Full Transcript for Influence Operations and Psyops: Information Warfare in the 21st Century

00:04:17,210 --> 00:04:24,110 tells us about how warfare is going to evolve in the 21st Century and and what sort of things we can expect. 47 00:04:24,290 --> 00:04:30,010 And that's specifically looking at ideas like Smart Power, which is are Joseph Nye's ideas, you know, 48 00:04:30,060 --> 00:04:35,960 using the power of soft power and how that combines with hard power and using smart power and all that sort of thing. 49 00:04:36,230 --> 00:04:41,690 So it's going to be slightly unstructured. I've got a bunch of, as you can see, power points. 50 00:04:41,690 --> 00:04:44,960 And there's one specific example of all the campaign we did in Basra. 51 00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:47,510 But if I forget to do it in the formal bit of the talk, 52 00:04:47,810 --> 00:04:51,650 hopefully somebody will prompt me and I'll just run through that in 5 minutes to give you an idea there. 53 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:57,580 And there's a little bit of doctrine as well that I want to show you a little bit about intelligence work and the reason it's something like this. 54 00:04:57,640 --> 00:05:01,180 I can remember all the stuff that I've got there so I can put it up as. 55 00:05:01,250 --> 00:05:04,700 And when. Like what influence? Very good question. 56 00:05:04,700 --> 00:05:08,240 And one of the slight problems that the Army hasn't really got its head around, what influence is? 57 00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:13,970 It has an idea, but it sort of changes every six months. About ten years ago, 58 00:05:14,060 --> 00:05:23,510 the word influence crept into army doctrine as a subset of information ops and information ops as a fairly old chunk of sort of soft effect, 59 00:05:23,810 --> 00:05:27,380 which was very much part of something called J. Three Support. 60 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:33,260 Now, for those of you with a military background, you'll know that J three is the hard, pointy end of the military. 61 00:05:33,270 --> 00:05:38,719 It's the immediate operations that day, or certainly in the next couple of days for regular soldiers. 62 00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:41,750 J three is operations within the next 48 hours. 63 00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:47,340 J Five is operations within the next week or two in the more rarefied world of our effort. 64 00:05:47,580 --> 00:05:50,959 The date since sort of changed slightly, but basically. J three. 65 00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:54,830 J five. This is the act, you know, these are soldiers going out and doing stuff on the ground. 66 00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:58,160 And Info Ops was very much part of J3 three of support. 67 00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:06,650 So we were supporting doing press releases or information operations on the back of kinetic that is violent physical military operations. 68 00:06:07,790 --> 00:06:11,810 It is then moved to become a much greater thing. About five years later. 69 00:06:12,020 --> 00:06:16,880 It evolved into being the sum of all non-kinetic effect. 70 00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:20,300 If anyone wants to stick up behind hand and say, I don't understand what you're talking about, 71 00:06:20,450 --> 00:06:23,570 please do so as I talk because it's much better than ask for the end. 72 00:06:24,050 --> 00:06:30,770 All non-kinetic effective military activity is divided into two kinetic effect things that go by a non-kinetic effect, 73 00:06:30,890 --> 00:06:32,240 which is things that don't go back. 74 00:06:32,510 --> 00:06:40,320 So inference became the sum of all non-kinetic effects that is in our hearts and minds operations, key leadership engagement, 75 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:49,160 interaction with villages, interaction with prime ministers, media ops externally to bring in Indigenous information ops to local people. 76 00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:58,430 So that became influence. It's since morphed even further into being the overarching aim in a lot of what the UK does strategically. 77 00:06:58,440 --> 00:07:01,160 So if you look at some of the manuals we produced, 78 00:07:01,370 --> 00:07:05,980 some of the some words like feature character conflict, which goes by the charming aspect of the mascot. 79 00:07:06,380 --> 00:07:14,750 And if you look at all those sorts of things, influence is now the name of the game, how you get people to do what you want, either by posturing, 80 00:07:14,750 --> 00:07:20,450 by taking an aircraft carrier that we may or may not have outside somebody's support, or by economic power or by military power, 81 00:07:20,630 --> 00:07:26,990 or even using different and other organisations when they can be bothered to, to, to do stuff. 82 00:07:28,190 --> 00:07:34,460 So that in the some of it is what influence is. It starts off as a bit of info ops as an element of it. 83 00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:39,020 It morphed into all non-kinetic effect or the supporting effect that the military needs. 84 00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:44,600 And because of the nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency that we've been doing in the past ten years, 85 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:48,110 it's become almost the greatest sum of everything. 86 00:07:48,470 --> 00:07:51,920 Everything that the military does. And I think there's a decent slide here. 87 00:07:52,580 --> 00:07:59,230 If you look at the US military influence the levers, ignore the writing on the on on display. 88 00:07:59,540 --> 00:08:04,680 This is the military contribution to stabilisation. This is out of a publication GDP. 89 00:08:04,700 --> 00:08:10,759 340 I think it has come out about two or three years ago and you go to all of the activities that we do, 90 00:08:10,760 --> 00:08:16,370 the manoeuvre is, is getting the army to focus on the enemy's weak point to defeat him. 91 00:08:16,550 --> 00:08:22,790 That may be a raid on a compound in a village in northern Afghanistan. 92 00:08:22,910 --> 00:08:26,120 It may be a divisional level operation. 93 00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:31,220 So this is the fighting and these are infrastructure projects of

