Retired Doctors and Nurses First – PSYOP, PA and IO Next?

We know we are losing the information war. Our peer adversaries, China and Russia are cleaning our information clock.  They waging economic war through global investments and have seized Covad-19 as a major theme for disinformation. (see: https://nyti.ms/33Yy9Xr, which is also a photo source.)

The pandemic has fostered a critical shortage of medical personnel, the Army put out a call for retired medical professions to return to active duty to help quell the spread of the virus. Over 9,000 former soldiers (see: https://abcn.ws/3dF17A5, another photo source) have answered the call.

What about the information war?

Perhaps the time has come for the Retired Information Corps (RIC). The RIC would be composed of retired PSYOP, Public Affairs, Information Operations (IO) and perhaps even Civil Affairs personnel. For administrative purposes the RIC could fall under USACAPOC while it would report to USSOCOM.

As a part of USSOCOM the RIC could reinforce influence operations conducted outside the United States. It is not inconceivable that a significant portion of these project-oriented missions could be conducted by personnel working from their home computers.

Projects such as propaganda analysis, content creation and counter disinformation would be assigned to individuals and teams from the retired force.

Alternatively, retired military influence professionals could be assigned to a Civilian Influence Corps (CIC). As civilians they would be able to support influence operations internationally and domestically as a part of the appropriate federal, state or local governments. CIC personnel could supplement Public Affairs in Emergency Operations Centers. They could also augment efforts to counter foreign disinformation campaigns in Social Media and on domestic soil through traditional media.

Congress has already recognized the need for civilian support to critical missions when it called for a creating a reserve force of civilian cybersecurity experts. (See: https://bit.ly/3awud2D, which is another photo source)

Of course, this is a radical idea, but this are radical times that call for radical measures.

What do you think?

PSYOP and Covid

Unless you’re in a cave, in which case, you wouldn’t be reading this anyway, your life has been tremendously impacted by the Covid-19 virus. 
 
Here in California, Governor Newsome has placed our National Guard on alert on March 17, 2020. As the governor noted in his press release (see: https://bit.ly/33IaACt)
 “As Californians make sacrifices over the coming weeks and stay home, we are immensely grateful for medical providers, first-responders and National Guard personnel who are assisting those who are most vulnerable to COVID-19,” said Governor Newsom. Today’s (March 17, 2020) announcement, made in the Governor’s capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of the California National Guard, is consistent with duties routinely performed by the California National Guard during natural disasters and other emergencies within the state.”

As of 1800 Pacific Time on 19 March 2020, the US Army Reserve website is only offering general messages which you can see at: https://bit.ly/33IaACt and which is a photo source.
 
PSYOP soldiers represent a trained and ready communications resource. Under the appropriate circumstances USAR personnel such as PSYOP soldiers may be called up in “Defense Support of Civil Authorities”. This force can be immediately accessible for assistance to local government leaders (see: https://bit.ly/3ddZyJp)
PSYOP was called upon to provide support in Florida during Hurricane Andrew. (see: an excellent article on the psywarrior.com website at: https://bit.ly/2vzV9PU)

Today’s situation WRT Covid is clearly unprecedented. The Johns Hopkins dynamic website is showing almost 250,000 confirmed cases as of 3/19/2020 at 17:43 Eastern time (see: https://bit.ly/2U68CZ2). 

Many communities, such as mine are under Shelter in Place orders which are legal orders requiring citizens to remain in their homes except for ‘essential services’.
President Trump has ordered the deployment of the two Navy hospital ships Mercy and Comfort.
Where does the reserve PSYOP force fit in?

Frankly, it’s hard to say. In my Red Cross experience, military personnel often provide logistics and security support. Here in California, the Air National Guard provides extensive logistical support while the Army National Guard 49^th MP Bde has provided security support during wildfire incidents. Communicating to the citizenry has not been an issue.
 
Is there a need for PSYOP at this time? At this time, this doesn’t seem to be the case. PSYOPers are influencers and communicators. There is no shortage of information. Traditional and social media are deluged with information. Individuals are also getting phone calls, Zoom/Skype/WebEx sessions and other forms of engagement to provide guidance on how to prevent contracting the disease and your responsibilities under a Shelter in Place Order.

