Thank you Mark McGrath | OODA Strategist, Kerry Shaw, Jessica Duke, Diana, Susan Hojdik, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Steeplechase and the Weaponization of Faith Networks, produced and hosted by George Webb and Peter Duke, examines the convergence of military strategy, religious infrastructure, and artificial intelligence within a fictional framework that mirrors real-world intelligence operations. The discussion unfolds as both a creative pitch and an investigative reflection on belief systems, media control, and epistemological warfare.
Hollywood, Substack, and the Birth of Steeplechase
The project emerged from Webb’s series of longform Substack investigations into the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and related military-religious movements. He and Duke used Google’s Notebook LM to aggregate and summarize years of reporting into a concise Hollywood treatment. The meeting they describe took place with producers associated with major film projects, including works featuring Nicolas Cage. They explored developing Steeplechase as a six-part dramatic miniseries. The series would follow independent journalists and veterans who expose a clandestine Pentagon initiative, codenamed Ziklag, that manipulates American churches through digital and psychological operations. The tagline, “The flock is the field,” defines the story’s tone and moral perimeter.
The conversation details the producers’ recognition that transmedia storytelling has fragmented audience behavior. Duke describes how platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Substack demand modular narrative forms, leading to the question of how truth-based stories can thrive amid competing attention markets. Webb and Duke position Steeplechase as a structural experiment: an investigative thriller designed for both cinematic and serialized release, capable of crossing traditional distribution boundaries.
Ziklag: A Military Theology
The plot’s foundation lies in the fictional operation Ziklag, a military initiative using faith networks as covert communication grids. Sermons transmit coded military signals through livestreams. Congregational viewer data is harvested to map believers and recruit veterans into “Faith Shield” security teams. These recruits are later conditioned through subliminal cues embedded in sermons. The ultimate purpose is to trigger coordinated civil unrest across the United States, manufacturing a crisis severe enough to justify martial law.
Webb describes this framework as “faith weaponized.” The operation’s architects believe that belief itself constitutes the final domain of warfare. The antagonist, Pastor Rob McKay, embodies the merger of religious charisma and intelligence discipline. His counterpart, Eli Turner, a retired Navy signals expert, detects the first anomaly while scanning shortwave radio frequencies. Turner teams up with podcaster Mara Lund, hacker Ian Carroll, and insider Candace Owen. Their alliance drives the six-episode structure: the discovery of the signal, the unraveling of the propaganda apparatus, the mapping of congregations, the exposure of financial pipelines, and the climactic revelation of Ziklag’s activation sequence.
The thriller’s geography spans California, Michigan, Texas, and Tennessee—each location representing a component of the operation’s logistics: command, data processing, finance, and propaganda. Webb insists these details reflect observable reality, arguing that similar mechanisms operate within real faith-based political organizing.
The Function of AI in Creative Production
Duke recounts how Webb used Notebook LM to compile years of research into a structured pitch document. The AI assembled four major Substack essays on the New Apostolic Reformation and several shorter studies into Ziklag’s precursor operations. Webb characterizes this process as “vomiting” the data into an intelligent notebook, transforming fragmented research into coherent narrative scaffolding.
Duke expands the discussion into a reflection on authorship in the age of machine learning. He distinguishes between AI as a drafting engine and human editorial control. He notes his own workflow—condensing 700-page books into thirty-minute explainers and six-minute visual summaries—and frames AI as an accelerator of synthesis rather than an endpoint of creation. Both men treat AI as a cognitive amplifier capable of compressing the investigative and dramatic timeline.
Operation Steeplechase and Historical Parallels
Webb traces Steeplechase to real-world precedents, particularly Tim Ballard’s Operation Underground Railroad and related “pastor network” initiatives that merged faith-based activism with intelligence methodology. He describes a recurring pattern: compromised pastors, infiltration through security ministries, and the replication of compromise cycles across multiple congregations. He cites incidents involving defrocked clergy, blackmail schemes using surveillance footage, and the recruitment of veterans under spiritual cover.
In his interpretation, Steeplechase represents the operational layer that transformed these compromised networks into political instruments. He connects the fictional events to the mobilization surrounding January 6th, describing how pastoral influence shaped the framing of that day as a spiritual confrontation. He argues that the same structural logic extends into what he calls the “Slaughter Pen of 2028,” a projected culmination of engineered domestic conflict.
Meeting with Hollywood and the Question of Risk
The transcript captures an extended exchange about their pitch meeting with entertainment executives. The producers acknowledged that mainstream media operates under epistemological constraints—certain truths permitted, others prohibited. Duke recounts asking directly how such material could be filmed without attracting suppression or physical danger. Webb references previous threats, including the burning of his home, as a reminder of real-world consequences. They propose filming outside Los Angeles, favoring locations in Ventura County, Nashville, and the Ohio–Michigan corridor, aligning production geography with the story’s thematic geography.
The meeting underscores their conviction that narrative truth can reach audiences only through fiction. Duke frames Steeplechase as a mirror inversion of the X-Files format: an epistemological thriller that reveals concealed operations instead of reinforcing state myths. The protagonists’ pursuit of metadata replaces alien lore. Their work aims to expose the infrastructure of manipulation itself.
