HALF-FULL REPORT 09/01/23

Unconstrained Information Warfare

Information War

The Ukraine War is the first to be documented on social media from end to end. At first, Ukraine had nearly complete control of the information environment. Information control was both a morale booster and a source of international revenue.

However, information quality remains terrible as sensationalist false narratives compete with accurate information. If I were to create a universal law of information, it would be something like Sir Thomas Gresham’s Law Here, which states that bad money always drives out the good. The false narrative always displaces the truth.

The United States is gaining valuable experience with digital warfare as the realization has set in that Russia and China are much further advanced than they understood just one year ago. The information environment is highly complex and depends on sensors in the front and a vast capacity to process data in the rear.

Until 2022, most information warfare campaigns were fought through humans managing arrays of computers. Social media companies were ordered to suppress opposition and amplify the driven narrative. Confusion set in immediately as the army of psyop warriors operating from dispersed locations poorly managed message quality and consistency.

Nobody believes anything now, and this is a disaster for psyops.

The military urgently needs modernized psyop warfare dogma and soldiers possessing the training and intellect to fight in the highly contested information domain. Unfortunately, the military’s efforts to demonize virtue and discipline as it pursues purple-haired and mentally malleable young women make a joke of the deep technical preparation required for modern information warfare.

The battlefield is now well beyond the Fred Flintstone days of dropping leaflets off the ramp of a C-130. We are indeed in a fight for the human mind.

When Fred Flintstone worked at the information quarry, it was enough to use linear planning processes to manage radio broadcasts, leaflets, and the occasional hearts and minds missions. Mr. Flintstone worked in a quarry, a constrained information environment.

Telecommunications were primitive by modern standards, and the internet was manageable by spoofing fake Google search results into targeted territories. The good guys continued to use and advance their primitive methods up until the recent Syrian War. ISIS attempted to counter internet-based psychological warfare by running their sites and snipping the cables to Syrian towns. Consequently, the old leaflet drop methods and chocolate bar passing remained relevant.

Things changed with Ukraine, and the old systems began to show problems immediately because Ukraine is not an information quarry with steep stone walls. It is a modern country with modern information systems.

In the world of psychological warfare, Ukraine is an unconstrained information warfare environment. Internet access rates are high, especially with Musk’s StarLink satellites.

We have learned that many psyop teams lack the analytical prowess to function well in an unconstrained environment.

For example, look at the Bud Light marketing catastrophe. The marketing team fancied themselves as modern information warriors intent on introducing Bud Light to underaged kids to lock them in for life. The queer beer concept appealed to high school kids more than other demographics. Besides the obvious problems of marketing alcohol to children, the marketers made the fatal assumption that their information environment was constrained. This means they assumed that the same social pressures preventing counter-messaging in universities exist nationwide. The Bud Light brand is ruined due to poor analytical skills. Senior execs boasted that the brand could be recovered through increased advertising. This means that the Budweiser organization is not equipped for business in an unconstrained information environment from bottom to top.

The unconstrained information battlefield requires a granular and local understanding of people and cultures at the household level. It takes a lot of work to develop such insight and a great deal of travel. Those who believe psychological warfare’s signals side is more important than human experience and understanding are stuck in Fred Flintstone’s world.

Russia and China send thousands of citizens to the West to build the analytical skills needed during unconstrained information warfare. From personal experience, I have watched Chinese companies install cameras and signal collection equipment near American military bases. The granular difference between an American satellite image and a local webcam reading aircraft tail numbers is vast and deep.

This means that America’s adversaries have a first-mover advantage as they collect data faster and more locally. They can generate propaganda faster than the good guys can counter it with accurate information. The big problem is that the first mover establishes the cognitive biases through which further information is filtered.

Russia relies on state-sponsored information channels such as RT Here and the Greyzone Here to establish a first-mover advantage and hundreds of ties to university professors, journalists, LGBT leaders, and perhaps hundreds to thousands of contracted social media accounts. They get a lot for their money. They block Western media within Russia and are known to spoof authentic Western news sources.

In short, this means that America’s adversaries are deeply invested in unconstrained psychological operations outside China and constrained domains within Russia and China.

