Of Course The Taliban Are PSYOP Experts! They Don’t Have Much Competition!

 

I ran across an MSN article dated June 22, 2021. “The Taliban Are Winning the War of Words in Afghanistan as morale falters” (see: https://bit.ly/3qmDhQt). The article began:

“As Afghanistan’s armed forces cede and regain ground in the searing summer offensive against the Taliban, they are losing a propaganda war that is affecting the morale of a fearful population waiting for reassurance that the insurgents won’t overrun their country.”

 

Just for fun I decided to do a Google Search on “Taliban war of words”.

And, what do you know, I came across another article “Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?” (See: https://bit.ly/35Kv7Ic), This one was written by the well respected International Crisis Group and published on 24 July 2008. It begins:

“The Taliban has created a sophisticated communications apparatus that projects an increasingly confident movement. Using the full range of media, it is successfully tapping into strains of Afghan nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government and its international backers. The result is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban. The Karzai government and its allies must make greater efforts, through word and deed, to address sources of alienation exploited in Taliban propaganda, particularly by ending arbitrary detentions and curtailing civilian casualties from aerial bombing.”

The Taliban dominance of influence operations should come as a surprise to no one.

The fact that the media is latching on to their dominance in June 2021 should also not be a surprise.

The Marine Corps Intelligence Activity commissioned the Rand Corporation to produce an analysis of “U.S. Military Information Operations in Afghanistan; Effectiveness of Psychological Operations 2001 – 2010”, which was published in 2012.

While the reported covered both successful and unsuccessful information operations, their general conclusion was:

“If the overall IO mission in Afghanistan is defined as convincing most residents of contested areas to side decisively with the Afghan government and its foreign allies against the Taliban insurgency, this has not been achieved.” (see: https://bit.ly/2TW4mhs, which is also a photo source).

On April 14, 2021, President Biden spoke from the Roosevelt – the Treaty Room in The White House where he said “We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal, and expecting a different result. 
I’m now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats.  I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.”

(See: https://bit.ly/3xGJFEC

There should be no surprises here. Recapping some reasons why:

1.     The Taliban have always had a more streamlined approval cycle.

2.     There was no real unity of command of influence operations.

3.     There was neither an overarching communications strategy, nor a practical plan.

4.     The Afghan government was barely able to govern, let alone develop and execute a communications strategy.

5.     The Taliban have done a marvelous job of exploiting their home field advantage.

6.     The US withdrawal will undoubtedly lead to more Taliban military victories which they will no doubt exploit.

7.     The tribal nature of Afghanistan does not lend itself to high tech social media efforts while the global stage is great fodder for them.

Many of us were trained using “Leadership Reaction Drills” where unit leadership rotated among the members of a group. At one point we were asked the question we all dreaded “What now Lieutenant?”

I’d ask President Biden, Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin the same question ‘What now’?

Photo Source of President Biden & President Roosevelt: https://abc3340.com/news/connect-to-congress/gallery/biden-hails-house-passage-of-19t-virus-bill-now-to-senate

 

 

What Does Vlad Putin Know That Joe Biden Doesn’t?

 

On May 19, 2021 I read an article from Politico about the current Pentagon weighs keeping Trump-era change to ‘psychological operations’ (See: https://politi.co/2S8fS8q). The article leads with:

“In the final months of the Trump administration, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper quietly moved to let the military run influence campaigns — often called “psyops” — more quickly and with less time for input from the State Department.

The policy change, which eight people described to POLITICO, highlights tension between military leaders and diplomats about how the U.S. handles gray-area operations that fall short of all-out war.

And now, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is weighing whether to maintain the change in policy, according to a senior defense official.”

This kind of BS has been going on for years. The beltway battle for influence supremacy keeps on between DOD, the Department of State and who else knows what other government agencies.

Meanwhile, in a land far away, there is a different approach which seems to be far more effective.

Another article from May 17, 2021 proclaims:

“Psy-ops in high places Putin’s new science adviser to Russia’s National Security Council is a military intelligence agent accused of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus” (See: https://bit.ly/3oz1Hp7 which is also a photo source).

 

The site “The Real Russia Today” claims that Russia’s Military Unit 55111 is the focal point for Russian disinformation campaigns and that one of their deputy commanders, A.G. Starunshky is highly placed in the Science Council of the Russian National Security Council.

 

The article stated that “In July 2020, citing sources in the U.S. government, The Associated Press and The New York Times both reported that Starunsky was a GRU officer involved in disinformation campaigns, including the dissemination of fake stories in English about the coronavirus. American journalists linked Starunsky to the website inforos.ru, which allegedly answers to the GRU.”

 

On October 8, 2019 The NY Times ran “Top Secret Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say” (see: https://nyti.ms/3oMlW2R, which is also a photo source).