For the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need, at least here in California. Given the geographic disparity of PSYOP units across the country, this may not be the case nationwide.

In short – stay safe and stay alert!

Reader comments invited.
Other Photo Sources:
49^th MP Bde: https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article/1357064/cal-guards-49th-military-police-brigade-brings-1900-plus-into-california-inferno/
129^th Air Rescue Wing: https://www.129rqw.ang.af.mil/
Governor Newsome’s photo: https://www.businessinsider.com/california-governor-coronavirus-national-guard-2020-3

Why Kansas for Russia’s Sputnik Radio?

In case you missed it, last Friday, February 14, 2020, the NY Times ran an article “On the Air in Kansas City: Russian Propaganda” which is a photo source and which you can see at: https://nyti.ms/38L2Elt

The article profiles how Russia’s media organization, Rossiya Segodnya. You can find some background on it from the Center for Strategic and International Studies at: http://bit.ly/39NNUlV.

     The Russians cooked a deal with Kansas City’s (MO) Peter Schartel, owner of Alpine Broadcasting Company.  I’ll get to some best practices and operational observations in a moment, but first – why Kansas?

• Some organizations, the American Nurses’ Association for example, thought it made sense to have a base of operations in the middle of the country to serve a national membership. As it turns out – they moved to the Washington, DC area.
• It’s a small market with limited influence, so no one will really care if you screw it up.
• Since the Russians tend to lean right politically, why bother with Kanas? In 2016 they went for Mr. Trump where he earned 56.16% of the vote. Both Senators are Republicans although the governor is a Democrat. It would not appear that the citizens need very much influence to move right.

And of course, there are operational possibilities as well:

• It’s a great test market with limited risks if you fail.
• It could be a diversion for activities going on elsewhere.
• While Social Media is omnipresent – Radio still counts!

Radio Sputnik services 90 cities worldwide and is part Russia’s global influence campaign. US intelligence sources believe that this campaign influenced the US 2016 Presidential election in favor of Mr. Trump.

The Kansas City station is employing several best practices:

·      They are airing their messages for 6 hours a day during prime drive time and on weekends.

·      The share a frequency with a community radio station that was grounded in Kansas City’s jazz community and that already had an audience.

·      Somehow, the managed to avoid having to register as an agent of a foreign government.

·      They have cohesive messaging:

o   America is damaged goods.

o   Playing on internal divisions.

o   “The wheels are coming off the establishment media,”

·      They employ personalities that appeal to their target audience.

o   According to the NY Times “Sputnik shares its Kansas City stations with a cast of far-right conspiracy theorists, evangelical pastors and anti-Semites.”

No matter where you sit in the political spectrum, it is important to realize that America’s adversaries appear to be far better at orchestrating all of their instruments of power to influence people around the world to think their way.

As always, reader comments are encouraged.

Source of the Wizard of Oz photo: https://www.flavorwire.com/411724/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-wizard-of-oz

Native Art Can Be The Best PSYOP

The February 4, 2020 NY Times ran an article “In Iraq Where Beauty Was long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests” (https://nyti.ms/2ScUsVk  which is also the photo source). While the political climate in Iraq is volatile and arguments about US troops are staying and over who was responsible for the most recent rocket attack.

Protest art is cropping in in various places around Baghdad.

These two paragraphs pretty much sum up the situation:

“The paintings, sculptures, photographs and shrines to killed protesters are political art of a kind rarely seen in Iraq, where art has been made for at least 10,000 years. It is as if an entire society is awakening to the sound of its own voice, and to the shape, size and sway of its creative force.

“In the beginning this was an uprising, but now it is a revolution,” said Bassim al-Shadhir, an Iraqi-German who goes back and forth between the two countries and has participated in the protests. “There is art, there is theater, people are giving lectures and distributing books — giving them away for free.””

Interestingly enough the article noted “There has been little if any new anti-American messages in the paintings in recent days, even though there is more anti-American feeling in Baghdad…..

The article postulates that there are two possible reasons: there are already more than enough murals with anti-American and Anti-Israel messages and/or there is not much available space.

