PSYOP REGIMENTAL EVENTS AND SPECIAL INTEREST ITEMS
13 Aug President Biden personally gives General Andree Carter her second star in New Orleans
WASHINGTON — Andreé “Ana” Carter got her second star directly from President Joe Biden Wednesday on Air Force One to become a major general in the U.S. Army Reserve.
She and her husband, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, were out at the airport in Kenner to greet the president when he arrived for an announcement on cancer research later in the day at Tulane University.
The Carters had planned a ceremony with retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Russel Honoré to pin the stars.
Biden invited the couple on board Air Force One and personally put the second star on Ana Carter’s shoulders.
“I’m extremely proud of my wife Ana Carter for reaching this historic rank," Carter said Wednesday. "As the first woman in our nation’s history to serve as Commanding General, she is leading the way for generations of young girls who will come after her. This is an exciting day for the Carter family and the great state of Louisiana.”
PSYOP NEWS - AUGUST 2024
27 Aug special ops official lays out ‘strategic’ reason for Israel to better protect civilians
WASHINGTON — As Israel faces calls from activists, international bodies and the American president to better protect civilians in the Gaza conflict for humanitarian reasons, a key Pentagon official recently explained why it would benefit Jerusalem at a strategic level.
Chris Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SOL/IC), was quick to remind reporters at an Aug. 23 event that Israel lost more than 1,200 people in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. But, he said, “At the same time, how the Israelis are conducting the operation in Gaza — I think we’ve been very open — has concerned us at times.”
Maier said there have been “dozens” of conversations between US and Israeli military officials, from the “operational level” up to the level of the Secretary of Defense, about how Israeli forces are fighting, and “this civilian harm is always a feature of this, because we think it has big strategic implications.”
27 Aug Marine Corp’s Infantry secret weapon: A $9.95 unofficial website
Last year, an idea began percolating among some Marine infantry officers: How could they draft principles and procedures for if the Marines found themselves in a conflict similar to the one now raging in Ukraine?
Using open-source analysis and commentary, a team of volunteers led by a retired lieutenant colonel got to work answering this question.
Two documents emerged out of this informal Marine effort.
One was a detailed 126-page handbook that described a series of scenarios and explained how existing Marine doctrine would apply to such a fight.
The handbook covered everything from how a company leader should write an order — one page, handwritten, no imagery — to drone use, and how each drone would support one unit, with leaders tasking drones in the company order.
23 Aug Army progressing toward Theatre Information Advantage Detacj,emts (TIAD) deployments
TECHNET AUGUSTA 2024 — The Army is making strides towards standing up its Theater Information Advantage Detachments (TIADS), a new kind of unit that seeks to monitor the information warfare efforts of adversarial nations like China and Russia at the field level.
Thanks to the hefty amount of equipment and personnel needed, these organizations are scheduled to stand up in fiscal year 2026. Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commanding general of Army Cyber Command, said this week that the service has received positive feedback to the idea internally.
She said that other “theaters were already itching to get this capability, so much so that organically, they pulled people from different areas in order to really start, jump-start their campaign of learning,” Barrett said, as she closed out the 2024 TechNet Augusta conference. These “different areas” referred to the redesignation of the US Army Pacific’s G39 staff, a group responsible for information activities, to the TIADs.
In February, the Army Force Structure Transformation plan approved the creation of three TIADS — one detachment in Europe, the other in the Pacific region and an interterritorial detachment for the Army Cyber Command.
23 Aug Specail operations forces ‘big fan’ of Replicator especially for Pacific Missions
WASHINGTON — US special operations forces are already a “big fan” of the Pentagon’s Replicator drone project, especially as the DoD imagines what a fight in the Pacific could look like, according to a senior official.
“First off, I think … it’ll field systems much more quickly than the standard defense industrial base process, procurement process,” Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, told the Defense Writers Group this morning.
“And so I think from the SOF [special operations forces] perspective, because we often are the ones able to do smaller projects, work them more quickly, test them with operators — in some cases actually [in an] operational context — then we can in some cases be proof of concept for the Replicator that then, if something works, can be scaled up much more quickly through Replicator than” through a traditional defense contractor.
Replicator, a major initiative by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled a year ago, aims to crank out hundreds of unmanned platforms in record time, or as she put it, to deliver “capabilities at greater speed and scale while simultaneously burning down risk and alleviating systemic barriers across the department.” The first Replicator systems were delivered to servicemembers in April, Hicks previously said.
21 Aug U.S. Investigating Americans who worked with Russian state television
By Julian E. Barnes and STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
The Department of Justice has begun a broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia’s state television networks, signaling an aggressive effort to combat the Kremlin’s influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November, according to U.S. officials briefed on the inquiry.
This month, FBI agents searched the homes of two prominent figures with connections to Russian state media: Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of U.S. foreign policy, and Dimitri K. Simes, an adviser to former President Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016. Prosecutors have not announced charges against either of the men.
