Psyops

2 Comments

As I noted a few months ago, in a sufficiently technological society, control over communications is control over reality.

And so I keep wondering several things:

  • Why haven't US and British forces made it their A-number-one priority to take out Iraqi broadcasting capability? (Clearly they've been trying to do this, but it seems to me like it should really be their absolute primary objective. S.H.'s broadcasts seem to be keeping his troops' spirits up, and giving the Iraqi people the impression that the Iraqi forces aren't doing so badly; surely things would go better for US/UK forces if those broadcasts ended.)
  • How much, if any, of the news we get from American and British sources about the war is completely fabricated, with the knowledge that Iraqis will see these news sources and will be influenced by them? (I gave up believing in conspiracy theories years ago, and this broadcast-fake-news tactic is probably not all that effective until/unless they take out the Iraqi information sources, and if they were really doing this, the news would be more overwhelmingly positive on the US/British side; still, it seems clear to me that if they want the Iraqis to believe something in this world of global information, they can't let contradictory information go out to the rest of the world.)
  • If some of the information being supplied to the public is completely false, will we ever find out? (If it comes out after the war that the US and UK did this, then they'll be suspect as information sources in all future conflicts.)
  • Is anyone working on info-war? I vaguely recall reading an article about American efforts in this direction, hacking Iraqi computers and so forth (also emailing "surrender now!" spam to Iraqi officers); it kinda surprises me that we haven't been more successful if we're really doing this, given the state of computer security. And I imagine the Iraqis have better things to do than hire hackers to write viruses and let them go after American sites, but I'm still a little surprised that something like that hasn't happened yet.

But maybe I've just been reading too much science fiction.

2 Responses to “Psyops”

  1. William

    Great idea, Jed. Sounds like they just bombed the Iraq information buildings where the broadcasts are prepared and transmitted.

    Use your power wisely.

    reply

  2. Vardibidian

    I don’t know if you read the Times op-ed, but Maureen Dowd wrote on this topic this morning. The idea seems to have been that we would keep Iraqi broadcast capabilities so that the provisional post-baath government would have them. It does seem, sadly, that the “New War” that Rumsfeld and his boys had hoped for, where we take out only what we need to, choose our targets with an eye not only towards winning but rebuilding, and don’t have to engage in messy battles, seems to be still in the future. Perhaps the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force was more realistic.

    Thank you,
    -Vardibidian.

    reply

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