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Psychological Operations

goarmy.com

111–120 of 191 posts

Re: Psychological Operations

#111
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it likely be an agency performing domestic PysOps, not the military? And I would guess that it would be TS/SCI or higher, so not really known.

Why assume the government is doing it domestically? Plenty of political organizations and lobby groups exist for this exact purpose.

This would be giving the benefit of the doubt that is completely unearned.

Still waiting on proof that Saddam bayoneted babies in Kuwait, and hid WMDs in the desert.

Re: Psychological Operations

#112

Former PsyOp guy here with OEF experience, now working in cybersecurity. Please feel welcome to ask me (almost!) anything, and I'll do my best to respond. edit - this TTP FM [0] (warning, PDF ahead) seems to be freely available, and gives a comprehensive overview of what PsyOp actually does in the modern US Army. Perhaps most relevant for today is propaganda analysis and the SCAME method, a multi-faceted approach to…

Did you ever meet Michael Aquino? Is his paper "From PsyOp to MindWar" widely read?

Re: Psychological Operations

#113
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much warfare is currently happening on social media sites, nationally operated or otherwise? Plenty. Likely more than you or even I realize. That said... > Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign? Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did…

> Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. Well somebody is running massive psyops on the American public then.

We in the Baltic states near Russia are observing a massive shift of antivax, alternative medicine etc influencers, who have been exploiting this "us vs them" so successfully during last years, into Russian war propagandists.

Re: Psychological Operations

#114

Former PsyOp guy here with OEF experience, now working in cybersecurity. Please feel welcome to ask me (almost!) anything, and I'll do my best to respond. edit - this TTP FM [0] (warning, PDF ahead) seems to be freely available, and gives a comprehensive overview of what PsyOp actually does in the modern US Army. Perhaps most relevant for today is propaganda analysis and the SCAME method, a multi-faceted approach to…

hi, my city is host to rapidly growing (foreign) usa war bases.

As an engaged citizen, I notice that local media over the past 10 years have not given this significant change to our town the scrutiny that any similarly sized development would receive.

scandals such as sexual assault are reported by outlets in other cities, but not locally.

what advice can you share to help me understand what is being done to so effectively manage the otherwise useful local media?

Re: Psychological Operations

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things being equal, this doesn't seem like the most likely explanation. It's more likely that there are just a large number of people who agree with what you think are the US State Department's positions. Whether those people have been in turn influenced is a separate question.

Is this tendency consistent over several years, though? Because there are some pretty stark differences between the Trump foreign policy and that of Biden or Obama. I don't imagine that many normal users would be inclined to echo the words of Hillary Clinton and later Antony Blinken, and in between them Rex Tillerson. If they have done that, maybe there is some kind of organized effort behind it.

That's an error.

The state department is not the same as the president. The previous president did not have a significant degree of control over the state department or any facet of the federal bureaucracy, in all reality.

Re: Psychological Operations

#116
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much warfare is currently happening on social media sites, nationally operated or otherwise? Plenty. Likely more than you or even I realize. That said... > Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign? Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did…

> Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. Well somebody is running massive psyops on the American public then.

Well, yeah. It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyops. But beyond that, psyops that generate anger with ingroup/outgroup mentality drive eyeballs, and that means profit. There were reports about troll farms in the 2016 election, I think in Albania or the Balkans, that made a fortune making up us-vs-them stories on both sides.

Re: Psychological Operations

#118

Former PsyOp guy here with OEF experience, now working in cybersecurity. Please feel welcome to ask me (almost!) anything, and I'll do my best to respond. edit - this TTP FM [0] (warning, PDF ahead) seems to be freely available, and gives a comprehensive overview of what PsyOp actually does in the modern US Army. Perhaps most relevant for today is propaganda analysis and the SCAME method, a multi-faceted approach to…

Is this itself Psyops? ;)

Re: Psychological Operations

#119
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, my hypothesis (as I have no discrete data) is that sites like reddit, twitter, HN, tumbler, etc. already have CIA / NSA / "DoD" people both on staff and as participatory users, likely volunteer moderators / admins as well. When you start to think about how many other foreign countries are doing the exact same thing , well, you start wanting to use social media a lot less.

> you start wanting to use social media a lot less fidgets for a minute about whether HN is a social media site

We are lucky that HN effectively only has one staff person. Sort of hard for the CIA/KGB/CCP to seed it while it stays at this stage.

Especially with strict moderation of participants.

Re: Psychological Operations

#120

Former PsyOp guy here with OEF experience, now working in cybersecurity. Please feel welcome to ask me (almost!) anything, and I'll do my best to respond. edit - this TTP FM [0] (warning, PDF ahead) seems to be freely available, and gives a comprehensive overview of what PsyOp actually does in the modern US Army. Perhaps most relevant for today is propaganda analysis and the SCAME method, a multi-faceted approach to…

hi, my city is host to rapidly growing (foreign) usa war bases. As an engaged citizen, I notice that local media over the past 10 years have not given this significant change to our town the scrutiny that any similarly sized development would receive. scandals such as sexual assault are reported by outlets in other cities, but not locally. what advice can you share to help me understand what is being done to so effec…

This is an emergent property of there being a big source of income from a single entity. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds.

It’s not that local media is paid to shut up, it’s that many of the viewers and advertisers directly benefit from the big entity and will become angry at the news unless it has irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of some wrong doing.

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