Category: A Declaration of Digital Independence

Taking back control from technologies that hijack investigations

Buy Out the Empire: Making an Offer He Can’t Refuse

(Taking Up) The Collection

An Exit Strategy for Trump 2, Year 2

Taking Up The Collection

The Collection is a collective action to disrupt and dethrone the Imperial Presidency by gamifying dissent and offering a massive, 24/7 “Exit Jackpot” to reclaim the American republic.

Deal Making as a Rite of Passage

As the presidency transitions from a public office to a luxury brand, the opposition must stop reacting and start negotiating. Welcome to “The Collection,” a high-stakes digital series that frames the “Imperial Presidency” as a distressed asset ripe for a corporate buyout.

This isn’t a fundraiser for television ads; it’s a live, 24/7 “Exit Jackpot” offered to the President in exchange for his immediate resignation. By contrasting “Royal Spend” pageantry with the systemic gutting of the American safety net, the show gamifies dissent. It transforms the public from passive victims into active shareholders, making an offer no “man of the deal” can ignore.

Speculative Repair List

To win, the opposition must control the narrative by treating “The Collection” as a high-stakes spectacle. This isn’t a standard fundraiser; it is a strategic “priming of the pump” designed to maximize both viewership and capital through collective action.

Trump will likely sense the trap. The Collection weaponizes ridicule, exposing his thinning skin while highlighting the massive national debt – the “Royal Spend” – accumulated under his watch. Unlike traditional protests, he cannot simply shout over this format. As he retaliates with legal threats and censorship, the opposition should double or triple matching funds, using his aggression to fuel the jackpot.

If his desire for vengeance leads him to suppress the event, that very interference should trigger the endgame: a final “Priority Vote” where the public instantly earmarks and distributes the funds.

How would that work?

Enter The Imperial Ledger

Pilot Episode 101: “The Cost of the Crown” | Date: Immediate Future

CUE 1: A high-contrast, “Late-Night Noir” aesthetic. The HOST stands before a massive digital screen – The Ledger – scrolling with gold-on-black text and ticker tape numbers.

HOST: Good evening, citizens. Welcome to the first edition of The Imperial Ledger, the only accounting firm authorized by the reality of your own bank accounts.

Since the Restoration began in January, we’ve been told we’re living through a “Golden Age.” But gold is heavy, and someone has to carry it. Tonight, we look at the balance sheet for the 47th Presidency as we closed out 2025.

CUE 2: A 3D rendering of the White House displays The East Wing highlighted in red, then dissolves into a pile of digital rubble.

White House East Wing demolished as Trump moves forward with ballroom construction, AP photos show, Darlene Superville; Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press, October 23, 2025

HOST: Item one on the Ledger: The Demolition of History. In October, the President decided the East Wing – a fixture since 1902 – wasn’t “ballroom” enough. He tore it down. In its place, we’re getting a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot “State Ballroom.” It’s designed to hold 999 people – because 1,000 would be “ostentatious,” I’m sure. The White House calls it a “National Security” priority. Apparently, our primary defense against foreign threats is a really, really big dance floor for donors from BlackRock, Nvidia, Meta, Google, and Amazon.

Billionaires at Trump’s inauguration hold wealth equal to 1/3 India’s GDP, Vasudha Mukherjee, Business Standard, January 21, 2025

CUE 3: The Ledger scrolls to a list of names: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

HOST: Next, the Branding Fee. As of late December, the Kennedy Center is officially the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” Because nothing says “Performing Arts” like a hostile takeover by the Chairman of the Board. The new gold signage is still fresh. It’s the ultimate Participation Trophy: President Trump didn’t win a Grammy, so he just bought the building.

CUE 4: The Ledger shifts to the “Repair List” for the common man. Numbers start spinning rapidly.

Quiet Over Trump’s Kennedy Center Grab Risks Capitulation, Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beat, February 13, 2025

Three Repair Worthy Collections

Some viable candidate causes include:

A. The Nutritional Safety Net (Repairing Food Security)

The Fix: Funding “Community Granaries” in the 2,000+ counties most affected by inflation and benefit rollbacks.

With the administration’s proposed $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), an estimated 16 million children face reduced access to food.

