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Hundreds of Army PSYOP Specialists to be promoted this month
- cwkoss 7y agoI wonder if the Army is currently conducting any PSYOPS on domestic targets, particularly via social media. Influence bots seem quite rampant, I'd be surprised if they weren't working on this - but would be quite the scandal if their operations also targeted Americans, even incidentally.
- verizonuser 7y agoWould it be less of a scandal if FB and Google participated in psychological operations on users, without any help from the US military nor IC?
- hos234 7y agoAll I know is Google shows me Meghan Markle news every single day. I don't click the articles, but one day they will break me.
- mieseratte 7y agoThere's what you see, and there's what you don't see. Enjoy the bread and circus, citizen.
- maximente 7y agojust a typical clutching of pearls "scandal" that follows every completely plausible but as of yet unknown .gov action
- alrs 7y agoIt was legalized in 2013, so the answer is "yes." https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...
- ryanmarsh 7y agoI wonder if this has been used since then?
- pp19dd 7y agoTo be fair, social advertising accidents do happen all the time, everywhere. But USAGM (VOA/RFERL/etc) broadcasting to America is still barred today as it was then. That cited law was a modernization to Smith-Mundt recognizing that internet works very differently than the old method of pointing a shortwave antenna toward somewhere and bouncing the signal off the atmosphere. There was a relaxation clause for affiliates that often gets misinterpreted and intent of that relaxation was to permit any private news agencies to request and use VOA material. For example, a Minnesota radio station can use VOA Somali material, but that part is up to the free market.
- Eire_Banshee 7y agoLegally cannot on US citizens. We werent even allowed to use drones to help civilian search and rescue missions due to fears of being accused of spying on citizens. This was in 2015.
- xnyan 7y agoThat’s a little misleading, if the American government wants to do some surveillance on its citizens using military resources he can do so via partnership with the CIA and the NSA or any other domestic agency that has the authority to do it. The CIA and the NSA or whatever civilian agency will make the actual program and then “use” (let) military resources do their thing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- swayvil 7y agoYes. Of course. It's a new battlefield.
- verizonuser 7y agoThis is the second time that this article (from May 2019) has been on the front page of HN in the past 24 hours. Presumably this is due to the news about the Army being on alert for Involuntary Celibates planning a mass shooting in US theaters for the screening of Joker. [1] [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/army-warns-soldiers-about-incel-threat-joker-movie-report-83451 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/army-warns-soldiers-a...
- cwkoss 7y agoWhy are domestic threats related to incels relevant to the Army whatsoever? This should be entirely within FBI/law enforcement's purview. Are they worried they are coming from incel service members?
- ryanmarsh 7y agoAs a former service member I can tell you the US Military is pretty much defined by involuntary celibacy. This is especially true in the lower ranks. If you know of an incel, please encourage them to sign up for the military. The structure, discipline, and sense of purpose the military gives you is the greatest inoculation of the anger that comes from involuntary celibacy in young men.
- jacquesm 7y agoThat sounds suspiciously like making things a lot worse. How about helping them connect with the rest of society instead of codifying their existence?
- tenebrisalietum 7y agoNot sure how you got "codifying" from this. > The structure, discipline, and sense of purpose the military gives you is the greatest inoculation of the anger that comes from involuntary celibacy in young men. Incels typically feel inadequate. Structure, discipline, and sense of purpose can counter that.
- iamdumb 7y agoOur tax dollars pay for the dumbest shit
- Eire_Banshee 7y agoFor those that don't know, Specialist is a rank in the army. Each of the individuals being promoted are _already psychological operations soldiers_. They are just going from the rank of specialist to sergeant or corporal. This is honestly a non-story. Soldiers are being promoted all the time, this is just a single large ceremony to account for an organizational reshuffle for the PSYOPS corps, Im assuming.
- sandworm101 7y agoBut it is also a statement that the training and skills are being given more respect within the army.
- frickinLasers 7y agoClearly you haven't read the article. They are all either E-5 or E-6 and being promoted because 'the current rank authorizations were "inadequate to account for Soldiers' extensive training and education in influence theory, human dynamics, psychology, sociology, language, culture, and politics," per the release.'
