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Psychological Operations

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Re: Psychological Operations

#71

Post by Sebb767 »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #53
K7PJP wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that /r/worldnews is gamed by western intelligence and diplomatic agencies. The top stories and top comments on said stories are invariably towing the US State Department line.

Quoted post unavailable.

I have the same impression. With the start of the war, the Russian side completely vanished from basically all forums I saw, except if parodied to a maximum for laughs. Part of that is surely that few people that saw Russias side beforehand don't support the war and don't want to defend it, but basically all I see now is complete and utterly black and white. And I support supporting the Ukraine, but I'm afraid this might be the final breakthrough for maximum polarization.

Re: Psychological Operations

#72

Post by wolverine876 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #22
boston_clone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a purely definitive level, no. PsyOp cannot create a campaign (i.e. a coordinated approach to influence with objectives, timelines, etc.) with US citizens as an intended audience, but there truly isn't much difference between public relations / mass communication and some core PsyOp procedures. That said, I think our intelligence community and executive branch did an incredible job of establishing themselves as a…

> I think our intelligence community and executive branch did an incredible job of establishing themselves as a high-credibility source from even before the invasion, allowing them to easily counter propaganda sponsored by Russia or whomever else. I noticed that too, and I've seen a few experts other than you say it. I've always thought that the US fell far behind on information operations. Others like the Russians s…

I realize that wasn't clear and I'm too late to edit the parent: In the past, "I've always thought that the US fell far behind on information operations." Now it seems different. What changed organizationally? Can it be sustained?

Re: Psychological Operations

#73

Post by JetAlone »

acapybara wrote: post #45
boston_clone wrote: post #33

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…

[flagged]

Oh man, forget about white supremacists, antifa and the rest of the fun-house gang, could you imagine if the state departments individually labelled every single US citizen as a potential domestic terrorist, to pre-emptively justify deploying whatever surveillance and psyops they wanted? There's something deeply comical to me about the notion. That seems more or less like the fear that justified the PRISM priapism anyways.

Re: Psychological Operations

#74

Post by Sebb767 »

boston_clone wrote: post #5

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…

Somewhat off-topic, but does your PsyOp experience help you in Cybersecurity? I imagine it's valuable for social engineering or (possibly) getting management to accept that it's needed.

Re: Psychological Operations

#75

Post by TeeMassive »

boston_clone wrote: post #57
mjfl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How evil are you, and your past deeds?

I don't think anyone is inherently evil, but I can proudly say much of my work was oriented toward humanitarianism and democratic initiatives. Call it cliche, but you do win people over with kindness and decency. We worked to build schools, teach farmers about modern agricultural practices, provided medical services, and let women vote or shop by themselves in the local bazaar without fear. We helped reduce IEDs plac…

> Call it cliche, but you do win people over with kindness and decency.

You are probably familiar with the work of Dale Carnegie. A large part of HN find his work to be overrated and obvious at best, while personally so far I found it enlightening and found that the world would be a better place if people actually followed its advice. What is your opinion on his work?

Re: Psychological Operations

#76

Post by boston_clone »

boston_clone wrote: post #24
carabiner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about psyops deployed domestically, against US citizens? For example, there currently appear to be psyops against worker unions, raising the minimum wage, and the potential for a 4-day work week. Were you experienced in these?

> How do you feel about psyops deployed domestically, against US citizens? Short answer is that PsyOp is not used domestically. There are a number of criteria for something to be considered actual factual psyop activity, and a private company attempting to influence US citizens would automatically fall short of those criteria. My work was done exclusively and entirely in Afghanistan.

Should also add that I detest those kinds of influence operations. Much like hacking, there is white, grey, and black classified activities [0]. I'm a bit old-fashioned and prefer to stick toward the white hat side and dabble elsewhere only when necessary, and not treat it like a fair selection.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...

Re: Psychological Operations

#77

Post by deltaonefour »

acapybara wrote: post #45
boston_clone wrote: post #33

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…

[flagged]

>Out of scope until labeled terrorists.

You don't know how big this goes. It started with 9/11 and eventually gave the president unlimited power to use all forms of necessary and appropriate force against all forms of aggression. This includes using agencies to spy on their own people.

Right after the 9/11 terrorist attack, overwhelmed by mourning, congress gave the executive branch broad powers related to terrorism that still exists to this day. That power is scoped in a 60 word document voted on by congress.

That document effects how the government operates to this very day.

To see how it all started listen to this podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/60-wo...

There was one person in that podcast who saw the future for what it was before anyone else. She made a stand and risked her entire career to stop what was to come. Ultimately she failed and that's why we are where we are today.

Re: Psychological Operations

#78

Post by obviouslynotme »

boston_clone wrote: post #49
obviouslynotme wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. They were smaller then and it was still illegal for the USGov to do domestic propaganda before 2014. Twitter is famous for having literal PsyOps officers on staff.[1] 1. https://www.newsweek.co…

The article states that was a UK officer, and not the US.

That is a distinction without a difference.

Re: Psychological Operations

#79

Post by bobthechef »

anon9384929 wrote: post #63
acapybara wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

False equivalence between BLM and Republicans. They aren’t two sides of the same coin. Further, BLM activists don’t blow up federal buildings (and nurseries) or bring zip-ties and gallows to their riots trying to overthrow the government. You sound silly.

No post body was provided.

Re: Psychological Operations

#80

Post by godmode2019 »

I have seen on social media GPT3 bots arguing about some hot topic issue, when you post its given a sentiment score, if favourable to the current agenda of the news story, it is boosted, if not only you and your friends can see it if they try and manually find it.

Some people even had obvious Nivida generated faces as profile pictures.

Its all about controlling what you see, most people will join a crowd, or if they are against a crowd they don't say anything because they, at the end of the day want likes and supportive comments not the hate that comes from going against the grain.

The comments on a story is not separate from the content of the story.

This sort of thing was happening very often 2020/2021 less so now, they might have just gotten better at it.

I am reminded of the London bridge terrorists attack MI5 had a whole catalogue of social media content, posters and news story's ready to bring the country together. I might be able to find a link if I dig through my archives.

Who knows that story I read could have been disinformation.

Written text is a broken medium.

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