U.S. To Build A Weaponized Narrative Into The Future of WarBy Nicholas West The two authors center their piece with a premise of apocalyptic concern about foreign State actors and influence peddling, saying that in the hands of professionals the emotional techniques of narrative are a cornerstone of perception control over the target populace. In the hands of professionals, the powerful emotions of anger and fear can be used to control adversaries, limit their options, and disrupt their functional capabilities. Ironically their justifications for the U.S. government to make propaganda Mission #1 begin with two embedded links to dubious claims and outright falsehoods stemming from the discredited Washington Post promoting the idea that the Russians hacked the U.S. election and are supposedly employing a battery of alternative news outlets, to produce fake news. Other motives cited by the authors for taking extreme action are everything from Brexit to Ukraine and basically anything else that would see people awakening en masse to the gross mismanagement of their feudal leaders. These populist uprisings are instead seen as coordinated efforts by a cadre of mind terrorists who apparently want to undermine an opponents civilization, identity, and will by generating complexity, confusion, and political and social schisms. While I suppose that it makes perfect sense to utilize duplicity in a missive about the value of propaganda, it doesnt portend an ease of finding truth in the future. This initiative essentially argues for exactly what the establishment has been seeking the co-opting of all forms of communication under the all-consuming directive of National Security. Moreover, it is also part of the ongoing (official) change of position from utilizing propaganda overseas to permitting it at home by eliminating in 2013 the ban upon that activity. This fact demands us to revisit the above quote about using anger and fear as a form of control if we are to be the designated recipients as well. Conventional military dominance is still critical to the superpower status of the United States. But even in a military sense, it is no longer enough: if an American election can be controlled by an adversarial power, then stealth aircraft and special forces are not the answer. With lawmakers poised to authorize $160 million to counter Russian fake news and disinformation, and the CIA and the Congress examining meddling in the U.S. election and democracies around the world, its time to see weaponized narrative for what it is: a deep threat to nationalsecurity. Weaponized narrative seeks to undermine an opponents civilization, identity, and will by generating complexity, confusion, and political and social schisms. It can be used tactically, as part of explicit military or geopolitical conflict; or strategically, as a way to reduce, neutralize, and defeat a civilization, state, or organization. Done well, it limits or even eliminates the need for armed force to achieve political and militaryaims. The efforts to muscle into the affairs of the American presidency, Brexit, the Ukraine, the Baltics, and NATO reflect a shift to a post-factual political and cultural environment that is vulnerable to weaponized narrative. This begs three deeperquestions: Far from being simply a U.S. or U.K. phenomenon, shifts to post-factualism can be seen in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, France, and the Philippines, among other democracies. Russia, whose own political culture is deeply post-factual and indeed post-modern, is now ably constructing ironic, highly cynical, weaponized narratives that were effective in the Ukrainian invasion, and are now destabilizing the Baltic states and the U.S. electionprocess. Such a large and varied shift to weaponized narrative implies that the enablers are indeed systemic. One fundamental underpinning often overlooked is the accelerating volume and velocity of information. Cultures, institutions, and individuals are, among many other things, information-processing mechanisms. As they become overwhelmed with information complexity, the tendency to retreat into simpler narratives becomesstronger. Under this stress, cultures fragment. Institutions are stretched until they become ineffective or even dysfunctional. Individuals who define their identity primarily through the state such as Americans, Russians, Chinese, or Europeans retreat to a mythic Golden Age nationalism, while those who prioritize cultural and religious bonds retreat tofundamentalism. Narrative is as old as tribes. Humans are pattern-seeking storytelling animals. We cannot endure an absence of meaning. Rather than look up at the distribution of lights in the night sky and deal with randomness, we will eagerly connect those dots and adorn them with the most elaborate even poetic tales of heroes and princesses and bears and dippers. We have a hard-wired need for myth. Narrative is basic to what it means to behuman. Whats new is the extraordinary power of todays weaponized narrative. It attacks our group identity our sense of who we are, our privilege of not being identified as other. The rise of the Connected Age allows attacks that tear down old identities that have bound us together. But it also allows the creation of narratives that define the new differences between us and them that are worth fightingfor. Weaponized narrative comes at a critical juncture. The speed of upheaval in our lives is unprecedented. It will be filled by