World War 01011001

I was averaging a rate of almost one comment per page in yet another RAND report – Hostile Social Manipulation – Present Realities and Emerging Trends – when I reached this statement:

Still, determining whether social manipulation efforts have resulted in attitude, opinion, belief, or behavior change is an incredibly complex task, particularly outside of a controlled setting.

[…]

Given the information available, we cannot determine whether Russian social manipulation efforts have been effective in influencing attitude, opinion, belief, or behavior change in their target audiences. Humans are inclined toward attitude preservation, particularly with attitudes that are deeply held, like those in the political realm. (p. 102-103)

Abruptly, I stopped. If it so difficult to figure out the effects of social manipulation, I thought, then WHAT is the point of this report?

It took me a few minutes’ of browsing my annotated PDF comments to recapture the fascination once again: that we just might be in the early days of a binary World War without truly understanding or appreciating it.

Conflicts typically arise from a competition for resources or when there is a desire to leverage national power by the exploitation of a strategic or economic opportunity. While it might be somewhat of a stretch to describe the current geopolitical stressors as anything like a traditional conflict, there is one resource which has been vital to the various causes for warfare throughout human history: the collective minds and national will which constitute a societies’ public opinion and desire to maintain the status quo.

I have recently defined the concept of “national will to fight” previously; to reiterate those points would threaten my current flow. However, it could be summed up as the desire to pursue a course of action despite the challenges involved. The concept of public opinion – which is a facet of that will – is a more difficult idea to sufficiently condense.

Broadly defined, public opinion is “the collective opinion of many people on some issue, problem, etc., especially as a guide to action, decision, or the like.” This definition pairs eloquently with the aforementioned summary of national will. One cannot effectively exist without the other – whether the threat is a belligerent nation, an influx of refugees, a natural disaster, a drastic shift in societal norms, or a divergence from established laws and/or governance styles. To form a coherent opposition, there has to be a motivation to do so; likewise, the justification for taking a stand must be rooted in the firm beliefs that it is a cause worthy of the effort.

Interestingly enough, the idea that we could easily look at the contemporary issues brought by nefarious intervention via social and traditional media and regard it as a muted global conflict might be based on the constant vying for a fitting narrative to undermine the ability for a nation or group to successfully defeat such intrusions and acts.

In “Hostile Social Manipulation – Present Realities and Emerging Trends,” the phrase “zero-sum” popped up twice:

The purpose of such measures was unitary: to weaken the military, economic, and psychological climate in the West, and by doing so, to strengthen the Soviet Union in what was perceived as a zero-sum game on a global scale. (p. 60-61)

President Xi Jinping has strongly reinforced a quiet but persistent belief among many Chinese thinkers that assumes China is in a zero-sum ideological competition with the West. (p. 108)

Zero-sum is a concept defined as “a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant’s gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants.” This concept recalls my earlier writings on the idea of “risk theory” – that a sort of victory through deterrence has been effective in the past. Looking at the heads of state in late 2019 suggests that there is a potential for levels of strategic thinking going on which is far beyond the comprehension of the average person.

While both China and Russia know from direct experience the value of the firm control of information, what is interesting is that this lesson is finding more direct application and appreciation within our own border. Whether it is the controversial exposes of a “non-profit journalism enterprise,” the fringe conspiracy theories of the origins of the current virus – as well as the official and/or public reaction to the broad range of credibility/disbelief, search engine optimization/manipulation, or foreign political interference, information has truly become digitized, weaponized, and commodified.

This is nothing new – is it a topic I have touched on before:

1Mar2019 Emotional Pliability: “…anger is a relatively cheap and effective emotion to elicit, that emotion is being used to draw more eyeballs to an increasingly competitive media market or scrape up more support for one political party or another.”

19Oct2017 Information Whack-A-Mole: “Current military information-support operations (MISO) are rooted in the control of information which has dominated human history in one form or another – deception, propaganda, and media control.”

13June 2019 Historical Memory and Manipulation: “Today, we have the same problem. The perceptions of history, based on poorly-researched ‘fact’ and burdened with either an intentional agenda or accidental bias, continues to sway public opinion in a dangerous cycle.”

