The Man Who Mistook The Web for his Sandpit

There's a lot to be worried about in this story US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the Internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

But if the Pentagon thinks it can fight "Terrorism", I suppose "Fighting the Net" sounds like a reasonable idea, and about as likely to succeed. It betrays a fearful organisation that sees everything that it doesn't directly control as a massive threat, and will lead to more bad decisions.

But there are dashes of humour, albeit unintentional

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

[...] Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive. Credibility problem Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

Damn that network thingy, its almost as if everybody is everybody else's neighbour and all they have to do is lean over the fence and, hang it all, they can talk to each other without us being there to control the message or the frame of the conversation or the language of the discourse.

Exactly, the net is, in part, the tower of Babel in reverse, the confusion and separation engendered by mutually incomprehensible language is being undone. OK, its being picked at around the edges, looking for the right thread to pull.

Comments

[Branedy]

I thought this was funny also. The internet is much like any broadcast media. Like Shortwave, it goes every where. But the worst part of this is that is does not provide the results that are expected. If they are producing propaganda, and it's not true, then there are sources, in the same media, that will contradict it, and hence make it a lie. It will be ignored, like any lie, and the source, being contaminated, will be useless.

The fall of the iron curtain has much more to do with Radio free Europe and the Internet as it does with any foreign policy of the U.S.

The foundation of Radio Free Europe was the Truth. Nothing else, just a source of reliable truth. The internet performs much the same delivering verifiable truth. And source that does not will fail to deliver it's message.

Hence government attempts to control the messenger, as opposed to the message, which they can't. The guise is pornography, 'protect the children' and guess what, once the filters are in place, other 'objectionable' subject matter can be eliminated as well.

[Earl Mardle]

I agree branedy. I see, for example, Google's cave in to the Chinese as a huge problem because if China can force Google to filter results, other governments will be close behind, including the US, Australia etc.

My side door is that corporate business in particular, and business geenrally, can't now survive without the Internet, a functioning, mostly whole Internet.

And when it comes to the military industrial complex, the Industrial usually wins. Except for one or two famous times when it didn't. But then we'll have other stuff to worry about than whether or not google is turning up all possible results.