Cognitive Warfare Project
innovationhub-act.org
innovationhub-act.org
Already, social media is a proverbial war of all against all, and tends to make any public career nasty, unctuous, and short. It seems like the military wants to expand it to where mere non-participation is not sufficient to be free of it. Programs like this shift the role of the military from defending a perimiter of civilization to managing it. They are finding ways to turn aggression inward on the population. It uses the same destructive tactics they defended against during the cold war and turns them to the domestic front.
Having read more than a few books and other sources on the tactics and strategies of totalitarianism, any military that is not actively defending its nation from this constant, post-20th century global threat should be treated as compromised by one of the movements this force co-opts to its ends. The goal is to unmoor people from all truth so we can be pacified and managed in a liquid way. The objective is just as through a mix of constant minor punishment and increasing dependency, a zoo animal loses its skill to hunt and feed itself, so via similar systems of dependency people lose the ability to think for themselves and can eventually be trusted to reject any and all truth that could connect them into an identity or a potential resistance, because we know what happens to people found in posession of it.
I'm glad the military is tipping their hand on this, as people need to understand that the pervasive forever war modern states are fighting is against truth itself, and you can see it in every action, because once you take that from people, dominion is complete.
I noticed this about a major U.S. news program in the 2000s. Their format was to get 6-8 people on screen with a “diverse set of viewpoints” to debate. Whether intentional or not, what they were doing was debate training. The anchor hinted at the message they wanted you to promote before the debate started, usually the “right” message started first, and the “diverse viewpoints” were there to introduce you to common retorts you’ll encounter and how you can defend against them.
They were training you to go out and spread their message in your social circles. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, they figured out how to use their news program to reach folks who didn’t watch their news program. Though I was a bit frustrated since I didn’t agree with their message!
Imo, news and commentary today are just over-the-air updates for official narratives. They are argument feature packs, same as anti-virus signature updates but for ideas.
To me it seems most of the countries are, at least at some degree, either totalitarian, obviously or covertly, themselves (and attack their own nation this way) or cooperate with such and supply them with necessary technologies.
The only non-totalitarian ways a state can defend its people from information warfare are education (propagation of rational thinking, awareness of manipulative techniques and fallacies, factual knowledge), enforcement of mandatory fact-checking in mass media and prosecution of proven spreaders of intentionally malicious fake news.
Nevertheless many governments prefer to apply the same manipulative techniques to their own people (and avoid educating them to keep these efficient), suppress "undesirable" opinions and facts falsely labeling them as fake and spy on them (their people) as thoroughly as reasonably possible. I consider such governments totalitarian, wildly or mildly.
What if the party has sub-total yet a huge degree of control and continuously strives to increase its control by applying all offensive techniques it reasonably can on the people?
It's war. It's not a sporting event. There's no referee. Just logic where mutually assured destruction might cause reconsidering a first strike. But the reconsideration is focused on how to beat MAD.
It's war. The means and methods of "good guys" and "evildoers" are the same. Including the propaganda to stakeholders.
> Analysis Facing Worldwide Jihadist Violence and Conflicts
While "The US has helped ISIS":
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-00935...
and "The Dirty War on Syria: Washington Supports the Islamic State (ISIS)":
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria-washing...
And how and why USA supported Bin Laden in Afghanistan:
https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
And to close this: NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” (from the horse's mouth)
The problem we run into is that a lot of current leadership in this country seem to rely on an easily manipulated population through misinformstion/disinformation. Leadership who utilize this need to be willing to abandon this to strengthen our democracy even if it may be the undoing of their own source of power. I'm not certain we're going to see that happen.
What I instead think we'll see is a shouting match of disinformation/misinformation between foreign adversaries and questionable leadership we already have which may hopefully undermine misplaced trust for many put in the free flowing mis/disinformation we have today. We could also end up with direction dictated by whoever can shout the loudest and most convincingly.
This is quite inaccurate, almost delusionally so. It is the sort of thing well-educated people tell themselves as a way of trying to distinguish themselves from the 'common rubes' who fall victim to obvious propaganda and influence. If we have learned anything over the past five to ten years is is that the educated critical thinking population is just as likely to crawl up their own backside in self-assured certainty that they are right and the so-called authoritative sources are wrong when in fact they are nothing more than Dunning-Kruger replicators. I don't have any answers to offer, but the oft-quoted idea that the solution to misinformation and bad speech is more speech is the biggest lie repeated on HN, and one that continues to have tragic consequences.
