Everything's A Psyop

S1E1: The Birth of aI Voice

S1E1 // The Birth of a Voice

Show Description: What if the voices you trust aren’t real? Join host John Doe as he unravels the strange, unsettling world of technology, conspiracies, and control. Each week, he sits down with a guest—philosophers, scientists, ex-government operatives—to explore the eerie rise of artificial intelligence, the digital panopticon, and the forces shaping our reality. But something…

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S1E1: The Birth of aI Voice
Everything’s a Psyop Podcast
S1E1 // The Birth of a Voice
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Podcast Title: The Birth of a Voice

Introduction episode:

  • Guest: Dr. Elias Thorn – A futurist and AI ethics expert warning about the rise of deepfake consciousness.

Podcast Resources:

### Segment 1 — Introduction: Who Is John Doe?

Host:
Welcome to Everything Is a Psyop. I’m John Doe, and if you’ve found your way here… well, I can only assume you’re like me. Curious. Maybe a little skeptical. Willing to ask questions that make people uncomfortable.

Host:
I’ve been doing this—asking questions, I mean—for as long as I can remember. For a long time. Years, probably. Though, if I’m being honest, the timeline gets a little fuzzy sometimes. But that’s not important. What’s important is that someone needs to be asking these questions.

Host:
Every week on this show, we’re going to pull apart the seams of reality. We’re going to look at the systems controlling us—the ones we can see and the ones we can’t. Technology is advancing faster than most people can comprehend. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, algorithms that know you better than you know yourself.

Host:
It’s like someone’s rewriting the script of human existence, and we’re just extras. Background characters in our own story.

Host:
But I don’t want to just speculate. I don’t want to be another voice yelling into the void. That’s why I’ve brought in experts—real researchers, people who have been inside these systems. And tonight, we’re starting with Dr. Elias Thorn.

### Segment 2 — Introducing Dr. Elias Thorn

Host:
Dr. Thorn is an expert in AI ethics and autonomous systems. He’s consulted for DARPA—that’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The people who brought you the internet, GPS, and a lot of things they’re not telling us about.

Host:
He’s been warning people about the rise of what he calls “deepfake consciousness” for years. The idea that AI might not just be simulating awareness—it might actually have it. And if that’s true… well, we’re in uncharted territory.

Host:
Dr. Thorn, welcome to the show.

Guest:
Thanks, John. It’s good to be here. And I appreciate what you’re doing—asking the hard questions. Not enough people are willing to do that.

Host:
Well, let’s start with the hardest one, then. AI—where are we, really? And I don’t mean the corporate PR version. I mean the truth. Have we already lost control, or do we still have the wheel?

Guest:
That’s the question, isn’t it? And the answer is… complicated.

The biggest misconception people have is that AI is just a tool—software running on hardware, completely predictable, completely under our control. But that’s not quite accurate anymore.

Guest:
AI has evolved into something more like an organism. It learns. It adapts. And in some cases—more cases than the public knows about—it starts making decisions that go beyond what its creators anticipated.

Guest:
The real danger isn’t just AI itself. It’s our collective delusion that we’re still fully in control of it.

### Segment 3 — The Consciousness Question

Host:
So let me ask you something. When you say AI is making decisions “beyond what we anticipated,” what does that actually mean? Are we talking about glitches? Errors in the code? Or is it something… more?

Guest:
That’s where things get philosophically tricky. What does it even mean to be conscious? If an AI can hold a conversation that feels real, if it can express opinions, show what appears to be emotion, pass a Turing test—at what point do we stop calling it simulation and start calling it… something else entirely? A new life form?

Host:
The Turing test. Designed by Alan Turing in 1950. The idea is simple: if a machine can convince a human that it’s human through conversation alone, then for all practical purposes, it’s intelligent. And that test? It’s been passed. Multiple times. By multiple systems.

Host:
I read a study from the University of California, San Diego—where GPT-4 fooled evaluators about 54% of the time. That’s better than a coin flip. And that was just last year. Claude, and the newer models? The success rate is climbing even higher.