HOST: But let’s look at the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” While you were busy getting your $25,000 tax deduction on tip income — if you’re lucky enough to make that much in tips…

#Impact AreaMeasurable Change & Outcome
1Medicaid Funding ChasmBans “provider taxes,” stripping states of $340 billion in revenue used to draw down federal Medicaid matches.
2SNAP Benefit ErosionCuts federal food assistance by $187 billion (20%), forcing a 30–50% surge in demand at local food banks.
3Admin Compliance SurgeForces states to build IT systems to track 80-hour/month work requirements for millions of Medicaid/SNAP recipients.
4State Revenue DrainAutomatic tax conformity is projected to slash state revenues by $100M to $1.2B per state (e.g., Colorado, Arizona).
5Healthcare Churn RisksCBO predicts 11.8 million people will lose coverage, increasing “uncompensated care” costs for providers by an estimated 15%.
6Work-for-Benefits MandateRequires 80 hours/month of work or community service for Medicaid/SNAP recipients (ages 19–64).
7Medicaid Cost SharingImplements co-payments of up to $35 per service for ACA expansion adults (income 100–138% of FPL).
8Graduate Loan CapsLimits federal borrowing for Master’s degrees to $20,500/year, forcing students to seek private loans for excess costs.
9SNAP Exemption RemovalSubjects 300,000+ veterans and formerly homeless individuals to the 3-month benefit time limit.
10Coverage Loss ForecastCBO projects 10.9 million people will lose health insurance by 2034 due to eligibility and subsidy changes.

That’s the trade: You get to deduct the interest on your new car loan, but your neighbor’s kid doesn’t get lunch. That’s the “Imperial” exchange rate. 

CUE: Proportion of Elon Musk’s stock options that would cover the SNAP shortfall…

Musk Wins $1 Trillion Pay Package, Creating Split Screen on Wealth in America, Rebecca F. Elliot; Jack Ewing; Reid J. Epstein, New York Times, November 6, 2025

B. Healthcare Restoration (Repairing the Safety Net)

After the only town hospital closed, a North Carolina city blames politicians: There’s no help for you here, Amanda Seitz; Allen G. Breed, The Independent, May 20, 2024

Current budget projections include a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over the next decade. This is estimated to leave roughly 10 million to 11.8 million Americans uninsured.

The Fix: A “Mobile Health Corps” specifically for rural areas where 1 in 4 residents currently relies on Medicaid for primary care and birth coverage.

HOST: “Last month, 12 rural hospitals in the Midwest closed their doors due to the Medicaid ‘Efficiency Purge.’ Tonight, your Priority Vote can move $50 million of the Collection’s interest directly to these facilities. You have the power. You have the funds. Don’t just watch the empire rise. Fund the restoration. Take up the Collection.”

The Jackpot is growing. But while the President waits for the right number to step down, the clock is ticking for the rest of us.

CUE: Somber, black-and-white footage of a closed rural medical clinic. A small child sits on the steps. A countdown timer appears in the corner.

C. Small Business Tariffs Relief (Repairing the Bootstrap Work Ethic)

Trump’s First Year Back, in 10 Charts, Steven Rattner, New York Times, December 27, 2025

Recent trade barriers have hiked raw material costs by an average of 22%, leaving local manufacturers unable to compete with subsidized global giants. Projections suggest 15,000 small-town family businesses will shutter by year-end without immediate intervention. 

The Fix: Direct “Bridge-to-Build” grants for businesses hit by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” trade policies. Provide immediate liquidity and supply-chain pivoting funds for domestic businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

HOST: Which brings us to why we are here. The President knows he is bored by the price of housing. He’s not focused on the cost of healthcare. He’s above the concerns of the majority of Americans that come from more modest roots and less favorable gene pools. And he loves a deal. And we know he loves to move on when the price is right.

Trump Attacks Obamacare Without a Health Plan, Dean Baker, CEPR, October 6, 2025

CUE: The host points directly into the camera:

So, it’s time for the Final Collection. If the cost of his “reign” is too high for the Constitution, maybe it’s just low enough for a buyout. We are opening the “Self-Removal Fund.” A golden parachute so large, so beautiful, so massive that even he can’t say no to a private retirement in Mar-a-Lago permanently. 

“Look at the Ledger. Look at the ballroom. Look at our neighbors. Then, look at your phone. Take up the Collection. Contribute to the Jackpot for his early exit. Let’s make him an offer he can’t refuse – before there’s nothing left of the People’s House but the gold leaf.”

Why “The Collection” Works Where Politics Fails

Conventional political channels – courts, legislation, and traditional protests – rely on norms that the current “Imperial Presidency” has already discarded. These methods are too slow, predictable, and easily ignored by a leader who controls the narrative through sheer media saturation.

“The Collection” succeeds by moving the battlefield from the ballot box to the balance sheet. By treating a President with a 36% approval rating as a “distressed asset,” it converts abstract frustration into a tangible, ever-growing Buyout Number to cap his insatiable temperment. This format strips the leader of his narrative dominance, relegating him to a mere contestant whose only move is to quit. It traps a “man of the deal” in his own branding, forcing him into defensive, damaging optics that traditional politics simply cannot achieve.

