July 8, 2011

MEMORANDUM FOR EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERS RE: Ten Years On: The Evolution of Strategic Communication and Information Operations Since 9/11

The subcommittee will meet in open session on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 1:30 PM in room 2118 Rayburn House Office Building to receive testimony on the evolution of strategic communication (SC) and information operations (IO) since 9/11. The focus of the hearing will be on understanding the current organizational and policy framework that supports government SC and IO efforts, including insight into specific challenges related to conducting SC and IO, as well as any recommendations that might improve the SC/IO framework to evolve it to meet the needs of the future strategic environment. If you have any questions about this hearing, please contact Kevin Gates or Jeff Cullen (x62843) or Mark Lewis (x64295) of the subcommittee staff. WITNESS Ms. Rosa Brooks Professor Georgetown University Law Center Dr. Christopher Paul Social Scientist RAND Corporation Dr. Tawfik Hamid Senior Fellow and Chair for the Study of Islamic Radicalism Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

OBJECTIVES FOR THE HEARING ! ! ! ! Understand the organizational structure and guiding policy documents that affect. Understand how the Department of Defense (DOD) plans for SC/IO investments and activities. Understand interdependencies with activities in other federal government agencies, as well as the private sector. Explore recommendations for ways to improve SC/IO, including how better cultural and narrative understanding of adversaries can be used to improve SC/IO efforts. BACKGROUND AND ISSUES Introduction The White House recently released an updated National Strategy for Counterterrorism that recognizes the importance of countering the narrative and messaging of al Qaida ideology as part of a broader effort at defeating terrorism. 1
In addition to plotting and carrying out specific attacks, al-Qaida seeks to inspire a broader conflict against the United States and many of our allies and partners. To rally individuals and groups to its cause, al-Qaida preys on local grievances and propagates a self-serving historical and political account. It draws on a distorted interpretation of Islam to justify the murder of Muslim and non-Muslim innocents. Countering this ideologywhich has been rejected repeatedly and unequivocally by people of all faiths around the worldis an essential element of our strategy. This Strategy prioritizes U.S. and partner efforts to undercut al-Qaidas fabricated legitimization of violence and its efforts to spread its ideology. As we have seen in the Middle East and North Africa, alQaidas calls for perpetual violence to address longstanding grievances have met a devastating rebuke in the face of nonviolent mass movements that seek solutions through expanded individual rights. Along with the majority of people across all religious and cultural traditions, we aim for a world in which al-Qaida is openly and widely rejected by all audiences as irrelevant to their aspirations and concerns, a world where al-Qaidas ideology does not shape perceptions of world and local events, inspire violence, or serve as a recruiting tool for the group or its adherents. Although achieving this objective is likely to require a concerted long-term effort, we must retain a focus on addressing the near-term challenge of preventing those individuals already on the brink from embracing al-Qaida ideology and resorting to violence. We will work closely with local and global partners, inside and outside governments, to discredit al-Qaida ideology and reduce its resonance. We will put forward a positive vision of engagement with foreign publics and support for universal rights that demonstrates that the United States aims to build while al-Qaida would only destroy. We will apply focused foreign and development assistance abroad. At the same time, we will continue to assist, engage, and connect communities to increase their collective resilience abroad and at home. These efforts strengthen bulwarks against radicalization, recruitment, and mobilization to violence in the name of al-Qaida and will focus in particular on those drivers that we know al-Qaida exploits. The 21st-century venue for sharing information and ideas is global, and al-Qaida, its affiliates and its adherents attempt to leverage the worldwide reach of media and communications systems to their advantage. Be it in traditional media or cyberspace, a successful U.S. strategy in these domains will focus on undermining and inhibiting al-Qaidas ideology while also diminishing those specific factors that make it appealing as a catalyst and justification for violence. We must also put forward a positive vision of engage1

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/counterterrorism_strategy.pdf

ment with Muslim communities around the world so that we are contrasting our vision of the future we are trying to build with al-Qaidas focus on what it aims to destroy. In the global information environment, al-Qaida adherents who promote or attempt to commit violence domestically are influenced by al-Qaida ideology and messaging that originates overseas, and those who attempt terror overseas often cite domestic U.S. events and policies. At the same time, peopleincluding those targeted by al-Qaida with its propagandalive in a local context and are affected by local issues, media, and concerns. In the arena of information and ideas, we must focus globally and locally and draw on direct and indirect communications and methods. We will continue to make it clear that the United States is notand never will beat war with Islam. We will focus on disrupting al-Qaidas ability to project its message across a range of media, challenge the legitimacy and accuracy of the assertions and behavior it advances, and promote a greater understanding of U.S. policies and actions and an alternative to al-Qaidas vision. We also will seek to amplify positive and influential messages that undermine the legitimacy of al-Qaida and its actions and contest its worldview. In some cases we may convey our ideas and messages through person-to-person engagement, other times through the power of social media, and in every case through the message of our deeds.

