This is probably a good time to endorse the work of the World Beyond War.
And to remind everyone that militarism is a major public health threat, a significant cause of death, injury, homelessness, and disease, a completely preventable epidemic that consists of the large-scale killing, wounding, impoverishing, making homeless, orphaning, and traumatizing of people.
We need to get past the mentality of trying to DOMINATE every domain in the pursuit of the disease of nationalism.
The "chinese concept on information war" link leads to a laughable US army presentation from the early 2000s that includes such nonsense as
"Secondary sound waves in the 3- 17hz range will be the super killers in future wars. It may be possible to use them in intercontinental conflict.
Special human abilities (telepathy, etc.) and mind control. "
as well as mentioning stuff that is basically conspiricy theories like "virus 666".
I wonder how much of our shared and limited resources is humanity going to waste on preventing war and violence with war and violence before coming to its collective sense? How much richer could we all be without this amazing waste, or how much less pollution there'd be?
Perhaps we should let the machines take over soon.
I get the feeling that this was written by somebody frustrated that psyops isnt a separate branch of the military with it's own command structure, and is instead run haphazardly across all branches headed up by people who understand missiles, ships and planes better than people.
This article makes it seem like the DoD is unaware of the work of the CIA. As it probably should be in most cases.
"Further, where DoD and the US government have to compete in the human domain without sacrificing key values or crossing ethical lines, our adversaries often show no such constraint, as evidenced by the growing number of examples of their efforts to destabilize and paralyze free societies"
Right there, hypocrite. If you want to prevail in the human domain, prosecute your war criminals, beginning with Dubya, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden.
You've already lost.
I always find articles like this very interesting, because what they're talking about is manipulating the worldviews, sentiments, desires, minds of people, and therefore behaviors, which is the ultimate goal. This is very intimate, and military people discuss it matter-of-factly.
Not to demonize it. It is a fascinating topic, and one of those "genie out of the bottle" type things. The tools exist, someone is going to use them, therefore everyone has to use them.
Human minds are evolved things, we have always been subject to manipulation. But now, our minds are swimming in a dense ocean of information, awash in it, noise and wisdom alike flowing through us unimpeded, and most people don't even realize this because they don't articulate it in this way. There are no borders, there are good actors, bad actors, irresponsible self serving actors, mixes of all types masquerading as each other, and probably more I didn't think of and mixes of all of it.
In the new world, you have to think about your thinking, you have to understand metamemetics, or you're swaying in the wind generated by someone else for their own ends at all times. How many of my deeply held beliefs are there because someone wants them there? How many of my behaviors are the result of someone else's planning? How many of these beliefs and behaviors are bad for me? How might I become an actor in this realm on my own mind and reclaim my agency?