Counter-narratives and Info Ops: Debating Jihadi YouTube Videos

[Ron Humphrey]

But for starters I agree with pretty much everything you stated. And Had I not "Framed" my statements the way I did would you have had the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, in pointing out that in all of the examples religion is a secondary if not tertiary problem.

If your narratives don't tell it like you see it your not really giving your audience a chance to make that same determination for themselves in correcting your mistatements

Once they (audience) start telling you Thats not what its about then you'll know your on the right track

[Erich G. Simmers]

But for starters I agree with pretty much everything you stated. And Had I not "Framed" my statements the way I did would you have had the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, in pointing out that in all of the examples religion is a secondary if not tertiary problem.

If your narratives don't tell it like you see it your not really giving your audience a chance to make that same determination for themselves in correcting your mistatements

Once they (audience) start telling you Thats not what its about then you'll know your on the right track

Thank you for your thoughts. I suspect we are not far apart in terms of ideas about controlling information, IO, etc.

It's a very good idea I think to frame this issue in terms of IO. Technical woo-woo about disrupting computers aside, this is very much an issue of information dissemination.

I think it's a very good idea to remove this information whenever possible, wherever it is found. It's not that the material will somehow cease to exist, but containing it within a narrative that explains what's wrong with it is an important contextual difference. In this instance the truth is poison to these people & their process. Real knowledge is a counter-weapon to their goals. It's not that the people seeking answers and solutions to their problems are somehow overly biased against alternatives that don't involve logically deficient fantasies about death & virgins. They really are not, but if they mistakenly see that as their only alternative because it's the only one given then they will be vulnerable to the exploitation being attempted by people seeking to weaponize their vulnerabilities.

Disrupting the activities of extremists helps to marginalize both their abilities and the acceptability of their message. This is an enemy that lives to create strife, and efforts to reduce those abilities are worth taking.

I think it's a mistake to wrap online stuff up in it's own special context, these are really all just ways of communicating information. I can talk at length about making computers do bad things, but once you get past the button pushing you must look at the goals and the reasons for these things. From what I've seen, that's when you start talking about information, knowledge, and life offline.

I concur with a lot of what Mr. Simmers has said. I also don't think it's very easy to make this type of information just go away. However between chasing these people down online & offline (I consider the latter more important too), using their propaganda against them becomes important.

In a historical context it's simply ludicrous for them to expect a triumph of their bad ideas. That just doesn't happen, and at best increases in the dissemination of knowledge and information all about how broken they are can serve to accelerate their failure much better than it can be used to enable any victories.

These people are enraptured with violence, utterly stuck ideologically, & don't know what to do with themselves even when they do manage short term wins. Iran is a great example of the revolutionary immobilization that goes with jihad. Thirty years down the road from their revolution, and what do they have to show for it? Well not very much as it turns out. That's in large part because outside of blazing guns to effectively put themselves in power they're inept. This is a rather common failing of revolutionaries, jihadist or otherwise.

It's important to differentiate between making computers do bad things (that which they were not designed, or intended to do), and using them to do bad things. The former activity in many ways has the exact sort of limitations that have been noted in the conversation so far. The latter I think of as literally everything else. That because it's about the doing of other activities. When building a house, pretty rapidly you're going to get tired of talking about what drill to use, & will want to talk about the house itself. The whole `cyber' thing is like that drill, it's just a tool. Granted I may be able to unplug it from across the world, but there needs to be some reason for that before it becomes worth bothering to do. The drill is also not an end unto itself, but the house sure is. COIN cares about the house, cyber is just another power tool.

"Erich," please.

I am a little torn myself on this distinction. I will admit that everyone has a tendency to see incremental change as something radical new. However, globalization (in particular the Internet) has enabled "superempowered" individuals (see John Robb, et. al.).

For example, consider that Dove World Outreach Church that planned to burn the Qu'ran, which was set to happen literally down the road from my office at University of Florida. The cost to entry was very little: YouTube, Facebook, etc. From that little church, they reached millions and were able threatened our position in Afghanistan and the Muslim world significantly enough to warrant comment from GEN Petraeus and the highest levels of the Obama administration. Outrage and threats of violence came from all over the world, and some of my students were frightened enough to talk about leaving Gainesville.

A single bad actor can match, if not exceed, the "information operations" capability of the United States. Look at Julian Assange. He is not some unique individual; thousands upon thousands have his skills. All the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the world combined lack the resources to monitor everyone who could replace him should he go to jail. More importantly, these people are amateurs.

