It’s no secret that the US Army is moving troops from Germany to Poland. Besides the Germans who will take a major economic hit because of the move, there are others who do not want the Poles and the US to get chummy.
In June 2020 there were a number of articles addressing “Poland hit by wave of fake news’ ahead of major military exercise with US” One such article was posted on 1 June 2020 by Kafkadesk (see: https://bit.ly/2YupScD, which is a photo source). According to the article:
“According to the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, hackers used “cyberattack tools” to post fake content on various news websites, including prominent Polish media groups.
“The attack coincided with the beginning of the next phase of the Defender Europe-20 military exercise hosted by Poland,” Polish government spokesman Stanislaw Zaryn allegedly said in a lengthy statement Thursday, in which he blamed Moscow.
Fake news and disinformation campaign
Among the fake news reports was a fabricated interview with U.S. Army Europe commander Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli, which was published by Gazeta Polska, one of Poland’s popular conservative newspapers, notorious for spreading disinformation, and then picked up by other sites, including Poland Daily.”
A more recent and focused article appeared on “InMilitary.com”, an online publication of American University. (see: https://bit.ly/2FC8E6p) this article focused on a meticulously crafted fake story about an soldier indicating that the soldier had killed a Polish soldier, stole a car and was at large. What made the story so interesting was the research behind it. The enemy had found a real soldier with a real unit in a deployed situation.
The article from InMilitary goes on to describe the information operations actions taken by the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force to counter this new battlefield threat.
It would appear that the threat is consider a cyber one so that a growing cadre of digital warriors is being assembled to counter the threat. One interesting approach is being taken by the Marine Corps who established the II MEF Information Group. Within that group is a COMMSTRAT company whose mission is:
II MIG COMMSTRAT supports the MAGTF commander through informing domestic and international audiences, conducting information environment battlespace awareness, providing task-organized COMMSTRAT capabilities in order to enhance the MAGTF’s ability to maneuver in a complex and contested operating environment. (See: https://bit.ly/316dWiJ)
To the casual observer it would appear that the ability to influence is being absorbed into the greater information world and be subsumed by its cyber cousins, much like a python eating a rat.
Am I missing something? You tell me.
