Subjects of Interest:
American Military University (AMU)
Intelligence and Homeland Security (HLSS320)
AMU’s Intelligence and Homeland Security course claims to examine the evolution of intelligence’s role in shaping homeland security strategies and to show how intelligence policy and oversight influence homeland security decisions. In practice, it fails to meet that mission. This course stands out as the clearest example of AMU’s bias base. Week after week, students are taught that terrorism failures, from 9/11 to Fort Hood and Boston, resulted from outdated systems, gaps in communication, or poor coordination. The irony is unmistakable: these lessons come from a curriculum so outdated it belongs in a museum, not a classroom. This isn’t a case of a lazy course left to rot. It’s the entire counter-terrorism program at AMU, clinging to old data and cherry-picked material to prop up a selective threat narrative while pretending to warn about the dangers of outdated systems. The material praises these technical fixes while never asking whether the systems target the right threats. There’s no examination of whether ideological bias in threat prioritization contributed to these failures. AMU warns about outdated processes using outdated material, recycling Cold War, post-9/11, and early-2000s case studies without updating the threat picture to match modern realities.
Right-wing extremism, white supremacy, and Islamic terrorism are presented as the primary dangers in assigned readings. Left-wing extremism, BLM, eco-terrorism, anarchist violence, and similar threats are minimized or ignored. When left-wing violence appears, it’s described as a reaction to right-wing extremism or as activism born of grievance. AMU selectively updates its material to reinforce its preferred ideological focus while ignoring recent examples of violence from the left. Even ethics and oversight content teaches students to guard against small-scale errors like weighing probabilities or assessing cause and effect while leaving them blind to the larger bias baked into the threat model itself. Oversight is presented as a safeguard for legal compliance, not as a tool for questioning ideological spin. The course teaches future homeland defense professionals to fine-tune processes without questioning whether those processes are applied fairly or target the right threats. This isn’t just an academic failure but a national security risk that blinds future leaders to the full spectrum of threats facing the nation.
The assigned readings, weekly summaries, and discussion prompts together form the curriculum’s ideological foundation. I include discussion points and classroom experiences in this paper because they reflect not just personal opinion but the reality of what AMU teaches and promotes. During a course discussion on the October 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment, I noted how this assigned reading highlighted white supremacy as the primary domestic threat while failing to address widespread left-wing violence from the same year, including attacks on police stations, courthouses, highways, and businesses. I pointed out that no mention was made of left-wing extremists harassing Jewish students on campuses or the destruction caused during protests and riots attributed to left-wing groups. The response in the forum, like the material itself, reflected the same pattern: right-wing violence was treated as the main danger while left-wing violence was minimized or ignored. In course discussions, I challenged how assigned readings like the Annual Threat Assessments focused almost exclusively on white supremacy while ignoring widespread left-wing violence during the same period. This pattern wasn’t unique to this class. It mirrored all my counter-terrorism courses at AMU. I was even blocked from choosing BLM as a subject of analysis in one course, while being directed toward Neo-Nazi groups to meet assignment requirements. Even in unrelated courses, such as Introduction to Environmental Science, students were encouraged to take to the streets for social and climate justice, accompanied by imagery of a glorified demonstration. These examples reinforce how AMU’s ideological spin extends beyond reading material into the online discussions, shaping what students are taught to see as acceptable or unacceptable threats.
This failure doesn’t simply reflect poor academic design. It represents a serious risk to national security, as it blinds future leaders to the full spectrum of threats facing our nation. To truly serve its mission, AMU must reform its curriculum to ensure students are taught to think critically about all violent ideologies, not just those that fit its preferred left-wing agenda. The reliance on outdated material, combined with these selective focus areas, suggests not oversight but design: a deliberate effort to avoid addressing left-wing violence as a significant domestic threat.
Click the links below for a breakdown of AMU’s counter-terrorism and homeland security curriculum. Each entry focuses on a specific course, pattern, or policy, exposing how bias undermines national security and professional training.
Why did you create Misleading by Design?
As a writer, I’ve experienced the joy of creating stories but also the frustration of navigating the publishing world. Behind the scenes, the process of marketing a book is filled with scams, schemes, and people looking to take advantage of authors. With over 30 years of experience in intelligence and investigations, I realized I could use those skills along with my writing background to help expose the bad actors in our industry and beyond. Misleading by Design is my way of fighting back.
Your projects seem all over the place. Why not just stick to one subject or theme?
