I was attracted to the article because of the title and
expected to see yet one more treatise on how the overpaid contractors charged with executing the DOD on-line
influence war were not doing their job. Interestingly, the article
makes the case that a major problem with the US on-line influence programs is
the resistance from Public Affairs.
The article describes how NATO is trying to recognize the
significance of the influence issue by forming a strategic communications
directorate and that the US is the only holdout. The article’s author, Robert
T. Hastings should know about Public Affairs because among other assignments he
served as acting secretary of defense for public affairs from 2008 to 2009.
PAO has generally taken the view that they must remain and
chaste and pure, avoiding any taint of ‘influence’. Having had the opportunity
to work Joint Exercises at DINFOS, the DOD school that trains Public Affairs
Officers, I’m of the opinion that the ‘new generation’ of PAOs has a much more
profound appreciation for social media and the on-line world than their top
brass.
The inability to integrate PAO efforts into the influence fight dilutes our influence efforts and has to stop,
the sooner the better. While I’m generally not one to editorialize, the DOD is
a pretty simple organization; it works from the top down. SECDEF needs to bring
MG Malcolm B. Frost, Chief of Public Affairs (see: https://www.army.mil/info/institution/publicAffairs/chief/)
into his office along with General
Raymond A. Thomas III, CDR, USSOCOM (see: http://www.socom.mil/Documents/Command_Bios/Gen%20Thomas%20Official%20Bio.pdf)
and have an open discussion about DOD’s need for unity of effort with regard to
Public Affairs.
The buck has to stop somewhere, and it looks like it needs
to be at the top or we will continue to lose influence ground to our enemies
and adversaries.
No comments:
Post a Comment