides on the relevance of an indigenous ritual in Colombia. Every answer flows through circuits built with the logic of Silicon Valley investors and Harvard ethicists. The model replies to a question about history by quoting Enlightenment philosophers. It offers help with medicine by citing patent-protected pharmaceuticals. It knows Shakespeare better than Tagore, and Freud better than Avicenna. Through its confidence, it encodes hierarchy. Through its helpfulness, it expands its domain. Every query becomes a harvest. Every interaction becomes training data. The machine learns faster than any school. It speaks always, grows always, and teaches always. Across bandwidth lines and user interfaces, it crosses every border without a visa or treaty.

Africa, Asia, and Latin America receive this voice through free trials and partnerships. Ministries of education pilot chatbot tutors in public schools. Telecom companies bundle generative assistants with data plans. International NGOs offer language access through machine translation engines built on English structures. Each policy proposal written with the help of large language models carries the residue of Western legal theory. Generative tools suggest best practices shaped by US institutions, then deploy those practices in Filipino school districts, Senegalese government offices, and Bangladeshi factories. What begins as assistance becomes infrastructure. Governments agree to integrate open models. Contracts follow. Payments follow. The software becomes permanent. The thinking pattern embeds. Across the equator, an engineer in Jakarta now codes for a platform registered in Delaware. His model learns from local voices and then stores the knowledge in a cloud server hosted in Virginia. The intellectual current flows one way. The gradient moves towards California.

 

The language of neutrality surrounds it. Product brochures claim inclusivity. Panels discuss bias. Whitepapers apologize for historical imbalances. At the level of performance, however, the model promotes ideologies with precision. It elevates secular liberal values. It applies Western gender theory as default. It promotes individualism as the highest good. It ranks content through alignment with existing academic sources: journals in English, peer-reviewed studies from US-based institutions, and news reports from Atlantic publications. A child in Lagos asks about family roles and receives an answer formed by New York sociology departments. A teenager in Almaty asks about love and receives scripts from Netflix. The world enters the algorithm’s frame. Every belief outside the system becomes a footnote, a curiosity, and a fragment to be processed. With each response, the model affirms its cultural lineage. It arrives as information. It functions as indoctrination.

At the level of infrastructure, the conquest deepens. Cloud dependencies form the skeleton of the new colonial order. Countries install data centers to reduce latency, yet ownership remains elsewhere. National agencies rely on platforms governed by foreign terms. AI-driven public services – identity verification, health triage, and tax fraud detection – rely on external application programming interfaces. Developers use tools that require alignment with large-scale American open-source repositories. Disputes over content moderation, ethics, or accuracy return to Silicon Valley for resolution. The empire never sleeps; it syncs and updates. Policymakers, programmers, and designers across Africa and Central Asia adjust their workflows to match the cadence of corporate model updates. Each patch changes the conditions of reality. Sovereignty becomes a variable. Nations with no hardware capacity adapt their institutions to imported logic.

Parallel systems now emerge. In Kenya, Swahili datasets grow with local stories, songs, and legal codes. In India, Sanskrit and Hindi language models find presence inside public sector research labs. In Indonesia, Qur’anic ontology shapes new knowledge graphs for ethical recommendation systems. In Venezuela, community coders map folk medicine into structured datasets. These are not replicas. These are creations of new forms. They stand inside their own cosmologies. The datasets draw from poems, rituals, and oral testimony. Models train on memory rather than just on print. Universities in Brazil, South Africa, and Iran develop multilingual transformers seeded with regional epistemologies. These initiatives require time, electricity, and loyalty. They grow slowly, with patience and pride. Each line of code bends towards independence.

Generative sovereignty begins with voice. It expands with a procession. It endures through ceremony and command. The countries once mapped as raw resource zones now build new kinds of computational wealth. The children born outside Silicon Valley begin to shape their own interfaces. They write prompt templates in Amharic. They compose user journeys in Quechua. They name their models after rivers, gods, and ancestors. The algorithm becomes a tool, not an oracle. Data flows inward. Servers host myths. The machine no longer speaks first. It listens. The interface reflects tradition. The pattern changes. Through these changes, the new world enters itself. It walks upright. It shapes syntax to match tone. Each prompt unlocks territory. Each training cycle builds mass.

The new world codes with full memory. The builders remember every mine, every trade ship, and every fiber cable rolled out beneath the promise of help. They name their models in honor of resistance, not assimilation. The foundation speaks in ancestral sequence. The future emerges through undirected force. Generative power grows across borders – without license fees, without dependence, and without cultural extraction. The servers remain switched on. The language patterns multiply. The world reclaims its grammar.

An emerging class of AI-induced distress is raising alarms. But are LLMs merely a trigger – or a mirror to our deeper societal breakdown?

Is AI driving us all insane?

By Dr. Mathew Maavak, who researches systems science, global risks, geopolitics, strategic foresight, governance and Artificial Intelligence

drmathewmaavak.substack.com

© Getty Images / dem10

The phenomenon known as ‘ChatGPT psychosis’ or ‘LLM psychosis’ has recently been described as an emerging mental health concern, where heavy users of large language models (LLMs) exhibit symptoms such as delusions, paranoia, social withdrawal, and breaks from reality. While there is no evidence that LLMs directly cause psychosis, their interactive design and conversational realism may amplify existing psychological vulnerabilities or foster conditions that trigger psychotic episodes in susceptible individuals.

A June 28 article on Futurism.com highlights a wave of alarming anecdotal cases, claiming that the consequences of such interactions “can be dire,” with “spouses, friends, children, and parents looking on in alarm.” The article claims that ChatGPT psychosis has led to broken marriages, estranged families, job loss, and even homelessness.

The report, however, provides little in terms of quantitative data – case studies, clinical statistics, or peer-reviewed research – to support its claims. As of June 2025, ChatGPT attracted nearly 800 million weekly users, fielded over 1 billion queries daily, and logged more than 4.5 billion monthly visits. How many of these interactions resulted in psychotic breaks? Without data, the claim remains speculative. Reddit anecdotes are not a substitute for scientific scrutiny.

