Mission Impossible 7 - Paula Dean - Jason Aldean - AI and The Harbinger Effect

I just saw Mission Impossible 7 last night. Most likely, the last of the series. Packed, and I mean packed full of action. However, that is not why I am writing this review. 

This film as in past films can sneak in a theme without the audience realizing it which can be quite relevant and timely. In this case, it is the dangers of Artificial Intelligence and where it can take us. The question is posed: what if a program could understand human emotional intelligence and predict your next move or moves through an algorithm? 

I say this is timely because of the recent controversy regarding Jason Aldean. Could this be an example

of an already existing algorithm to manipulate distraction and division to control the masses? (I will explain later in the review) Here is my theory. And, it is very similar to the plot of dead reckoning. What if AI could look into our past and find emotional events that distract the populous from reality? This is not anything new. It is called the Harbinger Effect. It is intentionally planted events to distract the common population from events we do not want them to particularly pay attention to via social media. 

I discovered the harbinger effect through course studies in the 1990s. If you were a history major, you would learn that governments can lie to the masses through sabotage to encourage the masses to rally behind war or political goals. There is strong evidence that our government sabotaged or created a false event and made it appear that it came from our political enemies. It would then combine with media (Newspapers or TV News) to broadcast an event that would change people to support a war effort or political point of view. For reference, the Gulf of Tonkin incident is one that many felt rallied us to get more in Vietnam.

The next advent of manipulation that was a gold mine for our government and governments around the world was the internet. I remember when the internet was developed, we were told it was an open platform that would rid us of the harbinger effect. This is why it was originally called the world wide web. It was supposed to be an open platform for learning which is dangerous. 

Conveniently, as platforms improved, the advent of social media would change the intentions from a free and open platform to one of manipulation. I truly believe this is when algorithms were developed to manipulate the masses. This might be a bit controversial, this includes not only war, it includes policies that impact the masses along with voter manipulation. 

Social Media can be taken advantage of by foreign adversaries which is the subplot of Mission Impossible 7. All the major countries around the world want the key to an algorithm that makes them the most powerful country in the world. 

The key is quite simple that we currently have in place for an algorithm. When the country needs a distraction, something is put out on social media to distract us from the current state of affairs. One could say that Jason Aldean was put out there to distract Trump supporters while the government rapidly speeds up his indictments to prevent him from running again. Again, just a theory, but it follows an all too familiar formula.

Back in June of 2013, a pattern began to develop that is similar to what we are experiencing today.

Paula Dean was a very popular person due to her cooking talents. She created an empire. Someone looked into her past and found some incriminating information about her Southern upbringing and the use of the N-Word from her past. She even had to do a deposition in court in which she was quite honest that she used the word many years ago. Without context, her entire empire crumbled overnight. The timeliness of this happening was interesting as some suggested it was a distraction from the public's interest in what happened in Libya which was the Benghazi Incident that could take down future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's chances of getting elected. At the time of Paula Dean, the Obama administration and Clinton were feeling the pressure for misleading the public regarding leaving our US ambassador behind for a terrorist attack in Libya. 

What further complicated this event was Reuters and other emerging news organizations that reported the timeline as being correct while our government initially gave out misinformation. Republicans wanted to of course look into it and along came Paula Dean as a distraction. Coincidence or not, it is an all too familiar pattern. 

The movie magic of Mission Impossible 7 is that it not only validates this could be a plausible theory, it can also be taken further. What if Artificial Intelligence could take down governments through pinpointed espionage? The theory is very plausible, There is currently enough data mining of our personal data from birth to death that sophisticated software could predict the future by studying our emotional intelligence. 

Dead Reckoning is a great title. While intentional or not, it continues the practice of the harbinger theory of the sacrificial lamb. This is why we have sealed documents of such events. The truth is sealed long enough for the current generation of outrage to long forget such incidents. It is left to Historians to discover and by that time, the damage is done. Some sacrificial lambs do not recover from pinpointed social media attacks such as Paula Dean. This is the real danger of Artificial Intelligence. It can destroy a person and structures without emotion. After all, it is just following an algorithm.