By Kyle Rempfer | 6 February 2019
MILITARY TIMES — The Defense Department wants U.S. Special Operations Command to do more than the traditional leaflets-and-loudspeakers approach to information warfare, a senior Pentagon official said this week.
“We need to move beyond our 20th century approach to messaging and start looking at influence as an integral aspect of modern irregular warfare,” Andrew Knaggs, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, said at a defense industry symposium Tuesday.
The shift will require cooperation with civilians rarely approached by SOCOM, as well as new technology and strategies to isolate enemy disinformation campaigns before they catch the public’s interest in an area of operations.
“It will also require new partnerships beyond traditional actors, throughout the world, through efforts to amplify voices of [non-governmental organizations] and individual citizens who bring transparency to malign activities of our competitors,” said Knaggs, who also served as an Army Green Beret with 5th Special Forces Group.
The comments hint at the direction U.S. special operations will be heading as the Pentagon reimagines irregular warfare in an era of great power competition between the United States, China, and Russia. […]
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