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For what it's worth, I'll give some perspective here as a career Army officer. I think this is one of those things that sounds like the plausible work of a hig

For what it's worth, I'll give some perspective here as a career Army officer. I think this is one of those things that sounds like the plausible work of a highly intelligent and effective monolith, which is how conspiracy theorists often seem to view "the government." I think the reality is that "the government" and the US Army is not. It's a sprawling bureaucracy with insanely high turnover and many internal divisions, in which every sub-organization has its own goals, and people are operating independently at every level of those sub-organizations (and mostly to advance their personal career goals which are often quite limited, like making it to a 20-year active duty retirement or 30-year FERS civilian retirement, getting an education, and transitioning to a good job in the private sector as soon as possible). 2000 was before my time, but this sounds like a program which still exists called "Training With Industry." The ideas behind TWI are that: (1) The Army has people in uniform who've been working hard and doing good things, feeling burned out, and are on the fence about whether they should continue in uniform or find another career path. (2) The Army would like to retain their valuable experience and expertise. (3) Letting people do an internship in private industry for a year, trying out "civilian life," on the condition that they do three more years in uniform afterwards, might be a win-win. It gives people a break and something nice to put on their resume for later. They learn and experience some things from the internship that the Army can't teach. It's like offering a sabbatical more than anything else. The Army lets people go to civilian graduate school for a year or two for the same reasons. My main point is that it's very divorced from the operational side of the Army, even though it's placing people in companies or graduate school programs that relate to their operational career fields.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Your arguments are cogent, but it's still 'state-affiliated media' - I mean, that also applies to the whole 'media embedding program' that got started in Desert Storm (Gulf War I, or perhaps II if we count the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s). Independent media is not necessarily adversarial to government, but it can't be dependent on government or it turns into nothing but the propaganda arm of the government. E.g. reporting on military failures is necessary, even if this upsets the brass because it damages morale.
- warner25 4y ago
  I think the embedded media program is much more problematic than TWI. Embedded media is at the invitation and discretion of operational public affairs officers and commanders, and those public affairs officers and commanders absolutely have operational "themes" and "messages" that they want to have broadcasted. I just finished Michael Hastings' book The Operators and he describes in-depth the dilemma for a reporter. But TWI is run by human resources wonks, and mostly for the benefit of the individuals participating. Frankly, it's disparaged by a lot of operational commanders who think those individuals should be serving in the mud somewhere instead of padding their personal resumes. I will concede, however, that there is a certain level of coziness between the Army and the companies that take TWI participants. In the IT community, for example, the Army buys a lot of stuff from Microsoft and Cisco, and Microsoft and Cisco host TWI participants. It makes sense in terms of the Army and those companies wanting to learn more about each other.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Your arguments are cogent, but it's still 'state-affiliated media' - I mean, that also applies to the whole 'media embedding program' that got started in Desert Storm (Gulf War I, or perhaps II if we count the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s). Independent media is not necessarily adversarial to government, but it can't be dependent on government or it turns into nothing but the propaganda arm of the government. E.g. reporting on military failures is necessary, even if this upsets the brass because it damages morale.

warner25 4y ago
I think the embedded media program is much more problematic than TWI. Embedded media is at the invitation and discretion of operational public affairs officers and commanders, and those public affairs officers and commanders absolutely have operational "themes" and "messages" that they want to have broadcasted. I just finished Michael Hastings' book The Operators and he describes in-depth the dilemma for a reporter. But TWI is run by human resources wonks, and mostly for the benefit of the individuals participating. Frankly, it's disparaged by a lot of operational commanders who think those individuals should be serving in the mud somewhere instead of padding their personal resumes. I will concede, however, that there is a certain level of coziness between the Army and the companies that take TWI participants. In the IT community, for example, the Army buys a lot of stuff from Microsoft and Cisco, and Microsoft and Cisco host TWI participants. It makes sense in terms of the Army and those companies wanting to learn more about each other.