This fact is exactly why it is a mistake to say "this is just IO, same as always." Whatever overlap in theory and doctrine, there needs to be a different mindset acknowledging that globalization has enabled bad actors in ways that very few have a full understanding.

[anonamatic]

Thank you for your thoughts. I suspect we are not far apart in terms of ideas about controlling information, IO, etc.



"Erich," please.

I am a little torn myself on this distinction. I will admit that everyone has a tendency to see incremental change as something radical new. However, globalization (in particular the Internet) has enabled "superempowered" individuals (see John Robb, et. al.).

For example, consider that Dove World Outreach Church that planned to burn the Qu'ran, which was set to happen literally down the road from my office at University of Florida. The cost to entry was very little: YouTube, Facebook, etc. From that little church, they reached millions and were able threatened our position in Afghanistan and the Muslim world significantly enough to warrant comment from GEN Petraeus and the highest levels of the Obama administration. Outrage and threats of violence came from all over the world, and some of my students were frightened enough to talk about leaving Gainesville.

I'm familiar with the concept, it's somewhat easier to find examples of it than actually act in that manner. However it's entirely possible to do it depending on ones goals, methods, level of effort, & timing.

A single bad actor can match, if not exceed, the "information operations" capability of the United States. Look at Julian Assange. He is not some unique individual; thousands upon thousands have his skills. All the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the world combined lack the resources to monitor everyone who could replace him should he go to jail. More importantly, these people are amateurs.

This fact is exactly why it is a mistake to say "this is just IO, same as always." Whatever overlap in theory and doctrine, there needs to be a different mindset acknowledging that globalization has enabled bad actors in ways that very few have a full understanding.

I've known Julian since 1991 and am one of his peers in most respects. I diverge in opinion with both the harm he's done to the US, and to a lot of the strategy he's used with Wikileaks too. We've argued about it over the years, but up until he went completely off the rails with the Manning material I at least thought he was trying to head in the right direction. That direction changed a great deal. In prior discussions about potentially harmful leaks he'd asserted that he'd at least consider higher levels of discretion than he's since taken. He has something of a blind spot to consequences sadly enough in my opinion, and unfortunately has a bit too much `moth to a flame' instincts going on for anyones good.

That said, the whole `collateral murder' presentation was very propagandistic as well as openly deceitful. It took me a while to be able to do a thorough analysis without going to the site directly, but eventually it all ended up fully quoted elsewhere. The damage and dishonesty with that, as well as with the spin on the other stolen materials, well it's just damnable evil to me, more so because I know all about the more odious aspects of Julian's personality that others have observed.

Your observation that there is a great deal of the amateur to go with this is very accurate. It's true in the case of Wikileaks, but also in other instances where globalized IO has come from unexpected quarters. The impacts of these things are very hard to quantify. Information pressure, characterized by differences from whatever repressive dogma that's served as conventional wisdom in regions where leaders treat citizenry badly is quite the common complaint of quasi-failed states. The Taliban hopes rather vainly that if maybe they burn all those schools they can somehow keep that pesky internet away, and it's just not going to work for them. The result is there's them, and other piles of repressive nuts in nasty parts of the world who're all hating life more than they have in the past.

Information pressure means that when crazy bandit gangs roam the Sudan, it not only makes news, but more people can actually find the place on a map. More people have maps too, there's an ocean of information out there, as well as ideas that are new to people to go with the new devices.

There is a relationship too. One of the things I've done to try to get some grasp on this has been just using Google. Not to find stuff, but to compare by example the number of news articles about North Korea to that of those mentioning Wikileaks. It's also useful to compare conflict coverage since there's a pile of places in the world with various sized wars going on. I use googlefight.com for some things, others I use counts on news articles, and I also look at trends. They have some very nice tools for that, and it's interesting to see in some cases that nearly 100% of the internet search traffic coming from some rather distasteful locations in the world have been occupied by people looking for US Cable material. Tunisia at least is having a revolution thankfully rather than other potentially nastier outcomes.

It's safe to say the press does not understand IO or IW to a level that's worth valuing in a majority of instances. They don't understand that, or any of the myriad of other aspects of these issues. I think that contributes to the confusion & makes these issues a bit harder to work on than they otherwise might be.

[AdamG]

Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric with ties to al-Qaeda, is using his online magazine, Inspire, to urge jihadists to steal “booty”—money and property—from people or institutions that don’t believe in his holy war. And it’s not really theft, he adds, explaining that ill-gotten wealth is really just fuel for jihad. “The reasoning behind comparing booty to hunting and wood gathering is because the property which exists in the hands of the disbelievers is not considered to be rightfully theirs,” writes al-Awlaki

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/was...dists-to-steal