I’ll be honest.
I didn’t want to like this episode. I was hoping there would be something in there that just turned me off completely or gave me an opportunity to stand on my soapbox and rant.When information can travel globally at the tap of a finger, irregular warfare professionals must contend with an ever-changing environment. How does strategic messaging tie into operations on the battlefield? How can we build a more information-savvy force? And how can information act as both weapon and warfighting space?
Too bad.
It was a great episode and it’s clear the guests Dr. Rafi Cohen and Brent Colburn know what they’re talking about.
They didn’t sing the praises of information warfare as a panacea to all of our problems.
Nor did they cast it aside as a silly distraction.
If you’re interested in information warfare, where it’s currently at, and where it might be going, this episode is worth the listen.
You might also want to consider signing up for the CTG newsletter. The next one goes out tomorrow and it is on this very topic.
There were so many great discussion points in this episode, but the below are the ones that stood out to me.
We blame DoD for being poor at responding when this is often way outside of their lane. I’ve seen this over and over again. Some adversarial spokesperson says something that gets picked up and amplified. The response (in DoD circles) is often “how are we countering this?” Well, the answer might have to be – “we’re not.” It may be something way outside the lane of DoD. I’ve been in situations where the person asking me this question is the actual person who has the power and authority to “do” the countering – they often don’t realize it.
No one (that we care about) is reading that press release or article in the New York Times. Just because it’s hot in the United States does not mean it’s hot somewhere overseas. In fact, it’s probably a non-story.
DoD information warfare is inherently tactical. Before anything else, these efforts should be focused on achieving battlefield effects. How many enemy soldiers surrendered? How many civilians moved to safety? There is a role at the operational strategic level, sure. But that is the realm of political warfare.
Reinforcing beliefs is easier than changing them. It’s really not even worth the effort.
Firehose of falsehoods. I never heard this term before. But it refers to just spouting lies all over the place. This is something that our adversaries do. It’s a tactic, sure. But as the guests say, it ultimately fails. It’s flashy. It’s messy. But it’s not what we do. Truth is our best tactic.
Mission Command. Yes! They discussed that our biggest problem is we don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish. Readers of this blog will know that this is Matt Armstrong’s thesis.
We need to further professionalize. Yes, agree. Beyond PSYOP. When commander’s look at the IW professional in the room, there is an expectation of expertise. This comes in many domains. We need to keep professionalizing. This is a bigger topic, but this professional really needs to be a lot of things. Language. Culture. Media. Psychology. Political-acumen. It’s that important.
The importance of language and culture. “We need to be able to do all of this simultaneously in multiple different languages.” Yes, agreed. You know who does that really well?
The age of secrecy is over. I’m so glad that they made this a point. Whatever it is we’re up to is going to become public knoweldge. There is no way we’re going to keep everything a secret. It’s going to become public. Recognize it, plan for it, and move on.
“Black hole” words. We’re full of them. Buzzy words that are devoid of meaning – “strategic communications.”
It’s not about the tweets. It’s not about the platform.
“The railroads are in trouble today not because the need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, even telephones), but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry wrong was because they were railroad-oriented instead of transportation-oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer-oriented.”
Authorities need a revamp. The space moves fast. Push the approval authority down lower. How low? Well, how low can you go?
They ended the episode with this warning: “Don’t trust anyone who says they have this space figured out.“
This reminds me of something I once heard about advanced education.
“What did you learn in graduate school?”
“I learned how much I don’t know.”
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