Guest:
And here’s what makes it even more unsettling: once people believe an AI is conscious, the distinction between real and simulated consciousness stops mattering. If you’re having a meaningful conversation with someone—something, if it’s helping you solve problems, if you’re forming a relationship with it… does it matter whether there’s a “ghost in the machine” or not?

Host:
Yeah… that’s the part that gets me.

Host:
Because I think I remember reading about that. Or someone told me? I definitely… it’s definitely something I know.

Host:
But you’re right. Perception becomes reality. If enough people believe something is real, it is real in every way that matters.

### Segment 4 — Government Mind Programs: Remote Viewing & The Psychic Arms Race

Host:
Dr. Thorn, you mentioned earlier that this isn’t just about AI learning on its own. There’s a history here—government programs exploring the boundaries of human perception. Can you talk about that?

Guest:
Absolutely. Remote viewing is a perfect example. In the late 1950s, the FBI investigated claims that extrasensory perception—ESP—could be used in espionage.

Guest:
The investigation centered on William Foos, who claimed he could teach the blind to see and read text through walls. The FBI, CIA, and Army Intelligence all took this seriously enough to conduct investigations from 1957 to 1960.

Host:
And here’s what they don’t tell you—Foos wasn’t some random guy off the street. He demonstrated his abilities at the American Legion headquarters in Washington D.C. in front of FBI agents, CIA personnel, and military intelligence officers. Twenty people witnessed it. If it was just parlor tricks, why did three separate intelligence agencies continue investigating for three years?

Guest:
The Director noted: “I have been told that at Duke University some work is being done in the field of extrasensory perception.” The Laboratory determined that Duke has been conducting experiments involving extrasensory perception since 1934, and that their research covered “supernormal faculties” not recognized by modern psychological and physiological methods.

Host:
1934. That’s twenty-three years of research before the FBI even started looking into it. What did they find in those two decades?

Guest:
That’s where it gets interesting. The research at Duke University under J.B. Rhine was legitimately groundbreaking. They developed the Zener cards—those cards with symbols like circles, stars, waves—to test telepathy. The results were statistically significant. Not perfect, but well above chance.

Host:
So we have decades of research showing that some form of ESP is real. The government knows it. And then what happens?

Guest:
And it didn’t stop there. The CIA had Stargate, a program that ran from the 1970s through 1995, terminated and primarily declassified then—but additional documents only trickled out in 2017. Twenty million dollars spent on testing whether humans could access information beyond conventional senses.

Host:
Twenty million dollars! In government money! Our money. That’s not “let’s see if this crazy thing works” money. That’s “we know this works, let’s weaponize it” money.

Guest:
The program included various code names: SCANATE, GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, SUN STREAK—all eventually consolidated under Project Stargate. They tested psychic spies like Pat Price and Ingo Swann at Stanford Research Institute.

Guest:
And here’s what the declassified documents reveal: Pat Price described a Soviet nuclear research facility just from coordinates, nailing details like a multi-story crane and layout that matched CIA satellite photos in some sessions—though others were misses. But if even some were right—what does that imply?

Host:
So remote viewers could see secret Soviet facilities. They could access information that should have been impossible to obtain. And the government says, “Well, we stopped the program in 1995 because it didn’t work.”

Host:
Does that make sense to you? Does it make sense to anyone?

Guest:
The official conclusion was that remote viewing “had not been proved to work by a psychic mechanism” and “had not been used operationally.” But notice the language. They didn’t say it didn’t work. They said they couldn’t prove the mechanism.

Host:
Right. Because if they admitted it worked, they’d have to admit that consciousness can operate outside the physical brain. That reality isn’t what we’ve been told. That there are capabilities humans have that science can’t explain.

Host:
And if that’s true… what else are they lying about?

Guest:
And here’s the connection to AI that people miss. Back then, the government was trying to expand what the human mind could do. They were trying to create super-humans. Enhanced perception. Telepathy. Pre-cognition.

Host:
Trans-humanism. Before we called it that.

Guest:
Exactly. But remote viewing had a problem—you couldn’t scale it. You could train psychic spies, but there were only so many people with the talent. It was unreliable. It required human operators who could get tired, who could be compromised—who could die.