soft effects. 94 00:08:31,460 --> 00:08:35,750 This is fires, physical destruction made of putting your your kinetic operations. 95 00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:43,130 This is the information activities that support it. And everything is to win over your target audience. 96 00:08:43,370 --> 00:08:48,890 Prime Minister, get a village bit a national population and that is now were influences come. 97 00:08:49,070 --> 00:08:53,879 So it started out as an acorn and it's become this oak and it's as many people point out, 98 00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:57,050 a very vague sort of out because people still aren't quite sure what it means. 99 00:08:57,350 --> 00:09:04,850 And in effect, influence in practical terms is a thing that generals waffle about understanding quite what it is. 100 00:09:05,540 --> 00:09:13,760 BE It's a thing that colonels and majors need as part of their support to the kinetic, kinetic operations. 101 00:09:14,150 --> 00:09:15,980 If you're slightly old fashioned, commander, 102 00:09:16,290 --> 00:09:21,320 you will get influenced to support the kinetic operation that you do clearing a compound of clearing village. 103 00:09:21,590 --> 00:09:28,360 If you're a slightly more enlightened commander, I would add you start off as Moshtarak, a very important operation. 104 00:09:28,370 --> 00:09:32,960 I'll discuss a bit later, a couple of years ago in Afghanistan that we'll start off by saying, what is my end result? 105 00:09:33,140 --> 00:09:37,040 My result is no Taliban and infrastructure projects going ahead. 106 00:09:37,190 --> 00:09:44,350 That is my political aim operationally in my patch of Nadi, ideally north or south or Sangin or wherever. 107 00:09:44,420 --> 00:09:49,370 How do I use my kinetic and non-kinetic to combine to make that happen? 108 00:09:50,030 --> 00:09:53,990 That should be the thing you say influences two things at a tactical operational level, 109 00:09:54,190 --> 00:10:00,710 it's support to kinetic or kinetic is support it to achieve your political objectives. 110 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:07,459 At the local level. It's what some general with a very small hand and a very, very large hand and a very small map will say, 111 00:10:07,460 --> 00:10:11,050 I won't have influence over here and influence over that. So anyway, for those of you who got to that, 112 00:10:11,150 --> 00:10:15,500 that is influence and that what I'm going to be talking about for the next 20 minutes or so and I will move 113 00:10:15,500 --> 00:10:20,090 on because obviously I do want to start waffling a little bit about history of hearts and minds in warfare. 114 00:10:20,330 --> 00:10:27,220 I think it's very important to know what is influence in the history of warfare. 115 00:10:27,230 --> 00:10:32,030 It's about human and the political within warfare. It's due its Maccabees. 116 00:10:32,030 --> 00:10:34,099 It could be the zealots, if you think about it. 117 00:10:34,100 --> 00:10:38,810 I was I mean, one of the fascinating ideas I had recently, and I'm sure it's not mine because I've heard it on the radio, 118 00:10:39,620 --> 00:10:43,580 it was an academic was talking about Jesus, his role as a zealot. 119 00:10:45,380 --> 00:10:52,970 And I was thinking actually everything that he did leading up and I'm not questioning I'm not questioning the whys and wherefores of Christianity. 120 00:10:53,150 --> 00:10:56,150 I just think he's a historical figure. He was a zealot. 121 00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:05,060 His activity in Jerusalem leading up to his to his crucifixion, arguably was a form of propaganda of the day. 122 00:11:05,900 --> 00:11:12,590 In its effect. It was no different to what Che Guevara was trying to do or the IRA is trying to do, is a propaganda of the day. 123 00:11:12,740 --> 00:11:16,040 These were hands designed to fulfil a propaganda purpose, 124 00:11:16,250 --> 00:11:20,420 whether it's riding to Jerusalem on a donkey or whether it's blowing up a barracks in Londonderry. 125 00:11:20,840 --> 00:11:25,459 Some people may have an issue with that, but I think it's useful to to see these things, 126 00:11:25,460 --> 00:11:31,670 to see conflict in the broad and political role historically hearts and minds in warfare. 127 00:11:31,880 --> 00:11:39,350 It has encompassed irregular troops in the 18th century, you could argue the people like Rodgers Rangers in Canada, the Brits fighting the French, 128 00:11:39,350 --> 00:11:45,000 in Canada, in North America in the middle of the 18th century was a form of irregular, almost a form ftf type revolt. 129 00:11:45,710 --> 00:11:53,060 And the Rangers now, the U.S. Rangers, they take their name from Rodgers Rangers initially, which is his British force in the mid-18th century. 130 00:11:54,980 --> 00:11:58,639 There's a link to certainly Algeria and the Caucasus, 131 00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:05,780 maybe in the middle of the last century in terms of types of tactics used certainly by the insurgents, people fighting against European domination. 132 00:12:06,530 --> 00:12:11,120 And again, the bulls as well were very interesting at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, 133 00:12:11,330 --> 00:12:18,830 who I think were the first group of people to fight in a way that was inconvenient and very counterproductive for the Western imperial forces. 134 00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:21,500 The Bulls arguably were the first to make a truce, 135 00:12:21,650 --> 00:12:28,550 and I think a big question mark would actually play to the strength and not to their weaknesses since then. 136 00:12:29,420 --> 00:12:31,120 T.E. Lawrence, a genius. 137 00:12:31,140 --> 00:12:37,820 I'm going to quote from a little bit later who I think had a great deal to say about psychological battle spaces in warfare in his book, 138 00:12:37,820 --> 00:12:40,129 and I recommend it to everyone. It's an amazing reading. 139 00:12:40,130 --> 00:12:46,840 You can do it in a couple of hours with the evolution of a