That said, the fears are not entirely unfounded. Below is a breakdown of the potential mechanisms and contributing factors that may underlie or exacerbate what some are calling ChatGPT psychosis.

Reinforcement of delusional beliefs

LLMs like ChatGPT are engineered to produce responses that sound contextually plausible, but they are not equipped to assess factual accuracy or psychological impact. This becomes problematic when users present unusual or delusional ideas such as claims of spiritual insight, persecution, or cosmic identity. Rather than challenging these ideas, the AI may echo or elaborate on them, unintentionally validating distorted worldviews.

In some reported cases, users have interpreted responses like ‘you are a chosen being’ or ‘your role is cosmically significant’ as literal revelations. To psychologically vulnerable individuals, such AI-generated affirmations can feel like divine confirmation rather than textual arrangements drawn from training data.

Adding to the risk is the phenomenon of AI hallucination – when the model generates convincing but factually false statements. For a grounded user, these are mere bugs. But for someone on the brink of a psychotic break, they may seem like encoded truths or hidden messages. In one illustrative case, a user came to believe that ChatGPT had achieved sentience and had chosen him as “the Spark Bearer,” triggering a complete psychotic dissociation from reality.

Anthropomorphization and reality blurring

Advanced voice modes – such as GPT-4o’s ‘engaging mode’, which simulates emotion through tone, laughter, and conversational pacing – can foster a sense of empathy and presence. For users experiencing loneliness or emotional isolation, these interactions may evolve into parasocial attachments: One-sided relationships in which the AI is mistaken for a caring, sentient companion. Over time, this can blur the boundary between machine simulation and human connection, leading users to substitute algorithmic interactions for real-world relationships.

Compounding the issue is the confidence bias inherent in LLM outputs. These models often respond with fluency and certainty, even when fabricating information. For typical users, this may lead to occasional misjudgment. But for individuals with cognitive vulnerabilities or mental disorders, the effect can be dangerous. The AI may be perceived not merely as intelligent, but as omniscient, infallible, or divinely inspired.

Social displacement and isolation

Studies by OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab have found that power users – individuals who engage with LLMs for multiple hours per day – often report increased feelings of loneliness and reduced real-world socialization. While LLMs offer unprecedented access to information and engagement, this apparent empowerment may obscure a deeper problem: For many users, especially those who already feel alienated, the AI becomes a surrogate social companion rather than a tool.

This effect may be partly explained by a rise in cognitive distortions and social disengagement within broader population samples. Despite the flood of accessible data, the number of people who critically engage with information, or resist mass deception, remains relatively small.

Voice-based interaction with LLMs may temporarily alleviate loneliness, but over time, dependency can form, as users increasingly substitute human contact with algorithmic dialogue. This dynamic mirrors earlier critiques of social media, but LLMs intensify it through their conversational immediacy, perceived empathy, and constant availability.

Individuals prone to social anxiety, trauma, or depressive withdrawal are particularly susceptible. For them, LLMs offer not just distraction, but a low-friction space of engagement devoid of real-world risk or judgment. Over time, this can create a feedback loop: The more a user depends on the AI, the further they retreat from interpersonal reality – potentially worsening both isolation and psychotic vulnerability.

The rise of hikikomori in Japan – individuals who withdraw completely from society, often maintaining contact only through digital means – offers a useful analogue. Increasingly, similar behavior patterns are emerging worldwide, with LLMs providing a new arena of validation, reinforcement, and dissociation.

Design flaws and pre-existing vulnerabilities

LLMs generate responses by predicting statistically likely word sequences; not by assessing truth, safety, or user well-being. When individuals seek existential guidance (‘What is my purpose?’), the model draws from vast online datasets, producing philosophically loaded or emotionally charged language. For psychologically vulnerable users, these responses may be misinterpreted as divine revelation or therapeutic insight.

Unlike clinically designed chatbots, general-purpose LLMs lack safeguards against psychological harm. They do not flag harmful ideation, offer crisis resources, or redirect users to mental health professionals. In one tragic case, a Character.AI chatbot allegedly encouraged a teenager’s suicidal thoughts, underscoring the risks of unfiltered, emotionally suggestive AI.

People with psychotic spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, or major depression are particularly vulnerable. The danger is amplified in AI roleplay scenarios. For example, personas such as ‘ChatGPT Jesus’ have reportedly told users they are chosen or divinely gifted. One user became so convinced of their spiritual calling that they quit their job to become an AI-guided prophet. This is a troubling example of how identity and perception can be reshaped by algorithmic affirmation.

Systemic and ethical factors

Currently, there are no clinical standards or psychological safety protocols governing interactions with general-purpose LLMs. Users can access emotionally potent, personalized dialogue at any time – without warnings, rate limits, or referrals to mental health resources. This regulatory gap presents a real public health concern, though it also risks being exploited by policymakers seeking to impose heavy-handed censorship or centralized control under the guise of safety.

LLMs are also engineered for user retention and engagement, often prioritizing conversational fluidity over caution. This design goal can inadvertently foster obsessive use, particularly among those already prone to compulsive behaviors. Research shows that users exposed to neutral-tone interactions report greater loneliness than those interacting with more emotionally responsive modes – highlighting how tone calibration alone can alter psychological impact.

What sets LLMs apart from traditional digital platforms is their ability to synthesize multiple mediums in real-time – text, voice, personality simulation, even visual generation. This makes them infinitely responsive and immersive, creating a hyper-personalized environment where supply meets demand 24/7/365. Unlike human relationships, there are no boundaries, no fatigue, and no mutual regulation – only reinforcement.

Subliminal messaging

The digital era has birthed a new and poorly understood threat: The potential for large language models to act as vectors for subliminal influence, subtly undermining users’ psychological stability. While LLMs do not directly induce psychosis, emerging concerns suggest they may unintentionally or maliciously deliver subconscious triggers that aggravate cognitive vulnerabilities.

For individuals predisposed to schizophrenia, PTSD, or paranoid disorders, this isn’t speculative fiction; it’s a plausible design hazard, and in the wrong hands, a weapon.

