Decoding Culture Foundation

Out now: Volume 3 of Cultural Engineering Studies This new volume takes up the theme of Neo-Gnosticism and examines its role in shaping the deeper logic of modern film, media, politics, and cultural engineering. Inside, you can find articles that trace the myths of false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion that have helped form the modern imagination. Featuring writings by: Jamie Hanshaw (@JamieLHanshaw)  Jasun Horsley, (@JaKephas)  Brett Carollo (@DecoderShell) Joshua Stylman (@jstylman) Paul and Phillip Collins (@PhillipDCollin1) Hans Utter, and Thomas Millary (@CinemaPsyop) Plus a interactive zine by Mrs Horsley (@Mrs___Horsley) If you want serious research, strong writing, and a print publication built to last, this is our strongest volume yet. Order now: decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin…

To celebrate the release of Volume 3, during the rest of April and the month of May, you can acquire Volumes 1 and 2 at a discounted price. However, we’re also offering a Collector's Bundle with Volumes 1, 2, and 3. This is our biggest deal ever, and it won't stick around forever.  Get the bundle here: decoding-culture.com/product/ces-an….

Avaiable now: Volume 3 of Cultural Engineering Studies! Our latest volume takes up the theme of Neo-Gnosticism and examines its role in shaping the deeper logic of modern film, media, politics, and cultural engineering. Inside, you can find articles that trace the myths of false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion that have helped form the modern imagination. Featuring writings by: Jamie Hanshaw (@JamieLHanshaw)  Jasun Horsley, (@JaKephas)  Brett Carollo (@DecoderShell) Joshua Stylman (@jstylman) Paul and Phillip Collins (@PhillipDCollin1) Hans Utter (@Resonantstate), and Thomas Millary (@CinemaPsyop) Plus a interactive zine by Mrs Horsley (@Mrs___Horsley) If you want serious research, strong writing, and a print publication built to last, this is our strongest volume yet. Order now: decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin…

"Cultural Engineering Studies 3: Neo Gnosticism" contributor spotlight: Hans Utter: In his first contribution to CES, "FM Radio: The Occulted Frequencies of the Counterculture", Hans Utter, an expert in ethnomusicology, analyzes a critical but overlooked factor in the cultural revolution of the 1960s. The political, aesthetic, spiritual, and pharmacological elements of the emerging counterculture needed a binding new medium, a role played by FM radio. Describing the novel techniques pioneered by DJs like Bob Fass and Lorenzo Milam and comparing them to Tavistock Institute frameworks for collective manipulation, Utter's essay reveals how FM overlapped with military and intelligence psyops to become a vital instrument of largescale cultural engineering. Excerpted from the article: "When the cultural history of the 1960s is recounted, certain images dominate: bearded protesters marching against the Vietnam War, psychedelic light shows spilling over concert halls, the tribal and primeval rituals of Woodstock, or the iconic silhouette of a young woman placing a flower in a soldier’s rifle barrel. The standard narrative foregrounds LSD, rock music, civil rights struggles, and political assassinations as the crucibles of transformation. Yet running parallel to these visible currents was a subtler, less tangible medium—radio, particularly the experimental landscape of FM broadcasting—that played a critical role in shaping the consciousness of the decade. Radio is curiously absent in most mainstream accounts. Scholars of various stripes have meticulously documented the role of psychedelic drugs in altering perceptions, the Tavistock Institute and other research bodies in experimenting with mass psychology, and the Laurel Canyon music scene as an incubator of countercultural sound. But radio, despite its capacity to reach millions in real time, is often treated as a mere transmitter of music rather than as an active site of transformation. This omission is striking, for radio possesses unique psycho-acoustic properties: it infiltrates domestic and private spaces, often through solitary listening; it works with voice, sound, and silence in hypnotic rhythms; and it has the ability to induce altered states of attention through repetition, sensory inhibition, and immersive soundscapes."

