When a Clipped Video Becomes a National Incident

Audio corrected version here

The slides are at

A single mistranslated word can change everything.

This video is a live lecture I delivered to the 300th Military Intelligence Brigade, now released publicly for the first time. It’s about how bad translations, clipped videos, and weaponized subtitles are used in modern information warfare, and how intelligence professionals are trained to stop them before they turn into real-world consequences.

If you think translation is just swapping words from one language to another, you’re already behind.

In this talk, I explain how adversaries exploit:

* Short, out-of-context video clips

* Burned-in subtitles

* Ambiguous words that sound threatening

* And emotionally loaded translations designed to force a reaction

I also walk through the W.I.R.E.S. framework, a practical method intelligence linguists use to evaluate foreign-language media in a hostile misinformation environment, without getting rushed, pressured, or boxed into a false narrative.

This isn’t theoretical.

This is how propaganda crosses language barriers.

This is how “emotional truth” beats factual truth.

And this is how a 12-second video can become an operational problem.

If you’re an intelligence professional, a linguist, a journalist, or just someone trying not to get played online, this applies to you.

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