 

Frankly it doesn’t matter what 55111 does or doesn’t do. I think the point is that Mr. Putin is a former MI guy (like Marines, there are probably no former MI guys) and as such recognizes the power of information as an offensive and defensive tool.

 

The continuing internecine battles within the US Federal government indicates, that the US hasn’t grasped the importance of this position.

 

As always, reader comments invited.

 

 

 

 

Musical Movies Part of China’s All Government Approach to Propaganda

 

China spares no efforts to get their point across. They have mastered the art of weaving the information related capabilities together in an unmatched tapestry of propaganda.

 

Probably the most interesting and most powerful is the effort to counter the criticism of and change the perception of China’s treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority.

 

This was chronicled by the NY Times in its April 5, 2021 online edition and the print edition of April 6, 2021. (See: https://nyti.ms/2Ovbnn1, which is also a photo source).

 

The Chinese employ every method they can. The picture above shows a propaganda sign in Xinjiang.

 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations “More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.”  (See: https://on.cfr.org/3rT5cqo, which is another photo source). The March 1 article highlights three key points:

• About eleven million Uyghurs—a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group—live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
• The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million people since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations.
• The United States sanctioned officials and blacklisted dozens of Chinese agencies linked to abuses in Xinjiang. In 2021, it determined that China’s actions constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Sound of Music it's not - but maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time. The Business Insider (see: https://bit.ly/3dHbIvi, a photo source) headed their April 6, 2021 article "China made a 'La La Land' - inspired propaganda musical about the life of Uyghur Muslims, which omits all mention of mass surveillance and oppression. 

The “Bollywood” style musical is designed to portray an idealistic picture of the Uyghurs and their loving assimilation as part of China. “The notion that Uyghurs can sing and dance so therefore there is no genocide — that’s just not going to work,” said Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American lawyer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. “Genocide can take place in any beautiful place.”

 

The movie is thorough in it staging. While it tells the story of three young men from different ethnic groups – Uyghur, Kazakh and of course the majority Han Chinese, it does a great job of eliminating any hint of Islamic influence because … “Young Uyghur men are clean-shaven and seen chugging beers, free of the beards and abstinence from alcohol that the authorities see as signs of religious extremism. Uyghur women are seen without traditional head scarves.”

 

The movie is only one element of the campaign. Social media is particularly active on FaceBook and Twitter.

 

Not even textbooks are spared and are also a target of the propaganda. The China Global TV Network (www.cgtn.com) or CGTN released a documentary purporting that textbooks which had been approved and used in Xinjiang elementary and middle schools for over a decade were suddenly deemed subversive.

 

The People’s Republic certainly knows how to synergize their information related capabilities to push their point across.

 

From the relentless nature of the campaign, it would appear that the PRC is far more concerned with Measures of Production (MOP) rather than Measures of Effectiveness (MOE). Perhaps an indication of how the program is not working would be the population count of the reeducation camps shown on the map and photo below.

 

As always, reader comments invited.

Your Health is a Disinformation Target

 

In early March 2021 there were a number of reports about Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation efforts all designed to cast doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines for the COVID virus.

 

A base source of information appears to be the Alliance for Security Democracy (see: http://bit.ly/3s9zuGx, which is also a photo source. Their website states their mission as: “The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a nonpartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, develops comprehensive strategies to deter, defend against, and raise the costs on autocratic efforts to undermine and interfere in democratic institutions. ASD has staff in Washington, D.C., and Brussels, bringing together experts on disinformation, malign finance, emerging technologies, elections integrity, economic coercion, and cybersecurity, as well as Russia, China, and the Middle East, to collaborate across traditional stovepipes and develop cross-cutting frameworks.”

Their report was noted by USA Today among others as a source. Some of their key findings were:

·      While there were few instances of any studied country promoting verifiably false information about vaccines, reports of safety concerns related to the administration of certain Western-produced vaccines were often sensationalized while downplaying or completely omitting key contextual information. For example, Iran’s Arabic-language Fars News Agency tweeted that the Pfizer vaccine “kill[ed] six people in America,” omitting (and never correcting) that four of the six people who died during the vaccine trial had received a placebo and that authorities determined there was no causal connection between the vaccine and the deaths of the other two participants.

·      Pfizer received by far the most unfavorable coverage of any vaccine, particularly from Kremlin-funded outlets and Iranian state media and government accounts. Of the 50 most-retweeted tweets mentioning Pfizer posted by Russian state media outlets, 43 (86 percent) mentioned either an adverse reaction to the vaccine (including deaths) or negative information about the company itself. In Iranian government and state media tweets, 92 percent of mentions of Pfizer were negative. But the notion that Russian, Chinese, and Iranian diplomats and state media outlets seek to disparage and undermine Western vaccines writ large is not entirely accurate, as coverage of Moderna’s vaccine was mixed and reporting on Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine was largely neutral or positive.

