WASHINGTON — The Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy announced this week that it has launched a new course for senior leaders titled Strategic Gaslighting: Shaping Reality Through Passive-Aggressive Command Presence.
The program is spearheaded by retired Lt. Gen. Duane Gamble, who first introduced himself by appearing unannounced in the middle of a staff meeting about pending logistics failures, calmly walking to the front of the room, and declaring himself the department chair. No one recalls inviting him or even seeing him enter the building, but by the time the room stopped spinning, he had assigned mandatory reading and asserted the course had always existed.
“If you don’t remember it, that’s a reflection of your lack of commitment,” Gamble said. “And possibly your unresolved trauma.” Students nodded, including several who had only shown up for free parking before watching the Nationals lose another baseball game.
Described by organizers as a full-spectrum, cross-domain, multi-agency joint offensive against perception, the course teaches future general officers how to discredit subordinates, weaponize vague policies, and manipulate reality using little more than command presence and a perfectly timed calendar invite.
During one seminar, a naval officer stood up and said, “I want the truth!” Gamble leaned forward and replied, “Your job isn’t to know or tell the truth. It’s to absorb failure like a human sandbag made of misplaced trust and ROTC delusion.”
According to Gamble, strategic gaslighting dates back to the nation’s founding. “George Washington didn’t just cross the Delaware,” he said. “He convinced freezing soldiers that marching barefoot was character-building. That’s operational art.”
The first module, ‘Weaponizing Plausible Deniability,’ opens with students writing down three things they’re proud of before burning the papers and chanting, “I never said that.” The module concludes with a peer review exercise in which students gaslight one another into believing it’s 2016 and they’re still motivated.
