Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners
Quotes of the Day:
"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into the unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
- Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love
"Disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundation of open societies ¬– not only for the victim but also for the perpetrator. When vast, secretive bureaucracies engage in systemic deception, at large scale and over a long time, they will optimize their own organizational culture for this purpose, and undermine the legitimacy of public administration at home. A society’s approach to active measures is a litmus test for its republican institutions. For liberal democracies in particular, disinformation represents a double threat: being at the receiving end of active measures will undermine democratic institutions – and giving in to the temptation to design and deploy them will have the same result. It is impossible to excel at disinformation and democracy at the same time. The stronger and the more robust a democratic body politic, the more resistant to disinformation it will be - the more reluctant to deploy and optimize disinformation. Weakened democracies, in turn, succumb more easily to the temptations of active measures.
- Thomas Rid, Active Measures - The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it ... This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience."
- George Santayana
1. Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: Early August
2. Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan
3. Sasha Baker tapped for lead policy role at Pentagon
4. Mara Karlin confirmed to lead Pentagon strategy
5. Tucker Carlson’s Spying Allegations Being Investigated by National Security Agency Watchdog
6. Duckworth Calls for Closer Ties to Taiwan, More U.S. Vaccine Diplomacy
7. Renowned epidemiologist says the world 'is closer to the beginning than the end' of the pandemic
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/8-11-2021-National-Security-News-and-Commentary.html?soid=1114009586911&aid=ZiDFqhr40bA