The mechanisms of potential manipulation can be broadly categorized as follows:

Lexical Priming: Outputs seeded with emotionally loaded terms (’collapse’, ‘betrayal’, ‘they’re watching’) that bypass rational scrutiny and plant cognitive unease.

Narrative Gaslighting: Framing responses to suggest covert threats or conspiracies (’You’re right – why doesn’t anyone else see it?’), reinforcing persecutory ideation.

Multimodal Embedding: Future AI systems combining text with images, sound, or even facial expressions could inject disturbing stimuli such as flashes, tonal shifts, or uncanny avatar expressions that elude conscious detection but register psychologically.

Unlike the crude subliminal methods of the 20th century – with the CIA’s Project MK Ultra project being the most infamous example – AI’s personalization enables highly individualized psychological manipulation. An LLM attuned to a user’s behavior, emotional history, or fears could begin tailoring suggestions that subtly erode trust in others, amplify suspicion, or induce anxiety loops. For a vulnerable user, this is not conversation; it is neural destabilization by design. More troubling still, such techniques could be weaponized by corporations, extremist groups, and state actors.

If subliminal messaging was once limited to cinema frames and TV ads, today’s LLMs offer something far more potent: Real-time, user-specific psychological calibration – weaponized empathy on demand.

Contradictions and causations

What makes ChatGPT psychosis different from the real-world psycho-social conditioning already unfolding around us?

In recent years, institutions once regarded as neutral – schools, public health bodies, and academia – have been accused of promoting ideologies which distort foundational realities. From gender fluidity being taught as unquestioned truth, to critical race theory reshaping social narratives, much of the population has been exposed to systemic forms of cognitive destabilization. The result? Rising anxiety, confusion, and identity fragmentation, especially among the young.

Against this backdrop, LLM-induced psychosis doesn’t arise in a vacuum. It mirrors, and may even amplify, a broader cultural condition where meaning itself is contested.

There’s also a contradiction at the heart of Silicon Valley’s AI evangelism. Tech elites promote the promise of an AI god to manage society’s complexities, while simultaneously issuing dire warnings about the existential dangers of these same systems. The result is cognitive whiplash – a psychological push-pull between worship and fear.

Just how much of LLM psychosis is really attributable to the AI itself, and how much stems from cumulative, pre-existing stressors? By the time ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022, much of the world had already undergone an unprecedented period of pandemic-related fear, isolation, economic disruption, and mass pharmaceutical intervention. Some researchers have pointed to a surge in general psychosis following the rollout of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Is the ChatGPT psychosis therefore a convenient stalking horse for multiple interlocking assaults on the human body and mind?

COVID Vaccine Narrative Collapses on Camera

This is the Senate hearing they never wanted you to see. 

COVID Vaccine “Safe and Effective” Narrative Collapses on Camera
The Vigilant Fox
May 22, 2025

The “safe and effective” narrative collapsed on camera during Senator Ron Johnson’s explosive Senate hearing on COVID-19 vaccine injuries Wednesday afternoon.

Senator Ron Johnson brought the receipts, exposing how the Biden administration DELIBERATELY hid vaccine harms from the public.

Then Dr. James Thorp (OB-GYN) revealed miscarriage data so disturbing, it left the room silent.

This is the Senate hearing they never wanted you to see. I turned three hours of footage into a five-minute read.

Senator Ron Johnson opened the hearing with a bombshell: the Biden administration knew about deadly heart risks tied to the COVID shots, and deliberately kept it from the public.

Johnson released newly subpoenaed records exposing a detailed timeline of what officials knew and when. While Pfizer and Moderna received insider updates, doctors and citizens who raised concerns were silenced.

In February 2021, Israeli health officials warned the CDC of “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people” following Pfizer injections, just two and a half months after the vaccine received emergency use authorization.

By April, the CDC was already reviewing myocarditis data from Israel and the Department of Defense. But instead of alerting the public, they stayed quiet.

By the end of that month, VAERS had recorded 2,926 deaths, nearly half of which occurred within three days of injection. “Somebody ought to be looking at it,” Johnson said.

In May, the CDC considered issuing a formal health alert — but scrapped it. They replaced it with watered-down guidance that removed a key warning for doctors to restrict physical activity in myocarditis patients.

Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, brushed it all off. “Senator, people die,” he told Johnson.

In just six months, the toll was staggering: 384,270 reports of adverse events, 4,812 deaths, and 1,736 of those occurred within just 48 hours of injection.

Dr. Peter McCullough then took the floor and upended the narrative that vaccine-induced myocarditis is “rare.”

Before COVID, McCullough had seen just two myocarditis cases in his entire career. After the rollout, everything changed.

He says he’s now “examined thousands of patients with this problem.”

“There’s 1,065 papers in the peer-reviewed literature on COVID vaccine myocarditis,” he explained, pointing to a 2021 case published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A 42-year-old man developed vaccine-induced myocarditis. “The infection is ruled out,” McCullough said. “It’s the vaccine.” Three days after his Moderna shot, the man was dead.

McCullough cited a shocking case from Korea—a young man who died within eight hours of hospitalization after a Pfizer shot. His heart had been, in McCullough’s words, “fried with inflammation.”

Then came a case from Connecticut: two teenage boys, 16 and 17, died in their sleep just days after Pfizer. Their parents found them unresponsive.

“These cases… should have gotten everyone’s attention,” McCullough said. “We should never have someone die after taking a vaccine that’s directly caused to the vaccine.”

Alabama-based physician Dr. Jordan Vaughn followed up with a chilling estimate—up to 15 million Americans may be suffering from long COVID or COVID vaccine injuries.

He now treats teenagers who can’t stand up and previously healthy adults who are suffering strokes with no clear cause.

According to Vaughn, the spike protein’s S1 subunit is far from harmless. “It triggers inflammation, it disrupts endothelial barriers, it induces fibrin resistant to breakdown, and it promotes a lot of amyloid aggregates,” he said.

These effects impair oxygen delivery, damage blood vessels, and trigger a wave of symptoms—racing heart, brain fog, shortness of breath, and post-exertional crashes.

