POVA LEAFLET DROP - December 2023
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Greetings Fellow PSYOPers!
Happy New Year to you and yours.
I am pleased to report that in December we welcomed two new Life Members, Benjamin Witt and Jason Valles as well as a new annual member. We also welcomed two members who are still serving, one US and one French. Thank you all!
This month I would like to address the pressing need for more member involvement in the coming year. Here are three key areas that need our attention.
Reunion
Our last reunion was a very successful one held in Cleveland in 2018. The membership would like to see another one. Washington, D.C. and Fort Liberty, NC have been mentioned as potential sites. However, we need a Reunion Chairman to recruit a committee and organize the event. Please contact me ASAP if you are interested.
Scholarships
Last month we kicked off our Scholarship campaign for 2024. The amount of our scholarships will be limited unless we receive new donations to help cover their cost. You can donate through the website, or mail a donation to:
PSYOP Veterans Association
117 Bernal Road, Suite 70-338
San Jose, CA 95119
Membership and Leadership
Member participation and recruitment are the lifeblood of any organization, especially POVA.
We need to transition our leadership team to those younger than our VietNam Era veterans.
There are many much younger PSYOPers on our rolls. Please consider giving POVA the benefit of your training and experience by volunteering for leadership
roles and responsibilities.
The Leaflet Drop continues to earn readership:
Scholarship Program Message from LTC Dan Wood
Happy November fellow PSYOP Vets! In the spirit of thanksgiving I would like to announce the next round of scholarships! Candidates must meet the following criteria:
Child or other dependent of a POVA member in good-standing. “Member in good standing” means that the parent or sponsor must have completed a POVA membership application and been rostered as a member and remained a member through the actual submission of this application. Participation in POVA-related social media does not constitute membership in POVA.
Must be enrolled in, or accepted for enrollment in, an accredited community or junior/community college, a college or university, or other accredited higher education institution*
For non-traditional students, enrollment in or acceptance for enrollment in a certified/licensed training program leading to the equivalent of a college degree will qualify as long as the program and vendor are appropriately certified by competent authority. This may include a trade apprenticeship program certified by competent authority.
Must be a full-time student or accepted as a freshman for full-time enrollment.
Must provide certification of current enrollment or acceptance for enrollment from the intended educational institution.
Complete application process not later than the deadline date of 10 JAN 2024
The total scholarship amount will be based upon the number of applicants received. If you are interested in applying or donating to the scholarship fund, please contact me directly at: DWood1180@gmail.com
Statistics From October/November Leaflet Drop
Sends: 587
Opens: 333 (63%)
Clicks: 32
Unsubscribes: 0
Our next virtual Board meeting is scheduled for 1900 Eastern Time, 17 Jan 24. If you would like to attend, let me know and I will send you a Google Meet invitation.
All the best,
Larry
PSYOP NEWS - DECEMBER 2023
Articles of Interest
PSYOP NEWS - DECEMBER 2023
27 Dec 23
A Middle East preview for 2024; Maritime cooperation, regional rivalries and a new jet
BEIRUT — The conflict in Gaza dominated the news at the end of 2023 and, with few signs of resolution on the horizon, it will likely do so in 2024 as well. But other themes will be worth watching in the coming year, from more cooperation in the maritime domain to an increasingly intense Gulf rivalry to potentially new help for indigenous fifth generation fighter development.
[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2023 and look forward to what 2024 may hold.]
Here’s what we’ll especially be keeping an eye on in the region in the new year: https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/a-middle-east-preview-for-2024-maritime cooperation-regional-rivalries-and-a-new-jet/?
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25 Dec 23
Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on U.S. Strikes in Iraq Early this morning in northern Iraq, U.S. military personnel were targeted by a one way attack drone. The attack wounded three U.S. service-members, one critically. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack.
President Biden was immediately briefed on the attack this morning, and he ordered the Department of Defense to prepare response options against those responsible. Those options were then presented to the President during a call this afternoon with Secretary of Defense Austin and members of the President’s national security team. During that call, the President directed strikes against three locations utilized by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused specifically on unmanned aerial drone activities.
The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way. The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements
releases/2023/12/25/statement-from-nsc-spokesperson-adrienne-watson-on-u s-strikes-in-iraq/
21 Dec 23
Army chief: looming force structure shakeups and new weapons: Army 2023 in review
WASHINGTON — US Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville bid adieu to the service this summer, handing the baton and a host of imperatives, from a munition production ramp up to a fight for more recruits to his successor, Gen. Randy George.