Unlike other forms of influence, there is no question about the origin and how the art reflects how a younger generation of Iraqis have been influenced by the internet.

While today’s influence campaigns have been focused on Social Media and the like, it is worthwhile to step back and recognize that the people of the country are the best ones to influence its future.

The Enemy Is Always Faster

While I was on a consulting assignment, playing the J39 of a mythical Joint Task Force (JTF) being deployed to a notional country, our largest tactical unit was to be the 1^st Bde Combat Team of the 82^nd Airborne.

Part of my job along with a colleague was to portray enemy social media posters. While we were busily playing our roles on January 16, 2020, a gift dropped from the heavens. In the real word “Families of deployed paratroopers received ‘menacing’ messages, warned to double-check social media settings” See: http://bit.ly/2tDI07t which is also the photo source.

We quickly seized on the concept and borrowed some of the text of those messages and employed themselves. It was easy and effective. In fact, the student class that was trying to counter our influence efforts couldn’t even figure out who the ‘enemy’ social media authors were actually representing.

This is a clear microcosm of the world we live in. I have already noted a few very well-done pieces on the fact that Cyber Command does not have a true PSYOP/Influence capability (see: http://bit.ly/3aw8g4s ). In my view this is as one of my former SF colleagues used to say “deja do do” or I have seen this poop before.

Shooters want to shoot. If they are war fighters, they want to fire weapons and blow things up. If their cyber wizards, they want to shoot electrons (distributed denial of service attack) or employ other means to show their technical chops.

There is a glaring lack of an overarching strategy to achieve dominance or even parity in the information domain. Even if there were such a strategy, the bureaucratic nature of our government would hamper effective, timely response.

At the 2* JTF level for example, approvals would have had to be sought from the State Department, the Combatant Commander, SECDEF and presumably the White House to wage a multi-platform influence campaign including both social media and cyberspace operations over and above the tactical MISO/PSYOP executed by the JTF.

It is no wonder that the ‘enemy’ is cleaning our clock at the national, operational and tactical levels. As the 2020 Presidential Election comes closer and closer, I’m afraid we can expect more targeting by traditional enemies and adversaries as well as a host of opportunists to include Transnational Criminal Organizations and others who will seek to drive the American voter their way.

Unfortunately, experience shows this is not a drive, but a gimmee putt.

What Does Congress Really Know?

 

I’m sure you all saw or heard about the Washington Post article of December 9, 2019, “At War With The Truth” which you can find at https://wapo.st/2Plvhyl and is a photo source. The article claimed that “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” As a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the results of over 400 interviews were revealed.

Among the most telling of those interviews was a quote from LTG (R) Douglas Lute (you can read his bio here). According to the General: ““We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

As a Viet Nam veteran, I was reminded of a similar Washington Post story which came to be known as the Pentagon papers. For those of you who do not remember, the Pentagon Papers was a collection of classified DOD reports on the conflict in Viet Nam. Just like the latest release, the Pentagon Papers indicated that the war was not going nearly as well as the US public was led to believe.

PSYOP Today – What Does Congress Know?

In my role as First VP of POVA, I decided to ask my Congressional Representative about PSYOP manning. Here is the text of the letter dated 5 December 2019 from my Rep.

“Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about funding cuts to the U.S. Army's psychological operations (PSYOP). I appreciate that you took the lime to share your thoughts with me and for speaking with me at the Veterans Day parade. I apologize for the delayed written response.

Like you, I recognize the strategic importance of the U.S. Army's PSYOP units. Both active duty and reserve PSYOP units play a pivotal role in disseminating important information to local populations in foreign countries and are critical to our national security. Helping locals share information about schools reopening or NATO-sponsored building projects, for example, are proven ways to positively impact U.S. perception abroad and can help to keep U.S. forces deployed overseas out of harm's way.

My staff shared your inquiry about this program to the Office of the Chief Legislative Liaison

(OCLL) for the Army. You may be interested to know that the OCLL informed me that the Army's psychological operations units are currently manned well above the authorized leve.ls at almost every rank and that there is no plan to reduce these levels in the foreseeable future. My office was notified by OCLL that PSYOP units are facing challenges in recruiting, but have been told that the Pentagon is working to address this challenge and has made recruiting one of their top priorities. You may be pleased to know that the Active Duty Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) PSYOP Initial Entry Training pipeline, which was instituted just a year and a half ago, is beginning to produce pipeline graduates. While I was informed that it is still too early to identify the impact of this pipeline program on recruiting levels, the program has the potential to assist in the growth of Active Duty Enlisted PSYOP forces in the future.”

