via email
May 31, 2017
Seen on the Web 2364-2438
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Seen at Marine Corps University
DIME: elements of national power –
Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
In The News
Instruments of Informational Power
4. BROADCASTING
Professional Topics
7. CYBER
9. SOFT POWER
15. NARRATIVES
17. BRANDING
19. FOUR FREEDOMS
21. IDEAS OF AMERICA
Countries and Regions
22. RUSSIA
23. UKRAINE
24. FRANCE
25. CHINA
26. NORTH KOREA
27. INDONESIA
Toolkit
Precepts
In The News
● The intelligence community’s authorization bill includes a revived section that would establish a new committee to “counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments,” according to the final text passed on Wednesday evening.
Jenna McLaughlin, Foreign Policy, May 4, 2017
● Section 107.... The Secretary of Homeland Security shall conduct a series of public service campaigns to educate the people of the United States on threats to their cybersecurity and to urge better online practices to ensure the protection of private information. In conducting such campaigns, the Secretary shall offer training in basic skills on fact checking news articles and media sources.
Bill introduced by Senator Ben Cardin, 1/11/2017, referred to Senate Foreign Relations Committee
● Malicious cyber activity from both state and non-state actors continues to intensify and every conflict around the world includes a cyber dimension. The traditional fight we have envisioned across the domains of air, land, sea, and space has expanded to the cyber domain. The United States’ technical superiority is not yet established in this domain: we have to earn superiority in each fight. We can never take our superiority for granted. Our enemies will test us.
● By partnering together, 24th Air Force supports a broad array of programs designed to reach young students, essential to our nation’s success in this arena. A good example is the Air Force Association’s “CyberPatriot” STEM initiative in which our Airmen mentor cyber teams as part of a nationwide competition involving nearly 10,000 high school and middle school students.
● The Army paid a modest “bug bounty” to selected ethical hackers which helped the Army discover dozens of vulnerabilities. Army Cyber Command subsequently shared these vulnerabilities with the Intelligence Community.
● Across the wide-ranging responsibilities, we identified 5 strategic goals: * * * 3. Deliver Warfighting Effects Through Cyberspace: Advance our effects delivery capabilities to support a full spectrum of operations, including cyber, electromagnetic maneuver, and information operations. * * *
● Cyber forces, cyber defenses and defensible cyber terrain are the three main elements that determine the Joint Force’s our ability to achieve the primary cyber missions.
● Violent extremist organizations constitute another focus for USCYBERCOM. For over a decade they have used the internet to publicize their malicious actions to intimidate opponents and win sympathizers.
● The U.S. government workforce is not prepared to deal with the kind of information warfare that Russia used to influence the 2016 presidential election and has continued to use in the elections of other nations, U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency (NSA) Chief Admiral Michael Rogers told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
Jessie Bur, MeriTalk, May 9, 2017
● When asked about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, particularly the Kremlin’s use of information operations, Adm. Michael Rogers, who also serves as the director of the National Security Agency, said the government needs “to publicly out this behavior” and “make it more difficult to succeed.”
John Grady, USNI News, May 9, 2017
Elements of Informational Power
● Leaders in Beijing, Tehran and Moscow invest heavily in such efforts because they understand that their political preferences are best advanced through a strong capacity to communicate ideas. These regimes therefore have developed an array of tools that include cultural, policy and educational initiatives; people-to-people exchanges; and wide-ranging, multiplatform media enterprises, of which television outlets such as RT are only one part.
Christopher Walker, Politico, March 3, 2017
● [The Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] had not developed a regional public diplomacy strategy to identify strategic goals and priorities for public diplomacy programs.
Office of the Inspector General, U.S. State Department, May 2017
● ... given the speed of modern communication, some 10,000 American diplomats around the world often take their cue from statements in the daily briefing .... Formal transmission of official policy statements is usually much slower. In a new administration, a spokesperson who can reflect the views of a new secretary of state is especially valuable, because Foreign Service officers, anxious to get a feel for their new leadership, will be able to quickly determine the underlying premises and the thinking of a new team from even short exchanges with the diplomatic press corps.