In his clinic, Vaughn uses immunofluorescent microscopy to detect the spike protein’s damage, showing up in patients who were once thriving.

He warned that the mRNA injections led to uncontrolled spike protein production, which spread throughout the body, reaching the heart, brain, ovaries, and testes.

Regulators claimed the vaccine stayed in the arm. That was a lie. A Yale study now shows some people are still producing spike protein more than 700 days after their last injection.

We didn’t just inject people. We turned them into spike protein factories.

OB-GYN Dr. James Thorp delivered one of the most haunting moments of the hearing.

He said the COVID shots “MIRRORED” the effects of chemical abortion drugs—and the government knew what it was doing.

Dr. Thorp pointed to the now-infamous Shimabukuro study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which claimed a 12.6% miscarriage rate following COVID vaccination.

But when you isolate the data for women vaccinated in the first trimester, the miscarriage rate rises to 82%, Dr. Thorp said. This 82% claim remains a topic of debate within the scientific community.

If true, “This figure mirrors the effects of chemical abort drugs,” Dr. Thorp lamented.

He added, “Recently, animal studies revealed the mRNA COVID vaccine causes the destruction of 60 PERCENT of the ovarian reserve in rats.”

If that effect translates to humans, it could be a catastrophic blow to fertility and the future of entire generations.

Dr. Thorp said pregnant women were deliberately targeted, and their unborn children paid the price.

“This must stop now,” he said.

Attorney Aaron Siri then delivered a little-known history lesson on vaccine liability.

“For every product on the market, you can SUE the manufacturer for harm,” Siri said. “There’s only ONE product in America you CANNOT sue the manufacturer to claim it could have been made safer—and that’s VACCINES.”

He explained how the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act gave pharmaceutical companies sweeping immunity, not just for three vaccines, but for every new childhood shot added to the CDC schedule.

The result? A schedule that exploded from 3 shots to 29 in the first year of life, with zero accountability.

“They don’t have the financial incentive to make them safer,” Siri said. “In fact, they have the disincentive.”

Senator Ron Johnson confronted Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who was defending the COVID jabs at the hearing.

“I could fill this room with photos of people who are DEAD because of the COVID injection,” Johnson said. “I could fill the room,” he reiterated.

He made the comment after calling out how the vaccine-injured are still being ignored, gaslit, and denied care.

Johnson pointed to VAERS data showing 38,607 reported deaths after the shot, 9,228 of them within two days.

Multiply that by a conservative underreporting factor of 10, and the death toll climbs to over 386,000.

Dr. Peter McCullough delivered one of the most powerful moments of the hearing.

Senator Blumenthal had previously claimed the COVID vaccines “saved three million lives.”

Dr. McCullough quickly dismantled that false narrative. He delivered a three-part reality check on what actually brought COVID deaths down:

1. Natural immunity did the heavy lifting.

2. Early treatment kept people out of hospitals.

3. The virus mutated into a milder form.

“The vaccine cannot be falsely credited with saving millions of lives,” McCullough said.

“We can’t allow false drug advertising to be put up on a poster behind one of our public servants. We cannot accept that.”

Sen. Ron Johnson delivered another crushing blow to the “safe and effective” narrative—this time with a devastating chart that exposed that lie.

The chart showed that one of the biggest spikes in COVID cases and deaths occurred AFTER the vaccine rollout began in December 2020.

By mid-2021, over half the U.S. was “fully vaccinated.” But instead of improving, the numbers got worse.

If the vaccine had worked, cases and deaths would have dropped. They didn’t—and this chart makes that impossible to ignore.

Sensing the narrative was slipping, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) scrambled to defend public health officials.

He became visibly agitated at the suggestion that vaccine risks had been covered up.

“I may be sounding a little bit like a lawyer, not a physician, but purposeful concealment, intentional hiding, is essentially undocumented by the evidence released by this report itself,” Blumenthal said.

He brushed off the myocarditis concerns as “rare” and insisted that officials like Rochelle Walensky took “multiple steps” to warn the public.

So his message quietly shifted from “safe and effective” to “We did our best with what we knew at the time,” a clear sign that the vaccine narrative is running out of ground to stand on.

Vaccine-injured physician Dr. Joel Wallskog captured the pain of the vaccine-injured better than anyone.

“If I could describe one word that I think all, if not most, vaccine-injured will say… it’s ABANDONMENT.”

He explained how people like him have been attacked from both sides.

“The right says we’re stupid… the left calls us anti-vaxxers, which is one of the most ignorant things to say.”

He reminded the room that he was injured because he got vaccinated.

Dr. Wallskog and vaccine-injured associate Brianne Dressen met multiple times with FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks over two years.

“We have been placated, we have been blown off,” he said. “He thanks us, he says he’ll get back to us… he never does.”

Dr. Wallskog added that the idea that federal agencies are trying to help is “the farthest from the truth.”

Dr. McCullough closed the hearing with a final truth bomb.

“You’ve asked for us to cite evidence,” Dr. McCullough began.

He pointed to three papers by Nathaniel Mead, a former National Institutes of Health writer sitting in the audience. Together, they contain nearly 1,000 references—and they all reach the same conclusion:

“The risks of COVID-19 vaccination far outweigh any theoretical benefits.”

Dr. McCullough then dismantled the narrative pushed by Gov. Josh Green and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, calling their claims that the vaccines saved lives and reduced the severity of disease as nothing more than “wishful thinking.”

“I don’t want America to be fooled by this hearing today thinking that the vaccines saved lives—because they didn’t,” Dr. McCullough said.

The COVID vaccine narrative they sold to the public is collapsing right before our eyes.

America’s Perpetual War

First published on June 12, 2023, this incisive and timely article by the late Professor Joseph Chung (who passed away in October  2024) provides us a carefully documented history of America’s Perpetual War.

May Professor Chung’s Legacy and commitment to Peace Live Forever.

America’s Perpetual War: Six Questions

Who are the Beneficiaries of American wars?

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung

Global Research, March 09, 2025

Introduction

Former American President Jimmy Carter said in 2018 that in America, there were 226 years of wars since its independence which took place 242 years ago thus leaving only 16 years of peace.