🧵 (3/3)These aren’t neutral administrative costs. “The FBI Story” compiles heroic case summaries for public consumption, while Citizens Academies invite community leaders, business executives, and influencers for an insider’s tour—turning them into unpaid ambassadors who carry the Bureau’s narrative back into their networks. Branding initiatives and digital infrastructure ensure a polished, omnipresent FBI voice on fbi.gov and beyond. Media monitoring allows rapid counter-messaging. In an era when trust in federal institutions is fragile, these programs function as soft-power instruments: they don’t just inform; they cultivate goodwill, deflect scrutiny, and gently launder the Bureau’s image one publication, one certificate, and one community leader at a time. Transparency matters. FBI Story Publication (the exact program referenced in both budgets): Official FBI page & recent editions: fbi.gov/how-we-can-hel… Example 2023 PDF (identical format to the budgeted versions): fbi.gov/file-repositor… 2023.pdf/view Citizens Academy program (heavily funded in both years): fbi.gov/how-we-can-hel…   Budget Documents referenced:  app.box.com/file/221357647… app.box.com/file/221966734… For further examples of  the US Federal Government  serving as  a tool of Cultural Engineering, check out our research anthology, "Cultural Engineering Studies". Volume 3 is out now! This new volume takes up the theme of Neo-Gnosticism and examines its role in shaping the deeper logic of modern film, media, politics, and cultural engineering. Inside, you can find articles that trace the myths of false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion that have helped form the modern imagination. Featuring writings by: Jamie Hanshaw (@JamieLHanshaw)  Jasun Horsley, (@JaKephas)  Brett Carollo (@DecoderShell) Joshua Stylman (@jstylman) Paul and Phillip Collins (@PhillipDCollin1) Hans Utter (@Resonantstate) , and Thomas Millary (@CinemaPsyop) Plus a interactive zine by Mrs Horsley (@Mrs___Horsley) If you want serious research, strong writing, and a print publication built to last, this is our strongest volume yet. Order now: decoding-culture.com/print-copies/.

🧵(2/3) Consider just a few highlights. In 2022 the OPA budgeted $30,000 for the “FBI Story Publication” (exactly on target) and another $21,500 for “Community Outreach Printing”—materials designed to reach everyday Americans with carefully curated success stories. The 2018 documents show even larger outlays: $70,000 allotted for “Your FBI Publication,” $75,000 specifically for “FBI Story Printing,” $250,000 for the “FBI Branding Initiative,” and tens of thousands more for Citizens Academy certificates, travel, and supplies. Add in multi-million-dollar web-development contracts, daily news-clipping services ($310k+ in obligations), and internet monitoring ($90k), and a clear pattern emerges: a substantial share of the Public Affairs budget—often hundreds of thousands to low millions annually—flows into tools that shape what the public sees and hears about the FBI.

🧵 (1/3) What do internal FBI budget documents reveal about how the Bureau manages its public image? Thanks to FOIA releases obtained by the Decoding Culture Foundation, we now have a rare look inside the Office of Public Affairs (OPA) spending for FY 2018 and FY 2022. These records expose a deliberate, well-funded infrastructure dedicated to narrative control, community influence, and reputation management. From glossy publications to citizen “academies,” the line items tell a story of sophisticated image laundering that operates year after year, largely out of public view.

Cultural Engineering Studies Volume 3 is available now, exclusively on the DCF website. decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin… To celebrate the release of Volume 3, during the rest of April and the month of May, you can acquire Volumes 1 and 2 at a discounted price. Additionally, we're offering a Collector's Bundle with Volumes 1, 2, and 3. This is our biggest deal ever, and it won't stick around forever.  Get the bundle here: decoding-culture.com/product/ces-an…

This is a great new journal! Or don't you want to know that you exist in a petri dish of an engineered culture?

🧵5/5 For further examples of Hollywood as a tool of Cultural Engineering, check out our research anthology, "Cultural Engineering Studies". Volume 3 is out now! This new volume takes up the theme of Neo-Gnosticism and examines its role in shaping the deeper logic of modern film, media, politics, and cultural engineering. Inside, you can find articles that trace the myths of false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion that have helped form the modern imagination. Featuring writings by: Jamie Hanshaw (@JamieLHanshaw)  Jasun Horsley, (@JaKephas)  Brett Carollo (@DecoderShell) Joshua Stylman (@jstylman) Paul and Phillip Collins (@PhillipDCollin1) Hans Utter @Resonantstate) , and Thomas Millary (@CinemaPsyop) Plus a interactive zine by Mrs Horsley (@Mrs___Horsley) If you want serious research, strong writing, and a print publication built to last, this is our strongest volume yet. Order now: decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin…

🧵4/5 All of these terms appear in meticulous detail in the official DoD Production Assistance Agreement (DoD-327-2024) signed in late 2024 between the Pentagon and Amazon MGM. The document reveals exactly how such collaborations functions. They are methodical, tightly coordinated, and designed to serve both the demands of cinematic storytelling and the interests of the military. The film's March 20 release is the result of a well coordinated partnership that benefits the DoD by shaping public understanding of its people and mission on its own terms.  You can check out the document in its entirety here:  app.box.com/file/218940499…

Government influence on Project Hail Mary (2026) - 🧵 1/5  Amazon MGM Studios partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense on Project Hail Mary, the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel. The collaboration gave the studio permission to film authentic background plates aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt and at Naval Base Coronado and Naval Air Station North Island in California. This access let the production capture real naval operations including: the scale of a carrier flight deck, the precise movements of sailors, and actual military hardware.