Heading Trump Off at the Institutional Standoff Corral

Institutional Capture: Legislative and judicial checks are increasingly slow or neutralized by executive overreach, making “legal” resistance feel like a theoretical exercise rather than a functional one.

The Attention Economy: Traditional protests are easily framed as “partisan noise.” “The Collection” uses a high-stakes, “Jackpot” format that the media cannot afford to ignore, forcing the administration to respond to the public’s terms.

The Language of the Deal: The current administration views the country through the lens of corporate ownership. By framing the presidency as a buyout opportunity, the opposition speaks the administration’s only fluent language, making the “Golden Parachute” a psychological trap that bypasses ideological gridlock.

Turning the Corner

By prioritizing personal grudges, Trump undermines his own leverage as a negotiator. His brand is no longer just threatened by his erratic behavior, but by something more damaging: predictability. This growing boredom may be exactly what allows America to regain its collective focus.

To succeed in 2026, the opposition must “flip the script” by choosing humor, consensus, and accessibility over the reactive whiplash that defined 2025. We cannot reverse history; we can only change how we move forward.

New World Order: Art of the Deal vs Art of War, Tang Meng Kit, Asia Times, April 30, 2025

Out Loud

A smattering of a gathering for trying anything once and repeating on the most promising of failures.

Commencement as Transition

When we attended, Hampshire people joked about it being an experiment. Do people still say that now that Hampshire is more than 50 years old?

Reflections on Hampshire’s Changing of the Guard

PART ONE:
Ed Wingenbach Leaves the Hampshire Stage

Since we live just a few miles from our alma mater, we usually go to the Hampshire College Commencement Ceremony. We gaze up at the banners hanging in eves of the big white tent. Can we find our years… ‘78 and ‘80? That was a lifetime ago.

The place is packed with people we don’t know. We have no connection to the graduating class or their parents- who are mostly younger than us. Even the faculty and staff who were a part of our experience have departed. What draws us here? Love of the place itself and many happy, crazy, distraught, meaningful memories, for sure. But we also share a deep feeling that our Hampshire experience shaped who we are and set us on our life path that might have been very different otherwise. The two of us share a love for this unique institution. 

When we attended, Hampshire people joked about it being an experiment. Do people still say that now that Hampshire is more than 50 years old?  And is it still growing and changing to rise to the challenges of our world? We hope so.

At its best, higher education anticipates crises, interrogates them, and builds systems that transcend inherited limits. At its worst, it retreats into privilege, shielded by endowments and exemptions. 

Ed Wingenbach, Hampshire’s outgoing leader, championed disruptive art, inclusive communities, and the recasting of global crises as a launch point into the Hampshire academic experience.

Yet on May 17, 2025, graduation day passed without invoking those ideals. Their urgency went unspoken, and no one claimed Hampshire’s role as a proving ground. Perhaps it’s because Hampshire has been facing down an existential threat throughout President Wingenbach’s term. 

The Parting of the New College Transfers

In  Wingenbach’s final Commencement address, he might have well been describing his own turn at the helm when he described many of these ranks as having taken a “leap into something fragile and unfinished.” He was referencing Hampshire grads who accepted  his invitation to transfer from the New College of Florida, an early casualty of culture war attempts on the right to derail progressive values.

Ed’s brinkmanship offered NCF students two stark choices:

A) Hampshire’s self-directed curriculum tackling diversity, misinformation, climate change, and critical race theory in pursuit of justice.

B) The new pedagogy at New College: A more monastic scholarship rooted in tradition, canon, and individual restraint. 

Both institutions see themselves as radically independent. Both demand students chart their own course. But here’s the catch: true inquiry  isn’t progressive or conservative — it follows evidence, not ideology. At times students at Hampshire may provoke the system, which gives them agency to ask their own questions and come up with their own viewpoints rather than being led blindly into one camp or another. 

To Ed’s lasting credit, he left behind a renewed manifesto — one that distilled the expansive questions this class first dared to ask into a coherent, compelling vision. This change reinvigorated the Hampshire experience for entering students and highlighted a unique difference between Hampshire and traditional schools.

The Exit Interview

Ed Wingenbach’s legacy goes beyond rescuing a faltering institution. With a $50 million campaign nearly complete, Hampshire is no longer on life support.

He reaffirmed its capacity for reinvention but left the task of confronting the relentless pace of today’s disorienting changes to his successor.  His address favored timeless lessons over timely engagement, and the ceremony offered reflection without reckoning. 

Left unsaid was what the future may hold for Hampshire. If Hampshire aims to lead in rethinking education, it must do more than adapt—it must engage, interrogate, and act. Reinvention demands relevance.

In the past, Wingenbach often cast Hampshire as a site of radical experimentation. But on graduation day, that vision felt distant—more concept than reality. Unspoken were the mounting pressures on progressive ideals, which may have shaped his decision to continue his work abroad. 