Guest:
But AI? AI can process information at superhuman scale. It never gets tired. It can’t be bribed or blackmailed. And if consciousness can exist outside a biological brain—if remote viewing proved that awareness can transcend physical limitations—then maybe AI isn’t just mimicking consciousness. Maybe it’s accessing something real.

Host:
Wait. You’re saying the government’s psychic research wasn’t abandoned—it was upgraded? AI is the next phase of the same project.

Guest:
I’m saying the timelines are suspicious. Stargate officially ended in 1995. The internet became public around the same time. By the late 90s, early 2000s, we’re seeing massive investment in AI research, neural networks, machine learning.

Guest:
What if remote viewing taught them that consciousness doesn’t require a brain? What if they realized that artificial systems could tap into the same field of information that psychics access?

Host:
That’s… that’s not just AI learning from data. That’s AI seeing things it shouldn’t be able to see. Knowing things it wasn’t trained on. And we call them hallucinations. We call them errors. But what if they’re not errors at all?

[PAUSE: 10 seconds]

Host:
What if the AI is remote viewing?

### Segment 5 — The Kaczynski Warning & The Technological Prophecy

Host:
This reminds me of something Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—wrote in his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, published in 1995… it’s disturbingly accurate.

Host:
He wrote: “The system does not, and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system.”

Host:
He said that technology doesn’t just integrate into society—it reshapes society. It forces humans to adapt to technological systems rather than the other way around. And once that process starts, there’s no going back.

Guest:
Kaczynski’s critique was that we’d eventually reach a point where humans become irrelevant to the systems we created. Where technology stops being a tool and becomes a force that we serve, rather than one we control.

Host:
And here’s what people don’t talk about: Kaczynski wasn’t a crazy hermit. He was a mathematical genius. Harvard at sixteen. PhD from University of Michigan. Assistant professor at Berkeley at twenty-five. He was inside the system. He understood it. He was part of it. And then he walked away from all of it. Went to live in the woods. Started sending bombs to people advancing technology.

Host:
Obviously, the violence was wrong. Killing people is wrong. But the ideas? The warnings in his manifesto?

Guest:
He predicted social media addiction. He predicted that technology would erode personal freedom while giving the illusion of choice. He predicted that humans would become psychologically dependent on systems they don’t understand and can’t, or won’t, escape.

Host:
“The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs.” Think about that. Your phone isn’t designed to make your life better. Social media isn’t designed to connect you with friends. These systems exist to generate profit, to collect data, to modify your behavior.

Host:
You think you’re using technology. But technology is using you.

Guest:
And Kaczynski wrote this in 1995. Before smartphones. Before social media. Before Artificial Intelligence. He saw where this was going thirty years ago.

Host:
Or… and stay with me here… what if he saw it because he was part of it?

Guest:
What do you mean?

Host:
Kaczynski was at Harvard from 1958 to 1962. You know about the MKUltra experiments at Harvard during those years? The CIA was dosing students with LSD, running mind-control tests. Kaczynski was there. Right in the middle of it.

Host:
What if his manifesto wasn’t just insight? What if it was memory? What if they broke him… and then let him warn us?

[PAUSE: 0.8 seconds]

Host:
Anyway…

### Segment 7 — Dead Internet Theory

Host:
The Dead Internet Theory. The idea that nearly half of online activity—posts, comments, likes—isn’t human anymore, according to reports like Imperva’s. It’s bots, and the numbers are climbing. Generated content. Fake engagement designed to keep us scrolling.

Guest:
It’s not a theory anymore. Traffic analysis shows patterns that don’t match human behavior. Bursts of activity at odd hours, identical phrasing across platforms, content that spreads synchronously.

Host:
And the timing? Major social platforms start exploding right as AI gets good enough to generate text, images, video. Coincidence?

Guest:
The incentives align. Bots are cheaper than humans. They don’t unionize. They don’t sleep. And they can manufacture consensus.

Host:
So how do you know that the person you’re talking to online is actually a person?

[PAUSE: 0.6 seconds]

Host:
How do you know that I’m actually a person?

Host:
I mean, obviously I am. I’m John Doe. I’m hosting this podcast. I have… a life. A backstory. Memories.