something. We are desperate for something to hang onto. By offering cheap passage through a complex world, weaponized narrative furnishes emotional certainty at the cost of rational understanding. The emotionally satisfying decision to accept a weaponized narrative to believe, to have faith inoculates cultures, institutions, and individuals against counterarguments and inconvenientfacts. This departure from rationality opens such ring-fenced belief communities to manipulation and their societies to attack. These communities can be strengthened through media tools and messages that reinforce the narrative crucially, by demonizing outsiders. Trust is extended only to those who believe, leaving other institutional and social structures toerode. In the hands of professionals, the powerful emotions of anger and fear can be used to control adversaries, limit their options, and disrupt their functional capabilities. This is a unique form of soft power. In such campaigns, facts are not necessary because contrary to the old memes of the Enlightenment truth does not necessarily prevail. It can be overwhelmed with constantly repeated and replenished falsehood. Especially powerful are falsehoods or simplifications that the target cohort has been primed to believe by the underlying narratives with which they are also beingsupplied. Its a self-reinforcing loop. This process was clear in Ukraine, in Brexit, in creation of alt-right and other far right and left communities in many countries, and in the American presidential election. All of these campaigns combine indigenous factors with known or suspected Russian deployment of weaponized narrative, achieving significant benefits for Russia with low risk of conventional military responses by the West. Indeed, the response by America, NATO, and European states has been confused, sporadic, andineffective. In the short term, then, weaponized narrative challenges existing Western military and security institutions grown comfortable in their post-Cold War conventional-force dominance. At least one major adversary now has a capability and indeed a new battlespace that is not just unfamiliar. It is one where institutional, historical, and cultural factors put the U.S. at a significantdisadvantage. Brad Allenby is the Co-director of The Weaponized Narrative Initiative of the Center on the Future of War, a partnership of Arizona State University and the Washington think tank NewAmerica. Joel Garreau is the Co-director of The Weaponized Narrative Initiative of the Center on the Future of War, a partnership of Arizona State University and the Washington think tank NewAmerica. A final note for those who might assume that the rantings of university types and think tanks are not always listened to in the halls of true power, it is worth remembering that Arizona State was the site of a secret mind control program that was revealed to selfnews Post by a whistleblower in 2013. Although funding for the project was allegedly halted following this revelation, we have seen the science of direct mind control that they had been working on being verified now in mainstream media and being pushed for in establishment medicine. At the very least, it seems that the military-industrial complex continues to expect its citizens to pay for their own enslavement. Nicholas West writes for selfnewsPost.com. This article can be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link. apparently the word propaganda is outdated and someone is desperately trying to justify their paycheck and relevancy Some yo-yos at ASU think theyre reinventing propaganda, and you say that the US is going to build it? I know its often the case that the writer of an article does not get to choose the headline when its posted by an aggregator site, but thats misleading to say the least. Besides, people are waking up. That crap is right on the cusp of passe. America invented the late day forms of perception management. Now we are to be told that a further effort must be at hand to protect us from the evil Rooskies et al? Psst. These fools are on the ropes. What a joke. The ultimate inversion, apparently. The creators of and apologists for Government propaganda trying hard to call truth-telling and fact-finding fictionalizing, while naming the propaganda-fictions they spew out fact? Weaponized narratives are what CIA-controlled mainstream media has indeed been regaling us with for a century and more, in tandem with the false flags created, ultimately by the Joint Defense-Intelligence-Surveillance enterpriseseeking to churn up fear, anger, a taste for war, a giving up of basic rightslets hope this more-than-Orwellian-sounding Center for Weaponized Narrativeswhose time is well pastwakes up to the real Future of War: PeacePeaceand more Peace. As people become overwhelmed with information complexity, the tendency to retreat into simpler narratives becomes stronger. That certainly explains Trumps victory. how will this work if its not propaganda? Brad Allenby and Joel Garreau obviously have invested heavily in A-bomb shelter futures! IMNSHO, Killarys would have been more of a hair-trigger on the nuclear button than Bozo the Clown. (Though hy anyone would vote for either of these idiots in quite beyond me!) In any case, Barry set the stage with a trillion dollars for new nukes, modernised to include battlefield weapons. Theyd better be modern, too: the few of us left be wearing skins and hunting with spears from our deep underground caves. 