Stranded on Hollywood Beach

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 t… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thedukereport.substack.com/subscribe