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 determining information about enemy capabilities and intentions.
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 or from deliberate/strategic postings.
Obviously the phrasing of my question is limited to platforms that operate in my known languages, but the question applies in a general sense to all social media platforms.
As many of us know, one of the most successful PsyOp propaganda tactics is that of controlled dissent. Funding organizations that present a fashionable yet controlled form of dissent in order to sway public opinion. How much of that is from private actors like Soros, Buffet, Gates, etc and how much is Govt funded? The state defends the interests of those with power, so is there a lot of overlap or is there a lot of internal disagreements?
I don't know psyops well, but I do know just a little about small unit tactics, and I've noticed that certain groups seem to use, at a level sophisticated enough to clearly indicate they know what they are doing, the public information equivalent of the small unit tactics - complementary effects, reinforcing effects, fixing the enemy, the focus on offense and movement, etc.
Is that a fair description of psyops - the information equivalent of more 'physical' tactics? How do they differ? Also, do you notice groups - political groups, companies, governments, etc. - using psyops outside military contexts?
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?
Do you have any go-to public tools for fact-checking or any internal tools that you might have had access to in the past?
More generally speaking, how do you defend yourself against PsyOp in this age with heavily degraded trust in the government and judiciary system in the west particularly?
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?
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.
What do you consider the best NON-FM/TA reference? So many DOD publications seem to be 10% 'military objectives' and 90% 'how to navigate the world's largest bureaucracy.' I tend to find things like monographs from the military's educational institutions a lot more valuable, but then they're narrowly focused which leads to a very fragmented way of looking at things.
Did you notice an increase of techniques or pattern usually related to PsyOps (no matter from which side) during the weeks leading to the Ukraine invasion?
I’m surprised the army literally calls it PsyOp rather than trying to disguise it as something more mild like “Communications Specialists”.
Is there a reason for this?
In my mind it would be to attract better talent that actually wants to do PsyOps rather than Communications, so it’s a good filter to attract smart people that want to do spy-like work.
What possible ethical basis do you have as an individual have to mess with people (lots of them), lying, misleading, misinforming, etc in order to achieve a goal?
Who decides what is a 'good' goal? Does it matter, or do you just do what you are told?
I know the answers - you're just following orders, you believe you are working for the good, etc. These are not valid answers - you cannot pretend the actions you take against others are ok, because you were just following orders.
Order following and misleading others at scale, makes you part of the problem.
> You’ll also use social media [...] to share information meant to help change minds and behaviors in the U.S. Army’s interest.
Back when I used reddit, I almost certainly came across at least two (2) of these folks. I was participating in discussion on $GEOPOLITICAL_TOPIC on a certain subreddit (probably classified as a foreign TA) and on two separate occasions, users DM'd me in a friendly manner and seemed to want to have a good faith chat about it. They dropped lots of unsolicited links, one even said "I wish we could talk about this over drinks", but when I calmly refuted their talking points, they quickly ended the conversation.
At the time it immediately reminded me of the analogous "deradicalisation" psyops in the context of far-right/Islamic extremism.
The key behavior was the "trying to be your friend" bit. They could have just replied to my comments publicly, like a normal user.
Grow your career releasing domestic propaganda now that the 2013 NDAA removed the Smith-Mundt Act ban on domestic propaganda. You too can earn $13k/year posting on multiple social media sites from a flowchart given to you that day. Never let the truth stand in the way of national security interests.
Every conspiracy theory out there seems to revolve around the concept of psychological operations, and they're at least as right as a stopped clock. The problem I see with them is that when a military tactic gets used against civilians, it would seem to make a kinetic response both justified and ethical. This idea that deception is somehow more ethical or acceptable than violence or the threat of it is itself, a psychological operation with real and negative consequences. I get that we're all trained to reject violence and co-ordinate to use shame against anyone who doesn't proclaim that enthusiastically enough, but if an organization or movement uses covert military tactics to dissolve or fabricate norms that result in militarily strategic political and economic outcomes, the unintended consequence is it may morally justify a kinetic repsponse as proportional.
Arguably, a commensurate and proportional response to using psychological operations to destroy the livelihoods of perhaps millions of small business owners would at the very least be a traditional pillorying, if not something more severe. In radically eschewing the idea of violence (even including words and silence in its current definition), we've had the effect of normalizing deception to the point that we're completely destroying trust in institutions, and increasingly, each other, where all the minor incidents of violence that didn't happen because of organized deception now risk all happening at once.
Sure, do psyops against the Enemy, but when you turn them on civilians, it's worth considering you have to live with the people you use them on, and they have long memories.