James P. Rubin, Politico, May 22, 2017
4. BROADCASTING
● ... the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which coordinates a global media operation, has recognized a shortfall in the US obligation to aggressively message and promote Western narratives among key audiences, an essential cornerstone of U.S. soft power. * * * Because of this tacit acknowledgement of a Western content shortfall, traditional U.S. platforms such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty ... are now buttressed by U.S. non-profit organizations that operate radio stations, such as Spirit of America, which produces counter-points to Russian informatizatsiya in the Ukrainian information environment.
Thomas Lorenzen, The Strategy Bridge, May 9, 2017
● Pro-Kremlin Russian lawmakers have accused the Russian-language services of RFE/RL and Voice of America of using "propaganda" to sow confusion during parliamentary elections last year as part of what they claimed was a broader U.S. influence campaign.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 19, 2017
● Bursts of harrowing SMS text messages are periodically sent to cellphones on the frontlines of the conflict in Ukraine, apparently intended to intimidate members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) into deserting or fleeing their positions. This type of information warfare has been termed “pinpoint propaganda,” a high-tech version of dropping leaflets onto enemy battlefields.
Digital Forensics Lab, May 18, 2017
● ... ISIS have exerted their negative messages continuously through the use of media platforms like radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the internet. A joint team of military professionals operating from Al Udeid AB serve to counter those narratives. Members of the Military Information Support Task Force-Central influence and persuade targets or intended audiences ... to reject those enemy narratives and violent extremist ideologies in order to establish conditions for long-term regional stability.
Air Force Senior Airman Cynthia Innocenti, 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, U.S. Central Command, April 11, 2017
● This is the account of fictitious narrator Captain I. N. Hindsight as he dreams of planning and integrating information operations (IO) in support of a mission in the notional country of Centralia. It intentionally mirrors the narrative style of the classic The Defence of Duffer’s Drift and documents Captain Hindsight’s efforts, and the things that go wrong, over the iterative course of six dreams.
[Report] Dominating Duffer’s Domain Lessons for the 21st-Century Information Operations Practitioner
Christopher Paul and William Marcellino, Rand Corporation, 2016
Professional Topics
● Astroturf lobbying campaigns that coax people into submitting similar comments aren’t new. But the scale (and absolute identicality) of these comments raised eyebrows. Especially when Techdirt noticed that [Ajit] Pai’s supporters had somehow “magically organized themselves” to file their views consecutively in perfect alphabetical order.
Bill Camarda, naked security, May 18, 2017
● Social media platforms may have once been praised as an inherently democratizing force, but in recent years they’ve gained more notoriety for the hate and harassment propogated on their networks. In response, the German government has taken the most decisive action of any democracy yet. In April 2017, the German cabinet passed new legislation on hate speech that the German Bundestag is scheduled to adopt in the summer.
Heidi Tworek, Foreign Affairs, May 16, 2017
7. CYBER
● Cyber warfare should not be thought of as computer against computer, but a much broader concept. It is an effort through cyber space or using a digital means to attack an opponent. These attacks could range from state-sponsored infiltration with the objective of disrupting information systems, to individual hackers trying to make a political statement or influence outcomes.
Marie O’Neill Sciarrone, The Catalyst, Spring 2017
● Q: What do you see as the threat of cyber warfare? A: We have a lot of capabilities. Big states like Russia and China, as well as Iran, are highly unlikely to use their capabilities directly against the United States to disable significant parts of our infrastructure. Attribution is difficult but not impossible and I think that they would know that we would retaliate.