More searches are expected soon, some of the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss investigations. Criminal charges are also possible, they said.
The investigation comes in the wake of the Biden administration’s official intelligence findings that Russia’s state news organizations, including the global news channel RT, are working with its intelligence agencies to sway elections around the world.
21 Gray Zone Warfare: How Counterintelligence Must Adapt to Modern Threats
As the global security landscape evolves, so too must our approach to counterintelligence (CI). For over two decades, CI professionals have been deeply entrenched in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), focusing on non-state actors and asymmetric threats. This focus has shaped their skills, methodologies, and operational frameworks. However, the rise of strategic competition with major nation-state actors like China (PRC) and Russia necessitates a paradigm shift. These adversaries employ sophisticated tactics that blend conventional and unconventional methods, often operating in the gray zone—a space where activities fall below the threshold of open conflict but can still have significant strategic impacts.
The gray zone challenges traditional CI approaches, demanding a more nuanced understanding of geopolitical dynamics, technological advancements, and the integration of various intelligence disciplines. We need a comprehensive strategy that encompasses not only military and intelligence capabilities but also economic, diplomatic, and informational tools.
21 Aug The Army has a vital role in space, and it continues to grow
A recent Breaking Defense op-ed from Charles Galbreath and Jennifer Reeves of the Mitchell Institute, titled “The Army wants its own ‘Space Force.’ They shouldn’t be allowed to have it,” misses key points about the Army’s space capabilities, and requires additional context and objective analysis.
Following the creation of the Space Force, the Army, alongside each military service, retained military and civilian space personnel and capabilities to address service-unique requirements. More than that, the Department of Defense (DoD), the Joint Staff, the US Space Force, and the US Space Command are actively encouraging all military services to increase their space forces and develop space capabilities. This is consistent with guidance outlined in numerous DoD-level policies and forums, as well as the annual Defense Planning Guidance.
14 Aug America will be more secure if it does less
In its final report, released at the end of last month, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS) had a chance to tackle the Pentagon’s most stubborn but pressing challenge: the failure to prioritize. It squandered this opportunity, however, by recommending a “multi-theater force construct” that requires a larger military, more spending and an increased forward presence in Asia, Europe and the Middle East while still defending the homeland. In other words, the Commission’s more-of-everything prescription punted on arguably the most crucial question it was supposed to tackle.
Even as the defense budget pushes towards $1 trillion, the status quo approach leaves the United States overstretched — involved in unnecessary wars where its interests are limited, and falling behind in Asia, where the stakes are highest. The Commission’s answer to this perennial overcommitment is to double down, with the American public footing the bill through tax increases and entitlement cuts. As attention shifts to what the US defense strategy might look like under a new president, policymakers should not repeat the Commission’s mistake, and instead must lean into the hard but necessary prioritization choices required to align ambitions and resources.
14 Aug Without Talent Agility, America May Lose
The 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy states that “people execute the strategy” and will be critical in great-power competition or a future conflict. Senior U.S. defense leaders tout that people are the U.S. military’s “greatest strength” and that the department is in a global war for talent. Yet no major program focuses on innovation and investment in talent management on par with the innovation and investment seen in countless other tangible systems. The department is pursuing sixth-generation fighter aircraft but is seemingly unphased by second-generation talent management systems, processes, and policies. To get serious about winning current and future conflicts, the military needs a talented, flexible, and skilled force, and the Defense Department should take on the thorny tasks of talent management reform.
https://warontherocks.com/2024/08/without-talent-agility-america-may-lose/
13 Aug NATO must recognize the potential of open-source intelligence (OSINT)
Writing in 1946, just a few years before NATO was founded, Director of the US Office of Strategic Services Bill Donovan knew precisely how valuable publicly available information could be.
“[E]ven a regimented press,” he wrote, “will again and again betray the national interest to a painstaking observer . . . Pamphlets, periodicals, scientific journals are mines of intelligence.”
Today, seventy-five years after the Alliance was formed, such open-source intelligence (OSINT) is more important—and more powerful—than ever. However, underinvestment in OSINT capabilities and a culture favoring classified data currently hold back member states’ intelligence-collection potential. To fully utilize the available technology to detect threats from adversaries, NATO member states must overcome these barriers to embrace open-source intelligence enabled by artificial intelligence (AI).
8 Aug Reviewing the intelligence and media relationship (Australia)
In 2024, Australian security relies on maintaining a resilient democracy and an underlying strong civil society as much as it does on secrecy to protect sensitive information from foreign or domestic threat actors. For two decades, our public discourse has focused on balancing national security and our freedoms, but that doesn’t need to be a perfect marriage. Our focus should just be on making it work.
The first review conducted by the new Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) Jake Blight, Secrecy offences—Review of Part 5.6 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, provides important recommendations for improving our secrecy legislation and laying the foundations for a better relationship between the national intelligence community (NIC) and the media.