The Resurrection of Charlie Kirk
Midway through the discussion, Webb introduces the concept of “AI Charlie”—a synthetic version of political figure Charlie Kirk, created posthumously by the operation within the story. The AI version delivers sermons and political messages, perpetuating influence beyond death. Webb calls this both prophetic and blasphemous, framing it as an allegory for digital resurrection and doctrinal control. Duke links the conceit to Machiavelli’s reflections on immortality through death, interpreting the AI replication as an ultimate expression of ideological utility.
The conversation moves between fiction and forecast. Webb asserts that this scenario functions less as speculative fiction and more as predictive modeling of real strategic trajectories. He warns that once charismatic leaders can be reconstructed through AI, control of digital faith communities becomes total.
The Epistemological Frame
Duke defines epistemological warfare as the strategic control of what populations perceive as true. He identifies four indicators of such warfare: the restriction of permissible narratives, the synchronization of media headlines, the replacement of investigative inquiry with entertainment, and the erasure of historical context. He argues that these mechanisms create uniform thought across institutions. Webb complements this with his “metadata method,” a practice of analyzing the structures around information rather than its surface content.
They agree that belief is the essential battlefield. Whoever shapes collective belief shapes political outcome. The conversation extends to the historical architecture of belief control, referencing the CIA’s postwar propaganda network known as the “Mighty Wurlitzer.” They describe how limited broadcast channels once simplified narrative management and how decentralized digital platforms have complicated but not broken that system.
Historical Continuities and Religious Engineering
The dialogue broadens into theological history. Webb and Duke discuss the Seven Mountain Mandate, a doctrine within the New Apostolic Reformation that asserts control over cultural domains—religion, education, media, government, family, business, and arts—as the path to national transformation. Webb associates this mandate with postwar intelligence efforts to infiltrate culture. Duke traces its lineage to earlier symbolic frameworks: the seven hills of Rome and Jerusalem, the seven pillars of wisdom, and the numerology of Freemasonry.
They identify the Schofield Bible as a historical instrument of doctrinal division, engineered to fracture Protestant unity. Duke situates this within a longer continuum of controlled religious dialectics—from Venetian manipulation after the Battle of Agnadello to English royal interventions in faith politics. He frames the emergence of new sects, from Mormonism to Scientology, as manifestations of theosophical engineering. In this interpretation, theology becomes a substrate for governance, and belief systems function as programmable architectures.
Machiavelli, Caesar, and the Economics of Assassination
The final portion of the transcript links modern information control to classical political theory. Duke recalls his Substack essay on the assassination of Julius Caesar, focusing on the moment Caesar issued fiat currency and expelled the money changers before his murder. He identifies a pattern in which control over monetary narrative aligns with lethal enforcement. Webb and Duke use Machiavelli’s writings to map continuity between Renaissance statecraft and twenty-first-century information regimes. The same epistemological levers—fear, secrecy, divine sanction—govern both eras.
They apply this analysis to the present media landscape, describing it as a digital principality sustained by algorithms rather than armies. In this schema, Hollywood operates as the narrative engine of empire. To challenge its logic requires creating independent story systems that bypass centralized approval. Steeplechase becomes their experiment in narrative autonomy—a cinematic parable of infiltration, faith, and awakening.
Faith, Power, and the Mechanics of Control
Across the conversation, Webb and Duke converge on one structural assertion: control of belief equals control of action. The weaponization of faith transforms congregations into programmable populations. The manipulation of epistemology replaces conventional warfare. The infiltration of spiritual institutions precedes the capture of civil institutions.
The story’s central phrase, “We never invaded the church, we became it,” functions as both plot climax and ideological key. It defines the transformation of spiritual infrastructure into an instrument of command. Eli Turner’s final broadcast closes the imagined series: “They called it Steeplechase because they thought they could outrun the truth.”
The transcript captures a creative and investigative collaboration built on the conviction that narrative remains the decisive battlefield. Through Steeplechase, George Webb and Peter Duke articulate a framework for understanding how faith, technology, and media form the composite machinery of twenty-first-century power.
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Thanks to the generosity of my readers, all my articles are available for free access. Independent journalism, however, requires time and investment. If you found value in this article or any others, please consider sharing or even becoming a paid subscriber, who benefits by joining the conversation in the comments. I want you to know that your support is always gratefully received and will never be forgotten. Please buy me a coffee or as many as you wish.
The Duke Report - Where to Start
My articles on SubStack are all free to read/listen to. If you load the Substack app on your phone, Substack will read the articles to you. (Convenient if you are driving).
Foundational Articles
* Do You Know the Difference between Liberty and Freedom?
* The Power Structure of the World
* A User’s Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Defense
Podcast (Audio & Video Content)
* Palmerston’s Zoo Episode 01 - Solving the Paradox of Current World History (9 Episodes)
* Oligarchic Control from the Renaissance to the Information Age
* The Grand Design of the 20th Century
* Bots React to Neurolinguistic Defense
SoundCloud Book Podcasts
I’ve taken almost 200 foundational books, for understanding how the world really works, and posted them as audio podcasts on SoundCloud. If you load the app on your phone, you can listen to the AI robots discuss the books on your journeys across America.
* The Duke Report SoundCloud Channel
Duke Report Books
* Over 600 foundational books by journalists and academics that never made the New York Times Bestseller list, but somehow tell a history we never learned in school. LINK
