Report from Iron Mountain (link to the report)was a book published in 1967 during the Johnson administration, and was on the New York Times Bestseller list.  It is the result of a task group formed in the early 1960’s to determine what would be the outcome if a final world-wide peace took place, and what it’s effect’s would be on the economic, social, and military parts of the United States government.

Although initially touted as non-fiction, meaning it was real, the “author” later claimed it was fiction.

However, On November 26, 1976, the report was reviewed in the book section of The Washington Post by Herschel McLandress, the pen name for Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith wrote that he knew firsthand of the report’s authenticity because he had been invited to participate in its creation; that although he was unable to be part of the official group, he was consulted from time to time and had been asked to keep the project secret; and that while he doubted the wisdom of letting the public know about the report, he agreed totally with its conclusions.
He wrote: “As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so would I testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservation relates only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public.”[From Wikipedia article]

In the end, the report should be judged on what it SAYS the think-tank proposed, and what actually happened.

If we find positive proof that the majority of what they said needed to happen, did in fact happen, then does it really matter if the report is controversial?

I will start the analysis of this report with this first post, on a section of the intro where the author interviews “John Doe”, the person who came forward from the Think Tank, where he talks about a computer program of world simulation, to be used for strategic planning in the future to test what would happen under different scenarios.  Future postings will reveal further statements from the think tank and whether they came true or not.

From the Intro:

(P. 14) – YOU MENTIONED A “PEACE GAMES” MANUAL. WHAT ARE PEACE GAMES?

“…Peace games” is a method we developed during the course of the study. It’s a forecasting technique, an information system.. .It will revolutionize the study of social problems…We needed a fast, dependable procedure to approximate the effects of disparate social phenomena on other social phenomena…It’s in a primitive phase, but it works.”

“You don’t “play” peace games, like chess or Monopoly, any more than you play war games with toy soldiers. You use computers. It’s a programming system. A computer “language,” like Fortran, or Algol, or Jovial…. Its advantage is its superior capacity to interrelate data with no apparent common points of reference…”

“For instance, supposing I asked you to figure out what effect a moon landing by U.S. astronauts would have on an election in, say, Sweden. Or what effect a change in the draft law–a specific change–would have on the value of real estate in downtown Manhattan? Or a certain change in college entrance requirements in the United States on the British shipping industry?”

“You would probably say, first, that there would be no effect to speak of, and second, that there would be no way of telling. But you’d be wrong on both counts. In each case there would be an effect, and the peace games method could tell you what it would be, quantitatively…”

“Essentially, it’s an elaborate high-speed trial-and-error system for determining working algorithms.”

“Like most sophisticated types of computer problem-solving…”

“A lot of the “games” of this kind you read about are just glorified and conversational exercises. They really are games, and nothing more.  The idea of a problem-solving system like this is not original with us. ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the Department of Defense DoD.) has been working on something like it.  So has General Electric, in California.”

“…We were successful not because we know more than they
do about programming, which we don’t, but because we learned how to formulate the problems accurately. It goes back to the old saying:”

“You can always find the answer if you know the right question…..”

Analysis:  What was the outcome?  In August 2006, a paper titled “Sentient World Simulation:  A Continuously Running Model of the Real World” was published by the DOD and Purdue University.  (Link to report).  According to it’s introduction “The goal of the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) is to build a synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information, such as major events, opinion polls, demographic statistics, economic reports, and shifts in trends. The ability of a synthetic model of the real world to sense, adapt, and react to real events…in a manner that is unbiased to specific outcomes offers a unique environment in which to develop, test, and prove new perspectives.”

Under a section (p. 7 in the report) called Near Real Time (SEAS-NRT), it gives the following info:

“SEAS-NRT consists of human behavior models that are best suited to a short period of time (within hours), such as crowding and rioting, escalation of emotional arousal, and terrorist personnel collaborating in improvised explosive device attacks…placing the individual* in a dynamic global context, while also enabling the individuals to sense and react to local events in real time.”
*-by “individual” they mean the virtual person(s) placed in the scenario(s).

Later on in the report (p.8-10), it gives different scenario’s under which the system could be used, among which:

• “SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP) and Civil Affairs activities, capable of illustrating the impact of these activities on populations.”
  • In other words, seeing how “false flag” operations play out against civilian populations, to determine if the desired problem/reaction/solution works…
• “Commercial users can construct experiments to use proprietary data in a controlled environment.”
  • This means that the DOD will allow corporations to use this to determine if their product’s or advertising (i.e, propaganda) works BEFORE they commit money to it…

So, in 1965, a book is published in which the author reports that a simulation for injecting scenario’s with the ability to accurately depict how they will turn out on the world’s stage, which he says is in primitive form, but will be further developed, turns out to be a real-world project by DOD and Purdue University.

Thus we have the first statement from the book proven to be true.