I’d like readers to let me know how this picture compares to reality.

Thanks for your support over the years.

All the best to you and yours for the Holiday Season. This will be my last posting of PSYOPREGIMENT.BLOGPSOT for 2019. May 2020 be your best year ever!

Read The Enemy’s Manual Whenever You Can

If you have seen George C. Scott as LTG George S. Patton, you might remember him saying “Rommel: you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”. If you don’t remember the scene, click here. Patton was of course referring to Rommel’s book “Infantry Tactics” in which the famed Armor Commander talked about his World War I experience employing speed, deception, aggressive action and surprise to win battles.

As the 2020 US Presidential election approaches, there is growing concern about Russian interference. The NY Times on November 11, 2019 ran an article “How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult leader. (see: https://nyti.ms/35eQVJH, which is also the photo source.) This article is a book of sorts on how Russia extends its influence.

While Russia can compete with either the US or China dollar for dollar, they are able to pick their political battles outside Mother Russia. Africa is in some ways the last frontier of foreign power influence. While some outsiders are motivated to share the ideology, for others, like Russia, the goal can be simple. In this case the profit motive based on controlling chromium mines. According to the US Geologic Survey, “Chromium is critical in the manufacturing of stainless steel. Most stainless steel contains about 18 percent chromium; it is what hardens and toughens steel and increases its resistance to corrosion, especially at high temperatures.” (see: https://on.doi.gov/32YYVgc)

The Times article is a rather lengthy one, here are some highlights. I have added the bolding and italics to emphasize key points.

·      The Russians were hard to miss. They appeared suddenly last year in Madagascar’s traffic-snarled capital, carrying backpacks stuffed with cash and campaign swag decorated with the name of Madagascar’s president.

·      Skirting electoral laws, they bought airtime on television stations and blanketed the country with billboards.

·      But two years after the Russians’ aggressive interference in the United States, here they were, determined to expand their clout and apply their special brand of election meddling to a distant political battleground.

·      The operation was approved by President Vladimir V. Putin and coordinated by some of the same figures who oversaw the disinformation around the 2016 American presidential election, according to dozens of interviews with officials in Madagascar, local operatives hired to take part in the Russian campaign and hundreds of pages of internal documents produced by the Russian operatives.

·      In some vital ways, the Madagascar operation mimicked the one in the United States. There was a disinformation campaign on social media and an attempt to bolster so-called spoiler candidates. The Russians even recruited an apocalyptic cult leader in a strategy to split the opposition vote and sink its chances.

·      It repeated a pattern in which Russia has swooped into African nations, hoping to reshape their politics for material gain. In the Central African Republic, a former Russian intelligence officer is the top security adviser to the country’s president, while companies linked to Mr. Prigozhin have spread across the nation, snapping up diamonds in both legal and illegal ways, according to government officials, warlords in the diamond trade and registration documents showing Mr. Prigozhin’s growing military and commercial footprint.

·      Plans included the creation of a “troll factory” to focus on social media, echoing the tactics Mr. Prigozhin is accused of unleashing on the United States. (Note the hyperlink to an article on Mr. Prigozhin – Yevegny Prigozhin: who is the man leading Russia’s push into Africa)

·      Few appeared to have much expertise on Madagascar, or on Africa at all — and it showed, locals said. They often used a translation application on their phones to communicate and had little understanding of local politics.

·      In the end, the Russians retained their prize — control over the chromium operation. They now maintain a staff of 30 in the country, including engineers and geologists. The contract gives them a 70 percent stake in the venture, said Nirina Rakotomanantsoa, the managing director of the Malagasy company that owns the remaining share.

This case study is one worth reviewing in detail. PSYOPers in particular should analyze the mix of on ground and cyber influence activities. Strategists might consider what other countries in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere they may be similarly targeted.