I would think this specialty would build skills that are well compensated in the private sector: public relations, marketing, political campaigns, journalism, SEO. Since gaslighting and enlightening aren't all that different in terms of PsyOps, also include teaching. Convincing a population that they are being liberated rather than invaded is good training for convincing another population to use chorizo flavored toothpaste.
has a population ever been convinced they were being liberated? seems to me that's more of a lie to tell the invading soldiers to give them high morale until the truth sinks in
To deceive your enemy is a valuable thing. I just watched this excellent lecture on the Colossus machine [0] and learned that our invasion of Normandy was successful in part thanks to US communications being able to "leak" plans to Nazi code breakers and fool them into thinking we would land in an entirely different beach. (The colossus decoding high command communications allowed us to confirm the deception was successful)
OTOH, mass deception of a population is a little newer, and anytime Russian PSYOPS are brought up I like to drop this link [1] about US Army developing social media "sockpuppets" back in 2011, years before we ever heard of the Internet Research Agency (founded in 2013 if wiki is credible)
Now that the disinformation cat is out of the bag, I wonder what kind of internal fact checking tools the Army uses to separate fresh SIGINT from trash. The videos purportedly coming out of Ukraine are impossible to sort through, the strangest thing to me was seeing hundreds of accounts post the same video, instead of quote tweeting or retweeting or linking to a source, just, 'I've never mentioned Ukraine before but here's a video of what's happening right now!'
> To deceive your enemy is a valuable thing. I just watched this excellent lecture on the Colossus machine [0] and learned that our invasion of Normandy was successful in part thanks to US communications being able to "leak" plans to Nazi code breakers and fool them into thinking we would land in an entirely different beach. (The colossus decoding high command communications allowed us to confirm the deception was successful)
The same pattern of confirming the success of a deception via Ultra/Colossus occurred with Operation Mincemeat:
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.
I recommend people looking to understand Russian governments mindset and tactics to take look at this video by Finnish army intelligence expert & researcher. It has decent English subtitles. Quite awakening stuff.
I imagine it would be more or less appealing for persons interested, to see the engineering side contributions of PsyOps. Individuals wearing fatigues sitting moderating social media all night long will be soon forgotten. Like the horse driven plow. The idea of mechanized disinformation as a trend moving forward seems likely. The results of planting personnel into social/familial groups as counter insurgence have been inefficient. this is due to the human condition and our ability to forget key fragments of an operation protocol that is so personalized. Deep undercover agents in the past proved to be high risk for defecting. It is perhaps most efficient in terms of delays to produce systems such as counterfeit blockchain technologies, automated subversion of academic journalism, ect. PsyOPs is really a long term tool beyond elected governments and generations of people. It would involve hardware specifications in manufacturing and global natural resource management schemes.
> The idea of mechanized disinformation as a trend moving forward seems likely.
It think this is no longer a trend but reality. I often post on the Chinese propaganda Facebook page (CGTN), and the nationalists who answer usually use the country of origin to craft their response. America is a fascist state who invades countries. Canada is "America's lapdog". African countries "benefit from China". And so on. When I removed any reference to my country of origin the answers got fewer and weirder, to the point the sentences made no semantic sense. The profile of those answering were obviously fake and looked different but semantically similar. A few pictures of them with landmarks, private friends list, random interests, everything else private. To the untrained and non-careful mind these can more than convincing.
[+] [-] boston_clone|4 years ago|reply
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 determining information about enemy capabilities and intentions.
[0] - https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf
[+] [-] throwaway10242|4 years ago|reply
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 or from deliberate/strategic postings.
Obviously the phrasing of my question is limited to platforms that operate in my known languages, but the question applies in a general sense to all social media platforms.
As many of us know, one of the most successful PsyOp propaganda tactics is that of controlled dissent. Funding organizations that present a fashionable yet controlled form of dissent in order to sway public opinion. How much of that is from private actors like Soros, Buffet, Gates, etc and how much is Govt funded? The state defends the interests of those with power, so is there a lot of overlap or is there a lot of internal disagreements?
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
Is that a fair description of psyops - the information equivalent of more 'physical' tactics? How do they differ? Also, do you notice groups - political groups, companies, governments, etc. - using psyops outside military contexts?
[+] [-] justatdotin|4 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] bgroat|4 years ago|reply
Presumably they'd know what levers you're pulling, and they may be able to pull the same levers in YOU.
Is it just a pay cheque and finding people who already believe what you believe?
