Writers know that if you want to tell a story, you need to flesh out other side-threads and characters apart from the main plot and protagonist as these are what make the author's fantasy believable and realistic. And the secret services know this, as well. When a false flag or disinformation operation is planned and then launched, a series of seemingly incidental moments obscures the real intention. Alternatively, they can be used to create the appearance of truth in the unsuspecting news consumer. In both cases, the end result is the same: we believe the story - but only if they do it right, of course.
Nowadays, it is perhaps even more difficult to distinguish between what is the truth and what only appears to be the truth.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk recently spoke of how artificial intelligence-produced content is becoming increasingly more realistic, making it much easier to deceive consumers.
"How will we ever know what reality is?" Musk posed the million dollar question. But even he couldn't give a reassuring answer to this increasingly disheartening problem either.
And nowadays, if we are unable to discern what is true from when they are consciously trying to deceive and influence us, then we become more easily manipulable.
It's been nearly two years and we still don't know who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines and why. These are seventeen billion-dollar-questions. That's how much it cost Germany and Russia to build it.
The whole thing is even more significant when you consider that this action succeeded in cutting off a large part of Western Europe from cheap Russian energy, the price of which is still being paid for by European industry and residents alike. Yet somehow no one seems to care about getting to the bottom of this mystery. Perhaps the silence surrounding it is the most revealing.
So far, there have been two diametrically opposed explanations. The first was published last year by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersch, who said that
the US administration, fearing that Berlin would be unwilling to wholeheartedly stand by Ukraine against Russia because of its business interests, tasked US Navy deep sea divers to carry out the operation.
The cover operation was Baltic Operations 2022 (Baltops 22), an annual NATO maritime exercise that was held in June of that year, when underwater mine detection and clearance was practiced. At the time, explosives were planted covertly on the pipelines running 80 meters deep in the Baltic sea without being detected by Russian technical surveillance systems. Then, in September, the buoy that remotely activated the bomb was dropped from a Norwegian reconnaissance plane.
That's Hersch's story in a nutshell, which seems to be confirmed by some external factors. The first is that Norway had been the logistical and information center which had assisted the US Secret Service in its operation to tap the phones of some Western European states' governments, among others, the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel and nearly her entire cabinet. The other point is that
both the then British Prime Minister Lizz Truss and the current Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski had thanked the United States at the time for the successful bombing. Just as President Joe Biden had made a clear reference to the possibility of a US action against the pipeline even before the Russia-Ukraine war had broken out.
However, just two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal put out a new version of the story. According to their article, Ukrainian political, military and economic leaders decided, during a night of celebratory drinking, to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline . Four people who were allegedly involved in the operation disclosed the information to the newspaper. The four said they had had a good laugh and been amused by those who envisaged a large-scale military-secret service operation at work. All it took, they say, were a few dedicated, patriotic people funded by the Ukrainian oligarchs. President Zelensky had initially greenlighted the plan, which strongly resembles the scripts of several old Hollywood World War II movies. Then, according to the newspaper,
the Dutch secret service somehow got wind of the plot and informed the unsuspecting CIA leaders. After the initial shock had passed, they asked the Ukrainian president to call off the operation, which he did immediately, but the now dismissed former commander-in-chief, Zaluzhnyi, had taken no action. He said the "torpedo" could no longer be stopped. And the Ukrainian patriots succeeded.
But let's return to Hersch's story. According to him, US intelligence started putting together a cover story with their German counterparts last year. They made it look like British and Americans were not involved in the operation, so President Biden could not be involved, either. Today, German investigators, after a year of seemingly fruitless investigations, have suddenly issued an arrest warrant for the very Ukrainian military diver the Wall Street Journal had mentioned. But the Poles had let him go to Ukraine because the German warrant had arrived to late.
This is where this very strange, but in fact very sad story for Europe, stands. Two contradictory explanations with the same end result: the continued economic and political erosion of the European Union.
A few days ago, I called an old friend who has dived all over the world and now also teaches. He says the secret to successful and safe deep sea diving is planning. A long calculation precedes the launch. A special combination of helium, nitrogen and oxygen has to be put together, knowing the exact depth target. Changing the ratio of gases by even one or two percent can significantly affect the duration of the dive. A diver may therefore have to carry up to eight gas tanks. The descent to the desired depth is fast, but the ascent can take up to five or six hours, because the body, saturated with dissolved gases, needs to be emptied. This is also significantly influenced by the water temperature, the current and the physical work done in the depths. Above on the surface, the boat has to wait motionless...
Interestingly, these basic questions have not been examined. At least not in public. That's what makes this story - which like the saying a drop contains the ocean, has so much in it - so infinitely sad.
And this is not even remotely affected by AI.
The author is a security policy expert.