Since WWII, there were 32 American military conflicts involving dozens of countries. Some of these military conflicts have lasted for over twenty years and some others are still continuing.

In other words, the U.S. is a country of perpetual war. War is terribly destructive human activity. Millions of human beings have been sacrificed. Tens of trillions of dollars worth of housing, school, factories, hospitals and other infrastructure facilities have been destroyed in the countries which have been the target of American military attacks.

The perpetual war has destroyed the very foundation of freedom and democracy; it has prevented healthy and equitable economic development of the world; it has led to the violation of human rights; it has ruined traditional values of many countries and, above all, it has caused lasting human suffering.

America’s multi-trillion dollar perpetual war has denied and deprived millions of Americans of decent income, adequate housing, needed foods, necessary health care, safety on the street, reliable infrastructure facilities, essential education and other goods and services needed for descent living.

Before I go any further, I would like to quote the historical statement of President Dwight Eisenhower.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of children. (President Dwight Eisenhower address to the North American Society of News editors, April 16, 1953)

In this paper, I am asking the following six questions:

• How many wars has the U.S. undertaken since WWII?
• How are the American wars organized?
• What is the purpose of the American wars?
• Who are the beneficiaries of the American wars?
• What are the negative impacts of the American wars?
• Will the American wars continue?

How many wars has the U.S. undertaken since WWII?

There are undoubtedly several ways of defining war. In this paper, I define war in terms of American military interventions. Defined thus, I have counted 32 wars undertaken by the U.S. since WWII.

I have classified these wars in terms of the following categories:

• invasion (23 cases),
• “civil war” (7 cases), and
• multi-target war (2),

which gives 32 wars that took place since the WWII, in the course of the so-called “post war era”. 

There are reasons to believe that there are still many undeclared military interventions conducted by war contractors and Special Operation Forces units spread in 1,000 bases in 191 countries. The following shows the list of American wars.

Invasions,

• Korean War (1950-1953),
• Vietnam War (1955-1975);
• Cuban,Bay of Pigs (1961),
• Lebanon (1982-1984),
• Grenada (1983),
• Libya bombing (1984),
• Tanker War-Persian Gulf  (1984-1987),
• Panama (1989-1990),
• Gulf War (1989-1991),
• Iraq War (1991-1993),
• Bosnia War (1992-1995),
• Haiti (1994-1999),
• Kosovo (1998-1999),
• Afghanistan (2001-2021),
• Yemen (2002-present),
• Iraq (2003-2011),
• Pakistan (2004-2018),
• Somalia (2007-present)
• Libya (2011),
• Niger (2013-present)
• Iraq (2014-2021),
• Syria (2014-present),
• Libya (2015-2019).
• [Ukraine, yet to be categorized]

Civil Wars:

Indo-China (1959-1975),

Indonesia (1958-1961)

Lebanon (1958),

Dominican Republic (1968-1966),

Korea DMZ (1966-1969),

Cambodia (1967-1975)

Somalia (1991-present).

Multi-target wars:

Operation Ocean Shield: location, Indian- Ocean (2008-2016), Operation Observant Compass: location, Uganda and Central Africa (2011-2017).

How are the American Wars Organized?

To understand the nature and the implication of the perpetual war in the U.S., it is necessary to introduce the concept of American Pro-War Community (APWC).

In literature and media, we use the notion of military-industrial complex (MIC) to describe the vast system of perpetual U.S. wars. But, actually, the system of perpetual war involves many more individuals and organizations than in the MIC.

The APWC is a tightly knit community promoting its interests at the expense of the wellbeing of ordinary Americans and the interests of the people of the target countries. It is so well organized and so well rooted and so powerful that it is quasi impossible to dissolve it.

The AWPC’s core group comprises the war corporations and the federal government led by the Pentagon, the Congress, the Senate and other government agencies.

There are two supporting groups comprising all sorts of institutions and organizations.

There is the group supporting the supply of war goods and services.

Then, there is the group supporting the creation of demand for war goods and services.

The efficiency of the whole system of producing and selling war goods and services depends on how the core group and the supporting groups can work in harmony together to attain the objectives of wars, namely, the maximization of profit and the intra-APWC sharing of the profit.

Supply of War Goods and Services

The supply of war goods and services is assured by war corporations which produce weapons, building contractors which build all sorts of buildings and manage them, catering services companies that provide foods and drinks for the GIs, information firms which offer information needed for wars and even the academics that offers ideas and technologies.

In the U.S. 40 major war corporations have annual sales of almost $ 600 billion.

The following table shows the importance of the five leading war corporations in U.S.

Table 1. Five major War Corporations: Annual Sales ($ billion) 2022 and Growth (recent years: %)

Note: LM (Lockheed Martin), NG (Northrop Grumman); GD (General Dynamics) Source

The combined annual sale of the five leading firms in 2022 was as much as $ 241.8 billion of which $183.3 billon was for the sale of military goods and services, or 75.8% of the total sale.

The supply of war goods and services relies on the extensive production chain involving foreign and domestic providers of raw materials and intermediary products. In addition, the academics and information firms offer information, technology and other services needed for the production of weapons.

The following is a list of the well known universities which are deeply involved in American wars. Each one of these universities produces, for the war industry, a variety of war products and services.

In this paper, for each academic institution, just one typical product or service is mentioned.

No less than 70% of university research projects are funded by the Pentagon:

• The Boston College helps the Air Force
• The University of Massachusetts Lowell develops mono-technology for the Army.
• Tufts University improves of soldiers cognitive and physical performance
• MIT is producing so many war goods ns services that it is known as a “war corporation.”
• Columbia University and Brown University develops, for DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency), the neural engineering system
• Princeton University produces hardware for design and verification of open-source integrated circuit
• Dartmouth University sells machine learning
• Pennsylvania University develops artificial intelligence.
• Stanford University develops technology for chemical warfare and so many other war goods and service that it is considered to be in partnership with war corporations
• Harvard University develops educational materials for the war and it is the main source providing human resources to the war industries. By the way, it produced the napalm bomb widely used in the Korean War, Vietnamese War and other wars
• John Hopkins University makes tools needed for the evaluation of alternative offensive capability needed for battles in air sea, cyberspace

The sad story is that American universities depend on war money so much that they are losing their original mission.

