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By Chris Dufour

This week kicks off the second year of AOC's InfoWarCon in Washington, DC. Subtitled "Future Warfare Today: The Battle for Information & Ideas", the three-day gathering sports luminaries from different information disciplines beyond information operations, or IO. Joel Harding, the director of AOC's IO Institute, has put together an agenda with panelists from across the spectrum of informational engagement: strategic communication, public diplomacy, public affairs, technology, and emerging media. The stated purpose of InfoWarCon is to advance the discourse about the evolving role of information in warfare of today and tomorrow, especially the kind where explosions, in the case they actually occur, are shaping events in support of information activities.

InfoWarCon provides the necessary forum to discuss the real and perceived differences and similarities between information warfare and communication in a modern competitive landscape where information, not platforms, matter most. This environment is one where dissemination and reception are increasingly disassociated from geography as audiences are less likely to be contained within the borders of traditional nation-states.

The opportunities and threats of this modern environment can reduce autonomy, empower, or both. Typically, the empowerment to the non-state actor, whether a group or individual and the restriction on acting unilaterally is on the state. The easy answer for this situation is agility to operate in today's dynamic, fluid, and hyperactive information environment. No longer do major powers solely rely on direct force-on-force combat to achieve strategic objectives. Similarly, non-violent communications campaigns conducted by private organizations or individuals can no longer succeed without considering the competitive information landscape.

InfoWarCon will provide the opportunity to discuss the issues related to this evolutionary, perhaps even revolutionary, environment and the resulting splintering of doctrine and perceptions of influence.

By Melanie Ciolek

President Hugo Chavez has a long history of dominating the media environment in Venezuela, using radio and television to belittle his critics and project his political agenda to national and regional audiences. His administration has referred to the closures of privately held radio and television stations as efforts to "democratize" the media. Now facing the ultimate democratic media environment--an online space featuring millions of independent actors--he seems unsure how to compete.

By Mariana González Insua

Hugo Chávez' tight grip on Venezuelan media threatens to reach new levels. The Venezuelan leader's recent announcement that every country needs to regulate the Internet and the launch of his "guerrilla" communicational campaign have sparked fears that his control over the media might be extended to the online world.

Chávez' dominance of traditional forms of media in Venezuela is unquestionable. Not only does the Venezuelan leader have his own weekly show, but he is the brain behind Telesur and Radio del Sur, television and radio channels aimed at exporting the Venezuelan "socialist" model beyond Venezuela's borders while reinforcing Chávez' message at home. However, what has caused even more alarm are his outright attempts at media censorship, which have sounded warning bells both in the Latin American country and abroad.

The Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the SecDev Group, Ottawa) and the Shadowserver Foundation released a new report documenting a cyber espionage ring that “operated or staged their operations” from Chengdu, Peoples Republic of China.

Targets of this espionage activity included Indian government computers and the offices of the Dalai Lama.

By Carson Thomas Checketts

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." - Goethe

Something or someone in the PRC has failed. China's attempts to attack Google betray a deep discomfort with the PRC's own decision to ban the worlds leading technology leader from its shores. Perhaps, given Goethe's insight, it's fair to say that the PRC's "ideas" have failed so it is now resorting to all it has left: words. Despite a widely shared international consensus among academics[1] that an industrial revolution remains hollow without a transition to a services and information based economy, China has turned its back on its own modernization. This change has many implications for the world, but perhaps the most significant is that the Google decision shows who really holds the cards in the PRC's inner circle. It would appear the less educated military may have moved from a position of moderate influence into the inner circle, where their paranoia has apparently convinced China that technology is what ancients called a "Greek gift," intended to harm rather than enlighten the recipient.

From Bloomberg-BusinessWeek:

"We found that Afghans in the most-troubled, insurgent- held areas lived in information wastelands dominated by militant propaganda," [U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke] said March 17. "We are fighting back with a revamped strategy that puts the people and their ability to communicate at the forefront of our effort."

Joanna Nathan, author of a 2008 report on Taliban propaganda for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, cautioned that expanding mobile-phone capacity isn't enough to counteract the Taliban. They have dominated the war of words by exaggerating victories and fueling conspiracy theories, she said.

"It's not the words, but how credible is your message," said Said Jawad, Afghan ambassador to Washington. The U.S. must not only "respond to propaganda but deliver and make a difference in people's lives."

