Transcription
In November of last year, a sitting United States Congressman sent a letter to the Attorney General of the United States asking her to open a federal investigation into Orthodox Christian churches. Not because they committed a crime and not because obviously there was any evidence of wrongdoing, because Orthodox Christians came to Washington to lobby for the release of imprisoned Ukrainian Orthodox Church members. And a congressman basically decided that that was an intelligence operation.
Now, [music] the Orthodox Church in America has been canonically independent of Moscow since 1970. The Antiochian Archdiocese answers to Damascus and the Serbian Orthodox Church answers to Belgrade. But apparently that didn't matter. They were in the same room and that was enough.
Now, here's what makes this letter more than than just a bad take from one congressman. [music] The organization whose research he cited to justify that letter has no named staff, no disclosed funders, no named authors on any of its reports. Because when you find out who actually runs it, you understand why. That organization was staffed by a former French military intelligence analyst, a retired US Army counterintelligence operative, and 28-year CIA Clandestine Service Officer who served as a station chief in get this, both Moscow and Belgrade. Now, they deleted their personal page and then they rebranded. But they kept publishing. And what I'm about to show you is how those three things, the surveillance machine, the law that activates it, and the intelligence community built narrative that justifies pointing at at us, converged at the same moment for the first time.
>> [music] >> Welcome back to Spiritual Frontlines, guys. I'm your host Marco. If this is your first time here, this channel exists because someone has to say the things that don't get said. And we obviously over here what we do is we cover the intersection of faith, geopolitics, and the forces that are actively shaping the world that Orthodox Christians need to live in. And if that's something that you guys care about, do me a favor, hit subscribe, hit that notification bell, share this video with someone with someone in your parish who actually needs to see it because the algorithm is not going to be doing us any favors with content like this. And before we get into the brief, just a quick word on what's coming next, the Saint Lazar Unseen Warfare episode that I promised it's coming next week, guys. Um I'm going to be honest with you, this has been one of the most demanding weeks that I've had in a long time, and I'm still not done with it. But I want you to know it's actually lining up to be one of the best episodes that I've ever produced, I promise you that. And the material on Saint Lazar, the theology of all of it, you know, the context of what's happening in the world right now, super important, it goes very deep, and it's worth doing it right. So that's going to be next Saturday. But uh with that being said, let's go ahead and get into this.
Let's start with what's being built right now. Basically, over the past 2 years, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI and roughly 80 fusion centers across the United States have been quietly developing a new surveillance category. They're calling it, and I want you to hear this phrase very carefully, they're calling it anti-tech violent extremism. Now, that phrase, it doesn't appear in any public DHS or FBI domestic extremism guide, it wasn't debated in Congress, it wasn't signed into law, and it's obviously not being announced in a press conference. [music] It was created internally. And and we only know that it exists because Wired magazine basically obtained over 1,000 [music] pages of unpublished government reports through the Freedom of Information Act. And so we got to thank them for that one. But those documents, they basically show fusion centers in western Pennsylvania and northern Virginia actively monitoring American citizens, not for planning violence, right? Not for some kind of criminal activity that they're actually engaged in, but for opposition to data centers and artificial intelligence. Let that one sink in. You know, a report from the New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau warned that AI adoption could basically, quote, spark major unrest and result in anti-tech violent extremist activity. I I want to be precise here because precision actually matters in this [music] brief. The government's not waiting for violence. It's It's It's actually building a system to identify in advance the communities it believes might become violent based on what they believe, not what they're actually doing or what they've done.
