On the night of January 9, 2024, Fox News host Jesse Watters insinuated that Taylor Swift was a “psyop” and “asset” of the Biden government during his show Jesse Watters Primetime. This is exactly how he stated it.
“Around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psyop for combating online misinformation.”
He went on to say that not only was President Joe Biden benefiting from the deal influencing voters his way, but so was Taylor Swift, which is why her fan base exploded and she became a national name.
Meanwhile, former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan told Watters that his theory could be correct and that Swift had no idea she was being “utilized in a covert manner to swing voters.”
Jesse Watters experienced massive trolling after his conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift being a psyop went viral. His charges were about Swift encouraging her fans to register to vote in September 2023.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a “psyop” is a psychological operative that participates in clandestine psychological operations and is usually recruited by the government, military, or police to affect the beliefs, feelings, and conduct of the masses.
The internet mocks Jesse Watters and Fox News for their psyop conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift
On Tuesday night, Fox News’ Jesse Watters floated the idea that Taylor Swift was a pro-Biden psyop and a Pentagon asset. Jesse Watters adds in the now-viral video that, while he likes Swift’s music, he wonders “why or how she blew up like this.”
He responded to his query by speculating that she was part of a “covert pact” with the present administration that helped them embrace their goal and influence American voters.
Watters has stated that Swift may have become a “psyop” four years ago, and that she was hired by the “Pentagon’s psychological operations unit” that hired her during a NATO conference. He also hinted that the sole goal was to make the Lover songstress help them fight “online misinformation.” However, later, he stated how his claims lacked any evidence.
Jesse Watters then presented footage from a 2019 NATO conference on the topic of online misinformation in which he said that the speaker was part of the Pentagon’s psyop unit and was “pitching” NATO to turn the singer-songwriter into a “asset.”
Alicia Marie Bargar, a data engineer with no ties to NATO or the Pentagon, was identified as the speaker by Business Insider. She explained how her views were misconstrued and stated that her address was “an academic presentation at an open conference for discussing cyber security challenges.”
Furthermore, while she mentioned Taylor Swift, she was just used as “an incidental example of a famous person to explain a social network analysis concept to the audience.”
Jesse Watters has suffered considerable blowback and trolling on X as a result of his conspiracy beliefs. Here are a few from the @acyn’s tweet comment area.
NATO representatives have yet to respond to the psyop allegations. Taylor Swift, too, remained silent on the subject. Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon official, defended Swift and chastised Watters for his “psyop” hypothesis. “As for this conspiracy theory,” she told Politico on Wednesday, “we are going to shake it off.”
Singh went on to say,
“But that does highlight that we still need Congress to approve our supplemental budget request as Swift-ly as possible so we can be out of the woods with potential fiscal concerns.”
In this regard, she also utilized the chance to cite Swift’s renowned song, I Wish You Would.
Interestingly, Jesse Watters stressed near the end of his show that he had “no evidence” that Taylor Swift was “a front for a covert political agenda,” and that if and when they had, they would disclose it.
He concluded by saying,
“But we’re curious. Because the pop star who endorsed Biden is urging millions of her followers to vote… I wonder who got to her, from the White House, or wherever.”
For the uninformed, Jesse referred to Swift sharing a vote.org link on her Instagram Story on National Voter Registration Day in September 2023 and urging fellow Americans to use their voices and make the right choice in the 2024 election. But she took no sides. In fact, to this date, she has not promoted anyone for the upcoming election.
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According to Vice, within an hour of her appeal, there was a 1226 percent increase in website traffic, with more than 35,000 new voters registering, the most since 2020 and 23 percent higher than in 2022. In addition, the number of voters under the age of 18 increased by 115%.
Here’s all you need to know about Alicia Marie Bargar’s 2019 address
Jesse Watters’ Primetime show featured footage of data engineer Alicia Marie Bargar speaking at a conference on combatting online misinformation titled “Information Warfare: Defining and Analyzing.” It took place in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2019 as part of the 11th International Conference on Cyber Conflict.
She started by suggesting ways to “counter the information operation.”
“The idea is that social influence can help encourage or promote behavior change, potentially as a peaceful information operation. I include Taylor Swift in here because she’s a fairly influential online person. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her.”
Other parts of Bargar’s speech, which were not featured on Jesse Watters Primetime, stated that the best method to combat misinformation morally was “with people,” such as Swift.
Notably, Bargar was a research engineer for Johns Hopkins University at the time and was invited as a guest speaker. Meanwhile, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence arranged the event, while NATO StratCom moderated the panel.