🧵1/6 Fly Me to the Moon (2024) presents itself as a lighthearted romantic comedy set against the Apollo 11 era. A closer look reveals how the U.S. federal government and its space agencies actively shaped the project to serve their own strategic ends. Through formal mechanisms like NASA’s Space Act Agreement and direct production support from the Space Force, officials ensured the film not only entertained but also burnished the image of American space achievement, fostered public buy-in, and subtly recruited for today’s missions.

Cultural Engineering Studies Volume 3 is available now! The theme of our new volume is Neo-Gnosticism. This third volume of CES traces the gnostic turn in modern culture and the way false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion have shaped film, politics, and media. Today's featured article: "The Men Who Would Be Queens: Technosticism, Transgender & Transgression in the Plastic Arts" by Jasun Horsley. An excerpt from the article: "I used to be a gnostic (small g). I identified as one of "the men who knew too much." Today, I know better. For example, I know that, if knowledge is what got us into this mess in the first place, it is unlikely to get us out of it. When I first saw the original Matrix movie, I was so excited I wrote 10,000 words about it and titled it “Gnosticism Reborn: The Matrix as Shamanic Journey” (still probably the most “viral” piece I ever posted online). That movie literally changed my life. Like the C*lumbine shooters, I was culturally re-engineered to imitate a technostic superhero (the very best cinema psyops are the ones we fall for). With 20-20 hindsight of 25 years, the Matrix movie was a Trojan Horse for postmodern, self-reinventing hoodoo-voodoo gnostic bootstrapping or heaven-storming. This is what’s known, more traditionally (e.g., in Orthodox Christian lingo), as apotheosis, another thing I was into around that time (I wrote a series of booklets called Apotheosis of Species, later reworked as Homo Serpiens, the most mea culpa of all my books). Now the writing is on the wall (has been since the first sequel, really), and the code is dribbling down all our screens: The Matrix is us. We have been seduced and bamboozled into becoming both its programmers and its content code. We have given over, body and soul, to AI-Genesis."

Cultural Engineering Studies Volume 3 is available now, exclusively on the DCF website. decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin… To celebrate the release of Volume 3, during the rest of April and the month of May, you can acquire Volumes 1 and 2 at a discounted price. Additionally, we're offering a Collector's Bundle with Volumes 1, 2, and 3. This is our biggest deal ever, and it won't stick around forever.  Get the bundle here: decoding-culture.com/product/ces-an…

🧵 6/6 For further examples of Hollywood as a tool of Cultural Engineering, check out our research anthology, "Cultural Engineering Studies". Volume 3 is out now! This new volume takes up the theme of Neo-Gnosticism and examines its role in shaping the deeper logic of modern film, media, politics, and cultural engineering. Inside, you can find articles that trace the myths of false liberation, spiritual inversion, and manufactured rebellion that have helped form the modern imagination. Featuring writings by: Jamie Hanshaw (@JamieLHanshaw)  Jasun Horsley, (@JaKephas)  Brett Carollo (@DecoderShell) Joshua Stylman (@jstylman) Paul and Phillip Collins (@PhillipDCollin1) Hans Utter  @Resonantstate , and Thomas Millary (@CinemaPsyop) Plus a interactive zine by Mrs Horsley (@Mrs___Horsley) If you want serious research, strong writing, and a print publication built to last, this is our strongest volume yet. Order now: decoding-culture.com/cultural-engin…

🧵 5/6 Ultimately, Fly Me to the Moon exemplifies a sophisticated form of soft power, where government agencies partner with entertainment to shape cultural memory, inspire the next generation of talent for recruitment, and sustain momentum for ambitious programs. By lending expertise and locations while guiding key thematic elements, NASA and the Space Force gained a high-profile vehicle that promotes idealism, technological prowess, and the everyday relevance of space, without appearing overtly as propaganda. The results: cultural engineering mission accomplished! Sources: Space Act Agreement: app.box.com/file/161966130… motionpictures.org/2024/07/fly-me… spaceforce.mil/News/Article-D…