How info wars start Hoax report that fuelled our conspiracy culture

Intended as a leftwing satire on 1960s state power, Report from Iron Mountain was fake news but it has taken on a life of its own, writes Phil Tinline

- Phil Tinline

We live in a blizzard of fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories. It's tempting to blame this on social media - which does indeed exacerbate the problem. And AI deepfakes promise to make the situation even worse. But at root this is not about technology: it's about how humans think, as an astonishing case that long predates the internet reveals. This is an amazing story about the perils of amazing stories.

In November 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, a strange document was published in New York. Report from Iron Mountain was the work of a top-secret "special study group" recruited by the Kennedy administration to scope out what would happen to the US if permanent global peace broke out. It warned the end of war, and of the fear of war, would wreck America's economy, even its whole society. To replace the effects, extreme measures would be required - eugenics, fake alien scares, pollution, blood games. Even slavery. The report was so incendiary it had been suppressed, but one of the group leaked it. It caused a furore. The worried memos, demanding someone check if this document was real, went all the way up to President Johnson.