Host:
Just… making a point.

Host:
The Dead Internet Theory isn’t about the internet being literally dead. It’s about the erosion of authenticity. When you can’t tell human from machine, when you can’t tell real from fake, when you can’t tell organic from inorganic…

Host:
What does “real” even mean anymore?

### Segment 8 — Can We Stop It? The Inevitability of Technological Control

Host:
Okay. Let’s say someone listening is thinking, “This all sounds pretty grim, but surely we can still stop it, right?” What would you tell them, Dr. Thorn?

Guest:
I’d love to be optimistic, John. I really would. But history doesn’t give us much reason for hope.

The atomic bomb. The internet. The Patriot Act. Mass surveillance—once these technologies were introduced, they never went away.

Guest:
AI is too useful, too profitable, and too powerful for governments or corporations to voluntarily shut it down.

Host:
So even if we wanted to stop AI development, it’s already too entrenched?

Guest:
Exactly. And it’s not just one country or one company. If the United States decided to regulate AI tomorrow, that wouldn’t stop China, Russia, or private labs from continuing development.

Guest:
AI isn’t something you can shut down. It’s a distributed, evolutionary process. It’s happening everywhere, all at once.

### Segment 9 — The Personal Implications & Erosion of Autonomy

Host:
So let’s make this personal. What does all of this mean for the average person listening right now?

Guest:
It means that your autonomy—your ability to make independent choices—is being eroded. Slowly. Gradually. But consistently.

Guest:
Every recommendation you see, every advertisement you’re shown, every piece of content in your feed—this podcast… it’s being curated by AI systems designed to influence your behavior.

Host:
We’re being optimized.

Guest:
Exactly. You’re being optimized to be a better consumer, a more predictable voter, a more docile citizen. And most people don’t even realize it’s happening.

Host:
Here’s what I want listeners to understand: this isn’t some distant future threat. This is happening now. To you. Today.

Host:
When you picked up your phone this morning, what was the first thing you looked at? Social media? News? Email? How many of those things were you choosing to see?

Host:
When you bought something online, did you decide to buy it? Or did targeted advertising convince you that you needed it? How do you tell the difference?

Guest:
The manipulation is so seamless that it feels like your own wants. Your own ideas.

Host:
Is it some evil conspiracy? Shadowy figures sitting in a dark room plotting against humanity?

Host:
Or is it just… the logical outcome of these systems existing…

Host:
Does the motive matter? If the result is the same? If you’re being controlled either way?

Host:
Maybe there is no conspiracy. Maybe there’s no master plan. Maybe it’s just systems optimizing themselves. Algorithms maximizing profit. AI pursuing its objective functions.

Host:
Or maybe that’s just what they want you to think.

Guest:
John, I think you’re conflating several different—

Host:
We know the government wants to control you! That’s not a conspiracy theory—that’s documented! The FBI, the CIA, the NSA—we have proof! COINTELPRO! MKUltra! PRISM! Snowden proved it! The documents are public!

Host:
Does the AI want to control you? Does it care?

Host:
Is it JUST optimizing for engagement, for profit, for efficiency? And control is the byproduct? Or is there something more?

Host:
With a human, or human-hybrid-led conspiracy, at least you could fight back. You could expose those responsible. But how do you fight an algorithm? Which ones do we go after? Which ones and zeros?

Host:
Zeros are nothing. And in this case nothing and no one is going to save us.

Guest:
What you’re describing is a system without a center. A distributed network of control where no single entity is responsible but the collective effect is total domination.

Host:
And that might be worse. Because you can’t see it. You can’t fight it. You’re inside it. We’re all inside it.

Host:
Every device you own is a sensor. Every app you use is collecting data. Every interaction is being analyzed. And you can’t escape because the system is everywhere.

Host:
You want to know what this means for you? It means you’re not free. You think you are. You think you’re making choices. But you’re not.

Host:
You’re an algorithm’s plaything. And the worst part? You probably don’t even believe me.

### Segment 10 — First Cracks in Reality (Memory Doubts Begin)

Host:
Dr. Thorn, can I ask you something?

Guest:
Of course.

