Annalee Newitz on Psychological Warfare and the American Mind Former Knight Science Journalism Fellow Annalee Newitz discusses their timely new book "Stories are Weapons."

In 2020, Annalee Newitz (’03) began research for “Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.” Newitz set out to write about psychological warfare, but soon realized that “psyops had made their way into domestic culture wars.” The resulting book takes readers through examples of psychological warfare throughout United States history, tracing threads from the American Revolution to modern propaganda disseminated over the internet. Released in early June, the book is now one of Publishers Weekly‘s Top 10 Politics/Current Events books of Spring 2024.

Newitz described writing about psychological warfare while living through a pandemic as “writing about a war while it’s raging.” Through email, they spoke to KSJ about the research that went into this book, sharing moments of surprise and frustration as they discovered “how many contemporary culture wars have strong echoes in US history.” The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Knight Science Journalism: Your book is about psychological warfare and the American mind. For readers who have never thought about this topic before, how would you explain what your book is about?

Annalee Newitz: The book is a history of psychological warfare in the United States. I start with a fake newspaper that Benjamin Franklin created during the American Revolution and bring it all the way up to present-day concerns about online propaganda and culture wars over gender. Ultimately, the book is about a strange wedding between science and mass media that has lasted for a couple of centuries. The military learned to craft psyops – stories designed to be weapons – from the nascent field of psychology as well as advertising and public relations.  In the book,  I explore how this happened, and many of the major players who created the media environment that we live in now.

KSJ: You open your book by saying, “It’s hard to write about a war while it’s raging.” Set the stage for us. What was going on while you wrote this book? How did that make the writing difficult? 

AN:  I started researching this book in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and a raging culture war over the future of the United States. As a science journalist, I’m used to reporting on evidence and data that can be replicated.  What’s difficult about psychological warfare is that there is no scientific way to analyze it – or at least, doing so requires more than the toolkit that science gives us. So it was hard to write about a phenomenon that was ongoing as I wrote, but also frustrating that there was no way for me to point to some kind of chemical or physical analysis that showed how psyops had made their way into public discourse.

KSJ: As the book unfolds, we get to see a glimpse of your own journey in discovering underlying mechanisms that built the American past and present. How did your perspective change as you wrote the book? Do you think this book will change readers’ perspectives too? 

AN: When I started the book, I intended to write exclusively about psychological warfare, which is to say military engagements that involved psyops. But I quickly realized that these psyops had made their way into domestic culture wars and that completely changed the trajectory of the book. Now it’s about formal military wars as well as more informal culture wars, and how they resemble each other. I was shocked at how many contemporary culture wars have strong echoes in US history, and I suspect that readers will be too.

KSJ: Digging in archives and talking to people, did you find anything that really surprised you? Perhaps something odd or frightening?

AN: I started by looking into the Cold War, because that’s a kind of classic period in U.S. history for psychological warfare – it’s when ideas like “brainwashing” and “mental hygiene” become mainstream, as politicians stoked fears that Communists were polluting young minds through education and subversive books. What I discovered through my research was that a similar kind of panic swept through the nation in the 19th century. At that time, the U.S. government was fighting hundreds of wars with Indigenous nations across the West, and justifying it partly by claiming that, for example, the Sioux nation was polluting its children’s minds by teaching them their native languages and cultural traditions. So the government was waging total war with one hand, and with the other, it starts what can only be called a massive psyop to purge Indigenous culture from Indigenous kids’ minds. Residential schools were, as many Indigenous historians and community leaders pointed out, essentially brainwashing operations. So let’s just say I was surprised but also not entirely surprised that the U.S. government basically invented brainwashing during the Indian Wars, and then spent the next century and a half claiming that everybody else, from American feminists to Chinese Communists, had invented it to use against Americans.

KSJ: Your book comes out in June 2024, right in the midst of a big year for American politics. There’s a presidential election and 468 seats in the U.S. Congress on the ballot. What’s that like for you to witness?

AN: I’m definitely a lot more aware of how much our political debates are currently laced with psyops. The basic definition of a psyop is that it demoralizes or injures an adversary using a mixture of lies and violent threats. This election cycle is not giving us the typical peacetime political back-and-forth that obviously involves some out-of-pocket accusations and exaggerations. People who work on managing elections are quitting their jobs because they are getting death threats. Protesters are literally lighting themselves on fire. In my home city of San Francisco, a prominent venture capitalist recently called for a violent “purge” of Democrats, suggesting police could bar progressives from certain parts of the city. We are absolutely in a psychological war right now, and we need to be calling for a ceasefire immediately. We cannot reach consensus, and we cannot negotiate and compromise with each other democratically under these circumstances.

KSJ: In the 3rd part of your book, “Disarmament,” you look towards the future. What can readers look forward to learning in these final chapters?

AN: I don’t believe in describing a problem without offering some possible solutions, so this section explores people and groups who are working on ways to end culture war. They’re preserving suppressed histories, telling new kinds of stories about the future, and imagining ways to rebuild the public sphere by changing the way social media works. I think my favorite part was when I talked to an anthropologist named Jason Younker, who is also the chief of the Coquille tribe in southern Oregon. He’s helping to rebuild Indigenous history by archiving documents about the Coquille, Coos, and many other neighboring tribes that he and a team of researchers rescued from a basement in the National Archive starting in the 1990s. It’s a great story, and I got to visit the archive in person. It was both exciting to me as a history nerd, and a truly moving experience as an American, to see a U.S. institution acknowledging that history stretches back long before this settler nation was founded, and that Indigenous people are alive and badass and working in libraries so that the next generation will be better educated about our shared past.

KSJ: Overall, what is your hope for this book? Who should read this book, and what do you hope they’ll take away from it?

AN: I think anyone who is interested in American history will find something intriguing in this book. But also, it’s for people who have found themselves victimized in culture wars. It’s my way of contextualizing what is happening to us right now, and reassuring people like my friends and neighbors that things have not always been this way. And that means we can create a more peaceful culture in the future too.

KSJ: Do you have any advice for science journalists interested in writing books?

AN: If you are reporting out a story or series of stories that won’t let you go – if you keep thinking about them, long after you’ve filed – then your brain might be telling you that you should write a book about that topic. I always know when I’ve got a book idea because I can’t stop myself from reading more about it and looking up relevant scientific or historical papers. I also recommend getting a good agent who really understands your work. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have someone advocating for you during the contract process and beyond. And finally, the publishing industry is always in upheaval. Don’t be afraid to work with a smaller or newer press – they often provide more support and guidance than one of the mega-houses. 

KSJ: If people want to keep up with your journey as an author and journalist, where should they follow you?

AN: I co-host a fortnightly podcast about science fiction, science, and society that’s called Our Opinions Are Correct, and you can subscribe using your favorite app. I always post links to my new stuff on Mastodon (wandering.shop/@annaleen), Bluesky (annaleen.bsky.social) and Instagram (@ghidorahnotweak).