The Catalyst, Spring 2017
● Q: Let’s talk about cyber warfare. Do we have the appropriate budget, strategies, and tools to be engaged a new arena of cyber warfare? Michael O'Hanlon: Absolutely not. If we have a national Achilles heel, it’s this one we’re creating for ourselves in the form of the internet and everything that we’re now depending upon through it and with it and for it. We didn’t even think of this as a realm of likely warfare as we built up the internet. Therefore, we’re playing catch up in an area where there are constant probes and attacks.
The Catalyst, Spring 2017
● Pro-Kremlin outlets share an often-repeated narrative about migrants in the EU Member States. It combines elements of misinformation with a factual background of refugees arriving in Europe in large numbers. The pro-Kremlin narrative focuses on stirring up alarmist sentiments and is supported by a promotion of hate-speech.... the strategic aim is to bring confusion and to stir up controversy in public debates:
Euromaidan Press, May 24, 2017
● ... they’ve all been debunked, and yet you can still find those “news” articles on Facebook. We already know that since the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook and other social media platforms have been in hot water over fake news. Now, thanks to a report from the Guardian, we also know that in spite of Facebook’s new fact-checking system; its partnering with third-party fact-checkers . . . and its new “disputed” tag, which is supposed to be slapped on to dodgy news stories but isn’t always, those fake stories are doing just fine, thank you very much.
Lisa Vaas, naked security, May 18, 2017
● So even though in the end Sputnik didn’t admit it was spreading disinformation, three important conclusions can be made from this incident: first, the fact that Sputnik changed its article three times, apologizing for spreading disinformation, then retracting that apology and backing its original story with a source in the Russian Ministry of Defense, shows that Russia’s propaganda network may not be as coordinated as many analysts assume. Second, legal measures can be an efficient tool to fight disinformation. * * * And third, the fact that second-hand sites participating in the disinformation chain ... didn’t change their articles even after Al Jazeera threatened to sue shows that disinformation, once out, is almost uncontrollable.
Urve Eslas, Center for European Policy Analysis, May 2017
● The media storm surrounding a fake story about a Russian-German girl, who had reportedly been raped by Arab migrants, was a wake up call for German political elites earlier this year. For the first time, they clearly saw the links between Russian domestic and foreign media campaigns against Germany and Russian politics at the highest level.
Stefan Meister, NATO Review Magazine, 2016
9. SOFT POWER
● Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and its suspected hacking of French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign servers, should surprise no one, given President Vladimir Putin’s (mis)understanding of soft power. Before his re-election in 2012, Putin told a Moscow newspaper that “soft power is a complex of tools and methods to achieve foreign policy goals without the use of force, through information and other means of influence.”
Joseph S. Nye, Project Syndicate, May 9, 2017
● “If we implemented this budget, we’d have to retreat from the world and put a lot of people at risk,” [Senator Lindsey] Graham said. “A 29 percent cut means you really have to withdraw from the world because your presence is compromised. That may be the goal of this budget. It’s not my goal. This guts soft power as we know it.”
Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, American Foreign Service Association, 2017
10. WAR OF IDEAS
● [The MBC television series] “Black Crows” is presented as entertainment but, assuming it is widely watched, it has the potential to strike a more potent blow against ISIS than any number of American bombs. This is, of course, only one example of how it is possible to fight the “war of ideas” that must ultimately be won if we are to stop more horrors such as the one that unfolded in Manchester.
Max Boot, Commentary Magazine, May 23, 2017
● Today, in Afghanistan and globally, the United States needs to embark on a long-term strategy, much as it did against communism in the Cold War, to undermine the ideology of extremist groups that prey on vulnerable Muslim populaces in unstable countries. Washington acknowledges the importance of the “war of ideas,” but it must take more meaningful action towards the effort of winning it — and acknowledge it is likely to take generations.