Now, you might ask, what does any of this have to do with data with a data center or data centers, plural, right? And the answer to that question is where this story gets very interesting. Last year, Anthropic, the company that makes the AI called Claude, signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. That contract had two explicit restrictions written into it. Claude would basically not be used for mass domestic surveillance of American citizens, and Claude would not be used to power fully autonomous weapon systems. Okay. Now, both sides agreed to those terms at the signing. Then, what happened? Fast forward, right? In February of this year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent Anthropic a demand. Remove both restrictions, basically. Give us the right to use your technology for, quote, all lawful purposes, or face termination of contract, designation as a national security supply chain risk, and potential invocation of the of the Defense Production Act, okay? Now, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded in writing, and he said, and I'm quoting directly, we cannot in good conscience accede to their request. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, okay. Now, we we can't in good conscience accede to their request. That's what he said. The same day, President Trump directed every federal agency to immediately cease use of Anthropic's technology. The Pentagon then formally designated Anthropic, and again, I want you to hear this phrase carefully, a supply chain risk to national security. That designation has historically been reserved for companies from basically adversarial foreign states, by the way. Companies like Huawei, you guys remember that, right? A federal judge has since basically blocked that designation. The legal battle continues, obviously. And then the Pentagon basically replaced Anthropic with OpenAI, ChatGPT, right? Which basically agreed to the terms that Anthropic magic, you know, that Anthropic basically refused. And so, ChatGPT is now building, you know, surveillance systems and uh autonomous killing machines for the United States government. I want you guys to sit with what just happened there, okay? The United States government demanded that a private AI company remove its prohibition on domestic mass surveillance. When the company refused, the government attempted to destroy it. The attempt is no longer a theory, it's documented, it's on record. And the capability now being built with the more compliant vendor, well, that's what's going on, right?
The other piece of this infrastructure is basically a company called Palantir that was started by Peter Thiel, if you guys don't know. Uh Palantir basically built the surveillance architecture that's currently being used by ICE. It links immigration enforcement, criminal databases, biometric identification. It previously developed protest prediction tools for the US Army. Um it was obviously also used against Palestinians by Israel in the in the conflict over there. And so, this has kind of been the testing grounds. They've also used it in Ukraine, but anyway, I'm not going there today. It's algorithms are basically shielded from public scrutiny, and that's that's important here because it's basically it's shielded as a as a proprietary trade secret, basically. It's basically outsourced its most constitutionally sensitive surveillance to a company that answers to shareholders rather than the Constitution. So, whistleblowers have basically confirmed that the FBI has flagged individuals as potential threats based on their internet search history, their social media posts, their religious beliefs, and their associations with activist groups. Not for crimes, for associations. That's the machine.
Now, let's talk about the law that actually turns it on. I'm going to read you the exact language from the document, okay? Okay. So, what it says, quote, "Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on on immigration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." Now, I want to be very careful here because the framing of that language matters enormously. Notice Notice that anti-Christianity is listed as a as a threat indicator. And when this memorandum basically was announced, you know, many Christians, including many Orthodox Christians, interpreted this as as protection. The government they you know, that they thought is finally now somehow acknowledging that Christians are targeted. Awesome, right? And that instinct is I get it. It's It's understandable. But, here's what NSPM-7 actually is. It's the first presidential directive in American history to authorize preemptive law enforcement action against Americans. Not for what they've done, but for what they believe. Okay? 31 members of Congress basically sent a letter to the president then afterwards warning that NSPM-7 poses, and I'm quoting their letter, "serious constitutional, statutory, and civil liberties risks, especially if used to target political dissent, protest, or ideological speech." The ACLU noted, "It's it it basically instructs federal agencies to use existing authorities to investigate civil society groups, including nonprofits, activists, and donors." As of March of this year, the FBI and the IRS have formed a joint task force to investigate nonprofit organizations for suspected links to domestic terrorism, a direct implementation of NSPM-7.
Now, I need you to think about something, okay? NSPM-7 lists anti-Christianity as a threat indicator. It says that the government is watching for hostility towards traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. That framing protects Christians as long as, you know, this administration is in power and as long as the political winds point in the direction that they currently point. But, NSPM-7, it doesn't define anti-Christianity. It doesn't define which Christians are protected and which Christians might be deemed sympathetic to a foreign power. That distinction, it matters. It's the door, okay? And someone has already started building a narrative to walk right through it.
