Tuesday, January 31, 2006
SHAPING THE BATTLESPACE: INFORMATION OPERATIONS STRATEGY
Hat tip Rough Type:
Here is an interesting declassified DoD document from 2003 outlining " Information Operations" a rubric under which the Pentagon has placed PSYOPS, Strategic Influence, Disinformation, Electromagnetic weapons of mass disruption, IT network defense, Cultural Intelligence, Public Diplomacy and some netwar analysis capability. Parts of the PDF are redacted but it doesn't take too much imagination to fill in some of the blanks.
On the positive side, if you read between the lines you can see a growing familiarity with Boyd's OODA loop on an institutional level as the Pentagon attempts to craft a coherently strategy to influence a battlespace composed of multiple audiences - elite, mass, Arab, American and European - all of whom filter media delivered information through different cognitive frames. Another positive is that obvious deficits in terms of cultural intelligence and the subsequent impact on PSYOPS are frankly admitted.
On the negative side, the document reads too much like the Pentagon is still trying to get a handle on the nature of IO itself and isn't quite certain of the parameters here. IT network defense and cyberwarfare in general, or at least its technical and operational aspects would probably have been better served as the focus of a separate document.
Wonder what the classified follow up looks like. Particular after Titan Rain. ¶ 6:03 PM
Hat tip Rough Type:
Here is an interesting declassified DoD document from 2003 outlining " Information Operations" a rubric under which the Pentagon has placed PSYOPS, Strategic Influence, Disinformation, Electromagnetic weapons of mass disruption, IT network defense, Cultural Intelligence, Public Diplomacy and some netwar analysis capability. Parts of the PDF are redacted but it doesn't take too much imagination to fill in some of the blanks.
On the positive side, if you read between the lines you can see a growing familiarity with Boyd's OODA loop on an institutional level as the Pentagon attempts to craft a coherently strategy to influence a battlespace composed of multiple audiences - elite, mass, Arab, American and European - all of whom filter media delivered information through different cognitive frames. Another positive is that obvious deficits in terms of cultural intelligence and the subsequent impact on PSYOPS are frankly admitted.
On the negative side, the document reads too much like the Pentagon is still trying to get a handle on the nature of IO itself and isn't quite certain of the parameters here. IT network defense and cyberwarfare in general, or at least its technical and operational aspects would probably have been better served as the focus of a separate document.
Wonder what the classified follow up looks like. Particular after Titan Rain. ¶ 6:03 PM
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Mark, reminds me of the Onion article: "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years (google cache).
When asked by a reporter if the black ink was meant to intentionally obscure, Goss countered, "Good God, why?"
...
"With all the highlighting in the documents I unearthed in the National Archives, it's really no wonder that the invasion failed," Franks said. "I don't see how the field operatives and commandos were expected to decipher their orders."
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When asked by a reporter if the black ink was meant to intentionally obscure, Goss countered, "Good God, why?"
...
"With all the highlighting in the documents I unearthed in the National Archives, it's really no wonder that the invasion failed," Franks said. "I don't see how the field operatives and commandos were expected to decipher their orders."
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