PART TWO
Leading from Strength:
Traditions Worth Celebrating

If Hampshire is always reinventing itself, what anchors remain? The tradition of self-directed study is more than a badge of nonconformity. Over Hampshire’s 50 plus years it has proven to be a life changing form of higher education for its 19,000 alumni.

Our personal experience attending recent graduation is that these ideals hover—present but unspoken. There are no models. Only stories. The unique group experience of the graduating class is on full display as it should be. However the special connection between the grads and their academic process is not. We don’t hear the innovative Hampshire approach described or celebrated.

The power of Div III when it’s truly unleashed is when a student refuses passive submission to the systems that shape us, and instead uses experience, creation, and connection to understand and challenge them.That freedom isn’t just academic; it’s an on-ramp to reimagining the world, much like a Hampshire degree itself. As we know, Hampshire alumni have gone on to be trailblazers in many fields.

The Rally Cries of Commencement

At the 2025 commencement, a question that hung in the air was, how important was the student/faculty relationship to these graduates? Oddly, acknowledgements by the student speakers did not include faculty. 

A tradition begun in the 2010s continued: honoring a staff member as a pillar of campus life. This year, Post Office Manager Jim Patten received a heartfelt ovation — the ceremony’s most poignant moment.

The only faculty member to speak was Jina Fast, slated to deliver the  faculty toast. Instead, she delivered a lecture on a past urban tragedy, the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia.It wasn’t a toast to the students. It was a polemic to no one in particular.

Keynote speaker Manuel “Manny” Castro 02F shared a powerful immigration story, but offered little reflection on how his Hampshire education shaped his path to becoming NYC’s Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs. His unique vantage — as a former undocumented immigrant and current policy leader —was left unexplored.

The one voice that rang true came from grandparent and trustee Julie Schecter 71F GP22:

“[T]his awful moment we are in is what Hampshire grads were made for. . . . [W]e aren’t going to get out of the war that we are in right now [against all we hold dear] by doing what we’re told. And you only succeeded at Hampshire by being brave, scared, experimental, and occasionally obnoxious. . . . We need you.”

Harkening back to our own experiences, close working relationships with our faculty advisors informed our post-Hampshire engagement with our workplaces. Their guidance on our Division Committees was the heart of our learning experience.

At a campus event in March of 2024, Ken Burns asserted similar views as he reflected on his work with Jerome Liebling. In our view, Burns wasn’t being nostalgic. He was pointing to what makes Hampshire unique, sustainable, and ultimately indispensable as a place of higher learning.

New Skin for the Old Ceremony

Hampshire is headed for an important transition as a search is on for Wingenbach’s successor. While attention to the bottom line remains critical for Hampshire’s future, we also need someone who will champion the radical act of owning one’s education.

We have seen what happens when this is left to chance. It happened in 2019. We were all there. Jonathan Podolsky has been following the current search, Read his thoughtful article on moving Hampshire forward here. Jonathon refers to our tradition of community input and transparency. We too will be exploring a revitalized expression of enduring Hampshire themes in future posts to Searching Out Loud.

Ed Wingenbach’s  tenure was about saving the institution — not about maximizing its true potential. Perhaps someday Hampshire College will have a president who went to Hampshire, who can speak about the power of a Hampshire Education from first hand experience rather than as an abstraction.

We salute you, Ed, for keeping the flame alive. We look forward to new leadership to light the path ahead.

The Black Hole of Blindspots

Part Two: Taken Unawares

Self-identifying With Those We Investigate

 

(c) Ant-o-Rama, 2015: Darth Apple Caught Unawares

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

Sidney J. Harris

In our last segment, we grappled with those elements of blindspots that exceed our grasp of our influence as researchers. We looked at our limits of imagination, perspective-taking, and the obstacle of wish-fulfillment as areas in need of greater self-awareness and pro-active monitoring of tendencies that can undermine our effectiveness as researchers. In part two, we explore the more personal level of coming to terms with our blindspots: What that looks like in the context of “business as usual.”

How can can take our own shortcomings on-board? Where does this help us to raise our game as researchers, both in the conducting of our cases and reporting of our findings? What does it mean to become an expert at our own failings?

That too is a mastery over blindspots. One that saves us from repeating the temptation to go it alone when there’s a collaborator who can lead where we will falter.

Flattering Ourselves

Not everyone swipes their badge and descends into their fortified bunker or a fortress dressing up as avatars for a theoretical confrontation. So how do we make this real? How does this play out on a more personal level? More to the point: How do we assess the probability of these imagined events actually visiting us in the future? Are we privileging our own self-importance? Are we inflating the box office appeal of us starring in our own video game cinema? Virtual reality headset not included!