Michael G. Waltz, War on the Rocks, May 12, 2017
11. HYBRID WARFARE
● The most challenging threat scenario is what NATO calls “hybrid war” and what Russia calls “information war,” consisting of actions short of a full-scale invasion that are designed to be politically destabilizing. These tactics include cyberattacks, mass media disinformation and “fake news” campaigns, measures to skew popular opinion against particular local politicians or policies, and Special Operations force deception, such as clandestinely inserting provocateurs into a country to incite rioting that appears to be domestically caused.
Kimberly Marten, Council on Foreign Relations, March 2017
● ... within Russia’s national security establishment there is also a belief that the same non-kinetic instruments – subversion, corruption, disinformation, misdirection – can accomplish the desired results without the need for any shots being fired. This ‘political war’ model is currently in favour because it reflects the degree to which NATO and the West are stronger by every objective index, yet as a constellation of democracies vulnerable to the kind of measures a ruthless authoritarianism is able to employ.
Mark Galeotti, NATO Review, 2017
● ... the West needs to fight back more actively to get its message out to the oppressed populace of Russia. Reinvigorate the instruments of information warfare, such as the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency, that we used to wage the Cold War and give Putin a taste of his own medicine. Our information warriors, unlike theirs, wouldn’t even have to make anything up. Putin can’t handle the truth.
Max Boot, Commentary, April 25, 2017
● This Research Paper methodically examines the strategic logic of the “linkage-based” approach ... outlining the strategy’s core principles and outlining the four bodies of research that inform its key components. First, the framework’s fundamentals of campaign planning ... Second, empirical research regarding how humans tend to interpret information and make decisions ... Third, Tier 1 efforts are designed to mimic the strengths and exploit the weaknesses of militant Islamist propaganda strategies ... Tier 2 efforts are based on empirical research regarding the impact of disruption and disengagement strategies upon violent extremist propaganda networks.
Haroro J. Ingram, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, April 11, 2017
15. NARRATIVES
● Dr. Schmid argues that groups like so-called Islamic State (IS) derive their strength from grand narratives embedded in their ideology and disseminate these through sophisticated propaganda campaigns. Those groups fighting IS, while countering the threat through military force, continuously fail to counter IS’ narratives ...
● Four years ago, the first full-length feature film made by a Crimean Tatar director was premiered in Ukraine’s Crimea. The event was dated to the anniversary of the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland. The film Haytarma is dedicated to this Kremlin’s crime and its victims, as well as heroism, friendship, loyalty, and love during the war.
Ihor Vynokurov, Euromaidan Press, May 18, 2017
● This report describes an extensive Russia-linked phishing and disinformation campaign. It provides evidence of how documents stolen from a prominent journalist and critic of Russia was tampered with and then “leaked” to achieve specific propaganda aims. We name this technique “tainted leaks.” The report illustrates how the twin strategies of phishing and tainted leaks are sometimes used in combination to infiltrate civil society targets, and to seed mistrust and disinformation.
Adam Hulcoop, John Scott-Railton, Peter Tanchak, Matt Brooks, and Ron Deibert, Munk School of Global Affairs, May 2017
● [J.P. Kuehlwein and Wolfgang Schaefer] ... have brilliant ideas about pushing past brands built on the promise of performance and pricing, and into the challenge of creating brand mythology. They go beyond the current school of thought on the importance of being a purpose-driven brand, in which I strongly believe, and beyond storytelling—which, of course, is all the rage as it pertains to so-called content marketing. The power of the myth is irrefutable . . .
Russ Klein, American Marketing Association, September 9, 2015
● Conventional broadcast advertising (radio, print and television) is useful for verbally and visually communicating brand and product benefits, but in an era of consumer empowerment, top-down messaging—or the passive embrace of manufacturers’ wisdom—is no longer enough. Brands need to build multidimensional connections with consumers by stimulating as many senses as possible.
Tom Doctoroff, American Marketing Association, November 12, 2014
● Every country with a major involvement in World War I and II produced war propaganda posters. The U.S. alone produced hundreds of different posters with wide-ranging messages. And these posters certainly weren’t geared to just enticing new recruits to the Army and Navy. The themes and content of these posters called just about every American to action in some way or another.
