Tag: Political Warfare

Talking about Strategic Influence and Stuff

~ Matt Armstrong

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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Who said it, when, and why? Part II (of II)

~ Matt Armstrong

(This was originally posted at mountainrunner.substack.com yesterday on 28 November 2022. Subscribe there to keep up to date with my writing via email, the substack app, or the substack website. Cross-posting here is a low priority for me, but eventually, all I post on substack should make its way here.)

Happy Monday. I hope you enjoyed last week’s quiz. More important, however, is that you learned something from the answers provided in the post on Friday, “Who said it, when, and why? Part I.” The time spent sharing these quotes, and their context, seems justified when I receive feedback on the posts. One from a retired Foreign Service Officer included this observation: “Every organizational, conceptual, and doctrinal U.S. deficit in the information space was anticipated in the first postwar decade, it seems, and every time the insights were ignored.” Today is not like yesterday in many respects, but the most important difference is not the technology, despite the conventional wisdom, but the breadth and depth of discussions around the issues. The lack of commitment, leadership, depth of analysis, and consistency shown by both the legislative and executive branches is stunning compared to the depth, frequency, attention, and profile of the executive discussions, planning, and legislative actions in 1945-1952, for example. 

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Who said it, when, and why? Part I

~ Matt Armstrong

(This was originally posted at mountainrunner.substack.com last week on 25 November 2022. Subscribe there to keep up to date with my writing via email, the substack app, or the substack website. Cross-posting here is a low priority for me, but eventually, all that I post on substack should make its way here.)

Happy Thanksgiving from an American in Switzerland. Yesterday was merely Thursday here, and with my wife and daughter in the US, I BBQ’d ribs for my son. (Though it was about 39F/4C at the time, it wasn’t a problem with my Big Green Egg.) Though Thanksgiving isn’t really an “export,” Black Friday has a real presence here. Explaining why the sales day is called that and why it’s today is always an interesting experience in cultural exchange. 

I did get out for a short and easy ride on the trails with the gravel bike yesterday morning at 5:15a (see picture). This morning’s planned 5a forest run was replaced with walking the dog while I talked to my dad in California while it was still Thanksgiving there. Priorities.

Now on to some of the answers to the quiz earlier this week I called “It’s been said…” Below are answers to the first six questions since this write-up was getting a bit long as I felt some context was necessary to properly situate the quote to at least infer relevance to the present rather than allow any semblance with the present a mere coincidence. 

Ok, on to the answers… 

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It’s been said…

~ Matt Armstrong

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
~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

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

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

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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Neglected History, Forgotten Lessons: a presentation and a discussion

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

In discussions about how the United States needs to structure its bureaucracies as the nation — and democratic principles in general — is pummeled by propaganda and political warfare, historical precedents are often cited. These examples may be used to show how something worked before or as warnings. For the latter, it is easy to find a reference to the Committee for Public Information as a government domestic propaganda machine. For the former, it is increasingly common to read how the United States Information Agency provides a model to be emulated today. Both are bad takes based on common narratives that are ahistorical and easily debunked, and yet no one has seemed to do so.

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Comment on “The lost art of ideological warfare”

Alice asking the Cheshire Cat for Directions
~ Matt Armstrong

There are plenty of discussions today, and for the past many years, about “information warfare,” “ideological warfare,” and, more rarely, “political warfare.” While some may read these as largely synonymous terms, they should convey different meanings which translates into a differing understanding of the threat and thus the response required.

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