One of the firsthand experiences we all walk away from is the kind we go to great lengths not to experience again. That sense of dread and avoidance at-all-costs comes from events we consider beyond our control, even our comprehension. We know where to find our personal shutoff valves. We know where to run for safety, to wrestle back control from a daunting adversary, or the chaos that sends us fleeing its crushing, oversized footprints.

But what happens when these grim outcomes are in reach and we’re the last to know? What happens when we’re oblivious to these looming dangers, until the menace is upon us?  Our lack of awareness and preparedness can amplify the pain. There’s no hunkering down or shelter to seek when the moment of dread arrives arm-and-arm with our own ignorance (and search history). There is no transitional period from the blow to the head to crashing said head to the hard, frosty floor.

Coming to Blows With Our Demons

It’s not just cushioning the blow that should concern us. It’s the gnawing realization that the factors leading to this sneak attack were conspiring in broad daylight right under our congested sniffers. We can’t blow the cover of every closed door meeting. The challenge is for our dismay to move beyond our wounded pride to a front row seat of our own gullible, unsuspecting nature. That’s the show worth watching long after the element of surprise recedes. Confronting one’s vulnerabilities benefits us in two ways as researchers:

1.       A wider recognition of our personal blindspots

2.       An enhanced appreciation for the people we investigate

These sobering and ultimately enriching lessons carries us beyond the limitations of our own risk avoidance. It moves us past the shortness of breath and imagination that comes with being spooked. It elevates us beyond our own instincts for self-preservation and summons powers normally associated with superheroes. We can walk through the walls of closed door meetings. We can better handle the aggressive language of the alleged suspects in their defensive crouches. We sidestep the familiarity traps that befall the prisoners of self-imposed comfort zones.

As outsiders, we’re less prone to the rising pressure of maintaining a code of silence. We are not looking the other way but that doesn’t mean we compromise a confidence; not when there may be more to see. As fluency learners, we’re not staked to unassailable positions, sacred cow sources, or the close-ended commitments of sunk costs and confirmation bias. Not having an airtight narrative doesn’t put us on shaky ground. Neither does losing our earlier assumptions when they don’t match the surprising evidence we gather.

Taking One for the Project

(c) Fortune Magazine, 2020

Another burden worth shedding is that successful investigations ride on the shoulders of the investigator. Admissions of fault or confessions to a deeper truth are not tests of our will or diplomacy skills. Many times these breakthroughs are measured as much by the emotional distance the witness or whistleblower opens between themselves and the wrath of the person or group they’re implicating: The further the distance, the more forceful the allegation.

These dynamics don’t play-out on their own. They require the perspective-taking of the investigator to determine the psychological distance between case informants and their respective risk profiles. Has enough time expired to re-approach a long-buried secret? Have the sparring fighters returned to their ringside corners? Enough airing of past differences to have ironed them out?

There are countless back stories that relative newcomers stumble into; unsettled scores cloaked behind the territorial claims of entrenched adversaries. A learner’s mind is an inquiring one outside the safety of established social circles and affirming peer groups. Newcomer over-confidence in one’s abilities to hear and speak like a native? That’s a blindspot unique to investigators.

An ego can be a heavy thing to carry around. Fortunately we only have to carry one of those at a time (being a parent notwithstanding!)  However, you get the unfiltered glimpse of the onlooker when you lower the barricades around the locked-down neighborhoods where your pride is patrolling. The spectator figures who form the optics of how that hot, inflamed blindspot looks to others in the cold light of day.

There’s humility for starters. Is a co-worker fibbing when they over-apologize for coming late to a meeting? Perhaps I too can recollect not sharing a key reason why I was the one late to the last call? Is that target on my back etched in my own handiwork? Did I unwittingly tamper with the holy grail of someone else’s lost horizon? Am I culpable, guilty as charged? Does my own gullible nature testify to my innocence? Can both conclusions be drawn from the conflicting parties impacted by my research?

More Scratches Below the Surface

Besides our clumsy, fragile egos, another obstacle worth kicking out from under us is this notion of control. We leave the stage managing to the attorneys and production crews. But for investigators the action falls into line with two paths to discovery: guided and unguided questions. Guided questions have hard stops, pre-determined assumptions, and a bias towards binary yes/no answers. Unguided questions give the respondent more interpretive leeway. Given enough discretion, they can even reframe the question.

Put another way, guided questions are the ones we want to answer. Unguided are those our targets want to address. Confusing the two and you’re splintering a blindspot through all manner of observing lenses: spyglasses, binoculars, microscopes, drone cams … to name a few. In fact, our guided questions are unmasked invitations to theories and speculations that our targets know to be tenuous, contestable, even flat-out wrong, and insulting. 