- ryanmarsh 7y agoStill, the service branches are always shuffling the deck to maintain the appropriate mix of senior and junior service members, especially in the more technical fields (such as psyops). This could represent an uptick in the use of psyops capabilities and the need for additional senior NCO's, or it could reflect a crop of senior NCO's that are retiring and need to be replaced. Sometimes a field can become bottom heavy, thus they reduce the points necessary for promotion (yes they use a point system), and when a field is top heavy they will offer early retirement, re-classing, and other options.
- foxhop 7y agoI think it is a story. The internal reorg and promotion of a huge class of 80+ psyops into leadership is a really good indication that the US army is changing and solidifying their combat strategy.
- swayvil 7y ago>Involuntary Celibates planning a mass shooting in US theaters for the screening of Joker. This sounds exactly like PSYOPs Heck, this whole "mass shooting" wave sounds like PSYOPs Which means those guys deserve their promotion
- jackmaney 7y agoWhat is this conspiracy theory garbage doing on HN?
- LinuxBender 7y agoI am curious if they are open to some friendly competition, like an Army vs. Civilian PsyOp Hackathon. e.g. Pick a soft target, get points for manipulating people into doing {x}. Get points for identifying the other sides psychological attempts and neutralizing / countering them. etc.. I would imagine that civilian marketing companies should be some good competition for the Army.
- djsumdog 7y agoand how many points for encouraging depression or suicide? Facebook teams would probably score higher than anyone.
- LinuxBender 7y agoI think that would be out of bounds for a friendly competition. Those types of PsyOps occur on some of the lower echelon forums (chan sites) daily. That would not be much challenge either, as many folk there are already struggling with issues.
- mxuribe 7y agoThat would be fun to see for sure! Further, i imagine top/professional sales, advertising, and marketing firms would look to recruit soldiers from these type of units - much like professional security firms recruit people from military and intelligence agencies. ;-)
- LinuxBender 7y agoIt would certainly help encourage the military to promote and thus retain them. They struggle with retaining air force pilots and so they get promoted very fast. I've met some very young captains and majors. The same is true with their surgeons.
- djsumdog 7y agoPSYOPs sounds like their operations are funny, but what has been leaked is actually quite chilling and terrifying. I highly recommend the book The Men Who Stare at Goats. Don't bother with the movie; they fictionalize a lot of it and changes the names of the very real military operatives. One theory proposed by people interviewed in the books goes back to Abu Ghraib: the soldiers seen posing with the sexually abused Iraqis were pawns. Others reported plain clothes operatives in the facility encouraging the photos and the interrogation techniques. The various people the book's author interview suggest that it wasn't because of a lack of procedure leading to abuse, but the opposite: intentional abuse. Photos were encouraged to be taken and intentionally leaked to the public, in an effort to scare Iraqis by showing how they could be humiliated in prisons. This is a terrifying military division that probably does operations similar in ethics to MK Ultra. (The book I mention even suggested one of the suicides in MK Ultra may have even been a coverup for more bizzare PSYOPs operations).
- dingoegret 7y agoTrying to play psyop terrorism in the center of global hardcore terrorist activity was a really dumb idea. Scare Iraqis? That's laughable and all it managed to do was invoke indignation and get a bunch of Americans beheaded.
- gowld 7y agoThat doesn't seem possible. The US are the good guys.
- leroy_masochist 7y agoI don't really understand how this is news -- not because of the date of publication, but because this is basically just a gimmicky HR stunt being pulled by the Army to increase retention. They're telling PsyOps soldiers, hey you're so special that we're going to promote a big chunk of you so you can have higher status in the Army. The Marine Corps has done this a few times in recent years with the HUMINT community; it's a kind of intuitive thing to do when you have an MOS community with relatively low numbers, a selective and long training pipeline, and worse-than-expected retention. I'm sure they're giving out great reenlistment bonuses too. What totally bewilders me is why the HN community thinks this is interesting and upvoting it.
- captainredbeard 7y ago> What totally bewilders me is why the HN community thinks this is interesting and upvoting it. Must be psyops ;-)