Historically, the U.S. faced a similar challenge with the ideology of global communism, and developed a structural response to those threats. The end of the Cold War led to the disestablishment (i.e., U.S. Information Agency) and atrophy (i.e., Voice of America, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Department of State public diplomacy programs, etc.) of many of the organizations that were useful in countering ideological messaging. Attacking the ideological messages behind violent extremism is a challenge that the U.S. government has been increasingly called upon to address since 9/11. After the 9/11 attacks, the concept of strategic communication was coined and increasingly gained traction in the DOD and the federal government. How the U.S. government has organized to deal with strategic communication, as well as policy guidance, continues to evolve. The concept of strategic communication deals with the challenge of convincing others to think and act in ways compatible with our objectives, whether this means causing them to adopt a specific course of action or to simply understand us better and accept us more. A key dimension of this challenge is integrating all the various communication activities with each other and with other operational capabilities to maximize their combined effect and likewise to coordinate these actions with those of any partners. A key goal of strategic communication is to exert influence, which is the act of affecting anothers attitudes, opinions or behaviorscausing the other to support or not frustrate U.S. actions. Influence thus requires volition on the part of the other. The desired effect can be an observable behavior or an unobservable emotion, opinion, belief or attitude. Examples of desired influence effects on particular audiences include assuring existing allies and supporters, attracting new allies and supporters, deterring potential enemies, and discrediting adversaries. In both situations, though, the ability to measure effectiveness, or causally link a U.S. strategic communication action with a particular response is difficult. The term influence sometimes carries negative connotations because the term is often associated with deceptive manipulation or exploitation. Influence does not have that connotation 3

in this concept. Many influence attempts are open, straightforward and even virtuous. Education can be very influential. Many forms of influence can be mutually beneficial. Any form of cooperation, for example, is a form of mutual influence. Influence is a pervasive and fundamental form of any social interaction, as essential to cooperation as it is to competition or conflict. Affecting the behaviors of people who retain freedom of action is a very challenging undertaking, especially if these people are initially disposed against us. In most circumstances, there are very definite limits to one actors ability to cause another to think or do what he otherwise would not. In the future, the challenge of influence will be critical because success in the globally interconnected information environment will frequently be less a matter of imposing ones will and more a matter of ideas and example. Definitions DOD defines Strategic Communication as focused United States Government efforts to understand and engage key audiences to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for the advancement of United States Government interests, policies, and objectives through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and products synchronized with the actions of all instruments of national power. DOD currently defines Information Operations as the integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), military information support operations (MISO), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own. IO and SC are overlapping, but not identical. Whereas the strategic communication process focuses on effectively integrating issues of audience and stakeholder perception into all levels of strategy, policy, military planning and operations, Information Operations focuses on coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing several distinct information-related capabilities in order to affect adversary decision-making and protect friendly decision-making during military operations. Organization The Department of Defense issued a memo on January 25, 2011 that made significant changes to the organizational structure for SC and IO. On October 1, 2010, IO oversight and management was moved from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. 2 Additionally, the January 25 memo made the following changes: ! Assigned joint IO proponency to the Joint Staff;
2

Full details of the memo can be found here: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/dime/documents/Strategic%20Communication%20&%20IO%20Memo%2025%20Jan 2011.pdf

! ! ! ! !

Assigned responsibility for MISO to US Special Operations Command; Assigned responsibility for CNO to Strategic Command (STRATCOM); Assigned responsibility for military deception and operational security to the Joint Staff; Directed a review of the Joint IO Warfare Center to determine how it should be aligned with the Joint Staff, except for the Electronic Warfare Division, which would remain assigned to STRATCOM; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs were formally designated as the co-leads for SC.