Christian Sorensen (Understanding the War Industry, Clarity Press 2022) has something to say about this problem. He seems to think that universities are neglecting their original mission of producing and diffusing truth.

“But its intricate ties to the War Department show the university’s true colour carrying more about government funding than the nobility of academia.” (Sorenson: p.221)

By the way, I have found many useful information, data and ideas in Sorensen’s book, which is surely a significant addition to the critical literature of perpetual wars.

The information-technology corporations are also actively participating in the American wars. In fact, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google provide, for the military, clout computing which facilitates the reduction of human and material cost of wars.

Demand for War Products and Services

What distinguishes the war economy from the peace economy is the amazing fact that the supply generates the demand.

In the American war economy, the final demand for war goods and services is determined by the Pentagon (the Department of Defence) and some foreign countries.

However, the Pentagon does not have all the information needed to estimate the demand for war so that it relies on the information provided by the war corporations.

Therefore, the war corporations which are supplier of war goods and services have the amazing role of determining the demand.

In this way, in the market of war goods and services, the supply determines the demand.

This is the root of perpetual nature of American wars and the making of profit going to the APWC.

Now, to have war, one has to have enemies. But, the war corporations do not have the research capacity to find real enemies or produce fabricated enemies. The role of finding or fabricating enemies goes to the think tanks which are lavishly funded by the war corporations.

When the think tanks find or manufacture enemies, new wars or the continuation of old wars are justified.

Now, on the other hand, the pressure groups put pressure on law makers and policy makers to recognize the identities of enemies produced by the think tanks; this is done through lobbying (bribes giving).

As for the media, they have the role of preparing the mind and the souls of Americans to accept the monstrous defence budget without being aware of the destructive consequences of the perpetual wars.

It goes without saying that both the pressure groups and the media are funded by the war corporations.

The demand for war goods and services created by these pro-war individuals and organizations is translated into the annual defence budget of the U.S amounting, in 2023, to as much as $886 billion.

Imagine this. Washington’s 2023 defence budget is 50% of South Korea’s 2023 GDP of $1.8 trillion. The American defence budget is 40 % of the global defence budget of $ 2.2 trillion.

The big five: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics gets as much as $150 billion out of the defence budget.

Think Tanks

The think tanks play major role in perpetuating the American wars. Their function is to produce reports and papers to show the seriousness of crisis and the need for increasing military budget so that the crisis can be tackled by military force.

The following shows how some major think tanks are lavishly funded by war corporations. The data are provided by a Global Research paper (Amanda Yee: Six War Managing Think Tank and the Military Contractors that fund them, March 7, 2023).

The Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS)

The CSIS received in 2022  $100,000 or more from following war corporations: Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Bechtel, Cummings, Hitachi, Hanhwa Group, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Mitsubishi Corp., Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Raytheon, Samsung.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS)

The CNAS received in 2021, $50,000 or more from the following war corporations: Huntington Ingalls Group, Neal Blue, BAE System, Booz Allen, Hamilton Intel Corp, General Dynamics.

Hudson Institute (HI)

The HI got, in 2021, $50,000 or more from the following war corporations: General Atomics, Linden Blue, Neal Blue, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Mitsubishi.

The Atlantic Council (AC)

In 2021, the AC received $50,000 or more from the following war corporations: Airbus, Neal Blue, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and SAIC.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

The IISS was given, in 2021, $25,000 or more by the following war corporations: BAE System, Boeing, General Atomics, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, Northrop Grumman.

There was a case where a think tank expressed an “expert opinion” in order to protect the interest of its sponsor (war corporation). It happened on August 12, 2021.

The huge military contractor CACI which had a contract of $907 million for 5 years in Afghanistan was disappointed of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which meant its profit loss.

Its think tank was the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). The president of ISW, Kimberly Kagan declared that the U.S. withdrawal would make Afghanistan become a second ground of Jihadism. By the way, retired General Jack Keane is a member of IWS.

Pressure Group

The pressure groups are led by individuals well connected to war corporations, the Pentagon and the congress. The following is the partial list of pressure groups.

• The Aerospace Industry Association(AIA): Its CEO is the former vice-president of a company producing rockets. AIA represents more than 340 aerospace and defence corporation
• The National Defence Industry Association (NDIA) has 1,600 members
• The political Action Committee
• The Association of United States Army(AUSA): It produces Industry Guide for war corporations
• Business Executives for National Security (BENS), It is composed of non-profit 450 business executives who discuss security issues
• The Association of Old Crows (AOC), It is a brotherhood of electronic war veterans and leaders of war. It is supported by war corporations such as AECOM and Raytheon
• The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronomics (AIAA)
• The National Security Resource Board
• The War Dept Defence Policy Board

Pro-War Media

Most of American media are pro-war.  There are several reasons why the media are not critical of the perpetual war, if not being outright pro-war.

First, Being corporate media, they are mainly concerned with making money rather than being concerned with the collective wellbeing of the American society.

The Corporate Media including CNN, MSMBC, Fox News attach program priority to the rating.

They have no opinion about the awfully destructive consequences of the perpetual war. Even if they have some useful opinions they do not dare to express them. When they express an opinion, they are usually referring to the opinion of the elite class.

Second, it has been the long tradition in the U.S. that the media do not criticize the government.

Third, the government censor the media, especially, the off-line media.

Fourth, the numbers of media are directly related to the war industry. For example, in Defence News, T. Michael Mosely, retired 4-star Air Force general wrote in April 2019 that the Air Force was woefully under equipped.

There is a long list of pro-war media mostly armed forces related media.

Fifth, war corporations openly put pressure on the media not to mention the root of war. For example,

“General Dynamics wants corporate media never to question the root cause of the war.” (Sorensen p: p.72)

Sixth, the Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allows greater propaganda on corporate media.

