US Military Faces Challenges in Countering Adversaries’ Psychological Operations
By Petr Svab
February 17, 2019 Updated: February 17, 2019
The U.S. military needs to upgrade its psychological operations as adversaries take advantage of cyberspace to ramp up psychological warfare on the United States. Yet the military faces a difficult landscape to up its game, based on remarks by several current and former Special Operations officers.
“We need to move beyond our 20th century approach to messaging and start looking at influence as an integral aspect of modern irregular warfare,†said Andrew Knaggs, former Green Beret and now the deputy assistant defense secretary for special operations and combating terrorism, at a Feb. 5 defense industry symposium, the Military Times reported.
What used to be called psychological operations, or psy-ops, is now called Military Information Support Operations or MISOs.
In fiscal 2018, the military spent over $160 million on MISOs, described as “operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals,†in a budget report by the Defense Department Comptroller (pdf).
https://m.theepochtimes.com/military-needs-to-step-up-its-counter-psychological-operations-against-adversaries-says-official_2804616.html
