How nuclear fears helped inspire creation of the internet – Sharon Weinberger | Aeon

‘Brainwashing’ was a new term in the early 1950s, first introduced
and popularised by Edward Hunter, a spy-turned-journalist who wrote
about this dangerous new weapon that could sway men’s minds. The
communists had been at work on it for years, but the Korean War was a
turning point, Hunter argued. In 1958, he told the House Committee on
Un-American Activities that, as a result of brainwashing tactics, ‘one
in three American prisoners collaborated with the communists in some
way, either as informers or propagandists’. The communists were racing
ahead of the US in mental warfare, Hunter claimed.