On March 24, 2010, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) will hold an event to mark the public launch of the U.S. Senate Caucus on Global Internet Freedom. Caucus co-chairs Senators Ted Kaufman (D-DE) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), and other Senate caucus members including Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Robert Casey (D-PA) and make remarks. Following the Senators' remarks will be a panel discussion:

• Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor;
• Ambassador Mark Palmer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs;
• Alan Davidson, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google;
• Richard Fontaine, Senior Fellow at CNAS;
• Daniel Calingaert, Deputy Director of Programs at Freedom House; and
• Rebecca MacKinnon, Visiting Fellow, Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and Co-Founder, Global Voices Online.

Visibly absent from this discussion is the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, which has a strong vested interest in the subject. Posner leads “DRL”, which is in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs.

MountainRunner.us, the leading blog on public diplomacy and strategic communication you’re reading, is now available as an Android mobile application.

Use this barcode to install this program directly on your Android mobile.

MountainRunner.us is also available on Kindle and may soon be available from Apple’s AppStore.

On January 22, 2010, Apple's App Store had a new application from VOA's Persian News Network. As noted last month on this blog, Alex Belida said,

This new application gives Iranians a unique opportunity to get the latest news on their mobile devices and to share with the world the news as it happens in their country. It is a groundbreaking way to expand our reach inside Iran and deepen our relationship with a key VOA audience.

This week, Alex sent me an update. 

[Between January 22 and February 19], there have been 5,040 downloads of VOA Persia's iPhone app via the Apple App Store plus an additional 446 downloads through the Android app site. No info on jailbroken downloads. VOA has received video and still shots through the integrated "report" function but, according to VOA, there has been nothing so far of news value.

The image above is a partial representation of the visitors to www.MountainRunner.us for the month of January 2010. Clearly the issues of US public diplomacy and strategic communication have a global audience.

The Defense Department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) has a new deputy: Sumit Agarwal. Agarwal was previously at Google, previously head of Google’s North American mobile products and before that image products. Agarwal’s demonstration of Google’s mobile technology to Robert Scoble from September 2008 is below.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, The Soft Power Solution in Iran, former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Jim Glassman and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy Mike Doran promotes the active use of public diplomacy for the purpose public diplomacy was intended. Beginning with this unattributed quote from presidential candidate Eisenhower (likely inserted by Mike, who's working on a book on the period), they wrote,

Everything that we do, everything that we say--and everything that we don't do and don't say--should be coordinated to meet this goal. Such a policy would have four separate tasks:

• Provide moral and educational support for the Green Revolution. ...

• Tighten sanctions on the Iranian economy and publicize the connection between regime belligerence and economic malaise. ...

• Do all we can to increase communications within Iran, as well as between Iran and the outside world. ...

• Finally, we should refute, in campaign style, the four key propositions of Iranian propaganda. ...

A serious strategic communications program for Iran could have dozens, even hundreds, of programs like these. It should extend across government agencies with clear leadership and include private-sector participation.

Too often in foreign policy our interests demand that we compromise our core values. With Iran, however, we have been blessed with remarkable luck: Our strategic and moral imperatives stand in perfect alignment. And Iranians like Americans.

The Iranian challenge appears more amenable than any other serious national threat to a soft-power solution. Let's get going.

Indeed. We know Congress is eager for action - for example the $55 million authorized, but not appropriated, by the Armed Services Committees under the VOICE Act. This does include $30 million for BBG, but Increasing resources at VOA - along with increasingly creative access for Iranians within Iran - is not enough.

(Iran's PressTV cites a New Yorks Times article about Senators asking State to spend $45 million that was "earmarked" for countering Iranian censorship, but I have not confirmed whether this is the same VOICE authorization or an earlier authorization or appropriation.)

The ability to share information empowers people, regardless of where they are. Increased access to information is democratizing. It can mobilize, increase oversight and accountability, and improve access to resources and markets, all of which increase participation and standards of living.

It is not surprising then that one of public diplomacy’s chief proponents in Congress, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), wrote about the use of social media as a tool for democracy in Twitter vs. Terror at ForeignPolicy.com.

The US Government’s Voice of America (VOA) released a Web application that will allow users in Iran to download and send content to VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN). The application is available for iPhones and Android’s and will be (is?) on Apple App Store, PNN’s website, and on PNN’s Facebook page.