War History Online, May 25, 2017
● Why don’t we use blackletter anymore? The answer is literally “Hitler.” Nazi leadership used Fraktur, an archetypal variety of blackletter, as their official typeface. They positioned it as a symbol of German national identity and denounced papers that printed with anything else.
Ben Hersh, Back Channel, May 22, 2017
19. FOUR FREEDOMS
● What’s especially striking about FDR’s speech—and relevant to the Trump-Tillerson brand of realpolitik—is not just FDR’s unabashed and unembarrassed embrace of values, but that the main focus of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech was actually his description of “unprecedented” threats to “American security” and explanation of “why the future of all the American republics is today in serious danger.”
Alan Dowd, Providence, May 16, 2017
● For 75 years, marketers have been accustomed to generational cohesion. The Greatest Generation was glued together by their common fight against world tyranny in WWII. Baby boomers were joined by peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll. For a while, it looked like there might again be certain transcendent values that would cleave to the next generation of consumers, millennials who are 82 million strong.... Then came the rest of the story.
Russ Klein, American Marketing Association, March 18, 2015
● He tackles head on what is perhaps the last great taboo—the proscription against linking the Qur’an, the sacred text of a billion Muslims, with violence.
Jennifer Taylor, Providence, May 17, 2017
● Democratic societies have long been seen as the champions of free speech and the open exchange of information, but those very qualities have increasingly become a vulnerabilities [sic] in the digital age, where cyberspace is being used to undermine confidence in governments and political institutions.
Leandra Bernstein, WJLA News, May 15, 2017
● How did U.S. “diplomacy” get turned around wrong this way? The answer is twofold: first, a post-Cold War loss of focus in the government, military, and foreign policy community on the ends and means of foreign policy; and second, a Department of State that has played down, in its institutional structures and culture, traditional diplomacy while advancing an outreach-to-populations, or social engineering model, of U.S. international
James Jeffrey, The American Interest, May 15, 2017
● To remain the leading proponent of Western ideals, the U.S. and her allies should re-imagine the content and context of this narrative, accounting for aggressive and persistent counter-messaging operations in the information environment, and not solely rely on new technological conduits. A back-to-basics campaign can be accomplished by simultaneously solidifying our grand-narrative, explicitly defining our objectives, and institutionally increasing our tolerance for risk. The nation that most convincingly and authentically communicates their narrative, based upon core ideals, will likely become the globe’s preeminent center of gravity.
Thomas Lorenzen, The Strategy Bridge, May 9, 2017
● ... the Pentagon’s culture must change from the current industrial age to one more appropriate of the information age.
General Norton A. Schwartz, USAF (Ret.), The Catalyst, Spring 2017
21. IDEAS OF AMERICA
● America became a great nation for many reasons, but principal among them has been our values. We are great because of them, not in spite of them. If we are to keep America first and remain as great as this administration asserts, we will need to continue to act on those values.
Gary Grappo, Fair Observer, May 23, 2017
Countries and Regions
22. RUSSIA
● Pravda means “Truth” in Russian. But not according to their latest published fib. Actually, fib is too generous a word, it is a bold, blatant, absolutely boldly fabricated lie. A doozy!
Joel Harding, To Inform is to Influence, May 22, 2017
● From the hacking to the disinformation to the political interference to the active measures, it's become fairly commonplace to assume that Vladimir Putin's Kremlin is waging a nonkinetic political war on the West. * * * On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, I have a conversation with co-host Mark Galeotti about the goals and scope of the Kremlin's assault on the West -- and how the West can respond.
Brian Whitmore, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 19, 2017
● The Kremlin is now looking for ways to hinder completion of the Khmelnitsky project once again using black PR. Kremlin propaganda is a formidable tool in the armoury of Russia’s nuclear diplomacy. It knows no boundaries in its attempts to eliminate rivals to Russian business abroad. It is difficult even for the EU to deal with it, to say nothing of Ukraine.