revolt, an astonishingly brilliant word which resonates, resonate. 140 00:12:47,020 --> 00:12:50,270 And if you want to understand warfare now, read a few. 141 00:12:50,270 --> 00:12:58,270 Lawrence's The Evolution of a Revolt, because in it he and I'll come to the quotes when I can find them in my work here in. 142 00:12:58,300 --> 00:13:03,530 And he was sort of arguing about the yet to be paid his own minds men for battle and he had to understand 143 00:13:03,530 --> 00:13:09,109 the enemy's mindset and the enemy support his mindset and our supporters mindset in the Middle East, 144 00:13:09,110 --> 00:13:10,220 in Europe and beyond. 145 00:13:10,370 --> 00:13:18,680 So we understood the notion that a battle space is not simply what the military now call the jour operating area, but it can encompass the globe. 146 00:13:18,890 --> 00:13:20,660 And I think that was amazingly creative, 147 00:13:20,660 --> 00:13:30,920 considering that he was fighting and leading his his leader advising the king during a time when the First World War, 148 00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:38,540 when you had commanders whose sole aim, whose sole purpose was to march men to the enemy, to try to kill as many of them as possible. 149 00:13:38,690 --> 00:13:43,900 And Lawrence turned that on its head, and that actually what I'm going to do is not have battle. 150 00:13:43,910 --> 00:13:51,590 I will avoid battle, and I will defeat my enemy by tying them down in Medina and all along the railway from the Dean of Asia minor. 151 00:13:51,740 --> 00:13:54,890 And I will defeat my enemy by avoiding battle. 152 00:13:55,010 --> 00:14:00,100 And he did so. And he tied down from about 300,000 Turkish troops at a fraction of the cost of Olympism. 153 00:14:00,350 --> 00:14:03,440 So I'm very slightly into creative warfare. 154 00:14:03,980 --> 00:14:09,350 One of the points I'm unashamedly trying to do is use influence, that is hearts and minds, 155 00:14:09,350 --> 00:14:16,309 operations and understanding of how to win over populations, how to understand the nature of nonconventional and creative warfare. 156 00:14:16,310 --> 00:14:24,590 So I should have said that since then, since T.E. Lawrence, Essawi and the Brits have done a lot of insurgency as well as counterinsurgency. 157 00:14:24,770 --> 00:14:31,430 So you've had a political warfare executive in the last in the Second World War, you had a special operations executive in the last war as well. 158 00:14:32,330 --> 00:14:37,820 You could argue that the Nazis lost the civilizational battle because they had no hearts and minds strategy in Ukraine. 159 00:14:38,060 --> 00:14:39,980 I mean, it is one of the great what ifs in history. 160 00:14:40,250 --> 00:14:46,550 If they've got if the Nazis if the Germans had got a Ukrainian army, which was well within their grasp, if they wanted to, 161 00:14:46,640 --> 00:14:53,720 of 2 to 3 million men who the Russians ever had stood a chance of getting any of European Russia back, I'd argue almost certainly not. 162 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:58,850 But the Germans were phenomenally good soldiers. But unlike the Brits, they missed the bigger picture. 163 00:14:58,850 --> 00:15:03,610 They missed the political objective. I say once again, we lost what Kelly did. 164 00:15:04,870 --> 00:15:10,989 But, you know, if manpower had been the operative, the issue for the Germans in the last war, then getting a Ukrainian army of 5 million, 165 00:15:10,990 --> 00:15:17,500 using hearts and minds, appealing to the Ukrainians, giving them a national identity, giving them the the political aims that they stand for. 166 00:15:17,710 --> 00:15:21,430 I think we probably would have been unstoppable. Very glad that he didn't do that. 167 00:15:21,430 --> 00:15:30,129 Clearly, post-war counterinsurgency, Gulu kits and Thomson, these people are all worth reading again to those of you who don't know them. 168 00:15:30,130 --> 00:15:34,990 David Gillooly was a Frenchman, served in Vietnam and then went and lived in the States. 169 00:15:35,680 --> 00:15:44,020 Sir Frank Kitson Great man. He talked about the continuum between kinetic operations and non-kinetic operations, the unity of effect. 170 00:15:44,290 --> 00:15:49,960 And that's one of the things that Britain and America and all these conventional armies are struggling with now. 171 00:15:50,200 --> 00:15:55,990 The idea of unity, of effect, how do you get the Foreign Office defeated, demoted regular soldiery? 172 00:15:57,080 --> 00:16:01,270 You get combined in an operating area to create the effect. 173 00:16:01,450 --> 00:16:10,570 You create the influence effect that you finally want. Since then, I'd argue that since the 1970s, I think we've lost our way. 174 00:16:10,720 --> 00:16:13,810 We've become addicted to high tech war. We follow the Americans. 175 00:16:13,990 --> 00:16:18,940 Americans are brilliant in many ways, but they've got their flaws. We threw the Americans down this high tech route. 176 00:16:19,030 --> 00:16:21,730 We abandoned the human understanding of the human. 177 00:16:21,940 --> 00:16:27,910 And very importantly, for people like Andrew McKinley, who wrote his book, The Insurgent Archipelago, 178 00:16:28,180 --> 00:16:35,409 he would argue the reason why the Brits did counterinsurgency so well in the post-war period is not because our army was particularly good, 179 00:16:35,410 --> 00:16:42,040 although I think it was very competent. And the use of the idea of minimum force was something that was essential to the British army operations, 180 00:16:42,040 --> 00:16:46,570 that you don't kill more people than you have to. You don't create, you don't engage in brutality. 181 00:16:46,660 --> 00:16:51,910 And a question marks to what extent we believed that and actually practised it, but we certainly argued it, McKinney said. 182 00:16:51,910 --> 00:16:54,310 Actually, the thing was we had political officers. 183