According to the VOA, VOA has the largest combined radio and television audience in Iran of all international broadcasters, with one in four adult Iranians tuning in to a VOA program once a week. PNN broadcasts seven hours of television daily, repeated in a 24 hour format, and five hours of radio. Programming is also available around the clock on the Internet.

According to PNN’s acting director, Alex Belida,

This new application gives Iranians a unique opportunity to get the latest news on their mobile devices and to share with the world the news as it happens in their country. It is a groundbreaking way to expand our reach inside Iran and deepen our relationship with a key VOA audience.

On Twitter, Dan McSwain asked whether the VOA app protected personal and if SD cards would be distributed to Iranians. Here is the response from the apps developer, Intridea:

The iPhone application does not send or extract any private information from the user's iPhone while submitting any reports.  The reports are indeed anonymous.  … the iPhone doesn't support SD cards.

Several resources that comb news sites and blogs for what they believe is relevant information for those in public diplomacy, strategic communication, or related issues. With one exception, I did not include aggregators that broadcast individual articles via Twitter or blog posts.

• RFE/RL’s The Rundown – An essential read broadly on communication and today and tomorrow’s hotspots. I get it emailed but I didn’t see a way to subscribe through email.
• NightWatch – is an “executive intelligence recap” edited and annotated by John McCreary.
• John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review – a broad (sometimes too broad) coverage of media, academic, and “plain” blog posts on public diplomacy and related matters. Too often the cited headline is the only part of an article that refers to public diplomacy. John is, however, the major aggregator of public diplomacy-related content.
• Public Diplomacy in the News – result set is focused and includes more non-US examples.
• Kim Andrew Elliott – required if you’re monitoring global communication.
• COMOPS Monitor – is an automated aggregator for the “latest links from the blogosphere on Strategic Communication, Terrorism, & Public Diplomacy.”
• Layalina Review – a bi-weekly update of public diplomacy news as it primarily relates to the Middle East.

Feel free to add to this list.

The second annual Democracy Video Challenge for 2010 is underway. If you haven’t checked out the winners of the 2009 challenge, do it.

See also several submissions from students in USC Masters of Public Diplomacy program.

Of possible interest:

Oglivy Exchange's National Security Strategy Lecture Series presents:

Price Floyd
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Public Affairs
Speaking on enhancing communications within the Department of Defense and between the U.S. military and Americans via social media, the new Defense.gov website and other channels.
(Q & A session will follow)

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009   11:30 AM - 1 PM.
Lunch will be served

Mr. Floyd will discuss using social media to expand communication within the 18 year old to 25 year old demographic, an important audience for recruiting purposes; building a platform to increase feedback from troops and their families; developing a forum for enhanced communication with American citizens; and ensuring operational security of military actions in the age of Twitter and Facebook.

RSVP: Contact Ellen Birek at Ellen.Birek@ogilvypr.com or at (202) 729-4231
DATE: Thursday, Nov.5, 2009
TIME: 11:30 AM - 1 PM, Lunch will be served
WHERE:
Ogilvy's Washington Headquarters
1111 19th St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, D.C., 20036

From the US Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership and The SecDev Group comes “Bullets and Blogs: New Media and the Warfighter” (2.7mb PDF). The report is based on a three-day workshop that took place at Carlisle Barracks in January 2008, one of the best events I have attended. It is required reading for anyone (e.g. more then than the Defense community) involved in the modern information environment.

This report is rich with soundbites and recommendations supported by examples, including operations where the insurgents were the first to write the first draft of history, the draft that usually sticks especially when a factual challenge is not made within days or weeks. It will be required reading for my upcoming class as well as a class I’ll likely be teaching in the spring (details to be announced).

This report deserves a better write up, but for now, download and read it yourself and comment below. More information can be found here: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/dime/.

By Ali Fisher

We live in a networked world. Whether known as family, kinship, tribe, village, neighbourhood, community, work place colleagues, or online social network, they are all networks in the sense of being a series of relationships between different individuals.

Social network analysis (SNA) explores the relationship between actors within a network by identifying the points that people "huddle around". Network maps allow a researcher to visualise and analyse data on complex interactions or relationships between large numbers of actors. In these maps the dots (nodes) are actors within the network and the lines (ties, edges or arcs) identify a relationship between the nodes which the tie connects.

Through the maps, groups (or cliques) can be seen more rapidly than a through a text based list. Groups that have high levels of interaction with each other form clusters of dots in different areas of the network map.

Worth watching.