·      Russia was the most likely of the three studied countries to suggest linkages between the Pfizer vaccine and the subsequent deaths of vaccine recipients. Of the 209 tweets from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian accounts that mentioned Pfizer and the words “die,” “dead,” or “death” in the same tweet, 111 (53 percent) were from Russian state media outlets.

·      Russia and China aggressively promoted their own vaccines, but not one another’s. In Russian tweets that mentioned a vaccine by name, just over 6 percent mentioned one of the two Chinese vaccines. Similarly, in Chinese tweets that mentioned a vaccine by name, just under 3 percent mentioned Sputnik V. By comparison, our control group of global media accounts mentioned Sputnik V in 6.5 percent and the two Chinese vaccines in over 8 percent of tweets that mentioned a vaccine by name.

As Psyopers we look at the motive – the why behind the disinformation. In this case, it may all be about the money!

One of the report’s authors, Bret Schafer “said the stakes are incredibly high as countries like Russia and China compete to distribute their own vaccines to the developing world. …When you look at their effort to get the vaccine approved in Mexico and Latin America, that’s a big economic win for them … but it also gives them diplomatic leverage as well,”

 

 

 

Russia’s Dilemma – How The Open Internet Challenges Governmental Control

 

We often hear about China’s ability to censor the Internet and in effect put up the “Great Digital Wall” around the country. But what about Russia? Surely they are wont to close their information borders to shield their autocratic government from criticism.

 

The NY Times February 21, 2021 ran the same article with two different titles. The online version which you can see at http://nyti.ms/37QjyRc and is a photo source ran “China Censors the Internet. So Why Doesn’t Russia?” and the print version had “Russia Fears But Can’t Quit Open Internet”.

 

Russia has set the stage for the internet challenge by providing “cheap high-speed internet access reaching into the remote corners of the vast country while angering a populace that has fallen in love with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok” according to the article.

 

Mr. Putin’s leading adversary, Alexi Navalny, has been particularly adept at employ YouTube, Instagram and Twitter as vehicles to express his opinions.

 

State media and media regulators find themselves increasingly challenged. In the words of Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian English language television news network RT “To quit using these platforms while everyone else is using them is to capitulate to the adversary,” she said in a statement to The New York Times. “To ban them for everyone is to vanquish said adversary.”

 

it’s not like the Russian government doesn’t have new laws to control the internet. According to Reuters (see: http://reut.rs/3bHUEEr, which is another photo source) “laws enables Russia to block or restrict access to sites that “discriminate” against its media, part of a campaign under Putin to increase Russia’s internet “sovereignty” that has fueled fears of creeping China-style controls.” Another law authorizes fines of up to 20% of the Russia-based revenue from sites that repeatedly fail to remove banned content. Russian lawmakers have repeatedly accused YouTube and FaceBook of these practices. While a third prohibits the disclosure of personal data of Russian security officials which leads me to another NY Times article.

 

The next day, February 21, 2021, The NY Times published a print article “Investigative Journalism Is Flourishing in Russia” while the online version touted “How Investigative Journalism Flourished in Hostile Russia” (see: http://nyti.ms/3aX2U4r, another photo source).

 

While conjuring up visions of Lubyanka Prison, Russia cyber practices are actually more porous. For example, anyone can by call records, cellphone geolocation or air travel records of other citizens for a couple of dollars through the social media app Telegram on a dark web marketplace. The Russians call int “Probiv” meaning to pierce. Here are a couple of tidbits that have been revealed:

 

• ·       The investigative nonprofit outlet Proekt identified Mr. Putin’s “secret family,” and found that the woman it linked to the president had acquired some $100 million in wealth from sources tied to the Russian state.
• ·       IStories used a trove of hacked emails to document how Mr. Putin’s former son-in-law built a huge fortune out of state connections.
• ·       Bellingcat, which was founded in London, and the Russia-based Insider identified, by name and photograph, the Russian agents who poisoned the defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.

If you’re interested in Russian independent journalism take a look at Proekt Media - http://bit.ly/3utMVlY, another photo source.

 

The bottom line is that Russia is likely to be dealing with the two-edged sword known as the internet for quite some time. Psyopers and influencers of all stripes need to be aware of the environment so that they can mine it and employ it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian Covid Vaccine in Latin America: Disinformation or Aggressive Marketing?

 

The Russians have been aggressive in their promotional tactics for their new Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine. On February 5, 2021, the NY Times reported “Russian Vaccine Promotions Undercut U.S.-Made Shots” (see: http://nyti.ms/3cSg6sBm, which is also a photo source).