The relationship is not always amicable, as shown by the 2019 AFP raids on Annika Smethurst and the ABC, and last year’s reporting on former secretary of home affairs Mike Pezzullo’s proposal to reinstitute a system for issuing D-notices—official requests not to publish.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/reviewing-the-intelligence-and-media-relationship/
6 Aug Niger cuts ties with Ukraine over comments on Mali-Wagner attack
NIAMEY, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Niger's junta on Tuesday cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine over remarks from officials it said showed Ukraine's support for groups involved in fighting in neighbouring Mali that killed dozens of soldiers and Russian Wagner fighters in July.
The move follows Mali's decision on Sunday to sever relations with Kyiv following comments by Ukraine's military spy agency about the fighting in northern Mali in which Tuareg rebels said they killed at least 84 Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers.
The incident appeared to be Wagner's heaviest defeat since it stepped in two years ago to help Mali's military authorities fight insurgent groups.
Editorial Comment: I believe this is clear evidence for Niger’s growing affinity towards Russia.
1 Aug National Counterintelligence Strategy 2024
As President, my greatest obligation is to lead our Government in protecting the United States of America. A key part of that solemn duty is identifying and countering foreign intelligence threats directed against the United States and its allies and partners.
Foreign intelligence and security services and their proxies persist in seeking to acquire our most sensitive information, technology, and intellectual property. Non-state actors are following suit.
Foreign intelligence entities are also seeking to take advantage of the proliferation of commercially available tools to conduct surveillance; collect vast amounts of previously unavailable personal data; and position themselves to disrupt our infrastructure, industries, and institutions.
To keep pace with these threats, the National Counterintelligence Strategy provides strategic direction for the United States Federal Government and its counterintelligence community. Based on current and anticipated foreign intelligence threats, this strategy updates our counterintelligence priorities and aligns them with broader strategic priorities set forth in the National Security Strategy.
Above all, the National Counterintelligence Strategy supplies a vision that guides our efforts to work together to keep this country safe and ensures we are well-positioned to counter foreign intelligence threats
https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/features/NCSC_CI_Strategy-pages-20240730.pdf
1 Aug Air Force Risks Defeat By Neglecting Information Warfare: Thinktank
The Air Force may be inviting catastrophe by neglecting information warfare, an emerging domain that service officials say is fundamental to air operations, according to a new report published July 30 by the RAND Corporation, a federally-funded think tank.
Despite talking a big game about information warfare for more than 20 years and forming a numbered air force in 2019 to serve as the information warfare (IW) hub, the Air Force has not published formal, actionable requirements that lay out the exact roles and responsibilities for IW organizations, which frustrates and confuses both IW Airmen and the non-IW groups they work with, RAND found.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-information-warfare/
24 July How U.S. Adversaries are Eyeing our Presidential Election
How U.S. Adversaries are Eyeing Our Presidential Election
By Mark Kelton
Kelton retired from CIA as a senior executive with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations. He is a partner at the FiveEyes Group; a member of the Board of Trustees of Valley Forge Military Academy and College; member of the National Security Advisory Board of the MITRE Corp.; member of the Day & Zimmermann Government Services Advisory Board; member of the Siemens Government Technologies Federal Advisory Board; and a member of the Board of BigMediaTV.
OPINION — Describing the conditions that set the stage for history’s largest, most costly war, Winston Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm, “The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.” We are confronted with similar circumstances today.
The leaders of a malicious Axis of Autocracies challenging the U.S. and its allies on multiple fronts have been encouraged in their aggression by a string of American failures. Those national security calamities have, at once, fueled and been fueled, by a growing impression of American weakness and irresolution that has demonstrably eroded our ability to dissuade and deter our adversaries from their depredations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine in 2022, was certainly encouraged by the disgraceful U.S. flight from Afghanistan. Likewise, Iran’s decision to unleash its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies – and ultimately its own drones and missiles – in an assault on Israel and in the case of the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea; likely would not have happened, or would not have taken the form they did, absent Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Now, the most important and dangerous member of the big three in that Axis – China – is exploiting the international chaos engendered by its allies to ramp up pressure on Taiwan and on the Philippines in the South China Sea.
22 July Pentagon unveils arctic strategy bolstered by new high north NATO allies Finland, Sweden
WASHINGTON — Fresh off a NATO Summit featuring two new members hailing from the high north, the Pentagon today released its newest strategic document outlining the need for both the US and its allies to curb Russian and Chinese ambitions in the arctic.
The new document, the 2024 National Strategy for the Arctic Region, warns that both Moscow and Beijing are increasingly working together to facilitate their activities in the north, particularly in the wake of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/07/pentagon-unveils-arctic-strategy-bolstered-by-new-high-north-nato-allies-finland-sweden/
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