War Games, Mind Games and the Five Eyes

"A pandemic response is more akin to a military operation than other natural hazards..."

You may have heard the term “Five Eyes” before but have you ever heard of the “ABCANZ Armies”?

CURRENT ABCANZ Executive Council. Source

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Firth (left) converse with fellow Australian and United States Army members during a break at the 2018 ABCANZ Executive Council Meeting in Canada (source)

In this post, I’m providing an overview of some of the NZ military influence on the Covid era government response.

This article has three parts:

1. I provide a summary of the ABCANZ Armies as it relates to NZ Defence Force and its role in the Five Eyes.

2. I run through an ‘interesting’ NZ conference that included the ABCANZ partners early on in the Covid era.

3. I include the connections with the Nudge Units and some strange ‘coincidences’ that may have prevented the NZDF staff from communicating their concerns about instructions they were given.

What is the “ABCANZ Armies” Organisation?

During WW2, the “ABC Armies” formalised the cooperation and standardisation of training, terms and materiel between the American, British and Canadian armies.

Expanded and re-named in 1947 (two years before the NATO Agreement), the ABCANZ Armies entity presented ways to capitalise on collaboration between the Five Eyes, with Australia joining in 1963 and later on, New Zealand as well (first as an observer in 1965 and then as a full member in 2006).

More recently, after the security changes resulting from 9/11, military representatives widened, to include the US Marine Corps and the British Royal Marines.

Map of ABCANZ members. WikiMedia

The ABCANZ ‘Vision’ is to “achieve the effective integration of the capabilities necessary to enable ABCANZ Armies to conduct the full spectrum of coalition land operations successfully in a joint environment, now and into the future.” With a ‘Mission’ “to optimize ABCANZ Armies’ interoperability in order to deliver success on coalition operations.”

Here is a group photo of the ABCANZ Executive Council during their 2018 meeting which was hosted by Canada at the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello, Quebec (sourced from a post on the official Facebook page of the Canadian Army):

The ABCANZ Armies Executive Council members in November 2018 (left to right): General James McConville, United States Army; Major General Mark Wise, United States Marine Corps; Lieutenant General Nick Pope, British Army; Major General Carl Turenne, Canadian Army; Major General Anthony Rawlins, Australian Army; and Brigadier Jim Bliss, New Zealand Army

Here is a group photo of the ABCANZ Armies Board of National Directors from that same meeting (sourced from the same post on the official Facebook page of the Canadian Army):

The ABCANZ Armies Board of National Directors (left to right): Major General Douglas Crissman, United States Army; Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Davis, United States Marine Corps; Brigadier Kevin Copsey, British Army; Brigadier General Stephen Kelsey, Canadian Army; Colonel Simeon Ward, Australian Army; and Colonel Duncan Roy, New Zealand Army.

Here is a group photo of the ABCANZ Armies Program Office members from that same meeting (sourced from the same post on the official Facebook page of the Canadian Army):

The ABCANZ Program Office members (left to right): Lieutenant Colonel Brent McGee, Canadian Army; Lieutenant Colonel Simon Boyle, British Army; Lieutenant Colonel Paul Firth, Australian Army; Colonel Andrew Maskell, British Army; Mr. James Contreras, United States, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Martin, United States Army, Major Rhys Myors, Australian Army; Lieutenant Colonel Todd Hart, New Zealand Army; and Warrant Officer John Jessome, Canadian Army.

The U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) has a Podcast called “Breaking Doctrine” and episode 61 of that podcast (released in July 2024) is dedicated to the “ABCANZ Armies” program.

Here is its official synopsis:

The American, British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand (ABCANZ) Armies’ Program is designed to enhance interoperability and demonstrate the collective strength of the ABCANZ Armies’ and USMC.

Join Lieutenant Colonel Phil Wingo (host), Colonel (COL) Craig Madden, Chief of Staff for the ABCANZ Armies’ Program, and COL(R) Rich Creed as they discuss how the program increases mutual trust between our armies, improving our ability to fight together.

Below are the embeds of this particular episode of the “Breaking Doctrine” Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube:

Here is an embed of the actual audio file itself, just in case this podcast ever does a ‘disappearance act’:

ABCANZ Chief of Staff, Craig Madden

Colonel Craig Madden, the Chief of Staff for the ABCANZ Armies program, is an ADF (Australian Defence Force) officer with extensive involvement with the US military, including the 20 year campaign in Afghanistan during which he was an advisor to the G3205 Corp of the Afghan National Army and member of the 205 Coalition Advisory Team, based out of the Forward Operating Base in Lindsey Kandahar.

Here is a synopsis of his military career sourced from a pamphlet of an RSL branch in Western Australia where he gave a talk in May 2023:

Craig Madden joined the Army upon completion of his secondary schooling at Guildford Grammar School. He was a member of the second intake of the Australian Defence Force Academy and he commissioned from the Royal Military College Duntroon into the Corps of the Royal Australian Engineers in 1991.

Colonel Madden has held a range of regimental and staff appointments including Commanding Officer of the 4th Combat Engineer Regiment and Chief of Staff of the Combined Arms Training Centre, Puckapunyal.