Russian and Chinese citizens who use VPNs can now utilize unconstrained information. Hence, the continuous inspection of phones and computers for VPN presence and severe criminal penalties for operation.

By the Way, this link is to psiphon.ca, an internet security tool allowing Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, and others in constrained environments to access information worldwide. This link is for the Windows environment, but Mac, iPhone, Linux, and Android tools are available. I strongly suggest using Psiphon when searching the internet for topics conflicting with the day’s narrative. It is freeware underwritten by Reuters and the AP.

Go to:  https://psiphon.ca/   or use: https://psiphon.en.softonic.com/

Ukraine’s psychological operations are improving, but they erred terribly. by overstating Russian atrocities and creating heroes like the Ghost of Kyiv and the soldiers of Snake Island. Ukrainian efforts burned through precious credibility capital early, suggesting that their psyop warfare leaders were trained to manage domestic, constrained information environments. I don’t know, but I would bet a box of donuts that senior Ukrainian psychological warfare officers were introduced in the Soviet Army or according to Soviet doctrine. They made the same errors that the Bud Light team did, and to this day, many support Russia because of these early “Bud Light” mistakes.

Winning the information war will require the West to establish a first-mover advantage in constrained and unconstrained information environments. We need to anticipate and engage narratives before they emerge. It appears that our intelligence systems cannot do this now. Staffing practices that fail to look for analysts capable of working in complex and unconstrained environments are vastly more important to the nation than hiring for skin color and sexual inhibition.

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Upskilling

The good guys need better training in the unconstrained information space. This is a problem as universities are now controlled and managed, constrained information environments. Therefore, the recent graduate with a spankin’ new degree in cyber and psychological warfare is not educated enough to engage the actual threat. Technical education with sufficient depth to have an impact precludes education in languages and culture. To some degree, AI and complex computer code can manage the language aspect. Going further, perhaps the United States should commission another national lab to produce information warfare software tools.

The mission is to sense and make sense of information and communications as rapidly as possible and then to nip threats in the bud. The problem is that the government’s focus on hiring radical leftists and social misfits into the psyop programs, followed by millions of dollars of training, will create superman-level political soldiers for the Democrats.

The left already owns the germs, healthcare, and education system. They will possess the information space of the future because of today’s hiring practices.

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On The Street

The Department of Justice and local leftist district attorneys are on an anti-Trump hysterics rampage. Collectively, they are trying to maintain a constrained information political battlespace. Trump’s crime? He tweeted without running his commentary through the vast legion of entrenched analysts. Joe Bidon was the antithesis as he hid in the basement during the 2020 campaign and seldom speaks coherently.

The indictments against Trump seek to destroy him to maintain control over the election tabulation process. If the vote count becomes an open-source, transparent process, the locus of power will shift from the careerists to the voters. The careerists say this will end civilization.

Viewing the 2024 election as domestic warfare to prevent the emergence of an unconstrained information space in the United States puts a lot of realism into the situation. Information will become unconstrained, as the Ukraine War has demonstrated.

The United States Government and its agencies have a lot of heavy lifting to do in light of the changing information space. The changes will reach deeply into every doctrine and practice.

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Vivek Ramaswamy

Presidential candidate Vivek recently moved from Cincinnati to Columbus, purchasing a $2.7 million house from the founder of Stanley Steamer, the international carpet cleaning franchise. This price might buy a shack in Malibu, but it buys a whole bunch in Columbus. I know this house well enough and have been in it several times as the founder’s wife is my great aunt, my grandfather’s sister; the home is well positioned on the golf course of one of the local country clubs.

Vivek installed a video and podcasting studio in the basement, with a heavy dose of computers and working space for necessary technicians. My sister lives in the same neighborhood and reports that Vivek paid cash and maintains a surprisingly quiet profile other than the constant stream of black Chevy Suburbans moving here and there.

Now, Vivek is a young guy without practical experience in government. He made his fortune by purchasing the rights to abandoned pharmaceuticals and promoting them for their secondary uses. He did not invent anything, did not build a political machine, and did not lead armies in battle. Instead, he communicated, and he expressed very well.

