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?
This is just extension of NGOs, NED, color revolution etc strategies. Yeah people have "right" to self determine and revolt against repressive govs that just happens to be geopolitical adversaries of west, but flip side of that is they also have right to be manipulated into thinking so, or at least past the threshold from thought to action that just happens to destabilize in ways that benefit interests of those who fund said manipulation. There's a reason why western NGO proliferated everywhere and serve as fronts for espionage / manipulation efforts. Now unrestricted internet allow nations with limited physical discourse power - those who can't afford or doesn't have cultural cachet to setup NGOs or thinktanks in territories they want to influence - to manipulate public via online influence programs that rival reach of much better funded actors.
Except, it's a story as old as time. Everybody ever has attempted to influence the beliefs of others. It's a mark of the shallowness of american military intellectual culture that they think they can slap a few new words on this then, like magic, germinate some new insights.
The problem is, convincing anybody of anything is very hard.
>Except, it's a story as old as time. Everybody ever has attempted to influence the beliefs of others.
Using ranged weapons is a tale as old as time, but the invention of the bow and arrow and the invention of the ICBM are still very different. Trying to convince people when you had to talk to them face to face is different than being able to mass print reading materials. Trying to convince people through a limited available bandwidth of a radio station is different than being able to have one of a thousand cable channels. Communicating with a mass audience is different than being able algorithmically modify your communication on a per person basis. It's a mark of the shallowness to dismiss the current information environment and its ability to manipulate mental blind spots as nothing new.
Sure, technique have advanced - but honestly, given what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military is clearly more on the level of throwing faeces than firing arrows, let alone ICBMs.
Given the speed of their collapse, I'm willing to bet there were more people in Afghanistan who believe in lizard people than who believed in the state they built. Ditto Iraq.
I think the biggest problem is, once the words are out of your mouth, you lose control of the message. If you look at something like christianity, you can see there's absolutely no practical way to stop people from taking a message in any and every way possible, no matter how clear it is. Usually, the worst offenders are those who are exceptionally convinced.
> 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.
If you look at the world, such feeling is not only prevalent, it's actually far more disturbing than you think.
For example, all ads industry is built on manipulating human emotions. And surfing the web, you are forced into so many such abusive staff every single seconds.
Look at the web content as well. When people staring at their phones, they are bring manipulated in the literal sense.
And you'll find every one of these AD's producers have a matter of factly explanation, or even glorified one.
Surprising?
Not at all. Karl Max predicted this inhumane end of the capitalism more than a century ago.
If you can predict the death of something with no time constraint, I suppose you'll be right 100% of the time. That being said, capitalism isn't dead. Meanwhile communism has died several times over in that time frame.
I was talking about the ridiculousness of people taking abuses without much care. To OP's point that someone discussing manipulation matter-of-factly.
Capitalism death? Capitalism is the strongest it ever is.
HN now are a playground of people whose attention span cannot be maintained more than 5 minutes, and jump onto stimulation without a strain of sensibility.
Military are the ranchers and rest of us are the cattle. Making us believe they work for us is the wisest thing they did. As soon as government stops being able to gather taxes to pay military what it wants, ugly truth comes out.
At least in the US, military officers don't make a lot of money relative to similar positions in private industry. Their total compensation is often underestimated as it includes healthcare for life, a housing stipend while on active duty, and a pension in retirement, but you might make more as an entry-level software developer than e.g. an Army colonel with 20+ years of service:
The real money in the military-industrial complex is made by defense contractors, spefically the executives and shareholders of companies like Raytheon, BAE, and Lockheed Martin. Corruption in the upper echelons of US military itself, while far from unheard of, is vigorously investigated and prosecuted by bodies like NCIS. "Fat Leonard"-scale scandals do happen, but are rare:
There's plenty of taxpayer money distrbuted to various military actors overtly and as bribes. To see who gets the most benefits you'd have to wait and see who steps in when US government looses ability to tax people or tries to enact something that reduces money stream into military complex significantly.
It's way more educational to look at countries where it already happened at least once.
Sometimes military removes government, sometimes it sides with government and kills enough people to quench the unrest.
The military in the US is a great opportunity for young people (just out of high school) who can't afford college. They identify and promote talent. I know several ex Army guys who served and they are top notch people to work with. The Army paid for them to get masters and phd degrees. They also turned them into great managers who get things done. If you are young and poor but have ambition and drive, the US Army is a great choice.
I also admire the overall benefits program. Great health care, pensions and perks such as USAA memberships are really valuable. So it's difficult to put a number on their total compensation. It's much more than it seems and passes down (somewhat) to future generations. For example, my children can be USAA members because my father was in the Army in Vietnam (50 years ago).
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?