In my youth in Brooklyn I was pretty good at ‘ranking out’
or belittling an opponent verbally. In fact, that skill put me on the math team
in high school. I didn’t solve many problems. My job was to ‘psych out’ the
other team. Many people say that my skills have improved with age.
Last week I heard how the Australian Olympic sailing team
worked on their British opponents by congratulating them on the win of the
Silver Medal – of course the Aussies wanted the gold!
Turns out monitoring jokes is good entertainment, a source
of counter-intelligence and potentially OPSEC vulnerabilities as well. The
British Daily Mail of Wednesday, Sep 26th 2018 featured an
article (see: The CIA joke-book: US
declassifies cache of Soviet jokes its agents compiled during the Cold War to
gauge public mood in the USSR” (see: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6192733/CIA-declassifies-cache-Soviet-jokes-agents-compiled-Cold-War.html,
which is a photo source).
You can find the two pages of the original, which was
approved for release on 16 September 2013 at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP89G00720R000800040003-6.pdf
In PSYOP we can employ humor in a subtle way to influence
the target’s behavior. The Soviet intelligence agents were checking the morale
and potential vulnerability of their population to subversion by monitoring
their jokes.
One
sample from the article goes like this: “'An American tells a Russia that the United
States is so free that he can stand outside the White House and yell "to
hell with Ronald Reagan."
The Russian replies: 'That's nothing, I can stand outside
the Kremlin and yell "to hell with Ronald Reagan too!"
Here’s
another one: “'A Russian man reappears in Moscow after an absence of 15
years and explains he was in prison for calling Josef Stalin a fathead.
"That's a long sentence for
criticizing the leader," his friend says.
"Oh, only got a year for
that" he replies. "I got 14 years for revealing a state secret."
Given the state of today’s news – I felt we all needed a
break!
1 comment:
Watch Live Hong Kong TV Channel
Click Here To Live
Watch Live TV Channels Online Broadcast On The Internet
livetvchannels.net
Live TV channels World Wide Internet TV watch free online TV broadcasts live The best live streaming guide of TV channels broadcast from around the world on the Internet for free.
Live TV channels
Post a Comment