Information As a Weapon

      One of the most prominent uses of information is just that: how it is used or misused. Flor and Shneier, while writing about completely different scenarios, explain how information is being misused to negatively impact others for their gain. Flor talks about the aftermath of a seemingly successful counter-insurgent skirmish by the U.S. where even though we had “won,” the insurgents immediately went to the press to claim that we had killed dozens of innocent civilians, which was not true. Nevertheless, the damage was done. Shneier explains a similar concept were large industries and agencies are waking up to the idea of empowering themselves through the use of the Internet. The main theme the articles are addressing is an informational gap suffered by the micro population. Individuals, in both the civilian and military world, are receiving the short end of the stick when it comes to the use of information. “No doctrine exists for the employment of information operations at the battalion level and below. Information operations in counterinsurgency suffer from a disparity in the definitions of the term as it is understood by the strategic and operational entities that resource and enable IO and the tactical units that can most effectively employ them. As a result, a doctrinal gap has opened between those best positioned to execute IO in counterinsurgency and those best resourced and trained to execute information operations in counterinsurgency.” (Flor, 2010)

      As I mentioned, the information gap is causing power and reputation to be distributed inaccurately. Of course, being a good propagandist for a cause I really cared about, I would avoid this disparity through the practices the Army has established for information dissemination among the Afghani population. In Baker’s article, he lists several lacking IO qualities that essentially mirror what marketing and advertising have been doing for many years now. For my cause, my audience would be the local population of Pullman since this cause would only affect them. The cause would be delivered, with the same repeating message, through a series of multimedia applications since one medium is never efficient. There would be flyers, a website, a Facebook page, newspaper ads, and possibly a YouTube video all with the same idea in one message. As Booker states, “All too often, organizations develop too many themes and messages for the target audiences they are attempting to influence. Doing this inadvertently impedes their ability to repetitiously drive home the intended message to a target audience.” Depending on the reaction time for the cause, I would continue to advertise for as long as is needed since changing to another cause too soon would be counter-intuitive.