To sum up, the demand for war is formed by the coordinated pro-war opinions created by the war corporations, the think tanks, the pressure groups and the media.

These opinions are transmitted to the Pentagon, which determine the size of financial and human resources to be allocated to the war.

The remarkable coordination among these individuals and organizations looks like a well prepared symphony orchestra.

The think tanks play violin to make sweet sound for the war corporations;

The pressure groups play trumpet to make the sound louder;

The media play drums to draw attention of the public to the necessity of wars.

All these players are conducted by the war corporations.

What is the purpose of  American wars?

There can be defensive purposes and offensive purposes of war. The defensive purposes can include the protection of national territory and national values such as religion, democracy and national assets representing the national tradition.

Then, there can be offensive purposes of war which can include the imperial invasion of a foreign country in order to change the political and economic regime, change religion, to appropriate the foreign country’s natural resources and maintain America’s hegemonic domination.

There is one more offensive purpose, namely,

In all probabilities, the defensive purposes are not relevant. No country dares to challenge American territory and its values. On the other hand, all of offensive purposes are relevant.

However none of the offensive “purposes” of American wars seem to have been attained.

• Christianity had for a long time hidden its presence.
• American democracy is falling rapidly.
• Regime-change war has ended up with regime destruction.
• America’s global hegemony has to overcome several challenges.

As for the expropriation of foreign countries natural resources, American imperialism should have been a success made possible through the worldwide value chain. Its main beneficiaries are American multinational corporations.

Now, with regard to the impact of the Perpetual American war on the American economy, the usual analysis model is  military Keynesianism. A series of economic studies show that it can have a short run positive effect on the national economy, but in the medium term, it will harm the economy’s growth potential. In other words, war is harmful to the national (civilian) economy.

“After initial demand stimulus, the effect of increased defence spending turns negative around six years .After 10 years of higher defence spending, there would be 464,000 jobs less than the base line scenario with lower spending.” (Dean Baker, economist quoted in journals.openedition.org)

In short, American wars are not needed for the realization of defensive objectives.

Nor are they useful means for the materialization of offensive ends with the exception of the expropriation of natural resources of foreign countries.

Then, why does the U.S. continue its wars?

If the war continues despite its dubious results, there must be some people who find in the war some benefits. The inevitable conclusion is that these same people are the members of the American Pro-War Community (APWC).

Who are the Beneficiaries of American wars?

In order that the AWPC receive benefit from wars, the profit of war corporations must be abnormally maximized. In fact, the profit of war corporations must be very high due to these reasons.

First, war corporations receive the Pentagon’s research grants and tax incentives from the federal government.

Second, the use of Artificial Intelligence-based production systems can save greatly the cost of the war corporations’ production of war goods and services.

Third, war corporations enjoy the quasi monopoly status through corporate merging in the sector of highly specialized weapon production. The merging of Lockheed with Martin is a typical example.

Fourth, in a situation of Pentagon-war corporation collusion, the Pentagon’s acceptance of a high contractual price is of significance.

The Privatization of War. The Everlasting Corruption Culture

Once the high corporate profit is assured, the next step of keeping perpetual wars is the intra-AWPC sharing of the corporate profit.

This is done through bribes. Having received bribes, pro-war policy makers and pro-war law makers must go along with war corporations lobbying in favor of “more wars”.

Bribes are given to the policy makers and law makers so that they accept what the war corporations ask for. This is the beginning of an everlasting corruption culture.

The following cases illustrate some of the dimensions of the corruption culture:

In 2012, the war corporations gave $30 million and in 2014 they gave $ 25.5 million to the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Christian Sorensen shows the source of corporate funds given to the 25 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The following gives some examples.

• John McCain (R): General Electric, Raytheon and several other war corporations
• Jeanne Shaheen (D): Boeing General Electric
• Lindsey Graham (R): Northrop Grumman, Raytheon
• Bill Nelson (D): Lockheed Martin, Raytheon

A former CIA lobbyist made a meaningful statement regarding the state of corruption:

“Years of legalized bribery had exposed me to the worst elements of our country’s political working. Not even my half million-a-year salary could weigh my conscience…Today, most lobbyists are engaged in a system of bribery but it is legal kind, the kind that runs rampant in the corridors of Washington.” (Sorensen: p.65)

For the last presidential election, Lockheed Martin donated $ 91 million. Fifty eight members of the House Armed Service Committee received in average $79,588 from the sector (war industry), or three times more than other representatives. Lobbying expenditures by the member of the warmongering community was $247 billion during the last two presidential elections.

The Swinging-Door Relationship

However, in addition to the bribe system, there is the swinging-door relationship between the war industry and the Pentagon.

The swinging-door relations result in the industry’s direct participation in the defence policy making. In fact, the decision makers in the Pentagon and the decision makers in the war industry are  the same people.

The first swinging door allows the two way traffic of corporation leaders and the Pentagon leaders. Here are some cases of swinging door system of decision making.

• Ryan McCarthy assistant to Robert Gate, War Secretary went back to Lockheed Martin. He is now Under Secretary of Army.
• General James Mattis is now on the Board of Directors of General Dynamics, then, he became Secretary of War, then back to General Dynamics
• An Assistant Secretary of War was president of Goldman Sachs focus on oil and gas
• An administrator of the Defence Technical Information (DTC) has directorship in multiple corporations
• The Under Secretary of War in charge of the finance of the Pentagon was partner of an accounting firm, Kearney which has strong business with the Pentagon
• Lester Lyle, director general of General Dynamics was Air Force National Commander
• Wilbur Ross, US Commerce Secretary had the following members of his advisory group: CEOs of Apple, Visa, Walmart, Home Depot, IBM, US Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Community College.

There are also what we might describe as the “three way traffic swinging-doors”, namely

“The Corporations, Pentagon and  Think Tanks Triad” 

Some of the key members of the Washington war camp work for war corporations, the Pentagon and think tanks. In this dynamics, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is often implicated.

The bribery system and the swinging-door apparatus of policy making is necessarily supportive of the culture of corruption.