00:16:54,550 --> 00:17:00,460 You had some bloke who lived with them for 40 years or 20 years, and he was a political officer and knew his stuff. 184 00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:05,680 You had somebody in the Afghan hills, you had somebody in the Peshawar Valley who knew the natives, 185 00:17:05,920 --> 00:17:13,360 who knew that the fundamental problem was the breakdown of politics and not simply are not not simply an outbreak of fighting, 186 00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:20,500 because fighting in huge societies generally comes when you had a collapse of a political settlement of some kind or would in fact, some crisis. 187 00:17:20,770 --> 00:17:26,349 And so McKinley argued, the reason we did counterinsurgency so well is because we understood the nuances the people, 188 00:17:26,350 --> 00:17:30,700 the villagers, the ethnic identity, the cultural nuances and all these good thing. 189 00:17:30,940 --> 00:17:39,519 And let me show you a quick slide on that here. Now, I found it's a bit as I apologise, it is a little bit messy if I can find it. 190 00:17:39,520 --> 00:17:47,410 Where is it? There's a great bit of, you know, sort of cultural stuff here. 191 00:17:48,130 --> 00:17:51,760 This is a just a present, a just a product. 192 00:17:51,790 --> 00:18:03,610 This is a guy in in Iraq how to do this nowadays, if we actually this is a guy in an Iraqi Shia who's trying to advise the Americans and said no. 193 00:18:03,700 --> 00:18:08,070 And the Brits as well, he said, can come. You talk about democracy. We've had that with Saddam. 194 00:18:08,410 --> 00:18:14,980 You know, we don't believe a word of it. Actually, we are a religious nation and our culture is our religion in the same way, 195 00:18:15,110 --> 00:18:19,450 in a way that it hasn't been in a place like Britain for 100, 150 years. 196 00:18:20,470 --> 00:18:27,820 And if you want to win over the Shia, this is what you should say, that you're the followers of Jesus and you're the sons of Ibrahim Michael Muslims. 197 00:18:27,940 --> 00:18:31,720 We've come to the Holy Land because you serve us here and we're going to kill Lucifer. 198 00:18:32,050 --> 00:18:37,390 Now, if I have said that to my general officer commanding in Iraq, I would have been sent back home, 199 00:18:37,810 --> 00:18:42,040 probably in a straight jacket and with a very useful diagnosis of being mentally ill. 200 00:18:42,190 --> 00:18:45,190 Because then wonderful, because you just extend your services until it results. 201 00:18:45,580 --> 00:18:50,830 So it would be great because the army could have paid me to write my Ph.D. and I would have go now because I'd be mentally ill. 202 00:18:51,520 --> 00:18:54,910 I'd also be correct because that's what we should have said. 203 00:18:55,180 --> 00:19:01,570 And now, even now in Afghanistan until about a year ago, we have 17 themes and messages. 204 00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:07,930 And if I pin down the the brigadier in the task force and said, give me five of them, he'd probably remember one. 205 00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:15,490 And that's about the Taliban. We know Islam foreigners are you know, we've now got two messages, but it's taken six years. 206 00:19:15,730 --> 00:19:19,510 And I think one of the lessons that we've learned I apologise. I'm running slightly behind. 207 00:19:19,510 --> 00:19:26,080 I'm trying to offer. One of the lessons that we've learned is actually is to get your narrative right and you have to learn very quickly. 208 00:19:26,620 --> 00:19:33,549 And one of the problems that have to be Iraq bureaucratic armed force that we've had, both the US and the Brits and the French and other people, 209 00:19:33,550 --> 00:19:38,200 is that we've learned our lesson very slowly and it's taken us years to get the doctrine right. 210 00:19:38,470 --> 00:19:43,180 And the reason you have an insurgency is because of a political breakdown in the first place. 211 00:19:43,780 --> 00:19:47,740 What we did, unfortunately, in Afghanistan is that we helped to create not more, 212 00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:54,520 not because we were bad soldiers, but because going into Helmand under strain, we created a hornet's nest. 213 00:19:54,700 --> 00:19:59,110 When all the hatred and all the divisions could be focussed on a very small number of British troops. 214 00:19:59,350 --> 00:20:05,290 We don't have to fight like cats and dogs. To stop that posting overrun and slaughtered a lot of Russians up in Kajaki when they 215 00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:09,430 all skinned all the Brits in Jalalabad when they were pretty much all skinned as well. 216 00:20:11,110 --> 00:20:18,010 After that, we have to call an air power to survive, which massively infuriated the locals with people who were sitting on the fence. 217 00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:22,360 So right when you trash my village square, what on earth do you think you're doing? 218 00:20:22,570 --> 00:20:26,890 You're killing my kids, etc.? There's collateral damage. So yeah. 219 00:20:27,570 --> 00:20:30,850 So I'm back to this a more free zone. This is probably what we did in Iraq. 220 00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:32,319 We were taught one of the rules. 221 00:20:32,320 --> 00:20:38,649 And I think another another point of learning that I've got is that in religious countries, you have to talk about God. 222 00:20:38,650 --> 00:20:43,150 And we're not allowed to according to the rules, because God is is a bit touching from the younger man. 223 00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:50,250 So we left the most important idea to the enemy, to the Jaish al-Mahdi, to the army of the Mahdi, 224 00:20:50,350 --> 00:20:55,329 which was run by Muqtada al-Sadr or Muqtada al-Sadr was the need to figure out how we got around it slightly, 225 00:20:55,330 --> 00:21:00,940 because we Allah Akbar in a lot of what we did, and that's the closest we could come to religion by having a nice big Allah 226 00:21:00,940 --> 00:21:05,560 Akbar all day and to almost never get under