After serving a stint as the acting chief due to Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blanket hold on military nominees, George was sworn in as the 41st Army chief in September and brought with him four focus areas — warfighting,
delivering ready combat power, undergoing continuous transformation and strengthening the profession of arms.
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/new-army-chief-looming-force-structure shakeups-and-new-weapons-army-2023-in-review/?
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20 Dec 23
3 ways intel analysts are using artificial intelligence right now: Ex-official WASHINGTON — Nearly six years ago the Director of National Intelligence sponsored a public competition to see how well an algorithm could replicate human-made analytical intelligence reports.
The results wouldn’t be very impressive looking back from the current age of ChatGPT; the best entry, written by a French programmer, looked good but didn’t make all that much sense. Still, at the time the ODNI found the results “highly encouraging.”
Fast forward a half decade and far more advanced algorithms — neural net learning artificial intelligence — are already at work within CIA headquarters, according to a former senior official, even if they’re not pumping out final analytical reports.
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/3-ways-intel-analysts-are-using-artificial intelligence-right-now-ex-official/?
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15 Dec 23
House Approves Four- Month Extension of Feds’ Warrantless Spying on Americans House lawmakers permitted a four-month extension of warrantless surveillance through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday. The lower chamber voted 310-118 to pass the annual national-defense bill after the Senate approved the legislation Wednesday. Slipped into the measure was a reauthorization of the federal government’s warrantless spying on American citizens known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The 2008 law allows federal intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance that’s ostensibly limited to foreign nationals but has been routinely abused to surveil American citizens. The controversial law will now bypass significant reform for another four months through the NDAA.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/15/house-approves-four-month-extension-of feds-warrantless-spying-on-americans/
14 Dec 23
IDF drops leaflets offering huge rewards for Hamas leaders' locations The IDF distributed flyers across Gaza on Thursday, promising huge rewards to anyone who would provide information on the locations of senior Hamas leaders hiding in the Strip.
The flyers state that $400,000 is being offered for information on Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and $300,000 for his brother Muhammad Sinwar. A lower reward, worth $200,000, will be awarded by the IDF to those who provide information on the location of Rafa Salama, the Khan Yunis Brigade commander; for the location of Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas's military wing, the army will give $100,000.
"Confidentiality is guaranteed," the IDF states in the flyer, and a phone number is provided to call.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-778002?
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13 Dec 23
DIA to release new AI strategy
he Defense Intelligence Agency is finalizing its artificial intelligence strategy to control the use of technology for decision support and human-machine teaming when providing intelligence to warfighters and policymakers. Ramesh Menon, DIA’s chief technology officer and new chief artificial intelligence officer, established the AI strategy, which is expected to be announced this week.
“When we create any strategy, it’s about truly understanding from a stakeholder perspective what is required? What are the gaps? Once you have a strategy, then you have to operate like the strategy. How do you do that? How do you create underlying for structure, the organizational design processes? Technology is changing at a very rapid pace,” Menon said during an interview for Federal Monthly Insights – AI/ML Systems. “We really are trying to figure out the best scenario for decisions support, decision augmentation and decision automation for human and machine teaming. And that will take a while and the underlying governance structure for it.”
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/artificial-intelligence/2023/12/dia-to-release new-ai-strategy/
13 Dec 23
The Social Hierarchy of US Special Operations Units
There is a fact about human beings that you’d all probably agree with: we never really outgrow our petty adolescent jealousies. It starts once we hit that Age of the Hormone, in which we are always measuring ourselves against everyone else. Within our peer groups, we judge ourselves and others, some days never feeling adequate, other days feeling superior to all.
The phenomenon is evident in elite athletics, the corporate world, among the parents at a local school, and within the government, at every level. You will no doubt be shocked to hear that it is also present within the military’s Special Operations (SOF) community. My friend George Hand ably and humorously touched on this phenomenon in his latest piece for Sandboxx News (although I’d refute
that piece – gently – by stating that our particular SEAL platoon took live-fire training extremely seriously, and never once did I ever push a poop through the water toward another human).
Those minor quibbles aside, Geo’s article reminded me of a GWOT-era meme that made its way around the SOF community a few years after the various US Government SpecOps components had been working together for a while in Afghanistan and Iraq. Given the time spent together, the SOF units had had time to grow much more familiar with each other. Of course, with that familiarity was bred plenty of contempt.
