The Cell Phone/Web Page effect

[marct]

Hi Guys,

I'd have to agree with everything I read there. I've pitched the idea that the ISF should start standing up their own webpages - maybe you have a ISF Mosul, or a IA or IP Mosul where videos shot of ISF victories are posted. You could even address rumors by putting out the latest info - you'd have to be slick though, and you'd have to hire the right guys. Why, because the guy going up against your site could be anyone, anywhere in the world.

Personally, think that that would be an excellent idea. When I was reading Kilcullen's email that was posted in another thread, one thing he said really popped for me:

I sometimes feel as if a new paradigm is on the tip of my tongue, and I have a strong feeling that the solution (if there is one) is about a strategic form of armed propaganda that goes well beyond our current concept of IO into a type of semi-kinetic "influence operations".

What really resonated for me was that what he seems to be seeing is what I am trying to see with all the stuff I'm talking about with symbolic warfare. In some ways it goes back to "what are we selling?". Well, certainly in Iraq at the moment, we are trying to sell a fairly simple idea - security is better than chaos. But, as anyone in marketing will tell you, you've got to get the message out to the potential customers (darn, maybe I've been doing to much market research consulting ).

Putting up local pages is a fantastic way to get this across. There's a few other things that can also work <evil grin>.

CF types are not real keen on it though, and even if they are, they are not sure how to do it. This is something where we could take a page out of the badguy's book. We take the video, email it to the team(s) back in FT Livingroom and they turn and maintain a product that gets our message out - another team also stationed at FT Livingroom could be attacking the badguy sites - or manipulating their message. Hell, you coud even set up decoy sites, copy cat sites where you post messages as them (Marc mentioned something like this in another post or in an email). There are an infiniite number of ways to inject doubt into the badguy's message while getting ours out. With the power of state sponsored apparatuses, we can certianly focus mass more easily for cyber attacks - look at China's training program. Its really just a question of resoucing it. Yea, I know, some buggerer from the ACLU woud start screaming, but how about if we did it from Canada (Marc, any thoughts?? )

Well, I'm not sure how useful the "state sponsored apparatuses" would be. Personally, I think that they would just be co-opted by the politics of the moment. As far as the ACLU is concerned, I actually think that they would be a great ally in this type of campaign <truly evil grin>. Look at it this way, globally, one of the core cultural values that we are selling is the idea of civilized disagreement - i.e. that it is just wrong to snuff everyone who disagrees with you. This is one of the ACLU's core values as well, so there is a potential alliance here.

As for running this from Canada, that's certainly a possibility <g>. There are some very interesting, below the surface trends starting to show up here. Anyway, I think it would be best to run it globally as well as locally.

On the truly nasty tactics that we could use, I'd really prefer not to make suggestions on an open board <evil grin>.

I am serious though about getting smart on Information Warfare, its not just about collecting info, its about information dominance that includes you getting your message out and attacking his - the politicians should have no problem with this one.

Food for thought and maybe some type of action we can take from the SWJ / SWC livingroom - any ideas out there on how to make this happen - if indeed we should?

I certainly think that the SWJ / SWC livingroom should be one site in it (it already bis anyway). But let's, for a second, go back to Kilcullen's ideas of a distributed global system: the key would be to get multiple sites involved using the same logic that created the 'net in the first place.

Dave/Bill, what would you think about starting a "best of" page for something like ISF Mosul?

Marc