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Psychological Operations

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Re: Psychological Operations

#91

Post by boston_clone »

Sebb767 wrote: post #74
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.

Thanks for asking; I was wanting someone to bring this up. It certainly does help.

All too often, great ideas are communicated poorly and end up going nowhere, I think. Knowing how to frame something for a particular audience, or helping people feel like they're heard / acknowledged / part of a team, or seeing through pervasive political fogs, and a bunch of other little skills that really boil down to "good communication" and "psychology" have undeniably helped.

Somewhat unfortunately, I'm working on convincing myself that not all persuasive communication is bad!

Re: Psychological Operations

#92

Post by User23 »

boston_clone wrote: post #33
throwaway10242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much warfare is currently happening on social media sites, nationally operated or otherwise? Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign? To the average bloke like me it would seem like discussions on these pages are being "managed" A LOT, but i could not tell if that is the effects of standard propaganda on the population like the news o…

> 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.

Re: Psychological Operations

#93

Post by raidicy »

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…

Do you have any suggestions on materials that might aid in critical or strategic thinking?

How closely related are PsyOp and Public relations/marketing/communications?

Is PsyOp analogous to strategic sophisticated trolling?

Re: Psychological Operations

#94

Post by boston_clone »

Sebb767 wrote: post #69
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…

> 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. Wouldn't operating there also target a lot of non-US citizens? How would you actually go for non-US people that frequent English forums? Also, that the US completely leaves the field to the ot…

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.

Re: Psychological Operations

#95

Post by boston_clone »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #78
boston_clone wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is a distinction without a difference.

I imagine there are at least a few differences in the legal boundaries for the US military and the UK. I can't speak to the latter, but I stand by my claim about the former.

Here's the most concrete anything I could find [0] about relationships between the US media and any PsyOp personnel, but I don't much care to look very hard. You're welcome to look as well.

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

Re: Psychological Operations

#96

Post by jonnybgood »

acapybara wrote: post #48
boston_clone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be foolish to not target such low hanging fruit to manufacture consent if you are trying to influence populations. While I agree at a conceptual level, I don't believe US Army Psyop to have a hand in any of that. However, the government as a whole is not exempt from that claim - see Operation Mockingbird, for example [0]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

"US Army Psyop" is a subset of a subset of US government agencies. https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies https://www.dni.gov/index.php/what-we-do/members-of-the-ic

It doesn’t work like that. You have to understand what set of laws an organization falls under. For example, even though NSA and Army is part of the DoD, they fall under different Titles of US Code which defines their authority.

Re: Psychological Operations

#97

Post by jonnybgood »

giantg2 wrote: post #28
boston_clone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Re: Psychological Operations

#98

Post by jonnybgood »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #66
boston_clone wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were still enlisted, I could get in legitimate trouble - like, UCMJ action with hard labor, docked pay, then dishonorable discharge - for the things I've simply read. I wouldn't admit to that if I were still attached. But to your question - could you share a tweet in particular, or a theme before I answer? I'm not entirely sure what you're describing. Most of his tweets seemed from the hip, unpolished, and frank…

As an example, in the month before Jan 6, he made regular posts showing pictures of people in other countries rioting which he claimed they were doing because they were so upset about America’s “stolen election”. He continually used terminology centered around fighting and rising up around these posts. I remember how utterly contrived it seemed to me, like the posts were intended to spur a certain idea in the minds o…

> I remember how utterly contrived it seemed to me, like the posts were intended to spur a certain idea in the minds of his followers.

I think that’s just textbook political ideologue.

Re: Psychological Operations

#99

Post by graderjs »

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…

Apart from you, are there other PsyOp people on HN? Any operations? If not, why not?

Also, how big is podcasting and youtube?

Also, what sort of tasks are "new recruits" put on when they don't have much experience?

This is a fascinating AMA :)

Re: Psychological Operations

#100

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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