Category: Information Operations (IO)

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Reference: U.S. Governmental Information Operations and Strategic Communications: A Discredited Tool or User Failure? Implications for Future Conflict

Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, IO Models
SSI Home Page
SSI Home Page

U.S. Governmental Information Operations and Strategic Communications: A Discredited Tool or User Failure? Implications for Future Conflict

Dr. Steve Tatham

Synopsis

Through the prism of operations in Afghanistan, the author examines how the U.S. Government’s Strategic Communication (SC) and, in particular, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Information Operations (IO) and Military Information Support to Operations (MISO) programs, have contributed to U.S. strategic and foreign policy objectives. It assesses whether current practice, which is largely predicated on ideas of positively shaping audiences perceptions and attitudes towards the United States, is actually fit for purpose. Indeed, it finds that the United States has for many years now been encouraged by large contractors to approach communications objectives through techniques heavily influenced by civilian advertising and marketing, which attempt to change hostile attitudes to the United States and its foreign policy in the belief that this will subsequently reduce hostile behavior. While an attitudinal approach may work in convincing U.S. citizens to buy consumer products, it does not easily translate to the conflict- and crisis-riven societies to which it has been routinely applied since September 11, 2001.

View the Executive Summary

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Matthew Wallin's Comments on the Monograph

Posted by Contributing Editor Berto Jongman

Robert Steele's Summary Review Below the Line

Continue reading “Reference: U.S. Governmental Information Operations and Strategic Communications: A Discredited Tool or User Failure? Implications for Future Conflict”

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Patrick Cockburn: Saudi Arabia Funds Terrorism & Mass Murder — USG Silent & Therefore Complicit [While Also Approving $4B to “Train & Equip” Saudi National Guard]

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence
Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn

Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis

World View: Everyone knows where al-Qa'ida gets its money, but while the violence is sectarian, the West does nothing

Patrick Cockburn

The Independent, Sunday 8 December 2013

Donors in Saudi Arabia have notoriously played a pivotal role in creating and maintaining Sunni jihadist groups over the past 30 years. But, for all the supposed determination of the United States and its allies since 9/11 to fight “the war on terror”, they have showed astonishing restraint when it comes to pressuring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies to turn off the financial tap that keeps the jihadists in business.

Continue reading “Patrick Cockburn: Saudi Arabia Funds Terrorism & Mass Murder — USG Silent & Therefore Complicit [While Also Approving $4B to “Train & Equip” Saudi National Guard]”

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Stephen Aftergood: Defense Warning Network

Ethics, Government, IO Impotency, Military
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

THE DEFENSE WARNING NETWORK

The structure and functions of the Defense Warning Network were outlined in a new directive issued yesterday by the Department of Defense.

The mission of the Defense Warning Network is to provide notice “of potential threats posed by adversaries, political and economic instability, failed or failing states, and any other emerging challenges that could affect the United States or its interests worldwide.”  See The Defense Warning Network, DoD Directive 3115.16, December 5, 2013.

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Eagle: Facebook & Yahoo Lose Millions of Passwords

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Stolen Facebook and Yahoo passwords dumped online

The database included details from many of the most popular social networks

More than two million stolen passwords used for sites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo and other web services have been posted online.

The details had probably been uploaded by a criminal gang, security experts said.

It is suspected the data was taken from computers infected with malicious software that logged key presses.

It is not known how old the details are – but the experts warned that even out-dated information posed a risk.

“We don't know how many of these details still work,” said security researcher Graham Cluley. “But we know that 30-40% of people use the same passwords on different websites.

“That's certainly something people shouldn't do.”

Criminal botnet

The site containing the passwords was discovered by researchers working for security firm Trustwave.

In a blog post outlining its findings, the team said it believed the passwords had been harvested by a large botnet – dubbed Pony – that had scooped up information from thousands of infected computers worldwide.

Read full article.

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Stephen E. Arnold: Google Letting Us All Down?

Commerce, Corruption, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Why Google is Letting People Down

Some people might say that Google abandons and starts projects on a whim. In the past, the search giant makes provided explanations for projects that could not be completed and promises they were unable to keep. But has the abandonment mentality and prideful hot hair stopped this habit? Marketing Land’s Danny Sullivan further explores this question in, “Google’s Broken Promises And Who’s Running The Search Engine?”

What promises has Google broken? Google Shopping was supposed to index prices of items across the Web, but it only displays results from paying vendors. Google once fought against shopping search engines that only included shopping results, but not the company claims that is the only way to get viable information.

Google also promised it would keep its searches banner free. Guess what they are doing now? Google stated that they are only conducting a US banner tests to allow advertisers to add images to relevant search queries.

Why Google is doing this may be that the company has had to adapt, but it goes against Google’s original philosophy:

“You’d think they caused some internal debate. Was there anyone at Google saying that if giant graphical units at the top of search results are useful to searchers, then maybe Google should be offering those for free, to ensure a consistent experience for those searchers? Was there anyone at Google saying that maybe a shift to paid inclusion was a bad move for shopping and other search products, because it opens up every search product to that possibility?”

Google is not sharing explanations with the public, however. In my opinion, the root of the problem is that no one is officially assigned to run search products. The company is instead focusing on other areas and neglecting its star. What is even worse is that the fuzzy management holds no one accountable for the broken promises. Google’s main search focus is making money and not providing accurate results.

Since Google is the biggest search player, what does this mean for other search components like SEO? Will paid results dwarf SEO? It also begs the question if SEO focuses on search? Money makes the world go around I guess.

Whitney Grace, December 01, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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Stephen E. Arnold: Amazon Global Computing – Cheaper

Advanced Cyber/IO
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Amazon Aims to Make Computing Cheaper

Amazon has aspirations beyond being the world’s largest retailer. The online retail giant also aspires to be a mega force in computing, says The New York Times Bits Blog in: “Amazon Bares Its Computers.” Amazon has announced that it is taking its Amazon Web Services beyond simple cloud-computing to include specialized computers, data storage systems, networking systems, optical transmissions systems, and power substations. The overall goal is make computer cheaper and run more efficiently.

Amazon rarely discusses its AWS plans, but the recent discussion about how it plans to annually spend one billion comes as big news.
Amazon is prepping to boosts its web services by hiring power engineers to work on substations and remove power redundancies in cloud-computing. Hardware is purchased directly to reduce costs and the company created original statistical methods to limit damage from catastrophic failures. Amazon also owns its own optical fiber systems and take AWS global.

Amazon is hardly keeping their information under wraps this time, though. They are sharing their advances via open source in a direct challenge to Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Microsoft will never share its secrets and Google does share some of its toys, but it keeps the bigger stuff locked away. What about Facebook?

The article explains:

“The notable outrider among the giant computers is Facebook, which isn’t selling its own system. Instead, Facebook is focused on pure cost-cutting, and spearheads the Open Compute Project, a kind of open-source, cloud-computing architecture. Open Compute is far enough along that companies like Hewlett-Packard, which came late to cloud computing, use aspects of it in their public clouds.”

Amazon is not directly asserting it is better than its competitors, but its openness and cost-cutting procedures certainly make it look better in the consumers’ eyes.

Whitney Grace, November 30, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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