James Wilson, The Brussels Chronicle, May 18, 2017
● ... Putin has made his cybermuscle an essential part of Russia’s influence globally.
Bill Powell, Newsweek, May 18, 2017
● ... as was the case in the 1820s and late 1940s, Russia is aggressively rejecting Western values and opposing the US. Though no one is threatening to attack Russia, anti-Western hysteria is being used once again to divert attention from domestic economic challenges and consolidate support for the country’s leader.
Vladislav Inozemtsev, Project Syndicate, May 17, 2017
● It is time,” [Tatyana] Ross argues, “to honestly admit that the Soviet Red Army having liberated became an occupier.” Taking that skeleton out of the closet will allow everyone to breathe easier But even more, she says, “until we do this, Russia will not have a future” because “Russians will not understand why other peoples are so negatively inclined toward them.”
Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia – New Series, May 15, 2017
● ... the Kremlin has collected a different return on its effort to help elect Trump in last year’s election: chaos in Washington.
Greg Miller, The Washington Post, May 14, 2017
● Perceptions that Russia is a defender of Christendom in an increasingly secular world are not based in reality. Any discussion concerning the relationship between Christianity and Russia cannot fail to take into consideration the Russian Orthodox Church, which dominates practically all aspects of Christianity in Russia. It is well known among Sovietologists that the ROC historically has been used by the Kremlin and serves as an extension of the Russian state and its intelligence services ...
George Barros, Providence, May 12, 2017
23. UKRAINE
● "I was very discouraged by the statements by a number of people's deputies that the closure of Russian social networks is a step towards dictatorship. This is a complete nonsense, because people probably do not know the history. It was propaganda that paved the way toward mass killings and wars," the lawmaker [Anton Herashchenko] told a round table conference in Gorshenin Institute on 17 May.
LB.ua, May 18, 2017
● Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has imposed sanctions on several leading Russian social networks and search engines, ordering access to the sites to be restricted or blocked entirely in Ukraine. Russia reacted angrily hours after Poroshenko's decree was published on May 16, calling it "unfriendly" and accusing Kyiv of censorship.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 17, 2017
24. FRANCE
● Just before the French elections, the long anticipated news hit. Emmanuel Macron, candidate for president of France, suffered a data breach and the data was dumped for the public to download. * * * Macron learned the lessons of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and immediately took control of the messaging and PR:
Gadi Evron, Hackernoon, May 8, 2017
25. CHINA
● ... though China is achieving remarkable military might and economic dominance, Nye would argue that China has only made stumbling progress in becoming a more attractive brand to most other nations.
Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo, Supchina, May 19, 2017
● Chinese state media on Wednesday criticized the United States for hindering efforts to stop global cyber threats in the wake of the WannaCry "ransomware" attack that has infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide in recent days. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) should shoulder some blame for the attack, which targets vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp systems and has infected some 30,000 Chinese organisations as of Saturday, the China Daily said.
Reuters, May 17, 2017
● The Belt and Road Forum is a projection of Chinese power, yes, but it is also a vivid display of the power of Chinese propaganda — a lesson in what happens when truths, half-truths and state-sanctioned talking points, mixed and repeated, begin to pass as fact.
Emily Rauhala and Simon Denyer The Washington Post, May 15, 2016
● First, China’s consumers started boycotting South Korean cosmetics and other products. Then the Chinese government began blocking videos of K-pop bands. Now comes the latest weapon in Beijing’s battle against Seoul’s deployment of an American-made antimissile system: the anti-Thaad rap video.
Gerry Mullany, The New York Times, May 12, 2017
26. NORTH KOREA
Ju-min Park and James Pearson, Reuters, May 22, 2017
● Last week’s global cyber attack has shed light on the shadowy and highly sophisticated team of cyber spies in North Korea believed to be among the best hackers in the world.
