Ancient Origins of Psychological Warfare: Sun Tzu to Genghis Khan

The World is a stage.

The Official YouTube Channel for the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) (Video above) serves as the primary digital platform for the U.S. Army’s elite PSYOP unit based at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), North Carolina. Featuring content such as recruitment videos like the viral “Ghosts in the Machine” series, training footage, podcasts like PSYWAR Underground, and informational pieces highlighting unit capabilities, the channel showcases the group’s expertise in tactical, operational, and strategic-level inform and influence operations.

Soldiers of the 4th PSYOP Group (Airborne) are highly trained specialists who master the full spectrum of military information support operations (MISO), including propaganda production, media analysis, leaflet dissemination, loudspeaker broadcasts, digital influence campaigns, and cultural engagement to shape perceptions, erode adversary morale, encourage defections, and support broader mission objectives without kinetic force. By leveraging creative, unconventional messaging—often delivered with a bold, meme-inspired edge—the channel not only recruits unconventional talent suited to psychological warfare but also demonstrates the unit’s role as the Army’s premier experts in manipulating information environments to achieve strategic effects.

Why Psychological Warfare?

Psychological warfare, often abbreviated as psywar or PSYOP, involves the planned use of propaganda, deception, fear, intimidation, and other non-kinetic methods to influence the perceptions, emotions, morale, and behavior of enemy forces, populations, or even one’s own side during conflict.

It aims to demoralize adversaries, erode their will to fight, encourage defections or surrender, sow confusion, and sometimes build support among allies or neutrals—all without direct physical combat. Rooted in the principle that breaking an opponent’s mind can be more effective than breaking their body, it includes tactics like spreading terrifying rumors, dropping leaflets promising mercy, broadcasting disinformation, exaggerating one’s own strength, or using symbolic acts to project invincibility.

First Uses of Psyops: Cyrus, Sun Tzu, Bias of Priene,Mongol Terror Tactics, & Alex Ander The Great

While modern technology has amplified its reach through radio, leaflets, and digital media, the core idea remains ancient: warfare is as much about perception and psychology as about weapons and manpower.

Who Invented Psychological warfare?

5th Century BCE:

Psychological warfare was not “invented” at a single moment or by one person, as its principles appear in human conflict from prehistoric times, but it has ancient documented origins dating back over 2,500 years to ancient China, where military strategist Sun Tzu (around the 5th century BCE) emphasized deception and undermining enemy morale in The Art of War.

Sun Zu famously stated that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Among the earliest recorded uses are tactics by Cyrus the Great of Persia (6th century BCE), who employed psychological methods against Babylon to encourage surrender.

Other ancient examples include Greek figures like Bias of Priene (6th century BCE) using clever deceptions during sieges, and later leaders such as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan (13th century CE in Mongolia), who masterfully spread exaggerated rumors of their armies’ size and brutality to induce terror and prompt submissions.

These practices originated primarily in ancient China, Persia (modern-day Iran), and surrounding regions of the Near East and Eurasia, long before the term “psychological warfare” , or “psyops” emerged in the 20th century during World Wars I and II.

How The CIA Rigged AK-47s to Explode:

1967:

One of the most ingenious and insidious psychological warfare operations during the Vietnam War was Project Eldest Son, a covert program run by the U.S. Army’s Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) starting around 1967.

The operation involved specially trained technicians secretly sabotaging enemy ammunition—primarily 7.62×39mm rounds for AK-47 rifles, 12.7mm heavy machine gun cartridges, and 82mm mortar shells—by replacing the standard propellant with high explosives that would cause the weapon to explode catastrophically when fired. These rigged rounds were then carefully placed back into captured or intercepted enemy ammunition caches, crates, or even loaded into abandoned rifles left behind after engagements, ensuring they blended seamlessly with legitimate supplies.

The goal was not mass casualties but to sow deep paranoia, distrust, and hesitation among North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong fighters: after a few incidents where rifles blew up in users’ faces—often maiming or killing the shooter with flying bolt fragments and shattered receivers—soldiers would grow wary of their own weapons, question the reliability of their ammunition supply chains, and potentially avoid combat out of fear that firing could mean self-destruction. This subtle betrayal of their most essential tool amplified psychological pressure far beyond the occasional physical harm, contributing to eroded morale and operational caution on the communist side throughout the late 1960s.

How Leaflets and Radio Defeated Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army

One of the most effective psychological operations (PSYOP) campaigns in recent African conflicts was the U.S.-led effort under Operation Observant Compass (2011–2017), targeting Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) across Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Following the viral 2012 Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children—which amplified global awareness and political pressure for intervention—the U.S. Special Operations Command deployed Military Information Support Operations (MISO, formerly PSYOP) teams to support regional African forces. These specialists focused on encouraging defections rather than direct combat, using tailored messaging to exploit LRA vulnerabilities like fear of punishment, family ties, and disillusionment with Kony’s leadership.

Tactics included dropping millions of leaflets in local languages promising amnesty and safe surrender, broadcasting radio messages with music, safety assurances, and personalized appeals (such as recordings of defectors’ family members urging loved ones to come home), helicopter-mounted loudspeakers for targeted broadcasts in remote areas, and community engagement to build trust in defection programs. This precision PSYOP approach significantly increased defections—hundreds of fighters, including high-value members like Kony’s radio operator, abandoned the group—weakening the LRA’s cohesion, reducing its operational capacity, and contributing to its decline from hundreds of fighters to a fragmented remnant, though Kony himself evaded capture and remains at large in remote border regions.

Modern Psy Ops

2009: Epstein Files: CIA-Mossad Blackmail Psyop Exposed

The Jeffrey Epstein files, comprising thousands of court documents from a 2015 defamation lawsuit by victim Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell and subsequent releases up to 2026, have fueled widespread conspiracy theories alleging that Epstein’s sex-trafficking network was a sophisticated psychological operation (psyop) orchestrated by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad to gather blackmail material on global elites.

Proponents of this view point to Epstein’s unexplained wealth, his ties to high-profile figures like former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and CIA Director William Burns, and the Mossad connections of his partner Maxwell—whose father, Robert Maxwell, was a confirmed Israeli intelligence asset—as evidence of a “honeytrap” scheme designed to compromise politicians, billionaires, and influencers for geopolitical leverage, particularly advancing Israeli interests.

A 2020 FBI report in the files even cites an anonymous source claiming Epstein was “trained as a spy” under Barak and relayed information to Mossad intermediaries, potentially involving surveillance tools like PROMIS software for tracking victims.

While official denials from figures like former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett dismiss these as “categorically false” lies, critics argue the operation’s exposure through file releases serves as a controlled psyop itself, sowing division and distrust among world powers without fully revealing the extent of the blackmail network.