[+] [-] jason-phillips|4 years ago|reply
How well were you able to leverage automation and the internet to scale the effectiveness of your mission?
[+] [-] vasuki|4 years ago|reply
More generally speaking, how do you defend yourself against PsyOp in this age with heavily degraded trust in the government and judiciary system in the west particularly?
[+] [-] carabiner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sebb767|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] demadog|4 years ago|reply
Is there a reason for this?
In my mind it would be to attract better talent that actually wants to do PsyOps rather than Communications, so it’s a good filter to attract smart people that want to do spy-like work.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LittleMoveBig|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graderjs|4 years ago|reply
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 :)
[+] [-] raidicy|4 years ago|reply
How closely related are PsyOp and Public relations/marketing/communications?
Is PsyOp analogous to strategic sophisticated trolling?
[+] [-] ta988|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mule1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sam1r|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingcharles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verisimi|4 years ago|reply
What possible ethical basis do you have as an individual have to mess with people (lots of them), lying, misleading, misinforming, etc in order to achieve a goal?
Who decides what is a 'good' goal? Does it matter, or do you just do what you are told?
I know the answers - you're just following orders, you believe you are working for the good, etc. These are not valid answers - you cannot pretend the actions you take against others are ok, because you were just following orders.
Order following and misleading others at scale, makes you part of the problem.
[+] [-] foxhop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterdabb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackees|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mjfl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IAmGraydon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pphysch|4 years ago|reply
Back when I used reddit, I almost certainly came across at least two (2) of these folks. I was participating in discussion on $GEOPOLITICAL_TOPIC on a certain subreddit (probably classified as a foreign TA) and on two separate occasions, users DM'd me in a friendly manner and seemed to want to have a good faith chat about it. They dropped lots of unsolicited links, one even said "I wish we could talk about this over drinks", but when I calmly refuted their talking points, they quickly ended the conversation.
At the time it immediately reminded me of the analogous "deradicalisation" psyops in the context of far-right/Islamic extremism.
The key behavior was the "trying to be your friend" bit. They could have just replied to my comments publicly, like a normal user.
[+] [-] obviouslynotme|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernewds|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
An example of this is the news out of the UK that they used "totalitarian tactics" (their own words) during covid to shut down the entire economy and wipe out a lot of small businesses, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit...
Arguably, a commensurate and proportional response to using psychological operations to destroy the livelihoods of perhaps millions of small business owners would at the very least be a traditional pillorying, if not something more severe. In radically eschewing the idea of violence (even including words and silence in its current definition), we've had the effect of normalizing deception to the point that we're completely destroying trust in institutions, and increasingly, each other, where all the minor incidents of violence that didn't happen because of organized deception now risk all happening at once.
Sure, do psyops against the Enemy, but when you turn them on civilians, it's worth considering you have to live with the people you use them on, and they have long memories.
[+] [-] hirundo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
OTOH, mass deception of a population is a little newer, and anytime Russian PSYOPS are brought up I like to drop this link [1] about US Army developing social media "sockpuppets" back in 2011, years before we ever heard of the Internet Research Agency (founded in 2013 if wiki is credible)
Now that the disinformation cat is out of the bag, I wonder what kind of internal fact checking tools the Army uses to separate fresh SIGINT from trash. The videos purportedly coming out of Ukraine are impossible to sort through, the strangest thing to me was seeing hundreds of accounts post the same video, instead of quote tweeting or retweeting or linking to a source, just, 'I've never mentioned Ukraine before but here's a video of what's happening right now!'
[0] https://youtu.be/g2tMcMQqSbA
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
[+] [-] webmaven|4 years ago|reply
The same pattern of confirming the success of a deception via Ultra/Colossus occurred with Operation Mincemeat:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat
[+] [-] cryptica|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godmode2019|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] erddfre3423|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
[+] [-] disambiguation|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaxedChewbacca|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Linearbandit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
It think this is no longer a trend but reality. I often post on the Chinese propaganda Facebook page (CGTN), and the nationalists who answer usually use the country of origin to craft their response. America is a fascist state who invades countries. Canada is "America's lapdog". African countries "benefit from China". And so on. When I removed any reference to my country of origin the answers got fewer and weirder, to the point the sentences made no semantic sense. The profile of those answering were obviously fake and looked different but semantically similar. A few pictures of them with landmarks, private friends list, random interests, everything else private. To the untrained and non-careful mind these can more than convincing.
[+] [-] The_rationalist|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwaway10242|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] submeta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|4 years ago|reply
https://whyumai.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/skippy%E2%80%99s-li...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Borrible|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archhn|4 years ago|reply