In my 50 or so odd years of working with and for various governmental agencies I have never seen and or heard of the simple concept...speed.Originally Posted by Bill Moore
In the info war that I am sorry to say is the first true "grey war" of the 21st century it is fully aimed at the US and for two long long years this Obama WH and especially DoS Kerry has simply ignored the info war challenge...recently even DoD and DoS stated and yes even Obama stated we cannot respond to every rumor, fake, disinformation or lies put out in this info war.
BUT here is the problem.....Russian uses the "narrative" concept....meaning the "narrative" is set in motion from Moscow an then their info warriors carry it out......meaning social media picks it up and drum beats the heck out of it..mostly lies and pushbacks, then specific writers pick it up in articles which in turn get picked up by MSM in order to hit the 24 hour news cycles. the Russians have a social media trolling system in place that cannot be matched right now by even tons of money and a new DoS department...
Info warfare is a battle of the "perception" and the US has never been good at understanding the concept of "perception"...hate to say it Russia does understand that game well.
The SWJ carried banner quote of Eisenhower actually goes to the heart of "perception".
NO DoS department with even 5K employees will ever match the Russian concept with what is needed.....a constant speedy counter narrative and a social media component to carry the fight all built around the concept of finally saying the truth nothing more nothing less even if it hurts us at first.
Example of just how poorly DoS can function is their release yesterday of the Syrian Coordination Center.....explain to me an thousands of Syrians caught in the true middle of a war zone call drop everything in the middle of a Russian cluster munitions air strike and call DoS via 1-800 or email them from a war zone that has virtually limited anything?
That alone sets a "perception" in motion that at least in Syria is viewed as proving the US has done a "secret handshake" with the Russians and are simply just going through the motions of showing they did something.
Here is the kicker...the Russians know that ME "perception" of the US right now and play their info war to exactly that "perception" to reinforce their narrative that what they are doing is totally correct and even supported by the US.
And the US info warfare response.....ZERO.
A famous US writer that knows the power of words said the following:
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightening that does the work.
-- Mark Twain
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain
Then there is this comment:
I'd rather be approximately right than exactly wrong.
-- John Maynard Keynes
And another comment:
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787
That is info warfare in a nut shell and no DoS department is ever going to come close to even meeting Twains words.
Social media is the battlefield and a hearty band of warriors across the internet do it daily and massively pushback on the Russian narratives...with an amazing success rate..meaning when you can take Russia off their narrative and force them into a response mode they utterly swim and that is then a declared victory and then you move on to the next word battle.
Problem is that here in SWJ there have been a number of US articles written by US professional types that smack closely to the Russian narrative...so is in effect Russian money flowing and paying for these types of articles that are then carried by reputable US MSM then picked up by SWJ....totally unchallenged....
That is the front line DoS should be pushing back against. But the core problem is money...the Russian info warfare budget is estimated in the 600-800M USDs a year..and DoS is never going to match that dollar for dollar
WHY...the Russian info war is inherently designed to change the attitudes of a specific targeted civil society to conform to the Russian narrative...IE see the campaign now against refugees in Europe and Europe is having an extremely hard time in pushing back against it..just look at Germany who just woke up about their being targeted by Russian info warfare.
BUT it was European social media that saw it coming and pushed back hard, but not a single European MSM outside of BILD picked up on it....until social media/BILD finally caught the attention of the German security services.
Why did BILD pick it up...they have hired over the last two years several social media savvy reported types who had a long track record covering Syria and Ukraine and know the info war game from their blogger days and coupled with the power of a major MSM in fact checking and a larger info pull have done some remarkable articles against Russian actions in both Ukraine an Syria...earning them the total dislike of the Russian FM that has accused them recently of being anti Russian......
So again back to Twain if the DoS thinks they can hold their own...after their dismal failure of the 1-800 call the US DoS in DC disaster...I simply believe it is wasting US taxpayer dollars.
BTW...for two years I have been saying here at SWJ social media is where you even win or lose against IS...or against any form of non linear warfare.
Non linear warfare has two key cornerstones;
1. "weaponization" of information
2. cyber warfare
And we are not doing so well against both right now.
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