New communication paradigms and the U.S. military
One of the biggest challenges the U.S. military faces in early 21st century is that while it has all the best weapons of mass destruction it has NONE of the best weapons of mass communication. If history remembers either Iraq or Afghanistan, or possibly both, as a defeat, it will be because the Pentagon was not focused on the right things. It will be because the military chain of command failed to recognize, understand and embrace the power of the tweetbomb.
One of the first tweetbombs will likely cause the ‘action’ of sending a vast and sudden surge of 100 million users to a particular website or document somewhere on the internet. Information distribution paradigms that came before Twitter, such as Slashdot or Digg, are famous for bringing surges of tens of thousands of users to websites within a matter of hours, but this is nothing compared to the power that will be unleashed by Twitter. A key difference between Twitter and previous paradigms is that Twitter automatically pushes information to users, whereas previous paradigms relied on users to seek out a specific website to find and act on information. This makes all the difference.
How can an organization that blocks thumb drives ever hope to win an information war? As a society, we need to encourage our best minds to focus on methods of information warfare. Obama is a cult of personality. Imagine a United States where Obama had a twitter account where his followers waited to receive instructions to mobilize and demand that his political agenda be made reality.
It is conceivable in the next few years that a single individual or institution could have more than 100 million followers dutifully waiting to receive a message and take an associated action. Imagine an official Twitter account for the United States or Chinese Government, created with the specific purpose of mobilizing its citizens at a moments notice to respond to a natural disaster, military attack, or any number of other emergencies.
The U.S. government has some trust issues to overcome that it will probably have to face before millions of citizens would be willing to respond to a tweet. That’s really neither here nor there. The key point of this blog entry is that information distribution systems continue to grow more robust and ubiquituous. People are growing infinitely more connected than they ever have been in human history. This will shake up paradigms long taken for granted and rearrange them in ways most people are not ready for.
The U.S. military needs to be paying attention to the technology changes taking place in the United States and worldwide because the wars of the 21st century are likely to be won or lost on LED screens or whatever replaces them. Right now that isn’t happening at the level it should be. DARPA might be thinking about how to win an information war, but corporals and captains are not. Ultimately they will need to start, or the U.S. is going to start losing.
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You wrote:Imagine a United States where Obama had a twitter account where his followers waited to receive instructions to mobilize and demand that his political agenda be made reality.
Huh? Does he need Twitter to do this? And besides, would we not have more to fear from Sarah Palin's use of Twitter than Obama? He at least thinks.
But to your point, the US has already lost Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Libya, all of Europe, and all of South America. It is not the ability to propagandize or mobilize.It is the ability to win the hearts and minds of the public at large. Which Obama has done. Bush could not. If you think Obama is only about his personality, then you have him confused with Miss America.
It's interesting that I didn't mention Obama one time in this blog entry. Sure, Obama has a great cult of personality going. Bill Clinton did too. That's not what the blog entry was about though. It was about whether or not the U.S. military understands information war, not national leaders who practice begging the question.
You wrote: Obama is a cult of personality. Imagine a United States where Obama had a twitter account where his followers waited to receive instructions to mobilize and demand that his political agenda be made reality.
I presumed that this was your example of Obama. If not, I apologize. Perhaps it was a misplaced quote from some other source.
I wrote that the US military has already lost the information war in some countries but I did not cite examples like false stories planted in the Iraqi press, like paying American journalists to "gin up" the war for Iraq.
I think the military does understand the information war and actively uses propaganda to promote its agenda. It has severed communication and internet links around the world as part of its 'command and control' attack planning.
Speculatively speaking, it has had several military missions in satellite communication interception and interruptions.
Like the submarine wars, we won't learn the full extent of this until the next generation of miliotary leaders comes to pass.
In this country, the military's job is to kill people and break things. Information wars are for the politicians. We started losing more than forty years ago, in Vietnam. Of course, the reason we started losing is not a lack of good propagandists. Rather, we've been losing because we pick our battles poorly.
We lost Vietnam because, really, nobody in America gives damn who governs Vietnam, or how. When it became apparent that the war would drag on longer than the Revolution, most Americans decided that it would be better to cut our losses and get out. We'll lose Iraq and Afghanistan in the same way.
To be fair, the politicians have given the job of information warfare to the military, or at least partially so. Military information operations and public affairs could do a better job of handling their tasks. The United States in general is way behind the power curve on the changing nature of warfare. The military's role is ever changing. Yes, it still kills those defined as enemies but the process is much more complicated than it ever has been in the past. We pick our battles poorly because the society that we fight on behalf of keeps changing and the military isn't doing a good job of redefining itself to match the society it represents.
The military's role shouldn't be nearly as complicated as it's become. Fighting for altruistic purposes is stupid. If the Iraqi war were a simple, old-fashioned, imperialistic resource grab, people would be much more enthusiastic about it. Americans will fight for cheap gas, but for democracy in Iraq? Get real!