the cover because it was in there. 227 00:21:05,830 --> 00:21:13,360 It was in the Iraqi police and Iraqi army literature. By getting the Allah Akbar in, we could at least get a reference to religion in there. 228 00:21:13,510 --> 00:21:17,380 So we didn't have to vacate that absolutely critical cultural space. 229 00:21:17,890 --> 00:21:22,790 And there it is there. Right. I'm going to come on to a few points I'm going to make. 230 00:21:22,810 --> 00:21:26,440 I'm going to get through these quickly. I was actually over. Right. 231 00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:32,290 And think I'm going to run out of time. So I've got enough to say that I always have too much to say from right points I'm trying to make. 232 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:38,920 COIN is a violent political campaign. We've done that. Culture is very difficult to understand and getting it right is absolutely critical. 233 00:21:39,130 --> 00:21:44,440 And we don't have the cultural relationships to know, have societies that we used to have because we don't have the people living in them. 234 00:21:44,590 --> 00:21:47,950 And when we do like the Foreign Office, they are not the adventurous types anymore. 235 00:21:48,070 --> 00:21:52,600 And the Foreign Office, unfortunately, is not the Foreign Office that it was in the days of Empire, which is a shame. 236 00:21:54,700 --> 00:22:01,120 This is a bit of a sort of hegemony in the whole sort of hearts and minds return to the understanding, the human and the political in warfare. 237 00:22:01,570 --> 00:22:06,729 It's all a little bit of a return or it's a little bit of a reality check on the revolution of military affairs, 238 00:22:06,730 --> 00:22:11,890 which I know Ulric and others are studying where the IRA was all about technology. 239 00:22:12,130 --> 00:22:20,740 This is all about human beings. Now, clearly there is a synthesis of the two use of drones, use of technology to listen, to understand. 240 00:22:20,950 --> 00:22:27,309 So you can act on the human. So you can get the intelligence that allows you to kill individuals or capture 241 00:22:27,310 --> 00:22:31,570 individuals rather than kill the wrong people and suffer collateral damage. 242 00:22:31,930 --> 00:22:36,490 So there's a balance between high tech and the human that we haven't had in warfare, 243 00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,899 but the army and the whole sort of we love cruise missiles because we can part one. 244 00:22:40,900 --> 00:22:43,300 Whatever we want is great in conventional war. 245 00:22:43,750 --> 00:22:49,900 But the problem is, as von Clausewitz and other people at MIT, that it conflicts with endlessly about conventional war. 246 00:22:50,110 --> 00:22:55,570 Actually, he talked a lot about partisan warfare when when Napoleon in the French came through Prussia. 247 00:22:56,110 --> 00:23:03,580 I mean, he was absolutely up for doing an assault, a result special operations, executive insurgency warfare out of Vietnam. 248 00:23:03,920 -->

00:23:07,629 And all this good stuff, things on war is all about conventional war. 249 00:23:07,630 --> 00:23:14,020 And I'd argue he actually wrote about I don't think you should have wrote about the Spanish about the Peninsula War, which is still very much with us. 250 00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:18,309 The idea being a peninsula war was Wellington that took a small, very well trained, 251 00:23:18,310 --> 00:23:23,770 irregular force and bulked it out with matters of really angry Spaniards who wanted to kill the French. 252 00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:29,860 And that actually is a model for warfare in our age, for this century, maybe for future centuries. 253 00:23:30,250 --> 00:23:37,360 But the conventional warfare that Van will cause it actually studied, you know, apart from the fact that it's entirely historic, 254 00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:41,740 even if you take conventional warfare and say, right, well, let's take that model and bring it forward. 255 00:23:41,740 --> 00:23:45,370 Now, how often do we fight conventional war? Ten, 15 years. 256 00:23:45,430 --> 00:23:50,620 Every century. How often do we fight chaos in warfare, political warfare, nonconventional warfare? 257 00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:54,700 Probably most years of every century. Certainly that's the rule of the last hundred years, 258 00:23:54,910 --> 00:24:00,820 even with the cataclysmic industrial wars that we've had, and probably which are unlikely to happen again, 259 00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:05,830 because even if you take the idea of a naval war in in in the Pacific between China and the US, 260 00:24:06,010 --> 00:24:13,959 which may be the most likely form of significant conventional war, or perhaps between India and Pakistan against them in a civil maps. 261 00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:18,880 Now, you know, it's difficult to see these conventional wars lasting any length of time, 262 00:24:19,330 --> 00:24:23,710 but chaos wars, political wars, nonconventional wars, insurgency wars. 263 00:24:23,980 --> 00:24:27,780 These are going to be with us for years and decades to come. Right. 264 00:24:28,120 --> 00:24:33,370 Limited warfare is all about sending messages, which is why your narrative is so important in warfare, 265 00:24:33,700 --> 00:24:41,649 and which is why your information operations are important, are not just as a subset, but as an encompassing. 266 00:24:41,650 --> 00:24:49,450 And what is our political game in this village, on this road, in this city, in this country, you know, in this region, at whatever level. 267 00:24:50,170 --> 00:24:53,240 And so it is about sending messages and everything. 268 00:24:53,260 --> 00:24:56,950 Everything that we do is is a message. 269 00:24:56,950 --> 00:25:00,700 And we forget that at our peril. And I think we have forgotten that in a lot of the soldiers. 270 00:25:00,780 --> 00:25:10,410 That we've done in the last ten years. There is a fluidity and insurgency warfare between information and violence because they overlap. 271 00:25:11,220 --> 00:25:15,300 If you're planning a resistance, we're teaching people to sabotage tanks. 272 00:25:15,510 --> 00:25:17,880 You're teaching people to sabotage broadcast systems, 273 00:25:18,120 --> 00:25:25,199 which nowadays has a violent effect because it helps to overthrow the regime in the same way that you're doing violent action, 274 00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:32,100 in the same way that you're doing information activities that lead to violent action by gearing people up to fight, by advising them how to fight, 275 00:25:32,430 --> 00:25:39,600 like the Palestinians did in the first intifada, the first intifada, if you remember, with kids, spontaneous uprising, slingshots. 276 00:25:40,170 --> 00:25:44,310 Very often the way it occurs or sort of, you know, hooded thugs and all that sort of stuff. 