We believe we would recognise an influence operation if we were caught in one. In reality, by the time the pattern becomes visible, our life is already organised around its benefits, and turning back feels like walking with steel boots.

The Influence Operation

It all starts off with a free lunch. Then a Mercedes ride back home. You feel privileged. Then there’s a concert invite. A game ticket, that just became available. A Hermes bag. A VIP pass to your favourite temple.

There’s a recommendation to the local country club, an award nomination, a meeting which you cannot otherwise fix, an admission for the son, an internship for the daughter. It slowly builds up into other things like joint holidays, family parties and combined investments.

Over time, the lunch is no longer free. An obligation forms, though no debt has been named.

By the time you recognise it, you are already embedded in the circle of influence. What once appeared harmless now feels inescapable. Reciprocation feels like a moral obligation.

Influence Exchange

The operator may be seeking to launder their reputation (if you are a professor say), or extract benefits from the position you occupy (a deal, a concession, a distributorship … ).

You are now one of the ‘arms’ of the influence exchange – you are now helping the ‘operator’ deliver other forms of influence to other friends of theirs. You are now organising internships to other friends’ daughters.

The structure is designed to ensure that when the moment comes, refusal is impossible. Yet this is just the first stage of the operation.

Kompromat

The most ruthless of operators can escalate this further. To a point where disentanglement can carry devastating consequences.

This may take the form of a compromised land deal or insider information that leads to profit. May be a shared transgression with alcohol, drugs and girls. Now the operator has ‘Kompromat’ on you. A shared secret.

You are no longer a willing participant but a figure in their puppet show.

They will constantly bring up this shared secret, more as an afterthought than as a threat. But threat it is. Meanwhile the influence operation will continue in full flow, commiserating your misery. You know and they know – they own your soul.

Stockholm syndrome

It is a perfect trap. You slip into a Stockholm syndrome. You begin to help the operator not by choice, but by conditioned loyalty and a perverse incentive of self-preservation.

One day you irrevocably transgress a thin ethical, moral, legal line. You end up in Epstein’s files.

It all starts off with a free lunch.