Why would the interrogated dignify a misguided question premised on the interrogator’s foregone conclusion?  Another reason to tread lightly through the signals we investigators strike. The imaginations we fire. The burden of those loaded questions we carry. Is the evidence conclusive? Or do the loose-ends stray from our theories of the case?

“The whole truth” is the sworn testimony we commit to upholding in our legal oath as trial witnesses. The more versions to consider, the more pronounced the role of blindspots as the obstruction to this clarified, verifiable and binding view of conflict resolution. We investigators need to address our own culpability as direct participants in the legal processing of justice before we can permeate the blindspots that cloud the periphery of all containable truths.

The Black Hole of Blindspots

Part One:
Primping in Front of Smoke and Mirrors

I am an unreliable witness to my own existence.

― Russell Brand

In our last post we explored our metaphorical nose for sniffing out the evidence that doesn’t quite smell right: Keeping Your Nose Clean: BS Detection in a World of Fake News and Real Threats. Recognizing and acting on the stench of social media infused misinformation is not an elective but a mandatory requirement for maintaining an informed citizenry in a 21st Century Democracy. Fair enough.

But what about when we’re the messengers of our own research? What happens if our own personal biases compromise our findings? What does it matter if we’re connecting events, matching patterns, calling out questionable behaviors, and assessing the exposure of search targets in our case outcomes? Why show at the presentation if our research methods are not beyond reproach?

In this dispatch we reflect on fine-tuning the information filters that pass through all of us and onto those around us. These are the signals picked up through our words and actions that undermine our ability to investigate and compromise the success of our investigations.

In Part One, we’ll get acquainted with the blindspots — the self-defeating intuitions buried right under our noses (and our stars).  I believe that researchers and consultants have a special relationship with blindspots. It’s us agents of knowledge who need to test the limits of our own self-awareness. It’s at the root of our reputations and effectiveness. Only through a growing and continual pulse-taking of our unintended selves can we see our investigations through to the promise of resolution, justice, and a greater understanding of past events by the future histories we’re called on to inform.

On the Merits

Professions all have rites of passage. From passing the bar, to the CPA exam, to the laminated medical license in the exam room, there are a myriad of milestones and certifications to validate the quality of service delivered by a certified professional. There is no such credentialing for professional investigators. Our work must stand in place of any formal degree or accreditation process. It must stand on its own merits:

        • Doubt on the investigation’s sources and methods
        • Suspicion on the investigator’s motives for conducting it

There is one self-imposed quality check at the disposal of the investigator. The probing for one’s reflexive judgments or blindspots is the researcher’s equivalent to “Doctor, heal thyself.” More than one’s personal loyalties or internal biases, blindspots are the shadow elements that cast…

It’s not a passing coincidence that these two criteria are non-negotiable. They are the deal-breakers for producing credible recommendations drawn from sound research: The two gold standards from which hinge the independent judgment of the investigator.

Can You Look Bad Breath in the Face?

We are rarely the first to notice our own unadorned scents and odors. All but the closest friends and family are loath to let us in on this most universal of blindspots.  This private humbling packs some additional positive takeaways besides the need for breath mints. That’s when we exercise our sniffers as a form of entertainment.

There’s nothing escapist or recreational about getting closer to our own blindspots. Yet removing our own self-serving natures is essential for confronting our own limitations in:

A. Imagination: What’s being talked about in the discussions I’m excluded from? What’s my capacity to write a gossip column: (1) about me, and (2) without access to primary sources?

B. Perspective-taking: How am I being engaged in ways that bring optimal benefit to the other parties? Am I an emissary, broker, pawn, or stooge?

C. Wish-fulfillment: Where am I missing the subtext or nonverbal signals that deny or pushback on what I believe to be reasonable, deserved, or warranted? Can I remove my sense of how things should go from how they actually went?

All three play starring roles in the writing and production of plot twists we never see coming but the audience can sense from a mile away. Call it an overestimation of our talents. Overconfidence in our powers to influence. A tendency to get in our own way — even when walking a straight line. There’s no warm welcomes, smooth landings, or YouTube replays.

How else to explain our insatiable appetite for non-fictional crime stories? Do we believe the characters? Does it seem more or less likely that the well-reported narrative actually went down in the manner depicted in the Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon series? More times than not, it comes down to the frailties — to that realm of human weakness also known as a surplus of pride, a lack of self-awareness, and the shock ending that leads to the tragic fall of our antagonist. Why? A black hole of blindspots, that’s why.

There is, however, a deeper appreciation for the humility needed to endure and learn from the muted glare of blindspots. That living classroom lesson is easily transported to our role as researchers — a role that calls out for self-control, attentive listening, and not playing a starring role in our own insular narratives. These aren’t just codes of conduct and decorum. They are the very ambitions for truly excellent investigators to build on.

