Just because blood isn’t being shed at the same volume doesn’t mean that the war is less dangerous or critical to democracy. Molly McKew’s article outlines how important the stakes even as Trump is clueless about how servers work.
In 2016, our country was targeted by an attack that had different operational objectives and a different overarching strategy, but its aim was every bit as much to devastate the American homeland as Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
The destruction may not send pillars of smoke into the sky or come with an 11-digit price tag, and there’s no body count or casualty statistics—but the damage done has ravaged our institutions and shaken our belief in our immovability. But two years on, we still haven’t put any boats or men in the proverbial water.
We still have not yet acted—just today (16 July 2018), President Donald Trump, a beneficiary of this attack, exonerated the man who ordered it: Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
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Last week, as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein released Mueller’s latest indictment of the 12 Russian intelligence officers, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was also testifying on Capitol Hill. “The warning lights are blinking red,” he said. The risk of a “crippling cyberattack on our critical infrastructure” by a foreign adversary was increasing, he added. Coats named Russia as the most aggressive threat, saying: “The digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”
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Proxy or official, the Russian operatives were able to create “American” personas that interacted freely with American voters, journalists, activists—and campaign officials. They also seemed to have considerable knowledge of how to target and parse American audiences. All of this was subversive and deceptive—but done right out in the open. It was targeting American society and individuals in a way that bypassed the existing system of protections, including those inherent in our own decision-making.
Mueller’s indictments have given incredible visibility into an ongoing Russian intelligence operation against the United States—the full scale of which, when exposed fully, will likely make it the most successful, and perhaps the most important, in history.
Trump may think of the European Union as America’s primary foe, but the Kremlin identifies the United States as its primary adversary. It is using asymmetric means to attack our society and our alliances, and to attack the citizens of the West. More details of this are being exposed daily, and our intelligence, military and national security communities are getting louder and louder in signaling their alarm. For now, our civilian leadership is shrugging this off, even acquiescing, which leaves every individual to defend themselves against the assault of information levied by a foreign attacker. This should not be the way we defend our people and our homeland.
Russia’s Perception Warfare – The development of Gerasimov’s doctrine in Estonia and Georgia and its application in Ukraine
Gerasimov described the framework of the current Russian operational concept as the ‘[r]ole of Non-Military Methods in the Resolution of Interstate Conflicts.’[12] It incorporates six phases as shown in figure 1: concealed origin, escalation, outbreak of conflict activity, crisis and resolution, ending with the restoration of peace. This current Russian operational concept is a whole of systems, methods, and tasks to influence the perception and behavior of the enemy, population, and international community on all levels. It uses a systems approach based on ‘reflexive control’ (perception management) to target enemy leadership and alter their orientation in such a way that they make decisions favorable to Russia and take actions that lead to a sense of despair within their leadership and establish a base for negotiation on Russian terms. According to an expert, reflexive control ‘considers psychological characters of humans and involves intentional influence on their models of decision making.’[13] With these characteristics it reveals a cognitive model that reflects the internal structure of a decision-making system. This model delivers an approach of interrelated mechanisms based on history, social conditions and linguistics to deceive, tempt, intimidate or disinform. Reflexive control mechanisms can cause psychological effects ranging from deception to suggestion (see table 1). If one of these mechanisms fails, the overall reflexive control approach needs to engage another mechanism, or its original effects might degrade quickly.[14]
The current Russian operational concept uses military and non-military means that engage simultaneously and rapidly throughout all physical and information domains, through the application of asymmetric and indirect actions. Russia mitigates adversaries’ capabilities, creates chaos, seizes vital terrain and isolates enemy leadership. Although Russia uses a conventional force in its operational concept that is superior and with which victory is almost certain, it does not want to employ the forces as such for its near-abroad policy. Major combat is an undesired escalation as Russia seeks a psychological victory, not a physical one. Rather than military action, Russia wants to let the reflexive control system take its second and third order effects to annex areas. The culminating psychological effects of the reflexive control approach, like disorientation, suggestion and concealment need to overcome the provocation. At the end, it will cause exhaustion, paralysis and a perception of despair among the political and military leadership. These created perceptions and misperceptions set the leadership up for the final phase of the Gerasimov doctrine: resolution.
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