277 00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:49,259 So keeping the intifada going, the information campaign was about ginning up the soldiers, 278 00:25:49,260 --> 00:25:56,880 was about charging up the young Palestinians, but also advising them on how to fight, advising them on tactics against the Israelis. 279 00:25:58,650 --> 00:26:02,160 So in the same way that that information campaign hasn't fallen foul of that. 280 00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:11,130 So by having the propaganda the dean bit and explosion better suicide bomber bit of violent action to use that violent action as a statement as well. 281 00:26:11,550 --> 00:26:14,910 So there's an overlap between information warfare and violent warfare. 282 00:26:15,170 --> 00:26:19,650 They feed off each other and they have to be seen of things that are fundamentally intertwined. 283 00:26:19,890 --> 00:26:26,250 And I think, again, we are learning that hearts and minds in practical terms is much more complex nowadays. 284 00:26:26,490 --> 00:26:32,730 Undoubtedly true. I mean, so not have a bomb with a bunch of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, 285 00:26:32,940 --> 00:26:37,170 a computer or a mobile phone, you can pretty much set yourself up as a global terrorist group. 286 00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:42,870 You may not have much success, but it is possible. And arguably that is what elements of Al Qaeda have done. 287 00:26:43,110 --> 00:26:51,300 And al Qaeda is absolutely focussed, as we know. They see themselves that our battle is 90% in the media and it's 10% in their acts of violence. 288 00:26:51,510 --> 00:26:56,760 For conventional war, conventional forces like our own tend to do the opposite, which isn't great. 289 00:26:58,170 --> 00:27:02,730 However, despite the fact that hearts and minds are much more complex nowadays, 290 00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:08,760 we have succeeded less than we should have or failed more than we should have. 291 00:27:08,850 --> 00:27:15,810 Depending on what your slant is, in part because we have forgotten most of the lessons that we originally lacked. 292 00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:22,139 And that for me has been the really painful thing

about watching our own armed forces. 293 00:27:22,140 --> 00:27:28,379 And when I've been serving with them, my job is to thank them, allow them to have a little bit of not oversight, 294 00:27:28,380 --> 00:27:36,090 but to nose around the elements of of Division one headquarters or to get out in the crowd with troops from a company level down. 295 00:27:36,420 --> 00:27:41,400 I think the Brits are probably the Americans are going to do fantastically good job because they have to interact with locals. 296 00:27:41,670 --> 00:27:44,820 They are forced to take hearts and minds seriously. They are forced to engage. 297 00:27:44,970 --> 00:27:48,090 They're forced to pick up intelligence and information and life. 298 00:27:48,690 --> 00:27:58,980 But above that level, there has been a corporate and institution and institutional forgetting of of what we have been about. 299 00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:04,079 But I'm going to stop there because I'm just going to go through. If anyone is interested in this, 300 00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:08,309 just the having a quick look at doctrine for those of you who are interested and I know 301 00:28:08,310 --> 00:28:11,790 I'm sort of I know this is a bit of the sort of nuts and bolts bread and butter piece, 302 00:28:11,790 --> 00:28:16,559 but I hope it's going to be quite useful. And then I'll go and some general points provided I can find the bit of paper 303 00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:20,640 that has it looking at some of the research that may be of interest to you, 304 00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:26,620 but also then looking a little bit just as the future and what the future may hold in terms of warfare. 305 00:28:26,620 --> 00:28:32,280 And that'll be about another ten, 10 minutes or so. And then maybe questions I think will be talking a bit too much about doctrine. 306 00:28:32,820 --> 00:28:43,110 22 First influence terminology of influence in in Gwp three eight Information Officers 2002 Then there's a 307 00:28:43,620 --> 00:28:49,830 lot of other references to influence and influence operations within military affects approach to warfare. 308 00:28:50,610 --> 00:28:56,309 So JD, JD and one of five. JD And four or five looked at the comprehensive approach and I'm just going to 309 00:28:56,310 --> 00:29:00,570 throw up a couple of slides on that now to give you some idea of the confusion. 310 00:29:00,750 --> 00:29:04,380 When we think about the military, we always think the military are very swept up in what they're doing. 311 00:29:04,620 --> 00:29:10,560 And if the military say something very smart or if the military say something, there's only a very good reason because they're very smart people. 312 00:29:11,340 --> 00:29:15,870 I was talking to Professor Strewn about this, and actually one of the things he said was that really wasn't the case. 313 00:29:16,140 --> 00:29:20,850 So if you look at the comprehensive approach here, we see what a sort of intellectual method is. 314 00:29:20,850