The essence of that meme was that each of the various SOF elements – including the CIA’s Paramilitary Ground Branch – could be described using college as a frame of reference. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but that doesn’t matter, because I have my own ideas, and here they are. No one take offense, these are the musings of a former SEAL and they’re firmly tongue-in-cheek. Also, I’m only including ground units, so no SWCCs, or Night Stalkers.
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-social-hierarchy-of-us-special-operations units/
12 Dec 23
How Russian intelligence services have taken over Wagner’s operations in Africa
Since the dissolution of the Wagner mercenary group, Russia has restructured its paramilitary networks in Africa, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR), which in recent years has become a hub for Russian security services on the continent.
Now under state control, Russia-Africa networks have become more official and the careers of their leaders are easier to identify as most of them come from the Russian Ministry of Defense or the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2023/12/12/how-russian intelligence-services-have-taken-over-wagner-s-operations-in africa_6336860_124.html
5 Dec 23
Clandestine online operations now require sign-off by senior officials
Following a controversy over the Pentagon’s use of clandestine information operations, the U.S. military has eliminated dozens of false online personas it created in recent years and has curtailed the use of such operations overseas, according to senior defense officials.
Clandestine online operations now require sign-off by senior Pentagon officials, the CIA and the State Department, according to the officials, who spoke Monday on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The new policy follows a review and pause initiated last year by the undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, who stepped down in July. His review, first reported by The Washington Post, was prompted by an outcry following the publication of an August 2022 report by internet researchers Graphika and Stanford Internet Observatory. The researchers revealed takedowns by platforms including Facebook and X of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites, and suggested that the accounts might have been created by the U.S. military.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-12-05/military-clandestine-
operations-oversight-12264006.html
28 Nov 23
‘Central to everything we do’: Army unveils first-ever doctrine for ‘information’ WASHINGTON — Information has been a vital tool of victory since the first Stone Age warriors hid in ambush for a rival tribe. But with social media, satellite imagery, and surveillance drones generating ever-vaster amounts of data every day on soldiers and civilians alike, the ability to gather information, make sense of it, conceal it, and weaponize it has become more essential than ever before — not just to technical specialists but to combat commanders and even ordinary grunts. That’s the message of a newly published Army doctrine manual, entitled simply titled “Information”.
The ambitious goal of the 144-page Army Doctrine Publication, ADP 3- 13, is to reconcile the ancient and the new into a single coherent framework — one equally useful to a rifleman sneaking through the forest, a technician hacking hostile networks, a spokesperson combating disinformation, or a commander trying to coordinate all of the above.
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/11/central-to-everything-we-do-army unveils-first-ever-doctrine-for-information/?
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28 Nov 23
Fake babies, real horror: Deepfakes from the Gaza war increase fears about AI’s power to mislead
WASHINGTON (AP) — Among images of the bombed out homes and ravaged streets of Gaza, some stood out for the utter horror: Bloodied, abandoned infants. Viewed millions of times online since the war began, these images are deepfakes created using artificial intelligence. If you look closely you can see clues: fingers that curl oddly, or eyes that shimmer with an unnatural light — all telltale signs of digital deception.
The outrage the images were created to provoke, however, is all too real. Pictures from the Israel-Hamas war have vividly and painfully illustrated AI’s potential as a propaganda tool, used to create lifelike images of carnage. Since the war began last month, digitally altered ones spread on social media have been used to make false claims about responsibility for casualties or to deceive people about atrocities that never happened.
https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47?
user_email=ac98ac2759633983e679cb1dfba90995157dcc8c1f47e1e5dd9a5d34092 1caae
27 Nov 23
Unit 910: Hezbollah’s Covert Action Unit
The External Security Organisation (ESO), most known as Unit 910, and sometimes referred to as the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), is Hezbollah´s clandestine black-ops branch and intelligence wing (source). Unit 910 is an elite and highly
compartmentalised unit responsible for overseas terrorism operations, mainly against Western targets and Israel. The unit therefore acts as a long-range strategic arm of Hezbollah and Iran.
Unit 910 operates throughout Lebanon with relative impunity and has also worked with Iranian officials to provide training and other military support to Shia militants in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The ESO reports directly to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, which Iran controls to a significant extent.
Unit 910 has conducted operations worldwide and operates in many Western countries, including the United States and Canada. The US State Department and more than 60 other countries and organizations, including the EU, the Arab League, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, have designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization.
This article analyses this organisation, paying particular attention to its history, structure, recruitment, capabilities and tactics.
https://greydynamics.com/unit-910-hezbollahs-covert-action-unit/
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