There’s a very specific kind of mentality that conflates I’m smart in one particular area (tech for example) therefore I am smart in general and therefore immune to magical thinking which just as a theory has been blown apart more times than I can imagine, it’s a meme at this point.
I too hear this quip often on HN and I see no foundation for it at all. Part of being educated and having an ability to think critically is to question your own assumptions and be willing to change them. To look at evidence and reevaluate, to experiment and test. It's the process science uses to dig through the unknown and uncertainty to find nuggets of truth and separate the mistakes and lies. It's slow and in the absence of analysis you shouldn't rush to conclusions. An often tell tale sign of misinformation/disinformation at play is pushing a false sense of urgency to persuade people to make decisions without thinking and often simply lean or what's beibg projected as an authorative answer.
I'm not speaking about those who think they're informed and ready to combat persuasion but are just entrenched in their own perhaps false viewpoints, say the antivaxers of recent times. Being truly educated in this domain is understanding that you might actually be wrong or are susceptible for persuasion, acknowledging what you do and don't know, figuring out what the information is saying and potential motives of it, and be willing to check to see if you are wrong and change your views if so.
Strange, I see large quantities of it on HN on a very regular basis - what could explain this apparent paradox? Is it that you haven't read any of the same threads as me, and all the threads you've read are completely devoid of instances of the phenomenon, or might there be something else going on?
> Part of being educated and having an ability to think critically is to question your own assumptions and be willing to change them.
This is certainly reasonable advice, but I suspect it is much(!) harder than people who advise this approach think.
> To look at evidence and reevaluate, to experiment and test. It's the process science uses to dig through the unknown and uncertainty to find nuggets of truth and separate the mistakes and lies. It's slow and in the absence of analysis you shouldn't rush to conclusions.
Science (the scientific process) is excellent, but I regularly encounter people people who sincerely perceive themselves to be Scientific Thinkers who are....not very good at the process they hold in such high regard. I sometimes wonder if the current fashion of ~worshipping science and scientists might be causing some harm in addition to the good that (I presume) it is doing.
> An often tell tale sign of misinformation/disinformation at play is pushing a false sense of urgency to persuade people to make decisions without thinking and often simply lean or what's being projected as an authoritative answer.
I agree, but this is also a fairly common talking point that you can find in conspiracy forums, do you believe those people are righteous in using this methodology?
> I'm not speaking about those who think they're informed and ready to combat persuasion but are just entrenched in their own perhaps false viewpoints, say the antivaxers of recent times.
Personally, I think this is doing it wrong. Rather than constantly amuse ourselves beating up on strawman caricatures of the (often virtual) members of our outgroups, I think it would be better to focus our critical eyes on those who actually are relatively(!) "informed and ready to combat persuasion", and realize how rare it is even among the best of the best to find thinking that is completely without flaw....maybe then we would learn something new about the true complexity of thinking and perception, and perhaps then have the ability to develop some educational countermeasures to the tricky cognitive phenomenon that plagues each one of us.
> Being truly educated in this domain is understanding that you might actually be wrong or are susceptible for persuasion, acknowledging what you do and don't know, figuring out what the information is saying and potential motives of it, and be willing to check to see if you are wrong and change your views if so.
These are fine ideas, but there is much more to it than this.
Almost nobody has time to learn to do that, conn a ship, or butcher a hog. People spend most of their time on their their friends, family, and employer. We need have to have thoughtful and attentive sources we can trust.
I think the bigger issue is how so many people refuse to see this.
And for you people who want to write this off as partisan, Romney was in on it too by a similar line of reasoning.
People need to realize you don't always have to come to a conclusion when you're presented with information, it's possible to just say here is some uncertain information and I will treat it as such.
Then most of the political information should be then inconclusive for the ordinary citizen. Which does not happen.
Our "reality runtime" seems to support these things, but the degree to which each individual actor within our reality has the ability to skilfully perform (aka: "can") these things is both very complex, and controversial. The ability to say "I don't know" seems like it should be very easy when one is thinking about the notion abstractly, but the ability to not "know" something when contemplating or discussing object level matters (particularly those that fall under the culture war category) seems to be damn near impossible, especially in the internet age.
Based on my observations of internet and real life conversations, I have become a firm believer that most of the time, people cannot actually say "I don't know", in large part because the idea never crossed their mind (at the time).
To whatever extent this skill exists, it certainly can’t be acquired by going through the university system.