I need to introduce you to an organization. It calls itself the Robert Lansing Institute for Global Threats and Democracy Studies, okay? Now, what it does is it actually presents itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy research organization. It publishes analysis on geopolitical threats, Russian influence operations, and relevant to what I'm about to tell you, the alleged use of Orthodox Christian church structures as Russian intelligence vectors inside the United States. And here's what the Robert Lansing Institute doesn't doesn't actually tell you about itself. It has no name staff on its website, no name board members, no disclosed funders, no named authors on any of its reports. Imagine that. It's only public contact is a single email address. For most organizations, you would chalk this up to a to a small operation. But this actually isn't a small operation at all. This organization's analysis has basically been cited in a formal letter from a sitting United States Congressman to the Attorney General of the United States. So, let's find out who who they actually are. The Robert Lansing Institute is a rebrand. Before it was the Robert Lansing Institute, it was the Institute for Global Threats and Democracy Studies, IG TDS, incorporated in Delaware, founded around 2019. Their own LinkedIn page still says plainly RLI formally IG TDS. At some point after 2021, they changed the name, migrated to a new website, and deleted their personal page. But before they deleted it, that page told us exactly who they are. And by the way, in order to find this, you have to use web archives to go back and actually look. It's the whole web time machine thing. And that's how I was actually able to find it. And if you And I'm going to put go ahead and post a link for you guys. You should probably screenshot it before it's entirely gone and completely deleted off the internet. But the director general of this organization is a man named Armand Chuet. He's French. I might have totally screwed that up. But anyway, Armand is is a former imagery analyst for the DRM, the Direction du Renseignement Militaire. I don't know if I said that right. That I'm not good at French, guys. I speak English and Serbian. But the Basically, it's it's France's military intelligence agency, the French equivalent of the Defense Intelligence Agency, right? Now, he's basically been in this role since September 2019. He's based in Paris. His work email domain confirmed as recently as June of this year, or I should say June of 2025, is at igdds.org. And then the second confirmed member of the founding team is a retired United States Army counterintelligence agent who basically served in Iraq as a leader of the, you know, tactical human intelligence team, and then he basically was previously instructed he instructed the US Army counterintelligence special agent course, okay? Now, the third Third's important, okay? The third is a man who spent 28 years from 1986 to 2014 as a field operative and senior executive in the CIA's National Clandestine Service, okay? And This is this is going to be super important. His name is John Sipher, okay? At retirement, he was a member of the CIA Senior Intelligence Service, the leadership tier that guides CIA operations globally. He served as chief of station in Belgrade following the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. Now, well, that one's kind of interesting, right? He served as And by the way, I want you guys to remember that one. That one's super important because as I've been doing the research, I've also found out that the Robert Lansing Institute is actually behind the uprisings that are happening in in Belgrade, Serbia with like the students that are doing all these protests against the government. Basically, they're trying to start a cover color revolution again in Serbia, and it's all linked to the Robert Lansing Institute. Imagine that. But anyway, let's go back to uh Mr. CIA guy here. You know, he served as the chief of station in Moscow, also, by the way. And he received the CIA Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. And he's currently basically a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
Now, the organization that published the report calling Orthodox Christian church structures Russian intelligence vectors. It's run by a former French military intelligence analyst, co-founded by a retired US Army counterintelligence operative, and you know, Council among its team of 28-year CIA clandestine, you know, service officer who basically served as station chief in both Moscow and Belgrade. They deleted their personal page. They rebranded. And then they kept the same operational email domain. But what they did is they just kept publishing information, right? And one more thing about that name. Robert Lansing Institute was was Robert Lansing was basically uh the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. He was the uncle of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Eisenhower, and he was the uncle of Allen Wels- Welsh Dulles. He was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961. Uh the man who basically built the CIA's clandestine operations apparatus. And, you know, the organization that named itself after the uncle of the CIA's founding architect. Imagine that. And basically staffed itself with CIA, French military intelligence, and US Army counterintelligence veterans.
Now, okay, I'm going to stop with that one for a second. Um it's basically the same organization that built the narrative now being used to justify federal investigation of Orthodox Christians in America. That one's key. So, this isn't a coincidence.
In November of last year, Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina sent a letter to the Attorney General Pam Bondi. And what he did was he asked her to open a Department of Justice investigation into Orthodox Christian churches in the United States. His basis? A lobbying visit to Capitol Hill. The Orthodox Christian clergy and lay people from multiple jurisdictions came to Washington to advocate for the release of imprisoned Ukrainian Orthodox Church members. Members imprisoned by the Ukrainian government, by the way. Members whose imprisonment has basically been criticized by the United Nations, the Pope, and multiple international human rights organizations, but I'm going to go ahead and digress there. Wilson called that visit an intelligence operation.