 

According to the Times, the Russians are harnessing Spanish-language social media and the official Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in Mexico City to mount a campaign targeting Latin America. It must be working because Mexico “which this week signed a deal to acquire millions of doses of the Russian vaccine, and Argentina, which last month began vaccinating its citizens with it.”

 

It’s no secret that market leaders Pfizer, Oxford-Astra Zeneca, Moderna and newcomer Johnson & Johnson are in for the money. Big Pharma is not a nonprofit do-gooder organization and are much more likely to focus on markets that can afford to pay the best prices for their vaccines. You can learn more from this CNN article at: http://cnn.it/3q5pRHF.

 

 

Is it illegal to tout your product? There is a legal expression called “seller’s puff”. According to Cornell Law School this is “The practice of exaggerating the value of a product, a business, or property for promotional purposes. Sellers are not generally held liable for exaggerations that are considered puffing. But they can be liable for misrepresenting the facts of a product.”

 

The Times quotes Bret Schafer from Alliance for Security Democracy (hyperlinked for your convenience),  which describes itself as “a nonpartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States” as saying “Almost everything they are promoting about the vaccine is manipulated and put out without context,” and “Every negative story or issue that has come out about a U.S.-made vaccine is amplified, while they flood the zone with any positive report about the Russian vaccine.”

 

Another of their sources, Jamie Longoria of First Draft (hyperlinked for your convenience and a photo source) who concluded ““Russia steadily seeded a narrative that has grown and been, to some degree, accepted.” Longoria continued “They have cultivated a large audience and regularly rank in the top 10 of the most-shared stories or links,” “The new approach was particularly effective because the Spanish-language Twitter and Facebook accounts of Russia Today and Sputnik, because two state-controlled media outlets, regularly rank among the most influential in Latin America”

 

 

If we take these two sources comments and analyze them, are they very much different than many of the advertising claims we hear every day?

 

So - what takes their efforts over the line?

 

The campaign also goes out of its way to promote false claims about the dangers of US vaccines while touting their own and quoting other sources such as a Chinese report that falsely claimed, “that falsely claimed the U.S. media had remained silent on deaths related to Pfizer’s vaccine.”

 

One of my favorite allegations, as reported in the Times of London (see: http://bit.ly/3aKq2BF, which is also a photo source) “is that the Astrazenca vaccine could turn people into monkeys because it uses a chimpanzee virus as a vector”

 

The Chinese are not to be outdone in the influence world. On January 29, 2021 the NY Times published a major article “Inside a pro-Huawei Influence Campaign” about “a covert online push to sway telecommunications policy in favor of the Chinese company”. (see: http://nyti.ms/2YZZqr3)

 

Our adversaries are clearly upping their game – are we?

China, Russia and ISIS Thank Capitol Rioters For Great Propaganda Content

 

Neither China’s nor Russia’s incredible propaganda machines could not have turned out the imagery of the riot and thuggery at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. GlobalSecurity.org reported on 8 January “China’s Propaganda Machine ‘Makes Deliberate Use of Washington Violence” (see: http://bit.ly

/3ozpRPh)

 

One of the highlights of the article is Foreign Minister Hua Chunying’s quote of "a beautiful sight taking place in the U.S which, according to the article  is "an apparent reference to U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi's description of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement as "a beautiful sight."”

 

Today’s posting is not about the political aspects of the riot, but to point out how America has now given all of our adversaries, big and small, some great, first rate content for them to exploit in their anti-American propaganda efforts.

 

A picture or a video can be worth a thousand words. While I have posted about how new technology such as deepfake videos can be easily produced, there is no substitute for the real thing.

 

Like toothpaste, once an image is out in the wild, it is not going back into the tube. We can expect to see these violent, lawless scenes played out along the other tragedies of the past.

 

One painful comparison is to Kristallnacht. For some positive inspiration, consider the comments made by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his remarks on YouTube (see: http://bit.ly/3oEUxPi)

 

The US has now experienced first-hand the kind of tragedy that Russia experienced in October 1993 when the Russian Parliament was fired upon and set on fire by artillery authorized by then Russian President Boris Yeltsin (see: http://bit.ly/2LpZA7V, which is also a photo source).

 

There are several PSYOP lessons learned here. As we continue to train and hone our readiness, we must be aware of how our enemies will employ this imagery and factor it into our red team influence operations.

 

Reader comments about the posting, but not the politics are invited.

 

I hope that 2021 brings us what appear to be two very elusive commodities: health and peace.

 

Photo Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55585546

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/1/9/22222553/man-steals-pelosi-lectern-capitol-riot-trump-adam-johnson-charged