Colonel Madden’s current appointment is Deputy Commander 13th Brigade, Karrakatta.

Colonel Madden has seen domestic and overseas operational service including:

• Bomb Disposal and Search advisor to the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games; Commanding Officer of the 370 person Task Group in Kinglake after the 2009 Black Saturday fires;

• Officer in command of US Marines and US Army Engineers Explosives Awareness Training Team in Iraq; and

• Advisor to the Afghan Operations Officer of the 205th Corps, Afghan National Army in Kandahar in 2012.

As of July 2020, Madden was also the Commanding Officer of the Western Australian University Regiment which is part of the 13th Brigade he is the deputy commander of.

Left to right: Officer cadet LT Amelia Swenser-Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Craig Madden, Officer cadet LT Stephanie Santamaria

Following the WHO declaration of the C19 PHEIC (pronounced “fake” which is so so appropriate!!) on March 11th 2020, the NZ National Action Plan was created and published on March 18th.

The propaganda campaign “Unite against COVID-19” (referred to by the NZ Herald as “A modern masterpiece of mass communication.”) was launched and literally flooded all press, TV and radio, websites, social media, and online newsletters.

It was inevitable that ABCANZ and All of Government (AoG) ‘workstream’ entities played a significant role in publishing and promoting the intense propaganda which used MINDSPACE techniques of behavioural science.

But were these military leaders also victims themselves?

A NZ Covid Era Military Conference

The above context is important to frame an unpublicized event that took place in New Zealand on Wed 1^st July, 2020.

It wasn’t included on the NZ Government’s Covid Timeline of Events, or on the AoG lists of significant outcomes.

This all-day conference with over 250 personnel from the ABCANZ Armies was called ‘Covid 19 Lessons’:

The purpose of the conference was to:

“facilitate sharing lessons throughout the NZ Army from the tactical and operational levels as they relate to the recent COVID-19 outbreak in New Zealand and the subsequent lockdown period that followed.”

The event also aimed to:

“prioritise and implement new Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) as well as a refinement of current TTPs as a result of lessons learned during the recent months. The conference used panels from across the Army, and pre-recorded videos from ABCANZ Lessons personnel, Senior National Officers (SNO) and Military Attachés (MILATs) to highlight the issues and lessons from our Coalition Partners.” (my emphasis)

Caught in the snapshot of time, the narratives, Q&As and presentations were all (strangely) framed as if the ‘worst was over’ and that this was an attempt to understand what worked well and what didn’t.

Because this conference was hosted by “Knowledge Enabled Army” (KEA), which is the professional development network focused on training provision for the New Zealand military, there was a mismatch between inter/national and micro-level issues like providing online training platforms and leadership of military staff on site.

Screenshot from the opening of the conference

Major Bob Duncan was the first speaker, who seemed to assume his audience was at a low level of knowledge. He explained the definitions of epidemics/pandemics and talked the usual fear-mongering nonsense about high risks of zoonotic infectious diseases.

11:50 minutes in he says:

“Measles is a killer and continues to kill unimmunized children around the world…”

Yeah, Nah. He used the Johns Hopkin’s data modelling of case numbers.

Admittedly, in July 2020 the international situation was uncertain.

Tragically, these military professionals seemed oblivious to the inevitability of more lockdowns, extreme testing regimes, contact tracing, and vaccine mandates.

Fast-forward one month: on 1 August, another propaganda campaign following on from the ‘Unite Against’ was launched: ‘Be Ready’ - which bizarrely encouraged Kiwis to prepare for ‘future outbreaks’ of COVID-19.

Less than two years later, on the 17^th Jan 2022, the New Zealand Defence Force would be required by law to be vaccinated (two doses required by 1^st March 2022) and later that year, the NZ Defence Force along with other public sector staff would be involved in a Court Case trying to fight for the right to bodily sovereignty and informed consent. For full details of that story, see this NZDSOS article.

One Conference Panel noted some serious failures, Group Captain Shaun Sexton, base commander for RNZAF (and others) pointed at the lack of any NZDF approved mobile messaging service, preventing effective communication during lockdowns:

Slide from Sexton’s presentation at the KEA Conference on Covid Lessons

The Conference blurb also noted:

“Whilst this was not the first occasion that NZDF have deployed personnel within the All-of-Government environment, COVID-19 provided a unique scenario which resulted in an adapted approach that was not necessarily in accordance with Emergency Management doctrine or All-of-Government Command and Control. Understanding the scale of the impact on NZ’s health, economic, and social sectors and the rapid timeline of the assessed ‘threat’ of COVID-19 is crucial to understanding why elements of this approach taken were necessary.

It also highlights why decisions were made in haste in difference to normal All-of-Government standard operating procedures within the national security system.

[Notice the inverted commas around the word ‘threat’ – did someone know it was theatre?] And then this:

“The key takeaway for NZDF personnel who are seconded into this environment is that a pandemic response is more akin to a military operation than other natural hazards.”

