To Slapout9,
thanks for the link - it's excellent and good food for thought.

To Tom,
My understanding of what you say is that it is not possible to feel comfortable in a culture unless you hold its values and it is not possible to simultaneously adhere to contradictory values. This may well be true but the next question is: is it possible to understand a society without adhering to its values in the same way that it is possible to predict a criminal mind without being a criminal?

For everyone,
A general question: do we now need cultural advisors in Joint HQ with the same level of recogniton as politcal and other advisors? Would it be possible to find one without an agenda of his/her own? And if so, would they not be there merely to provide an insight into the mind of those to be influenced - in other words should there not be another element interpreting the cultural advice to turn it into psyops?

I am going to talk about the three domains of the physical, informational and cognitive. We have Sea / Air / Land / Space because because each part of the physical domain has its own challenges and requires a certain skillset and culture to deal with these challenges. Increasingly, there ae communications / IO specialists to deal with the information domain either with information as media or message. There are, however, few, if any, experts on the cognitive domain where the ultimate effects will be wrought. Do we need to create cognitive experts in line with Sea / Air / Land experts? And should a cognitive effects based approach be the lead of operations with physical effects in support?

Big questions I know - maybe I should start a new thread?

JD