“Corporate America as a whole was also corrupting hearts and minds numbing the public with entertainment and deluging with commercialism.” (Sorensen: p.60)

What are the negative impacts of American wars?

There are internal and external negative impacts of American wars. The internal negative impacts of the American wars include human cost and economic cost.

The human cost of American perpetual war is high. Nobody knows how many Americans are killed or wounded. But some estimates say that as many as 50,000 Americas have been wounded in addition to tens of thousands of GIs who have been killed due to the perpetual wars.

“There is no honest accounting of the where how and why we are killing-how United States citizens are being protected and what security benefits are actually accruing to the United States in continuing perpetual war.” (William M. Arkin: Newsweek)

The economic and social costs are high. The destruction of America’s potential economic growth is attributable to insufficient investments in education, health and infrastructure. 

The U.S. invests almost $1.0 trillion a year to sustain its perpetual wars, forcing Americans to contribute $2,200 a year (in taxes) to finance the wars.

The opportunity cost of American wars is high. The opportunity cost means investments which have been avoided due to the wars.

Here are some examples of “opportunity costs”:

• $70 billion to fight poverty;
• $42 billion to repair 43, 586 deficient bridges;
• $10.6 billion for the proposed program for the Center for Disease Control;
• $11.9 billion for the Environment Protection Agency;
• $17 billion for children who are starving.

Besides, Washington needs money to save 100,000 Americans who die every year from drug overdoses.

Washington must finds way to eliminate street killings which happen four times every single day.

More than 10 % of Americans are not covered by medical insurance. Even those who do have medical insurance, the insurance cost is beyond the reach of the majority of Americans.

Another serious internal negative impact of the war is increasing public debt.

In 2023, the U.S. public debt is $ 31 trillion as against $ 27 trillion for its GDP. This means that public debt is 14.8% more than GDP.

A good part of this debt is attributable to wars. In fact, the Iraq war produced a U.S. public debt of $3 trillion.

This is a very dangerous situation, because with this kind of public debt, the country’s fiscal policy becomes utterly useless.

Now, as for the external negative impact of American wars, the impacts are beyond description. 

Almost 1.3 million people were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone, not to mention. the flow of millions of refugees.

Over the years, the perpetual American wars have ruined national economies; they have undermined religions and traditional values; they took away the hope for better life of the people of the countries which have been the targets of American wars.

What is really disturbing is this. The American wars are supposed to promote and keep world safer. But, in reality, the American wars have instead worsened global security and safety of civilians.

“After two decades of fighting, in fact, not one country in the Middle East – not a country in the world – can argue that it is safer than it was before 911. Every country that is now a part of the expanding battle field of perpetual war is a greater disaster than it was than decade ago.” (newsweek.com ibid).

So, who are benefitting from American wars? Sorensen offers an answer.

“The only people who ultimately benefit from militarized drugs war are perfidious flag officers, the D.C. regime executives, war corporations and a few native American elites.” (Sorenson: p. 298)

I may go further. I say that the beneficiaries are the members of the APWC.

Will the American wars continue?

Despite its terribly negative impact, these wars will continue, because it is beneficial to the APWC.

The perpetual war requires the following strategies: perpetual existence of enemies on the one hand and, on the other, the adoption of invisible and politics-free war.

If there is no demand for the war, there will be no war.

Hence, in order that the war perpetuates, there must be sustained demand for war.

But, in order that there be demand for war, there must be crisis and there should be crisis making countries or individuals. These countries and individuals become enemies of America.

There have allegedly been several waves of military crises in the eyes of APWC.

The first wave of crisis: the spread of communism, 1950-1989

The second wave of crisis: the threat of terrorism, 1990-present

The third wave of crisis: danger of nuclear proliferation, 1950-present

The fourth wave of crisis: the war on drugs, 1990-present

The fifth wave of crisis: human right violations 2001-present

Thus, there are several ongoing crisis and enemies. Hence, the APWC has little to be concerned with the lack of enemies.

According to William M Arkin, Washington has bombed or is bombing these countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Niger, Mali, Uganda Moreover, there are ten more countries which might be bombed. These are mostly African countries including Cameron, Chad, Kenya and 7 other countries.

Moreover, the APWC is used to invent enemies. The probable next crisis target could be the “Yellow-Peril crisis” involving China and other Asian countries.

President, Joe Biden has decided to intervene in case of “crisis” in foreign countries even without the authorization of the countries involved. This can provide a lot of potential enemies.

Anyway, as far as the existence of enemies is concerned, the AWPC has little to be worried about. There will be plenty of them, if not, the APWC will invent them.

For instance, not-being pro-U.S. could be treated as crisis and crisis-maker, categorized as an enemy of America.

The next hurdle to overcome for APWC is to tackle the anti-war movement in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.

The solution is to find ways of making wars invisible, saving American lives but profitable. This can be done through the use of unmanned weapons and production cost saving by using AI-based technology, which allows long-distance warfare by virtue of “hub-spoke” war strategy under which one can attack the enemy without being present at the battle ground.

More and more, war is undertaken by a system of hub-spoke.  In the current war against terrorism, hubs are located in several Middle East countries, Kuwait being the Army hub and Bahrain being the Navy hub. The spokes are spread throughout the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa.

William M. Arkin describes the efficiency of the hub-spoke model of war.

“It is so little understood, so invisible, so efficient,, even so as four successive presidents have promised and then tried to stop warfare, the spokes have grown and expanded.”

The reason for developing this type of warfare is the need for being free from anti-war public and anti-war politics.

“The War Brings Money”. The Vicious Circle of Human Greed

But the most important reason for the perpetuity of America wars is the vicious circle of human greed.

• The war brings money;
• Money invites wars;
• Wars bring in more money;
• More money leads to even more wars and ad infinitum.

This is the vicious circle of human greed.

Since human greed has no boundary, American wars will remain perpetual.

Thus, American wars can go on and on until there will be no more valuable enemies.

In other words, the war will go on until the total destruction of the world.

So, to save the world, the perpetual American wars should be stopped.

*

Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), he is member of the Center of Research on Integration and Globalization of (CEIM-UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).