The Shoemaker’s Children Are Barefoot – or who counter’s enemy influence on the US military?

A number of publications including the prestigious www.foreignpolicy.com reported on October 21, 2021 that the “U.S. Army Failed to Warn Troops About COVID-19 Disinformation” ( see: https://bit.ly/3vDwnsJ which is also a photo source)

According to the article close to 90% of the DOD workforce had not received any information from their chain of command about Chinese or Russian propaganda aiming to sow doubt and fear about the virus and Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines. In violation of a key security principle, neither service members or DOD civilian employees were advised as to how and to whom suspected disinformation should be reported to.

To be fair there were efforts to raise the issue of disinformation to service members and DOD civilians. The Vietnam Veterans Association (disclosure: I am a Life Member) published a survey on September 17, 2019 which you can find at: https://bit.ly/3E24BsS, which is another photo source.

The website, www.defenseone.com on September 17, 2021 (see: https://bit.ly/2ZgcYT8) briefly reported “Countering disinformation. The Army is working to disrupt disinformation online by trying to get inside a perpetrator’s OODA Loop—which stands for observe, orient, decide, act—when they see efforts to spread lies, Defense One reports. The U.S. evacuation operation in Afghanistan is a recent example where the military saw adversaries spread misinformation about the event on social media.”, (see: https://bit.ly/2ZgcYT8), but I couldn’t find any other information about that effort.

As with many of my postings, the point is not to report the news, but to analyze it.

Clearly enemy propaganda is an OPSEC concern which is the province of the J/G/S3. 

However, where does the buck start? Is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs responsible for putting out guidance down the chain of command? Should the service proponent (the JFK Special Warfare Center & School at Fort Bragg) be responsible for providing the guidance through the proper chains of command?

Is each of the 11 Combatant CDRs responsible for the spiderwebbing of guidance on how to spot enemy disinformation and what the individual should do about it.

Frankly, I certainly don’t know. My concern is that neither does anyone else!

Reader input encouraged.