International input

The “Covid 19 Lessons” conference also included “Lessons learnt” pre-recorded presentations from ABCANZ Armies partners: Canada and the UK.

The UK presentation was from an entity within the British army called Lesson Exploitation Centre (LXC), located at the Land Warfare Centre.

The Canadian presentation was given by Major-General S.M. Cadden from the Army Training Authority.

You can watch the full presentation below and as you can see, it starts with the obligatory mask ‘ritual’ and with that ‘brave’ Canadian General making an attempt at being funny (supposedly) by commenting how the distance between Canada and New Zealand probably constitutes sufficient “social distancing” and therefore he is “comfortable taking off the mask”:

As a side note, it seems that mask ‘rituals’ have still been very much in vogue at the Canadian armed forces two years later in March 2022 where masks seemed to matter a lot when meeting counterparts from other armed forces…but not when signing agreements with them!

Mask ON:

Major-General Conrad Mialkowski, Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army, and Lieutenant General John R. Evans, Jr., Commander of the United States Army North (Fifth Army) and Senior Commander, Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis, speak on the way to briefings during a visit to Canadian Army Headquarters in Ottawa on March 8, 2022. Photo: Sailor First Class Camden Scott, Directorate Army Public Affairs.

Major-General Conrad Mialkowski, Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army, and Lieutenant General John R. Evans, Jr., Commander of the United States Army North (Fifth Army) and Senior Commander, Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis, conduct briefings during a visit to Canadian Army Headquarters in Ottawa on March 8, 2022. Photo: Sailor First Class Camden Scott, Directorate Army Public Affairs.

Mask OFF:

Major-General Conrad Mialkowski, Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army, and Lieutenant General John R. Evans, Jr. Commander of the United States Army North (Fifth Army) and Senior Commander, Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis, sign the Bilateral Army Training Strategy during a visit to the Canadian Army Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario on March 8, 2022. Photo: Sailor First Class Camden Scott, Directorate Army Public Affairs.

Nudge Units and the NZ Military

The Ministry of Health’s Evaluation and Behavioural Science (EBS) team was created out of the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) and I’ve written extensively elsewhere about their MINDSPACE Nudge Unit strategies (see here, here and here.)

People like Gill Hall were involved. She was Group Manager of the Science & Insights COVID-19 Directorate during the covid era - central to the Gov EBS propaganda formed in mid-2021.

Another individual is Vishal George who has a fascinating background (and like me, is an alumni of Warwick Uni, UK) and leads the training consultancy Behavioural by Design which openly promotes the unethical MINDSPACE techniques:

Screenshot from one of Vishal George’s videos: MINDSPACE taking centre stage

As part of NZs (conveniently timed) centralised healthcare system reforms (eg the District Health Boards being disbanded), EBS was later situated under the Intelligence, Surveillance and Knowledge function of the interim Public Health Agency. More on that another day.

For the purposes of this post, it was Director Strategic Concepts Lt Col Jacob Murray who seemed to take this propaganda at face value and explained to the conference how the modelling and ‘threats’ from covid were real in this presentation: (but I couldn’t find any recording, sadly):

Crucially, at this early stage of the covid era, the NZDF Communication Information System (CIS) was identified as in urgent need of a revamp and in the middle of a complete transformation to a cloud-based system. “covid could not have come at a worse time” said Colonel Jim Bliss.

Of course this breakdown in communications, an IT system that was ‘not fit for purpose’ and instructions that everyone acknowledged were ambiguous, contradictory and went contrary to planned-for events was ALL A COINCIDENCE!

Actually, no, it was not. Because MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE.

Fear not, if you’re an IT expert, you can still apply for a job in NZDF CIS now! And here’s the job description for a senior technician.

Other than being as “fit as a fiddle”, you will also need to be “fully vaccinated” to apply - and they ain’t kidding:

Panel 3 included Tim Ewing-Jarvie who presented a view of crisis management and the leadership issues of NZDF:

His surname caught my attention, because Dr Simon Ewing-Jarvie (Tim’s father perhaps?) has appeared on my radar before as head of yet another quango-consultancy that gets Government funding and offers exciting-looking business war gaming simulations through experiential training workshops.

He also wrote lots of quite amusing articles on his Wordpress-hosted blog (now conveniently deleted) during Covid that were counter-narrative.

[Sidenote: his long-term business partner Heather Roy was an NZ ACT Party MP until 2010].

In closing

The Nudge Units were very active in NZ and via the Five Eyes partnerships like the ABCANZ Armies and other ‘workstreams’, so senior military personnel were likely propagandised during these first few months of the covid era.

I wonder what they think of it all now?

It would appear from this conference outputs that the NZDFs methods of internal (informal and secure) communication were non-existent and that their computer systems were inefficient and unstable.

Looking at the lists of participants questions to the panel (all posted anonymously, illustrating a total absence of trust in the room), there were many legitimate concerns. These included having to use personal phones for military comms, increased incidents of domestic violence (already a significant problem in NZ, sadly) and risks of financial data-harvesting.

None of the above questions were properly addressed.

There’s more to report about this topic, especially the Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) that using controversial scenarios and AI modelling.

Stay tuned!