--> 00:29:24,990 And I'm sorry to be negative. I know there's strong points about it. I'm not disagreeing with everything. 315 00:29:26,580 --> 00:29:30,420 The comprehensive approach is being a defence aptitude. So you've got the second problem. 316 00:29:30,420 --> 00:29:32,970 You've got the UK approach to campaign, you've got capability, 317 00:29:33,270 --> 00:29:40,170 which is to get the people you've got understanding and you've got well now clearly you need desire to do something that's absolutely true, 318 00:29:40,470 --> 00:29:45,630 but understanding in terms of G-2 and capability are pretty much the same thing, I'd argue. 319 00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:49,560 So why is intelligence gathering different from capability? 320 00:29:49,770 --> 00:29:55,919 It's absolutely not. So I think that is a fundamental flaw that if you take out that you end up with capability. 321 00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:00,630 Well, then if you look at joint action fires blowing things up, it's called the propaganda of the. 322 00:30:01,820 --> 00:30:05,030 Now, that is part of inference. That's part of the psychological approach. 323 00:30:05,180 --> 00:30:07,190 That's part of the psychological understanding. 324 00:30:07,790 --> 00:30:15,020 You know, manoeuvre is allegedly not part of includes any influences fits into manoeuvre anyway according to according to doctrine writing. 325 00:30:15,260 --> 00:30:21,530 But I don't understand the difference between father and influence, because influence surely is an outcome of manoeuvre. 326 00:30:21,570 --> 00:30:25,130 Getting your man in the right place at the right time to kill the enemy or capture the enemy. 327 00:30:25,940 --> 00:30:31,190 And it's also an outcome of fires, putting bombs down or dropping leaflets on a specific area. 328 00:30:31,430 --> 00:30:35,030 So, again, there is a lack of sort of intellectual rigour and intellectual credibility there. 329 00:30:35,330 --> 00:30:41,000 And again I don't we need Connecticut non-kinetic. Then moving further down opsec coordinating ops. 330 00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:45,560 Well, sac has got nothing to do with influence and media ops tend to be terrible gossips anyway. 331 00:30:46,340 --> 00:30:49,460 So that's a bit of a coordinating oxygen media. 332 00:30:49,490 --> 00:30:55,250 No, coordinating there is influence because influence is coordinating off for all non-kinetic effect. 333 00:30:55,730 --> 00:30:59,660 So why is media, though, and media as a subset of something that should be higher up the chain? 334 00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:05,840 Likewise, information ops and civics stabilisation is one of the great themes which should be much higher. 335 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:11,390 So again, there's a lack of credibility, that sort of a lack of intellectual rigour and all those sort of areas. 336 00:31:11,510 --> 00:31:16,420 And then moving down to the tools and techniques. Well, physical destruction, I'm not sure it's a tool and technique. 337 00:31:16,430 --> 00:31:19,249 And again, I think that is the wrong place. Special capability. 338 00:31:19,250 --> 00:31:23,930 Electronic warfare has got nothing to do with key leadership engagement, which is related to it. 339 00:31:24,180 --> 00:31:28,489 PSYOPS actually infuses everything that we're talking about. 340 00:31:28,490 --> 00:31:32,629 All the different bubbles completely. What was that come to? 341 00:31:32,630 --> 00:31:37,610 Come on again. Wrong place. It's not a tactical. It's much more of an operational issue. 342 00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:40,429 So if you're going to look at information operations, 343 00:31:40,430 --> 00:31:45,890 probably what you want to do is divide up information into various different elements and aspects that you can understand better. 344 00:31:46,130 --> 00:31:52,610 So you have direct information, which is information operations of stuff like control, stuff that I can when you have a directly, 345 00:31:52,790 --> 00:31:58,100 it's a meeting with you with dropping a leaflet on your house or sending you a diet message on radio. 346 00:31:58,220 --> 00:32:01,549 I control it so I know what I'm going to say to you. 347 00:32:01,550 --> 00:32:09,350 I may get the message wrong if I don't do my cultural appreciation correctly, but at least I have a good idea in the information is through the media. 348 00:32:10,370 --> 00:32:14,569 And again, it's one of our big failings in Afghanistan that a lot of the people who've worked in indigenous 349 00:32:14,570 --> 00:32:18,710 media have certainly been a pretty poor quality and it's a bit of a tough job to do. 350 00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,550 And in fact, the quality of work has been extremely poor. So, you know, community. 351 00:32:24,380 --> 00:32:27,590 So we've got direct information, indirect information, which is via the media. 352 00:32:27,710 --> 00:32:31,760 So you're a journalist, I'm trying to influence you. So get interview to hit that person. 353 00:32:31,850 --> 00:32:37,200 That is direct and indirect information, not cyber information, including very special capabilities of the army. 354 00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:42,680 You've been cited about electronic warfare, all that good stuff. And then we have presents, information, what I look like on the ground. 355 00:32:43,130 --> 00:32:50,660 And amazingly, actually, you disappointed me that even in the dying days in 2012 and 13, how it was operational and given to Afghanistan, to Iraq, 356 00:32:50,870 --> 00:32:58,620 we went out with hard hats on, very much tooled up for violence when the war, the insurgency had actually finished about six months earlier. 357 00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:03,679 And when I was doing the training for take 13, everyone came through a U.S. based down in Kuwait. 358 00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:09,140 We had that for a couple of weeks and I was doing the PSYOPS bet and I was just talking to people and none of them, 359 00:33:09,740 --> 00:33:16,970 the

British soldier was coming through and they had not had any training in their population engagement. 360 00:33:17,390 --> 00:33:21,620 Their training was still in hard kinetic warfare, 361 00:33:21,980 --> 00:33:26,870 and that was at the end of the day and the last year of the campaign were really we had 362 00:33:26,870 --> 00:33:32,090 moved on and I was against private much disappointed that we got that so badly wrong. 363 00:33:32,270 --> 00:33:36,559 So your presence, whether you're in berets or helmets, whether you're prodding somebody with a weapon, 364 00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:43,190 not that I would advise that that was legal to do anyway. All that sort of good stuff says a lot about you and your posture. 365 00:33:43,550 --> 00:33:49,070 So it's like in Afghanistan, in Helmand back in 2006, we rely on the Air Force because we're about to be overrun. 366 00:33:49,310 --> 00:33:51,980 That sends messages to locals, Hey, we're on demand. 367 00:33:52,100 --> 00:33:57,590 We have got the force ratios and we're blowing up everything in sight because we haven't come here with the correct preparation. 