Announcing the 9th Annual Association of Old Crows Information Operations Symposium! The United States Indo-Pacific Command and the Association Old Crows will once again co-sponsor the annual Information Operations and Electronic Warfare Symposium, now in its 9th year of execution.  The first two days of this event will be held at the UNCLASSIFIED level, and...Read More

Editor’s Note: The annual National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) symposium was held virtually for the first time this week. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander Army Gen. Richard Clarke described three types of war the military and SOCOM must prepare for: “a war on extremism, a war of influence,...Read More

Leaders from the Information Professionals Association, government, and industry participated in a panel discussion May 5 hosted by Alamo AFCEA on “Information Dominance: Why the US must evolve to compete and win in a challenged Information Environment.” Panelists agreed that today’s Information Warfare is not about finding tools to develop and deploy; it is about the...Read More

Note from the author:  Russia and China have the potential to impact our cognitive security, but in very different ways. You could say one is the hare and the other the turtle. Franak Viacorka, of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and myself recently wrote two columns on this topic, which we would like to share with...Read More

Editor’s note: The role of information and disinformation in worldwide reaction and response to the novel Coronavirus continues to dominate headlines. Here’s a roundup of the latest reports. Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD): China’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaigns Are Integral to Its Global Information Warfare Strategy Matthew Ha and Alice Cho highlights a European External...Read More

The U.S. Naval War College Review highlights John Curry’s study of the utility of matrix wargames to “include wider aspects of confrontations beyond war fighting, such as national will, social media, economics, and the laws of war. While traditional wargame models have struggled to represent these factors adequately, the matrix game narrative method offers utility...Read More

David Ignatius has a review up of a new book on Russian Active Measures.  An excerpt: When Russian intelligence officers plotted their campaign to destabilize American politics in 2016, they had nearly a century of experience in covert manipulation to draw upon. The Internet had given the Russians new tools for this mischief. But their...Read More

EEAS SPECIAL REPORT UPDATE: Short Assessment of Narratives and Disinformation around the COVID-19/Coronavirus Pandemic (Updated 2 – 22 April) Update:  The European Values Center for Security Policy highlighted the assertions by the NY Times that this report has been “watered down” to appease China – see the article here. A Summary of an EU report...Read More

The Voice of America and U.S. Public Diplomacy By Michael Williams Those with an interest in US government information efforts abroad will at least have heard of the Voice of America and anyone that has held a position in government that touches on an information programs aimed at foreign audiences has likely known of its...Read More

Editor’s Note:  Whether the assertion is true or not, we have to recognize that human biases make open western democracies very easy targets for the spread of dis- or mis-information.  Why do it?  I was lucky to have been introduced to a book called Unrestricted Warfare written by two PLA Colonels in 2000.  Since then,...Read More