“Go Tell the Spartans” (1978) was a gloomy Vietnam War movie with one bright spot, the comic relief supplied by a psychological operations (psyops) officer. The audience was invited to laugh at the character and the very concept of psyops.
We’ve come a long way since then, and psychological warfare officers seem to be serious business nowadays. But there were limits to a one-dimensional moniker like “psyops.” The field needed “information warfare” to provide a nomenclature upgrade, a mark of seriousness (like going from “garbage man” to “sanitation engineer”).
Even “information warfare” was not enough. There have been more upgrades: to “cognitive warfare,” for instance. It’s more serious yet (like going from “sanitary engineer” to “industrial waste specialist.”)
More effective?
Tinkering with what we call it is itself a form of propaganda and brainwashing. But as you inflate this “discipline”—and certainly the practitioners are doing that—as you make it more imposing, more complicated, more “scientific,” you lead the unwary into thinking it might be more effective as well.
In this way, psyops practitioners are propagandizing and brainwashing their own higher-ups. Wouldn’t that be natural?
The Red Chinese are doing especially well at this. They’re not only bedazzling their own brass hats, they’re scaring a lot of Beltway types.
Witness the Helms School of Government: “The United States faces a strategic information power crisis as it is losing the cognitive warfare/information power struggle to its foes, especially the People’s Republic of China,” says conference contributor Johnny Davis.
“The United States still operates at the information and psychological operations levels, treated separately. The evidence indicates that the PRC encompasses both the technology and the human-centered methods. The PRC combines traditional information operations with psychological ones and additional methods enabled by cutting-edge technologies like AI, DNA collection and analysis, and technologies designed to link to the brain and influence thinking.”
In this magical, transformative field where BS is transformed into political and battlefield victories, the U.S. is behind!
Lack of systematic operationalization
And so, adds Aleksandra Tirziu, “Western national security policymakers remain largely unprepared to systematically operationalize information warfare strategies. In the U.S. Air Force, for instance, information warfare operations are ‘conducted on an ad hoc basis,’ without ‘clearly delineated roles and responsibilities,’ which makes them unsuited for large-scale, sustained campaigns.
“The U.S. Navy similarly lacks a cohesive operational and tactical framework for future maritime warfare. A ‘War of 2026’ scenario recently published in Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine, highlighted that under its current force structure, the U.S. Navy would be cognitively outmaneuvered.”
“Cognitively outmaneuvered.” Note that the phrase does not refer to a surprise attack or the like but to something less easily defined, maybe a feeling of ennui.
At stake here, you guessed it, is a gravy train.
We need a “sort of comprehensive analysis” that “can be used to predict China’s behavior, inform U.S. strategic communications planning, and craft messages designed to inoculate audiences against Beijing’s narratives. At present, the United States does not have a single entity tasked and funded to perform this cross-cutting mission. To win the battle for the narrative, the United States should designate and fund an organization with the mission of informing whole-of-government U.S. strategic communications planning in ways that help Washington get ahead of Beijing’s influence operations.”
All the psyops rigamarole is here reduced to “narrative.” But still we are afraid.
Enter the ROC
You know who’s not afraid? The Republic of China on Taiwan, which bears the brunt of communist psyops and which has its own psyops unit.
In October, Red China offered a reward for info on members of that ROC unit, which suggests which side may have more to fear from the other.
Taipei’s Ministry of Defense described Beijing’s effort as “crude and inept” and the “despotic and pig-headed thinking of an authoritarian regime.” It was like an unfavorable review of a rival’s psyop; very social-media-like. Ministry officials didn’t need to “designate and fund an organization with the mission of informing whole-of-government.” They called it in plain language. They threw their rotten tomato with no PhD in cognitive science attached.
A bit of good news comes from the Rand Corporation. They think it’s bad news, but it’s good.
According to “one high-risk future scenario…the Chinese military and broader leadership believes that these emerging technologies enable Beijing to predict or otherwise influence” the decision-making of adversaries via psyops. “The most dangerous potential outcome is misplaced overconfidence by Beijing in its ability to deter (or coerce) an adversary to not fight at all or, failing that, conduct ‘perfectly’ tailored operations to appropriately manage escalation.”
Rand thinks that by believing its own psyops nonsense, Beijing could miscalculate in a crisis and trigger war.
But a more realistic possibility is that by acting on its psyops hype, Beijing would make a series of mistakes long before the decision tree yielded a war-triggering event. Rather like the mistakes already being made more generally under the influence of a communist ideology. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