Now, I need you to understand something about Orthodox Christian jurisdiction first, because this is where the category error basically becomes undeniable, okay? The Orthodox Church of America, the OCA, has been canonically independent of Moscow since 1970, 55 years ago, guys. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese answers to Damascus, Syria, and the Serbian Orthodox Church answers to Belgrade, Serbia. None of these jurisdictions have meaningful canonical ties to Moscow whatsoever. Okay? Period. Facts. End of story. But, somehow Congressman Wilson's letter named every single one of them, because they were in the same room. Even within his own party, Republicans obviously pushed back. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna said that Wilson was targeting Orthodox Christians, and I'm going to go ahead and quote her directly. She said, "Simply because the word Russia appears in their church name." Father Thomas Saracco of the OCA wrote, "Get ready for the 21st century McCarthy style purges."
Now, the category error that Wilson made manually in a letter in November 2025 is the same category error that the AI surveillance system will make automatically, at scale, by the way. Without anyone having to decide. Let me Let me just show you the full picture now. Because each of these three things, the machine, the law, and the narrative, only becomes what it is when you actually see them together. An intelligence community staffed organization with no disclosed funding, no named personnel, and a deliberately obscured institutional history publishes reports naming Orthodox Christian church structures in America as Russian intelligence vectors. A sitting United States Congressman uses those reports to formally request a Department of Justice investigation of Orthodox Christian communities, sweeping in jurisdictions with no Moscow ties based solely on their presence at a religious freedom lobbying event. A presidential memorandum, already signed, already law, authorizes preemptive federal investigation of Americans based on ideological beliefs, including beliefs deemed sympathetic to foreign powers. A surveillance infrastructure, already deployed, already operational, aggregates license plate data from church parking lots, financial transaction records from parish donations, social media activity, telecommunications metadata, and associational mapping to, you know, basically build profiles of communities of interest. And the one AI company that drew a line, that said, "We're not going to allow our technology to be used to surveil American citizens at mass scale." was designated a national security threat and removed from federal contracts.
None of this requires a conspiracy, guys. Conspiracies require coordination. What this requires is something far more ordinary and far more durable. It requires institutional momentum. It requires political incentive, and it requires technical capability. All three of those now exist simultaneously. History has also shown us a pattern before, okay? In 1942, the United States government interned 120,000 Japanese Americans. That that decision began with a legitimate intelligence concern, and then it, you know, it was basically a documented ties between a subset of the population and a foreign power, and then somehow it ended up with the category logic, right? Japanese ancestry is what they said as the operation criterion. And then it applied it to 120,000 people who had nothing to do with that concern. In 1956, the FBI launched COINTELPRO. It began with documented Communist Party info, you know, infiltration of American institutions, and then it basically ended with, you know, the active surveillance and disruption of Martin Luther King Jr. The infrastructure always outlasts the specific threat it just of that basically justified it, and it always finds new targets.
Now, I want to speak directly to my Orthodox brothers and sisters now. This isn't This isn't a cause for panic. The church has obviously survived empires. She survived emperors who called themselves her protectors and emperors who called themselves her enemies. She's survived surveillance states far more total than this one, but she survived because her people were clear-eyed about it. Because they understood what was happening. Before it was actually too late to actually bear witness. And that's what this brief is. Not a call to fear, a call to see. Here's what has been confirmed. An organization staffed by French military intelligence, US Army, and counterintelligence and CIA clan you know, clandestine service veterans operating without disclosed funding having deleted its own personal page built the narrative that the Orthodox church structures in America are Russian intelligence vectors. A congressman used that narrative to formally request DOJ investigations of communities with no documented intelligence ties. The legal authority to act on that request already exists signed into law by executive memorandum. The technical infrastructure to execute it at mass scale is already deployed. The one guardrail, the one company that said no, that company was removed. Everything I have told you today is documented. The sources are in the description below. The research document behind this video is available. I'm probably going to post that in the near future. Not because I want you to trust me, but because I actually want you to verify everything that I've said. And then tell somebody else. May God give us the eyes to see. Stay armed, stay sober, and remember Christ is king.
>> [music] [music] [music] [music]