Social Media and Unconventional Warfare

[Bill Moore]

http://www.soc.mil/swcs/swmag/archiv...ediaAndUW.html

Social media — blogs, social-network sites, information aggregators, wikis, livecasting, video sharing — has decisively altered that most extreme of socio-politico acts: revolution. The 2011 Arab Spring revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East were engineered through citizen-centric computer and cellular-phone technologies that streamed web-enabled social exchanges. The Arab Spring has profound implications for the U.S. special-operations mission of unconventional warfare. This article posits that the study, practice and successful execution of future UW must deliberately account for and incorporate social media.

This excellent article is on the Blog, but due to technical problems with our social media it isn't possible to discuss it there, so I opted to transfer it to the council.

LTC Petit's article is a long overdue discussion topic for the Special Forces community. I recall that the last time it was surfaced it was rapidly dismissed by officers who don't understand the power of this new medium. It is a disruptive technology that allows anyone with access to this medium to not only share tactics, coordinate actions, but to upload multimedia (voice, video, images, text, etc.) to shape the narrative and potentially mobilize people to action. It doesn't mean that older forms of information broadcasting are obsolete, radio broadcasts, T.V. programs, leaflet drops, etc. are still useful means in conveying a message, but more often than not the interpretation of these broadcast messages will formed in the realm of social media. Most in the military understand that government officials (including the military) prefer to get their information from official sources, but the people often distrust these sources and prefer to get their information from their peers (to include fellow social media peers).

I initially had two areas that I was critical of regarding this article, the first was that Brian didn't adequately define social media, yet by accident I discovered the images in the article are links to additional information. To gain a better understanding of social media simply click on the image of the SmartPhone. That left me with on critique, and that was Brian's suggestion that Special Forces soldiers in the future given the authorities and situational awareness could use this medium to support their UW mission.

I don't disagree, and definitely support pursuing this, but offer the following observations. First the authorities issue, as many know we're not agile in the information realm, and decisions on what can and can't be shared are often made several levels of command up in the chain of command by those least aware of what is happening the ground. Social media by definition is interactive, and if you can't interact you can't play. I think if we're supporting a resistance movement or insurgency that is competing the domain of social media we risk formally or informally imposing our restrictive authorities on those we're trying to help. It may be better to informally encourage them to act on their own without asking higher for permission. I tried to get Iraqis to do their own MISO without asking permission from us instead of complaining about our slow approval process and complaining about how the insurgents were running circles around us. I suggested it was their country so of course they could make their own decisions, but they wouldn't, so if even if it isn't our intent to interfer with the resistance use of the social media, it could still happen.

Addressing the second point, situational awareness, it is unlikely that our soldiers will have the SA or language skills (in most cases) at least initially, so the best approach may be to provide the means (technology) and maybe some advise on how to project their message and effectively shape the narrative, but ultimately it is the local with the Smartphone that will engage in this domain instead of the SF soldier. One area I would hope we could help with is monitoring the narrative (an expert cell sitting at Fort anywhere in the U.S. can do this) and provide the resistance what the global perceptions of their narrative is, so they can adjust it if they see fit to do so.

I am just happy that the SF community is exploring this, and regardless of what route they ultimately decide to pursue, I hope at a minimum they add a block of instruction on social media to SFQC, and then advanced courses in ANCOC, WOAC, and NPS/SOF curriculum at CGSC, etc.

Moderator's minor note: the thread's title was Social Media and Unconventional Media till today, but the author noted his mistake and it has been corrected.