At first glance, my projects might seem scattered. I write about ghost stories, spiritual preservation, investigative reporting, and even political analysis. But they all serve one purpose. Each one invites readers to interpret what they see based on their own beliefs, experiences, and instincts. That's the heart of Branching Plot Books. Whether it's a scroll sealed with a forgotten soul, a book that can be read multiple ways, or a report that exposes something hidden in plain sight, the goal is the same. I want readers to take an active role, to question the surface, and decide what they believe is real. The stories may differ, but the purpose is always connected.
What is Misleading by Design’s Briefing Room?
It’s an investigative blog that exposes political bias, fraud, scams, and manipulation in institutions that claim to educate or protect the public. That includes universities, publishing platforms, corporate programs, and anything else hiding an agenda behind a professional front.
Who runs this blog?
I do. Arthur Mills. I’m a retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 and former All-Source Intelligence Technician with 31 years of experience in intelligence and investigations. I’ve tracked extremist threats, exposed political corruption, and led intelligence operations. I’ve seen what real indoctrination looks like, and I’m calling it out when I see it again. This time in classrooms and consumer markets.
Are you affiliated with any political group?
No. I don’t work for any party, PAC, campaign, or media outlet. I’m not here to push an agenda or play politics. I’m here to expose whoever’s lying, misrepresenting, or manipulating others, regardless of which side they’re on.
When I worked in the private sector, I conducted opposition research and tracked domestic extremist groups from across the political spectrum. I’ve investigated threats from both the left and the right. I don’t excuse violence, bias, or propaganda just because it aligns with one side’s agenda. If you're hiding your motives behind credentials, credentials behind ideology, or ideology behind fake neutrality, you're part of the problem. And you’ll show up here.
Why are you investigating food? What does this have to do with Branching Plot Books?
Because it’s the most common scam nobody talks about. Fast food chains show thick burgers and crisp fries in their ads, then hand you a flattened mess in a greasy bag. Grocery stores use packaging that promises quality but delivers bland, shriveled, or half-empty products. It’s manipulation through presentation. They sell the illusion, not the item.
And that’s the same trick used in education, politics, publishing, and everywhere else. If they can sell you a lie in a sandwich, they can sell it anywhere.
Misleading by Design fits the larger mission of Branching Plot Books by turning real-world scams into something the reader has to question, interpret, and investigate. Like my other projects, it doesn’t hand you answers. It gives you evidence, patterns, and contradictions, then dares you to put the pieces together. Whether it’s testimonies from the lost souls, curriculum bias, staged food ads, or publishing cons, the goal is the same: to make you rethink what you’ve been told and see how easily truth gets packaged, sold, and distorted.
What made you investigate American Military University?
Because it claims to train intelligence and homeland security professionals. What it’s actually doing is grooming students to think one way, speak one way, and ignore anything that doesn’t fit the school's left-wing agenda. That isn’t education. That's political indoctrination.
When I was tracking domestic extremist groups, I kept asking the same question. Where does this hate come from? What feeds it? I suspected the root was in their education. What they were taught. What they were not taught. That includes schools and universities. The slogans change, but the indoctrination is baked in.
After retiring from the military, I decided to get the formal education to match my experience. I chose a degree in Counter-Terrorism from American Military University. It promotes itself as a leader in intelligence, counter-terrorism, and homeland defense. It’s one of the largest programs of its kind. On paper, it looked like the right fit.
It wasn’t.
Course after course, it became clear that AMU wasn’t teaching students how to counter terrorism. It was teaching them how to adopt one worldview. How to view one side as the enemy. How to justify violence and extremism from the other. This wasn’t counter-terrorism. It was a curriculum on how to become a left-wing extremist.
I document everything. The entire report is published on The Briefing Room, in serialized form. I sent it to professors and top university officials. They ignored it. They didn’t defend their curriculum. They didn’t ask for clarification. They ignored me. They know I’m on to them.
That's why I’m staying in the program. I’m not there for the degree anymore. I don’t need it. I’m there to finish the investigation. American Military University has built a propaganda machine. And I plan to expose every part of it.
Do you accept tips or leads?
Yes. If you’ve seen something worth investigating, send it through my contact page. I check everything personally.
This includes curriculum bias at any level, from elementary schools to universities. If you’ve seen political agendas being pushed in grade school lesson plans, high school classrooms, college syllabi, or university programs, I want to hear about it. If you’ve dealt with fake credentials, unethical hiring, publishing fraud, corporate indoctrination, or institutional censorship, send it in. I follow evidence, not agendas.
If something feels off and you think no one else will touch it, send it anyway. I’ll look into it.
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