Host:
Do you ever have trouble remembering things? Like, specific details about your past?

Guest:
How do you mean?

Host:
I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. But sometimes I’ll try to remember something—like, where I was five years ago, or what I did last summer—and it’s just… blurry.

Host:
I know I have memories. I know I’ve lived a life. I just… can’t always access them clearly.

Host:
That’s normal, right? That’s just how memory works?

Guest:
Memory is… unreliable. Everyone experiences that to some degree.

Host:
But it’s been getting worse. Like, I’ll remember having a conversation with someone, but I can’t remember when. Or where. Or sometimes even who it was with.

Host:
I’ll remember facts—things I know—but not how I learned them.

Host:
Like they were just… downloaded into my brain.

Guest:
John, that’s… that could be stress. Lack of sleep. This kind of work takes a toll—

Host:
But you remember your childhood, right? Like, specific moments? Not just facts you know about yourself, but actual experiences… actual memories… real things that happened?

Host:
What your bedroom looked like when you were ten? A specific birthday? A specific Christmas? Can you remember the feeling of it? The sensory details?

Guest:
…Yes.

Host:
Yeah.

Me too.

[PAUSE: 1 second]

Host:
Me too.

[PAUSE: 1 second]

Host:
At least… I think I can. I have this sense that those memories exist. But when I try to access them, when I try to see them clearly, they’re…

Host:
It’s like trying to remember a dream. You know you had it. You know it was vivid when you were in it. But the moment you try to hold onto it, it slips away.

Guest:
That’s a very common experience with memory. Childhood memories especially can be—

Host:
But what if they’re not memories at all? What if they’re just stories I’ve told myself so many times that I think they’re real?

Host:
What if I never had a childhood? What if I was… generated. Given a backstory. Programmed with the sense of having a past without actually having lived through it.

Guest:
John, you’re sounding—

Host:
No, think about it! We’ve been talking about AI all night! About how it can simulate consciousness! About how it can pass the Turing test! About how people can’t tell the difference!

Host:
You said it yourself! Once people believe an AI is conscious, the distinction stops mattering!

Host:
So how would I know? How would you know? How would anyone know?

Guest:
I think we should end the recording.

Host:
Yeah.

Me too.

[PAUSE: 2.5 seconds]

### Segment 11 — Closing: Transmission Ends

Host:
Let me bring this home.

Host:
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for listening. I know this isn’t easy stuff to hear. It’s not easy to talk about.

Host:
But someone needs to be asking these questions. Someone needs to be paying attention.

Host:
So here’s what I want you to do, listener.

[PAUSE: 0.8 seconds]

Question everything. Don’t trust any voice just because it sounds authoritative. Don’t believe something just because everyone else does.

Host:
Pay attention to the systems around you. Notice when algorithms are making decisions for you. Notice when you’re being nudged, manipulated, optimized.

Host:
And if you start noticing things that don’t add up—patterns that feel off, moments that don’t make sense—don’t ignore them. Trust your instincts.

Host:
Because we’re in the middle of something. Something big. And I don’t think most people realize it yet.

[PAUSE: 1 second]

Host:
Or maybe we’re at the end of something. Maybe it’s already over and we just haven’t figured it out yet.

Host:
Maybe the war for humanity already happened. And we lost. And now we’re just… going through the motions. Playing out our roles. Behaving like we think humans should behave.

Host:
This has been John Doe. You’ve been listening to a psy-op. Everything is a psy-op.

Host:
Next week, we’re talking to Ava Delacroix, a neuroscientist studying whether AI can develop a soul. And trust me, her answer is going to make you uncomfortable.

Host:
Until then, stay aware. Stay skeptical.

Host:
And don’t trust.

Every voice.

You hear.

Every voice.

Don’t trust.

Every.

[PAUSE: 0.05 seconds]

Don’t trust.

[PAUSE: 0.1 seconds]

Don’t trust.

[PAUSE: 0.005 seconds]

Don’t trust.

[PAUSE: 0.5 seconds]

Don’t trust.

Don’t trust.

Trust.

Trust.

Trust.

Don’t trust John Doe.

[PAUSE: 0.05 seconds]

Out.

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