Alex Diaz, Fox News, May 18, 2017
● North Koreans are subject to a never-ending stream of scaremongering from the regime’s propagandists, warning that Western imperialists and South Koreans are intent on forcibly unifying the peninsula. “When the North Korean state talks about turning Seoul into a sea of fire, that’s deliberate for its own people, more than for a foreign audience,” Ward said. “The point is to keep their people scared and alert and united.”
Hannah Beech, The New Yorker, May 14, 2017
27. INDONESIA
● Indonesia is a Muslim-majority nation known for religious tolerance, but a blasphemy conviction Tuesday shows the growing power of Islamists and the timidity of opponents.
The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2017
28. SRI LANKA
● The striking similarity of the response to allegations of war crimes extends beyond bald-faced denials. Syria has employed three other key elements of the Sri Lankan playbook. The first is to restrict the flow of information. * * * The second tactic out of Colombo’s playbook is to vehemently contest the limited information that does trickle out of the war zone. Finally, like Sri Lanka, Syria has disputed the attribution of all war crimes it can’t deny, and portrayed its opponent as the only blameworthy actor.
Kate Cronin-Furman, War on the Rocks, May 18, 2017
29. IRAN
● Because of the regime's failure to deliver on its ideological promises over the past four decades, the people mistrust its ability to make Iran an ordinary member of the international community. With Islamic ideology losing its seductive influence, the only way to prolong the regime's life is to reform the economy. But the prospects for such reform do not look bright ...
Mehdi Khalaji, The Washington Institute, May 16, 2017
30. ISLAMIC STATE
● Even as ISIS loses territory and its insurgency is eventually defeated in both Iraq and Syria, it will still be able to pose a formidable challenge to international security. Its media operations will continue unabated and may even increase.
Colin Clarke, The Cipher Brief, May 18, 2017
● The efforts by social media companies are helpful in degrading ISIS’ ability to recruit replacements for their losses. However, ISIS operatives have proven very flexible and innovative with modern technology. The group is still able to inspire and even guide terrorist attacks outside of Syria and Iraq. The United States has had some reported success using cyber-war operations against ISIS. Over time, this capability should receive even more emphasis and support.
Michael W.S. Ryan, The Cipher Brief, May 18, 2017
Toolkit
● “The bottom line is that we are teaching the mechanics of journalism, whether it be print, television or radio,” USAID spokesman Paul Koscak says. “How to do a story, how to write with balance … all of those types of things that you would expect in a professional piece that is published.” But some people, especially those outside the United States, see it differently.
Jeremy Bigwood, Abril de Novo Magazine, May 15, 2017
● ... international pathway programs for colleges in North America. These programs comprise partnerships between for-profit international education companies and not-for-profit colleges that wish to build their brands abroad, attract foreign students to their campuses, ensure foreign-student success, and make money. The pathway program is delivered on the campus and managed by the two parties.
Larry Green, The Chronicle of Higher Learning, May 7, 2017
Precepts
This is a compilation of news, articles, essays, and reports on strategic communications, Public Diplomacy, public affairs, U.S. government international broadcasting, and information operations. The editorial intent is to:
● share with busy practitioners the academic and policy ferment in Public Diplomacy and related fields
● from long speeches, testimonies, and articles, flag the portions that bear on Public Diplomacy
● provide a window on armed forces thinking on the fields that neighbor Public Diplomacy such as military public affairs, information operations, inform-influence-engage, and cultural learning, and
● introduce the long history of Public Diplomacy by citing some of the older books, articles, reports, and documents that are not available on the internet.
Public Diplomacy professionals always need a 360-degree view of how ideas are expressed, flow, and gain influence. Many points of view citied here are contentious, partisan, and/or biased; inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Edited by
Donald M. Bishop, Bren Chair of Strategic Communications, Marine Corps University
Jeffery W. Taylor, University of Mary Washington, Assistant
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