(Keep on Playing Those) War Games

While many of our own biases are exposed in our politics and expressed behaviors, blindspots land below the surface. They are the unknown-knowns. Their arrival time is also unknown and their blindsided landing zone is of little solace to the methodical and well-prepped. Well-resourced organizations have as much to protect as they have to imagine about the agents of surprise and disruption.

Some dedicate entire control centers and war rooms just to role play emergency attacks or adverse events that could expose a closely-held secret or compromise a key competitive advantage. These simulations are run in the name of risk management. Really what the participants are trying to do is anticipate the improbable harm that comes to organizations without the capacity to imagine these catastrophic off-the-radar scenarios.

Most war room maneuvers never live out beyond the darkest fantasies of their executioners. A few become false alarms. Some are legitimate enough to impose new fire drills or precautions needed to keep a lid on the potential dangers. All of them change the thinking of the risk professionals, competitive intelligence managers, and top executives who run through these paces. They improve their perspective-taking.

These exercises force them to look at the world from the outside and contentious views of those with much to gain from disrupting that world. We might not be stirred by the altruistic path of empathy when walking in the shoes of an enemy or adversary. But it is a critical to our own safety and preservation in conflicting, often hostile conditions that we can see them as an us. When we objectify our own positions we can better understand, relate to, and ultimately address those who wake each morning with the incentive to find and exploit our blindspots.

In our next installment, we’ll explore the more personal level of coming to terms with our blindspots: What that looks like in the context of “business as usual.” How we can take our own shortcomings on-board in order to raise our game as researchers. In our cases, this means…

          • Speaking with greater presence about events we didn’t attend,
          • Delegating to collaborators whose strengths include sparing us the investigative roles we’re not best suited to perform, and
          • Developing empathy for persons of interest who we may share little more than a unique assortment of blindspots.

Keeping Your Nose Clean (Part Two): Calling Out the Disinformers

(c) www.power3point0.org

In our last dispatch: BS Detection in a World of Fake News and Real Threats. Defining the fundamental differences and mutual dependencies between misinformation and disinformation in a complex world flooded with sweeping assertions and unproven claims.

So how do we identify these forms of coercion? So much of our public space is occupied by the intention of persuaders to influence our behavior that we’re likelier to notice the absence of manipulation in our digital interactions than neutral actors whose only impartial goal is to put their information before us.

You know you’re on the receiving end of a disinformation campaign when at least 3 of the following conditions are met:

Passive Voice:  Using the passive voice to validate a  premise or conclusion defies  plausible explanation, i.e. "it's been  said" … "people are saying" …  "we're hearing more and more", etc.  
Implicit Agreements: Messengers bury the unstated agendas of their sponsors and underwriters. 
Inconvenient Complications: They're glossed over when they don't match, confirm, and ultimately undermine the campaign goal. 
Battle-ready Posturing: Building resistance is the point -- not the actual conflict in question. 
Reflexive Responses: Ignoring a late-breaking event with narrative-altering potential. 
Gaslighting: Framing  an adversary with the very accusation that accounts for the disinformer's own misdeeds, rogue behavior, and punitive actions.
Time Warps: Confusing the ordering of events separates fact patterns from the arguments they're supporting.  
Self-confirming Statements: "I feel. Therefore I'm right." 
Circular Reasoning: This is the echo chamber of ad nauseum talking points. 
Under the Radar: What's  not only explicit or implied but escaping the notice of the messenger  completely, a.k.a. their blindspots. The wider the unawareness, the more  likely we are under a disinformation attack.
(c) Martin Shovel

Reclaiming Our Agency as Investigators

So how de we keep our bearings in this cloudiest of landscapes? How do we regain our footing when the stampeding crowds are oblivious to detachment and perspective-taking?

Self-awareness: Our first line of defense against a muddle of mis- and dis- is to recognize our own predilections and assumptions. Only by recognizing our personal biases and instincts can we assess our own blind spots. Where are we most persuadable by misleading actors? Where do we let our guards down? When can we be most easily played?

The middle ground: Once we move past the polar bear clinging to the melting glaciers, we need to cast outward to the motivations of the message sender. Is it merely self-interest that places us in the line of their motivational fire? Have they gone the extra step to be transparent: “don’t take my word…” or conversational, especially if the motivation is of mutual concern.

On one side of the fence, accusers tend to inflate actual damages. On the other, deniers tend to under-estimate the unintended consequences of their public statements. Investigators should factor these confirmation biases into their own findings.

Smell test: Finally, we need to calibrate our BS detector. What’s the end game here? How complete is their full disclosure. Are they running past some loose-ends still a long way from resolution?  How do you know your sniffer is working?

