Egypt Reportedly Blocks Internet Access

Today's(28 Jan 2011)NY Times reports that the Egyptian government has blocked Internet access in a move designed to reduce the effectiveness of protests against the Mubarak government.

Clearly this is IO at its finest where CNO is being employed simultaneously as a PSYOP and an EW weapon. This points to the critical need for more widespread training and exercises by our own forces whee they can develop offensive and defensive skills.

These tactics are, as I have pointed out in numerous previous postings, especially effective in AOs with large urban populations and where the target audience is part of the intelligentsia. Students and 20/30 somethings are particularly effected due to their demographic's disproportionate reliance on connectivity.

Tunisa: TV is Still King Of The Airwaves

I believe that TV is the uber information weapon. While TV is not everywhere, it is certainly more pervasive than the Internet. A TV needs power and an antenna while the Internet requires some sort of smart phone or computer and a connection. The Internet seems to be for those who can afford the devices and the access while TV continues to be for the masses.

Photo: Author's photo of Mount Trebevic SRT Repeating Tower, Bosnia

The NY Times article “Tunisia Shuts Down Private TV Channel” which was dated 23 Jan 11 and appeared in the 24 Jan print edition (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/world/africa/24tunis.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper) reported that Tunisian government had shut the TV Station down.

Government sources claimed justifiable reasons for the shutdown. However, the action was alleged to have fanned the current flames of discontent even higher. There were also comments about the station owner and the wealth that the owner and family had gained.

The shutdown was reportedly short lived with station coming back on the air Monday local time.

Some of my loyal readers may recall my earlier postings about TV. For those new to the Blog, I’ve often said that TV is a far better info weapon than the Internet. While I was in Bosnia during October 1997, the Republika Srpska and NATO got into, as the Brits might say, a bit of a sticky wicket. Seems NATO alleged that the Serb Radio and TV (SRT ) was inciting the local population against NATO forces.

The 1st Infantry Division under the command of MG David Grange mounted an attack against one of the TV repeater/transmitters in the network antenna stream and effectively halted TV broadcasts. The NATO press release can be found at: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_25555.htm?selectedLocale=en.
The population was dependent on TV for their entertainment. The fact that the State may have controlled the new content was not nearly as important as the daily dose of pirated Venezuelan soap operas. The Serb government was compelled to negotiate with NATO in order to regain their broadcasting capability and thereby assuage the population.

The lesson for MISO personnel is clear. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, know your AO’s TV channels and their executives like you know yourself. Part of your information preparation of the battlefield is to draw overlays of broadcast and print media to determine their effective footprints. It also makes sense to analyze the programming to determine if the medium is controlled by a particular political faction and to get a feeling for their audience demographics. It is also worthwhile to try and determine where the medium derives its revenue.

MISO forces can and do utilize a variety of media for paid advertising so that one way to get your message out can sometimes be to simply pay for the service. Care must be taken in working with media from a business as well as a cultural perspective so that media management is positively disposed to you and your efforts.
Sometimes the media can provide or point you to credible local spokespeople which can be invaluable.

Bottom line: never underestimate the power of an irate TV viewer!

PSYOP By Walking Around

Many of you are familiar with the technique “Management By Walking Around”. Essentially it is a style of leadership where the manager learns ground truth through conversation and observation by walking among his workers. I was having a bit of trouble figuring out what to post this week while I’m up here in Idaho grandchild and grand dog sitting.

After delivering my charges to their various assignments this morning, I decided that a little PT (Physical Training) was a good start. Since my knees no longer allow me to run very much I figured a walk to ‘town’ for breakfast was in order. I’ve never clocked the distance, but I think it’s about 1 ½ miles each way.
While I’m no mentalist, I am able to observe and analyze what I see. On my way the first item of interest was that the school crossing guard at the elementary school was a Native American – not common in Silicon Valley, but certainly so up here. Next I noticed that even this little town (population 4,000) has a 9 hole golf course even though the season must be relatively short.

When I arrived at my usual breakfast spot I noticed a couple of groups of Caucasians (or as we used to say in New York, coffee klatches). One group had about 8 ladies in their 50s – 70s, a second was about 10 men ranging in ages from late 50s up. Yesterday I learned that the local soda fountain (yes it really is a soda fountain) has sociologically assigned seats in the morning as well. Apparently the breakfast group is a local institution.

On my way back from breakfast I stopped into a Panderia where the signs were only in Spanish. I’m a bread and pastry lover so it made sense for me to explore. Bread and cookies are baked daily (bought 2 for my guests) and viernes is sale day with 3 cookies or bread items (except jalapeño rolls) for the price of two. I also noticed a woman in her early 40s holding a Neflix envelope.

My point in the travelogue is that there is no substitute for being on the ground. Direct communication to local groups is a critical tactical PSYOP task/skill. In this case my limited walkabout would have yielded information about when and where to meet a number of groups almost simultaneously. It also gave me some insight into language (I had to remember what day of the week is sale day), ethnicticities, and media .

This type of analysis is relevant whether in a rural village or a city block and is the foundation of building confidence with the local population.

Can You “PSYOP” An Individual?

PSYOP is generally employed by a military force against a group target in a defined geographic AO. The use of PSYOP against individuals is rare and reserved only for very high value targets where the stakes are quite high. The world of fiction has portrayed PSYOP against individuals in a number of ways. Among my favorites was the original Mission Impossible TV series which employed specially selected people with particular talents, not to mention disguises, drugs, theater, electronics and whatever else was required to alter the perception and decision making of the target.

In some ways it worked like CSI in reverse. Instead of starting with a dead body and figuring out what happened prior to the victim’s death, the Team started with the desired results in mind and performed the backwards planning to orchestrate the scenario to get to the desired results.

There was one episode where the evil doer de jure was convinced that a nuclear holocaust had just occurred. The MI Team built a mock-up of a wasteland around the periscope that the target used to observe what was going on outside. While I don’t exactly remember the outcome, I do remember thinking that was pretty cool.

Moving into the 21st Century – is it possible to “PSYOP” an individual by altering his perception of his environment and events around him to the point where his behavior moves in the desired direction or his decision making capability is severely hampered?

In thinking about the problem, one would have to consider the information and influence environment around the target, as much as the target itself. Given that the target’s actions are a function of the sum of all influences, it is important to determine what influences can be realistically altered or influenced and those that cannot.

For example, it would be difficult to subvert a target in a rural environment where communication is strictly via trusted messenger.

Alternatively, urban targets are typically inundated by information – face to face, television, radio, Internet, news papers, magazines, etc. PSYOP could be performed by controlling what is received by altering the genuine or providing false broadcasts or publications. However, would it be possible to exert enough control to get the desired results?

Another dimension of individual PSYOP in today’s world is the cyber dimension. In this case cyber means the information technology (IT) infrastructure used by the target as well as the Internet itself. CNO might prove effective in altering the effectiveness of decisions by changing the nature of ‘facts’ and information available to the target. CNE operations could be designed to employ computer crime techniques such as salami slicing to alter data in such a way to change the framework upon which decisions would be made. Drastic CNO could be employed perhaps in conjunction with EW to denigrate the information technology (IT) used by the target to the point where it is useless.

Regardless of the target it should be obvious from even this short posting that “PSYOPing” individuals require meticulous planning and significant resources. It also requires an in depth understanding of the target and its environment and an opera