Talking about Strategic Influence and Stuff

Come for the panel, stay for the carpet bombing of Smurfs

Since mid-2022, my primary outlet has been mountainrunner.substack.com. The mountainrunner.us site will continue to exist, and I will occasionally repost articles from my substack here. However, these reposts, like the one you are about to read, will be neither timely nor include all of my substack work. In other words, if you want to follow my writing, I suggest you subscribe to my substack where this post first appeared on 24 April 2023. The substack version of this article includes substantial footnotes that were not copied to the version below.  

Back on 6 December 2022, Dr. Isaiah “Ike” Wilson III, President of the Joint Special Operations University, moderated a panel with Tom Evans, Joint Staff J39 of the Joint Information Warfare Center, and me for an hour-long discussion starting with the question what is “strategic influence” and some of the problems we have in understanding, supporting, and conducting this stuff

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It’s been said…

Time for some words from the past. Whether history rhymes, repeats, or we find patterns regardless, I often share quotes from the past that seem highly relevant to the present. I do this to show that we’ve often been in a situation we think is unique to the present. It is not infrequent that past statements have the potential to reveal deficiencies in modern analysis, framing, and recommendations, but your perceptions may differ.

Below are ten quotes that I previously shared on Twitter and likely elsewhere (email correspondence, articles, presentations, etc.). The quotes are intentionally devoid of attribution below. At my other publishing (and, to be honest, where I primarily publish now) site — https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/its-been-said — each quote is followed by a poll for the reader to select which of three possible years the statement was made. Those polls are time-limited, so pop over quickly as they will close soon. Feel free to leave comments below with your guesses. We’re on the honor system here, so no cheating by Googling or searching this blog.

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The deficiency of “information”

Bio pic of Russ Burgo with the Cognitive Crucible logo inset

This post originally appeared at https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/the-deficiency-of-information yesterday.

I recently listened to the Cognitive Crucible podcast with Professor Russ Burgos entitled “Information supply, demand, and effect.” Recorded two weeks ago, on 13 September, this was a terrific and timely discussion that had me rewinding and taking copious notes. [Full disclosure: I’m on the Board of Advisors of the Information Professionals Association, which hosts the Cognitive Crucible podcast.]

With the CC interview with Russ focused on the military, incidentally, this past Friday, 30 September, I participated in a Glasshouse video chat where I talked about national-level (and non-military issues) around what I prefer to call political warfare. I will repeat my near-mantra that I oppose the label “information warfare” because information is a munition and because the term evokes a narrow aperture, which Russ spoke to in his discussion on definitions. 

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The Irony of Misinformation and USIA

A clear absence of research, making arguments incongruent with history and facts, and unsubstantiated if-then statements are the kind of malpractice that at some point is more than mere accidental misinformation. With the rare exception, modern calls to reincarnate the United States Information Agency skirt beyond malpractice and misinformation and into the realm of disinformation. Calls to “bring back USIA” are prevalent enough to be a genre of its own. And this genre, while well-intentioned, is a Pavlovian reaction based almost entirely on demonstrably false mythologies.

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