Physicians became aware of the abandoned pharmaceuticals and their uses and began prescribing them. The money thundered in.

He is not only the first millennial candidate but he has also mastered the communication space in the way that the West should dominate Ukrainian communications. Vivek is skilled in seizing the information initiative and forcing opponents to respond to the cognitive biases that Vivek’s messaging creates. The Republican debate demonstrated that established government figures lacked response tools to defend from Vivek’s unconstrained information warfare, other than ridiculing his gross lack of experience.

The combined forces of government are moving against Trump to prevent his type of communication transparency. If the government cannot break Trump, they will kill him. This is how government works, after all.

Vivek is dangerous because he has the mental speed and technical savvy to preempt opposing narratives. He is often wrong, but he is fast. This is what the establishment fears. Sooner or later, he will vanish from the public stage as the combined force of government moves to destroy him.

Vivek will not be president, but there are more Viveks among the millennials with exceptional technical savvy and information gaming skills. The move from constrained to unconstrained information warfare within politics will only accelerate.

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Beautiful Trouble

Leftists held global conferences post-pandemic to research and update their 1960s Rules For Radicals and other works. The work product is the book Beautiful Trouble. Your neighborhood Democrat ward boss probably attended a seminar or series of classes and plays board games based on the toolbox provided by the website Beautiful Trouble. Here.

The central thesis powering the rise of the New Left mirrors the psyop warfare strategies deployed by American agencies. It is impossible not to view the New Left political strategy as anything but the child of government research contracts issued to universities.

I studied the website, read the books, bought the flashcards and study material, and look forward to discussing the new political strategy behind the Democrats and global leftists. They have networks and blogs, district attorneys, sympathetic judges, and entire media production companies in position and engaged.

Conservatives demonstrated unpreparedness at the Republican debate as Vivek used rhetorical tools from Beautiful Trouble. Whether it was Nikki Haley shrieking something about Israel First or Mike Pence curling his lip, the Republican candidates failed to engage successfully.

We damn well better up our conservative communication game.

Democrats are being trained in modules divided into (and in this order) Tactics, Principles, Theories, Stories, Methods, Debates, Strategy, and Continuous Improvement.

Each modular element mirrors classified military psyop training material. Meaning, that defense dollars were used to create and deploy Democrat party information warfare weapons. Imagine the consequences from the reverse, if Republicans taught their operatives how to overwhelm Democrats using classified military methods.

For the most part, Leftists are determined to maintain constrained communications within their ranks and sympathizers. This is why dissenting academics are harshly dealt with.

On the other hand, they push unconstrained communication and manage emotional scenes onto their opponents.

It is essential to know that propaganda loses effectiveness immediately as it is recognized and called out. Not one Republican at the debate identified Vivek’s use of propaganda tools. They would have easily defeated him had they discussed his sales process instead of his message.

Referencing back to Bud Light. The brand was destroyed because customers objected to the marketing strategy, not just the message. It was clear to everyone with a shred of critical thinking that Bud was trying to sell beer to high school kids through a pop icon appealing to that age group. The Bud Light takedown is an excellent case study in breaking leftist narratives. The beer itself was seldom attacked while the takedown focused on the immorality of using alcohol to sexualize children.

Jack asked me to write the HFR over the next month while he travels from the top of the world (Mount Everest) to the bottom (the geographic South Pole -Brrr).

We will walk through Beautiful Trouble and how leftists use it in the real world.

For instance, their push for Solidarity, Not Aid, just smacked the State Department upside the head with a campaign to classify American Aid to Africa as neo-colonial control through dependence. Eight African military coups, with the latest in Niger and Gabon, were fueled by this redefinition of Aid.

All over the world, we are watching the struggle between information domains through the execution of psychological warfare. The critical thing to know is that the machinations all fall apart when people see that they are a ruse. Propaganda cannot survive discovery.

We can and should win the remaining century’s great political and philosophical battles. I intend to win, and I hope we engage the Beautiful Trouble strategies far more effectively than we dealt with Rules For Radicals.

Mike Ryan is a chemical engineer serving the Iron and Steel, Minerals, Heavy Chemicals, and Fibers industries.