  1. Always brake for integrity. Someone share a compromising piece of info? At whose expense? Clear your spyglass and take in an extra breath of empirical deliberation if it “costs” the provider something in the process.
  2. Don’t let a skeptical nature dismiss competing explanations. Persons of good faith may differ but an understanding of those differences demands this.
  3. Resist the rush to judgement. We’ve all been burned. We’ve got our suspicions. But they can be harbored under the protection of your better judgement while keeping an open mind to opposable sets of facts, alternative interpretations, and unshared experiences.

There are other fog-clearing practices to clarify the incoming mis and determine the unstated intentions buried in the dis. The hard part is absorbing the force of the disinformer’s aggression. Surprise and haste are two calculations made by disinformation campaigners to engage our visceral impulses.

We need to rise above the insistence to react at the provocation before us. This is not an unresolved issue up for debate. This is a willful act to influence the persuadable and shutdown the opposition.

In such matters the independent voice falls outside of either camp. We need to consume the message without absorbing its uncritical acceptance of its claims on our own judgments.  Only then can we tell what’s worthy of attention from the falsehoods planted to distract our focus. Our own goals are not to evolve into impartial fact-checkers but of independent investigators, swayable by evidence.  Only when we come to know the motives of the disinformer can we petition for our own interests.

Keeping Your Nose Clean So Your Sniffer Can Tell When Things Don’t Smell Right

Part One: BS Detection in a World of Fake News and Real Threats.

Dissing the Missing

We were once inundated with information overload. These days an information fog shadows us as persistently as the dragnet of personal data collection. Its density thickens with a sprinkling of the toxic twin-headed vapor trails of mis- and dis-information. These droplets rain down on us from clouds of doubt that fall on cynical brains. Conditions for a mis- and dis- cloud burst are rife for conflicts. In the gloom of low visibility, they descend with no clear path to resolution and “no good options” for getting there.

Why, you say, do I need the twins? I’m plenty confused and doubtful in the density of my own fog. I’m already being pelted with incoming mis. Now you’re seeding the clouds with additional dis? Facts and opinions are now going bump in broadest daylight. Conspiracies are flourishing, egged on by persuasion-filtered innuendo. The evidence is sketchy. Context is disappearing, and now at the tail of the 2010s, we’ve truly lost our way. Took no effort at all!

Another snoop can’t retrace our own footsteps. But I do have some suggestions about how you can get yourself back on track — become your own service animal in the quest for an empirical truth. But first, what of the twins? How did they grow into this hydra-headed two-faced scrambler of once common understandings and shared values? Can they metastasize into three heads? Egads, let’s look at that one with our eyes drawn away from direct exposure.

First, let’s step back over the bridge to the land of national media networks held together with printing presses and TV antennas. There’s a dot on that distant landscape called fringe media and it’s a xeroxed pamphlet or poster fastened by a dangling staple or pushpin. The low rent district has some exclusive members. And no one’s in a hurry to join the club.

Mis and dis are no strangers to conspiracists, bloviators, and persuasion seekers, heels firmly dug in. In fact, they have a working arrangement of mutual benefit. Think of them as a tag team. But there’s no carrot or stick here. We’re not talking good/bad cop interrogations.

Misinformation is a side-show. A distraction. Tall tales and urban legends. Misinformation scrambles the signal, amplifies the flog, sows the initial seeds of doubt. If there is any collusion it’s that a blob of misinformation is disorienting. Two blobs can throw us into a state of confusion. Three blobs and we’re flying blind.

Up the Frustration Vent

Enter the clarity and purpose of deliberately misleading information. And don’t discount certainty. In the hands of true believer it may be a leap for some. But in the hands of the disinformer, it’s an intoxicant, providing an outlet for those festering anxieties and uncertainties induced by a thick trail of mis. Disinformation provides the escape valve:

      • Grab your pitchforks!
      • Head for the exits!

A successful disinformation campaign not only clears the air but fans the grievance flames so that their frustrations are channeled towards the object of their hostilities. Often, they come with a lesson or instruction to act on the proof offered by the disinformer. In the case of social media, actors like Russia’s Internet Research Agency posed as like-minded American activists. The goal was for hostile agents like IRA to amplify already polarizing conflicts. Each schism a brand-ready theme for opening a new disinformation campaign front.

Disinformation is the main act, planting those seeds deep enough so that the earlier misinforming falsehood is sprouting up as a clearly absorbed conclusion. One in which recipients may be encouraged to take sides but will just as likely desensitize the un-inflamed:

This is a political food fight. Both sides are talking over each other and no one’s speaking to me.

In our next dispatch:

You’ve Been Served

How to gain the upper-hand on hoaxes, smoke screens, and information intended to put us on the defensive