IO and IFO
I talk a whole bunch about information operations. Don’t read unless you want to sleep.
Some comments on a presentation from Phoenix Challenge with regards to conducting an information operations (IO) campaign. The presenter was Noah Shachtman from Wired’s Danger Room column. He identified some lessons to pull from “the two most significant information operations of recent memory.” I’m going to address a few items of interest from his first pass since he didn’t post any of his second thoughts on the presentation.
Shachtman’s first point is excellent, information is moving across the world faster than ever before. Unfortunately, his examples make me think that he believes that information presenting Al Queda or other harmful actors in a bad light is made up.
How long did it take for that rumor to spread that al Qaeda has caught the bubonic plague? Or the zinger about the terror group using gay rape as an initiation rite? (By the way: Whoever in this room came up with that one – kudos to you, sir.)
Rape is a known tactic in the jihadi movement to encourage young people who otherwise have no reason to throw away their life to commit suicide. The Iraqis just arrested one of the prime exmaples of rape recruiters. The idea that Islam’s twisted views on homosexuality wouldn’t come into play in this arena is staggering. The idea that the giver (rapist in this case) is not gay gives a recruiter an out as he convinces the victim that he now needs to be purified in the fires of an explosive device. In the Danger Room comments, someone pointed out that now negative news is flowing both ways a lot of MSM personnel do not know how to handle the information.
The second point on the difficulty of controlling information is good but overstated. Once information is in the public domain, it is impossible to control but as SS points out, interested parties can maintain an “Mafia-like omerta” where information never leaves. The difficulty for us as the military is determining how much information we can release and then making sure that it is simple and clear. (This kind of ignores the fact that the simpler and clearer it is, the more politicians and journalists tend to wrap it in their own IO turning it complex and murky.)
I have no real thoughts on the IO campaign by the Obama administration. A passing thought that much of the Obama IO strategy that Shachtman lauds was in fact symptomatic of the entire Obama effort: they tried something, it worked beyond expectations, and they had no idea how to control it. Which leads to a campaign speech one month after you’ve already won the election and are now responsible for doing something; but I digress.
I do however have a lot of thoughts on the second example: the IO in effect during Operation CAST LEAD. It starts pretty much from the very third sentence of “rather than ease back on the control, Israel tried to exert it more tightly than any military in a long time.” This is directly contradicted by sheer amount of information that the IDF made available on through a multitude of channels. If, as is argued, the IDF didn’t care much about world opinion why were so many videos, interviews, and TTPs made available to the public? Much like the lauded Obama campaign IO strategy, the IDF found people who thought outside the box and used their expertise to get (admittedly) the IDF’s message out.
There’s a bias in Shachtman’s notes that’s pretty obvious, starting with the assumption of motives:
The battle started with a classic piece of military deception – Defense Minister Ehud Barak feigning a peace initiative, and then launching a massive set of airstrikes.
Immediately prior to CAST LEAD, the joint ceasefire between Hamas and Isreal had expired. Isreal requested a renew of the ceasefire based upon Hamas ceasing all rocket attacks into Isreal. Hamas declined. In the face of increasing in-direct fire on civilians, the Isrealis mounted Operation CAST LEAD. Shachtman implies that Isreal was using the offer of a ceasefire as a pretext for waging war. The pretext for war has existed for far longer than Hamas has been in control of Gaza: every time an attack is launched into a sovereign nation, that nation is afforded the opportunity to defend itself.
The “branding” notes are confused. From an objective observer stand-point, the message that the IDF was trying very hard to avoid civilian casualties was clearly received and understood. At no part did the IDF shy away from the fact that they were using high-explosive in very tight quarters; there was no pretense of “dropping flowers, instead of bombs.” Instead, they showed time and time again to the world and reporters like Shachtman that they were very concerned about the impact of their actions both locally and globally. Why would they open up their targeteers, a “secretive unit” to show how much work went into target selection and prosecution? Where stuff started to go off the reservation, it was with an outside actor, the Foreign Ministry, using completely inappropriate terminology to try and piggy back on the IDF’s IO. The IDF was saying “we have a stick and we’re not afraid to use it smartly” while the Foreign Ministry was comparing their country to wild animals in cages. It very much parallels communication issues present between the US State Department and DoD in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Overall, the IO strategy was overall well orchestrated, it was the tactics that were ad hoc. Again, this is very much in line with the Obama campaign IO.
At the conclusion of CAST LEAD, Shachtman says there was a wide swing of opinion against the Isreali operation. This is, again, oversimplified and biased to one side. As the operation drew down, Western journalists began to make unfiltered, unresearched claims about the results of CAST LEAD, much as they had done in previous instances such as Jenin. With the IDF IO strategy still in effect, claims about unprovoked attacks on UN buildings were quickly proven to be false thanks to continued demonstrations of innonce by the IDF. This contrasts favorably with the IO effects from the Lebanon strikes in 2007, where the IDF was unwilling to contradict falsified reports from Hezbollah strongholds. In fact, with the increased transparency on all sides, the world for the first time saw what the Palestinians were doing to each other without any help from the IDF. In that kind of environment, Shachtman’s opinion polls of Hamas approval are about as valid as Saddam Hussein’s vaunted 99% vote.
I think there is a lesson that Shachtman, and by extension much of the MSM, is ignoring. That lesson is that militaries as well as individuals are realizing that journalists are as much a part of the battlefield as any other component. In many cases, organizations are skipping forums that are known to be hostile to their information (BBC, Rueters, AP) and putting information directly out there. Even when an opposition figure listens to some of the information that is placed in front of them (the interview between Shachtman and Gils), they end up abscribing decent motives only to the actor directly in front of them vice the institution that has trained that actor. The context of IO can only really be discerned in the context of influence operations, and in this case I believe that the CAST LEAD IFO effort was much better coordinated, organized, and run than any previous military IFO.
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