368 00:33:57,890 --> 00:34:07,010 No good disinformation, deception, great stuff, very important strategic level, FCO targeting and information operations, 369 00:34:07,010 --> 00:34:13,310 a slightly dysfunctional organisation with the MOD and you've got stuff like Number ten, Downing Street, etc., which controls the shrinking level. 370 00:34:14,240 --> 00:34:19,940 And above that you have the carrot and stick of physical destruction, blowing things up and civic stabilisation, 371 00:34:20,030 --> 00:34:23,450 winning people over and navigating through the combines undue influence. 372 00:34:23,660 --> 00:34:30,390 So that just gives you a little bit of an idea about, I think, a sort of certain intellectual dysfunctionality that we've had in the MMT. 373 00:34:30,510 --> 00:34:34,820 I mean, while the defence was and I think Americans have slightly the same problem as well for that. 374 00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:39,460 But what else, just about doctrine. What else. 375 00:34:39,590 --> 00:34:49,840 GDP 300 company. Very important. I think that shows the quote in the document from 2010 from Major-General Ben. 376 00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:54,710 We conduct all operations in order to influence people and events to bring about change, 377 00:34:54,950 --> 00:34:59,390 whether by 155 millimetre artillery shell or by hosting visits. 378 00:34:59,960 --> 00:35:04,390 And I think. By the time that you had GDP 300, which came in the last couple of years of 2009, 379 00:35:05,290 --> 00:35:12,520 you had that break and that you had the idea that influence was everything and that influence was critical. 380 00:35:14,770 --> 00:35:18,790 Since then, future coverage of war very influenced orientated. 381 00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:25,420 The Land Influence Handbook and the Insurgent Tactics Handbook, again, recent publications that have come out

in the last two years, 382 00:35:25,810 --> 00:35:33,250 all of which talk about the totality of what you're trying to do and seeing it in terms of kinetic and non-kinetic events. 383 00:35:34,630 --> 00:35:42,150 Now, Rob, I'm not going to talk about 35 minutes, so I stop there and then we can have questions because that goes for you. 384 00:35:42,580 --> 00:35:47,080 You have one point of it. I was just talking about future of where we're seeing the future of warfare. 385 00:35:47,860 --> 00:35:53,410 And I'd argue that, I mean, social media is got a huge impact. We don't even know the impact yet, and we're still looking at that. 386 00:35:53,860 --> 00:35:57,280 I think there's a lot of very good thinking, a lot of it being done by the U.S. Marine Corps. 387 00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:06,040 And I'm engaged with somebody over there working on this, and they're looking at freedom and the concept of freedom of manoeuvre across the digital. 388 00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:10,630 Of course, the real and unreal space and real meaning of digital, cyberspace, etc. 389 00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:20,230 A U.S. Marine Corps organisation about has as it has, is used to the idea of having freedom of manoeuvre on land, on, sea, on and all these places. 390 00:36:20,500 --> 00:36:26,020 So the concept of freedom of manoeuvre in the digital space and cyberspace, I think is a very important progression. 391 00:36:26,170 --> 00:36:32,140 And I think it shows the roots of revolutionary thinking that wherever they go, whether it's in a virtual world or the non virtual world, 392 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:36,490 they have to control and they have to understand and be able to control that space. 393 00:36:36,700 --> 00:36:38,440 So that gives you an idea of some thinking. 394 00:36:38,770 --> 00:36:47,290 I think when it comes to the ideas around smart power, we're combining soft power, power of TV with hard power, the power of, you know, USS Nimitz. 395 00:36:47,530 --> 00:36:50,770 And it's about how to combine the two. And we're not very good at doing so. 396 00:36:50,980 --> 00:36:53,590 And I think Joseph Nye is a very interesting ideas to say about that, 397 00:36:53,710 --> 00:36:57,310 although I don't think you could understand the role of soft power in the military. 398 00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,120 I think joint effect is something that we're still very much working on. 399 00:37:01,300 --> 00:37:05,330 Joint Effect is the idea of combining government departments to work together. 400 00:37:05,410 --> 00:37:08,650 Many of you will think, Well, that is not what we pay our taxes for. You'll be right. 401 00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:13,360 I don't think it happens. And I think there's a lot of work that's going to be done in that in the next ten years. 402 00:37:13,870 --> 00:37:18,909 And I think finally, I think there are huge, significant legal implications about modern warfare as well, 403 00:37:18,910 --> 00:37:26,110 that we haven't got our heads around because it is currently very much easier to kill somebody than to persuade them or dissuade Somali pirates. 404 00:37:26,410 --> 00:37:30,810 You can this way. But if you come to near them and you capture them, they can ask for asylum. 405 00:37:31,010 --> 00:37:36,490 We can't drop them off anywhere. We can't put them in Somalia because there is no legal system and they will have a field day in that court. 406 00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,740 So actually, it's easier to kill somebody and argue because that moral so legalistic, 407 00:37:40,750 --> 00:37:47,680 we're coming to the point now where legal war is actually becoming legalistic war, which is arguably not moral or ethical. 408 00:37:47,950 --> 00:37:52,270 And I think there's that division, interestingly, between what is legal and what is ethical. 409 00:37:52,390 --> 00:38:00,020 And I think that is a great question. And I probably would flee the far right and you can go to the resource. 410 00:38:00,190 --> 00:38:06,819 So it kind of is very, very unstructured. My apologies. I should just because Bob, I mean, you I found it to be provocative. 411 00:38:06,820 --> 00:38:08,310 You know, just let me just remind.