Great Power Competition - Disinformation and Propaganda Remain Mostly Unanswered
Great
Power Competition - Disinformation and Propaganda Remain Mostly Unanswered
Our
adversaries continue to pummel us daily with varied types of disinformation and
propaganda. We’ve seen this for multiple
years and decades, most notably prior to the 2016 election, and every
increasing since. We’re undertaking some
efforts to preclude major impacts to our 2020 elections, but those efforts will
address only parts of the foreign Cognitive War and will totally miss
addressing our Domestic Cognitive War (which I’ve stated is truly the most pressing
national security issue and least understood threat that faces our Republic and
Democracy).
Yet
our pace remains sloth like. Our posture
highly reactive. And our unity of
effort, nearly non-existent. I’ve been writing
about the competition taking place in the Cognitive Domain pre and post my
retirement from federal service in our Intelligence Community and DoD. We continue to admire the problem, and in
fact have made some great headway…tactically.
Credit where due! And it is well
deserved.
Yet,
our cognitive dissonance is evident in that as much changes, nothing
changes. While our President is truly
the most effective driver of proactive influence operations – which cause
others to react – the rest of our government structure remains wanting.
Our
military service cyber elements move to rename themselves “Information Operations.”
While this is to be applauded, they do so mostly as “Titanium Cylinders of
Sub-Excellence,” and with naming conventions not likely to follow until 2028? My head does thus explode
There are more and more realistic views as to what
it will take to effectively counter the plethora of disinformation and
propaganda efforts by our adversaries.
One such event was held today, 27 Jan 2020, Great Power
Competition - Disinformation and
Influence Operations Seminar, by the Intelligence and National Security
Alliance (INSA) and Virginia Tech's Hume Center for National Security and
Technology. It is an event to be applauded, having great
speakers, who addressed the key issues facing us, but also left us hanging on
solutions. This
was part of a four part series – and I’d highly recommend attending every one
of them if you can.
As
for solutions, I’ve written a fair amount about how to address the challenges
in the Cognitive Domain. I’ll point
readers to my last paper I wrote for our IC, DoD, Federal, Private Sector and
Academia – on the Cognitive Domain. The
paper spoke to the Future of Intelligence 2035-2050. While it speaks to the future, I wrote it in
a manner which – for those who are woke, awake, or not sleeping – will understand
that its vision can be implemented today.
You can find my short talk on the paper, and the paper for download at https://nsiteam.com/future-military-intelligence-conops-and-st-investment-roadmap-2035-2050-the-cognitive-war/.
My
take away from today’s INSA – VA Tech Hume Center forum are the following:
·
Our
Intelligence Community is focused on election security, and disrupting
adversaries. But my assessment remains much as stated in my paper - our IC (government as a whole) lacks an
encompassing strategy, approach and operational construct;
·
This
is an increasing realization that a “whole of government” and “whole of society
effort” are required to combat our adversary’s efforts.
·
There
is also a growing understanding that this is a different type of war – a
Cognitive War – for which we (US government and society) remain ill prepared to
confront.
·
That
this new type of war “Cognitive War” or “Information War” requires a
bipartisan, long-term, strategic approach.
It requires a new operational construct.
It requires leadership, not ownership.
And it requires an understanding that this war is primarily cognitive in
nature, not kinetic.
·
With
very few exceptions, every effort, across government, private and public
sectors remains highly reactive.
·
And
our IC, DoD and Federal element have yet to come to a realization that the
necessary grunt work required in laying a new foundation for battle in the
cognitive domain requires that we understand, detail and grow capacity,
capability and knowledge of regional cultural, political, social, etc. networks
(human and material), strengths and weaknesses critical to enabling the conduct
of proactive influence operations.
It is time for an
overhaul of our IC, a realignment and much greater integration of our DoD
services, and further integration and alignment of our Executive Branch
departments on whole if we are not only to compete, but win, the Cognitive War.
Our civil
servants, public servants and private sector elements do realize the need for
greater collaboration, a civil defense posture and capability, but none of them
wish to mess with the culture that tends to eat those that try. But, we must. Our Republic, our Democracy and
the World’s humanity depend on us doing just that. While we may not be the world’s policeman,
and shouldn’t, we should remain the shining light on the hill. But to do so, we must address our current significant
shortfalls in fighting not only the foreign based Cognitive War, but our own
Domestic Cognitive War.
So, I’ll close by
thanking INSA and VA Tech’s Hume Center for National Security and Technology
for a great seminar and discussions. And, call on others to do the same.
2020, © Edward L. Haugland LLC, All Rights Reserved
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