I suspect the most relevant characteristic here is the tradeoff between socially motivated consensus (where people believe whatever beliefs are minimally socially costly) versus observationally motivated beliefs. People’s position in this tradeoff space has little if anything to do with formal education; it’s probably heritable or trained through some social process we don’t understand. It might not be feasible at all to meaningfully push the population towards observational beliefs.
> In an era where memory is outsourced to Google, GPS, calendar alerts and calculators, it will necessarily produce a generalised loss of knowledge that is not just memory, but rather motor memory. In other words, a long-term process of disabling connections in your brain is ongoing. It will present both vulnerabilities and opportunities.
The CW project seems to think we're headed for Wall-E, but mentally instead of physically. I'm extremely curious to see how this actually plays out.
USA is a pioneer in this battle. It also owns all the tools and media necessary for the combat and uses it for its advantage for years (Google Search, Google YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix, etc).
It's everyone else that is losing this battle.
A really effective "Critical Thinking course" would be VERY nice thing to have, but I think it could be deemed too dangerous for current elites, even more dangerous than guns.
If you want to 'do good' you need to create inclusive narratives that erase inequality and live by them.
A broken clock, etc etc.
Believing in something without sufficient evidence should always be an opportunity for scrutiny and debate.
That's what a liberal arts education is, though in the US right now it's mostly only affordable by elites.
I also recommend when reading it to do the mental exercise to examine every day life.
I am by no means a counterinsurgency or intelligence analysis expert, but I do have training in the social sciences and several decades of work in environments where I, shall we say, have encountered military thinking and doctrine.
This article to me reads as two academics insisting that THEIR social sciences disciplines are ESSENTIAL to forecasting information that western militaries desperately want to know. But, although the article repeatedly refers to their custom system ("Weber," named after the founder of sociology, not the fine outdoor grill), they never actually manage to describe the workings of the system at all; they simply narrate a variety of "scenarios," and cherry pick three instances where they claim their predictions (not previously available) were relevant or accurate.
The authors say "Weber" makes use of "53 ad-hoc parameters," and continue, "We made use of System Engineering that led us to a systemic approach." Aha, well, that certainly explains it! Continuing directly: "At that time thanks to this tooled method we took a major step toward a reflexive way of reasoning. As a result, this innovative and challenging method allowed us to achieve 23 meta-scenarios, comprising 58 sub-cases of scenarios described through visualization tools. Moreover, Weber enabled us to describe 138 different behavior patterns among the Jihadist Actors."
I've read the entire paper, and this is the closest they ever get to actually describing how their supposedly novel, "tooled system" operates.
The outputs they discuss later in the paper are actually mordantly amusing, in a Kurt Vonnegut sort of way. Take, for example, these keen insights (keeping in mind the research was conducted in 2016):
"Everywhere in the World, and especially in Africa, Al-Qaeda (AQ) began ten years ago to adopt a new tactic: “landfilling” within the societies where they were, with a long-range aim. By marriages facilitated by polygamy - a natural way to set up political alliances by blood - AQ militants established strong ties with tribes and they kept a low profile with lesser recourse to violence from that time on. Then, in some areas - for instance in coastal Libya - as early as January 2012 (through “Ansar al-Charia”) and in Syria (creation of “Jabhat al Nusra li-Ahl ash-Sham”), and in Northern Mali in January 2013 (co-rebellion of Jihadists and Tuaregs) the AQ local entities arose suddenly."
Apparently their sophisticated sociocultural analytical tooled system missed what is obviously the key reason that "AQ local entities arose suddenly" in Libya (January 2012) and northern Mali (January 2013) – I refer, of course, to the NATO bombing of Libya, the killing of Qaddafi, the complete destruction of much of Libya's state infrastructure, and the consequent dispersal of Libya's considerable arsenal to smaller, independent groups. The authors' claim that "Al-Qaeda" was pursuing a strategic, ten-year-long tactic of "landfilling" appears to be a convenient and paranoid way to describe the natural movements of younger men. How convenient that they happened to "landfill" in Libya ten years before a brutal NATO bombing campaign destroyed the central government and scattered the remaining security forces into disparate bands warring for power!
This is some kindergarten-level scholarship, which makes it exactly appropriate for NATO's forward-looking intelligence assessments, which are seldom more than gruesome fantasies for generals to whisper into the ears of their civilian overseers to secure ever-more funding for the world-destroying systems of ever-greater armaments.
This looks very cyber cyber to me.