Come to think of it, there is an entire section of this blog dedicated to my amateur perspectives on the matter…

On 7February2020, I reposted a link to “An Open Letter to Both Parties” with my own frustrated observations:

Your Source…

Where do you get your information from?

Where do you get your news from?

Where do you get your biases from?

I can tell you where the possible re-election of Trump will come from.

It will come from the lack of engagement and inability to have a discussion without it devolving into talking points from folks who never liked him in the first place and have never had anything positive to say from day one.

It will come from the “vote anything but Democrat” former moderate, middle-of-the-road, or previously politically disinterested voters who have grown tired of the repetitive accusations and coverage.

It will come from those who tried to attend the various perspectives and issues with patience and empathy – only to have those two qualities abused, twisted, and taken for acquiescence… all out of context and all incorrect assumptions.

It will come from the voices you shouted down or ridiculed, the friends you placed opinion over bond, and the family estranged because of familiar biases.

It will come from the perspectives that, while they might agree on some points of contention or failures of policy, protocol, or decorum, you would never know because that is all that dominates the discussion and it is taken as a given.

Take a look at what you have posted.

Consider the void of engagement and discussion on that which you have shared.

…Then ask yourself a hard question: “Am I part of the problem; am I assisting the divide?”

…

“Delete me if you support Trump.”

“Delete me if you think liberals make sense.”

I vacillate between contempt and frustration… between hope and despair… between participation and withdrawal…

BOTH sides are guilty.

Both sides have their share of greatness and of pettiness.

Both sides are a conglomeration of wisdom and foolishness.

I remain Independent… a friend… a relative… but still independent of party and position. I like it here, but it is not easy sometimes. I will not blindly vote because of – or in spite of – a person or affiliation, but it is quite clear that whoever receives my support… well, that is between me and the ballot box. The current state of emotion makes any other approach unrealistic and a possible exercise in exasperation.

I will continue to write whatever observations I may have, but I am making it clear here: my patience, however thin, is still there. Keep in mind, though: if this post creates unhinged rants from either side, it shall remain as proof to my points as to how far things have gotten and what this means for the future.

Since then, I have questioned my own sources, biases, and motives – both on social media as well as here on this blog…

I have wondered if it is possible that radicalization isn’t something specific to right-leaning politics or religious extremists; can the left and ideologically driven be just as vulnerable? Could it be that the major networks and academia are just as susceptible to the compelling imperative of financial or social benefits?

I have doubted if my words here are even worth the effort I put into them; if the biggest challenge is that most people either refuse or are incapable of reading and considering alternative perspectives renders this blog a lengthy exercise in futility.

This brings me back to the idea of a global war of opinion being a zero-sum game.

The RAND report is halfway finished, and I am sure that there will be much more on this topic to follow. Some notes thus far:

Hostile social manipulation is the purposeful, systematic generation and dissemination of information to produce harmful social, political, and economic outcomes in a target area by affecting beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. (p. 15)

…[I]nformation/influence warfare and manipulation (IIWAM) – ‘the deliberate use of information by one party on an adversary to confuse, mislead, and ultimately to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes.” It is thus a “hostile non-kinetic activity” whose targets are “the adversary’s perceptions.” Their concept of IIWAM is therefore distinct from classic cyberaggression because attacks in the IIWAM realm focus on “damaging knowledge, truth, and confidence, rather than physical or digital artifacts. . . . IIWAM seeks to inject fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and doubt into the adversary’s decision-making processes.

Today, thanks to the Internet and social media, the manipulation of our perception of the world is taking place on previously unimaginable scales of time, space and intentionality. That, precisely, is the source of one of the greatest vulnerabilities we as individuals and as a society must learn to deal with. (Rand Waltzman, p. 5)

Moreover, social manipulation frequently taps into well-established belief systems and social grievances for its effects—beliefs and grievances that must be addressed to truly reduce a nation’s vulnerability to such efforts. (p. 8)

The war of opinion might not benefit the aggressor or the defender in ways that were originally intended. The overall impacts of such efforts are difficult to quantify or assess and the repercussions of these actions may result in drastic and uncontainable consequences both to the victim and to the perpetrator…

Much like every other conflict.

We shall see what this all meant once we gain enough distance from the datum point and have more information to add… again, much like every other conflict.

In the meantime, I shall continue to be fascinated by current events and viciously optimistic that we will find our paths… and minds.