Vision and Goals for SC and IO The Strategic Communication Joint Operating Concept 3 highlights four goals for SC and IO: ! Improve U.S. credibility and legitimacy; ! Weaken an adversarys credibility and legitimacy ; ! Convince selected audiences to take specific actions that support U.S. or international objective; and ! Cause a competitor or adversary to take (or refrain from taking) specific actions. OVERARCHING CHALLENGES Coordination of capabilities and resources Coordination of resources and capabilities will be the primary challenge to our strategic communications effort. During the Cold War, the U.S. government became adept at integrating and synchronizing many (if not all) of the instruments of national power- military, diplomatic, economic and even cultural. That capability has atrophied since the 1990s, but will be critical in the future as we develop a focused national approach. Being able to synchronize, not just the DoD and State Department, but also the U.S. Agency for International Development, the BBG, the intelligence community (especially the CIAs Open Source Center and Counter-Terrorism Center) and even Non-Governmental Organizations and academia, is a prerequisite to deal with the funding and manpower constraints that the government faces itself. As with many areas, strategic communications suffers from a lack of resources, and of leadership. For this effort to succeed, the government must make it a stated priority. That entails not just the designation of a lead responsible agency, but also making an unbiased assessment of the magnitude of the task and devoting adequate resources to meet the challenge. Numerous studies and commissions have indicated that the Department of State is not adequately resourced to carry out its responsibilities with regards to strategic communications. The various defense committees have differing views on IO and SC, and the adequate distribution of responsibility between agencies. For example, the recent committee report of the House Appropriations Committee, Defense subcommittee included the following language:

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/dime/documents/Strategic%20Communication%20Joint%20Intergrating%20Concept. pdf

The Committee remains concerned that many of the activities being conducted under the guise of `information operations' or `military information support operations' do not represent traditional or appropriate military roles or responsibilities. Many of the activities being funded under information operations are duplicative of, or operate at cross purposes with, other federal agencies' activities, particularly the Department of State. Finally, based on the Department of Defense's significant usage of contractors to plan and execute these programs, the Committee questions whether the Department has the technical expertise or capacity to effectively manage and execute these types of programs in a cost effective manner. In an era of declining budgets, the Committee does not believe that the Department can afford to fund activities that do not fulfill core military requirements and are more appropriately funded by those other federal agencies which are statutorily authorized and traditionally charged with developing and administering such programs. Additionally, the Committee remains concerned that the official budget justification materials do not include the level of detailed information necessary to provide proper analysis and oversight of the activities funded under Information Operations. The Committee directs the Secretary of Defense to develop a format for improving the budget submission for fiscal year 2013 for these programs.

Technological Challenges The national strategic communications effort remains too focused on traditional means of communications (print, radio, television), while ceding the emerging territory of the internet and personal data communications (smart phones; wireless personal digital assistants; personal gaming systems) to our ideological adversaries. Any plan for countering ideological support for terrorism will require that the U.S. government become more effective at adapting to new technologies, both as a means to get out our message and in order to provide countermeasures for their propaganda and misinformation. To that end, the DOD strategic communications effort should be better tied into the Departments research and development efforts so as to leverage existing programs (such as Defense Research and Engineerings new human, social, cultural and behavioral modeling thrust, or the Armys Human Terrain System). 4 Management challenges There are some significant management challenges for the U.S. that will have to be addressed to create a successful strategic communications enterprise. First, we will have to develop a robust means for measuring the effectiveness of our efforts. Without good metrics, we will be unable to make the kinds of cost-benefit trades necessary to ensure consistency in approach, as well as effectively targeting resources to maximum effect. Polling is a traditional means of measuring effectiveness in this area, but must be augmented with better quantitative (and qualitative) techniques. Many of the regions of the world most in need of U.S. strategic communications efforts will also be the most unlikely to give access or presence.

The HASC directed DOD to examine this issue in the FY2009 NDAA. The result was a Strategic Communication S&T Plan, that made a number of recommendations in areas where the DOD should leverage existing S&T programs, or invest more in research to support broader SC goals. The report can be found here: http://www.dod.gov/ddre/doc/SC_ST_Plan_FINAL_public.pdf

Of equal importance, the U.S. will have to develop rules of engagement that are flexible, but that do not unduly cede ground to our adversaries. How we implement rules that constrain us as we try to fight any enemy that recognizes no rules (and often utilizes our own legal framework against us) is a seeming paradoxical challenge, but one that we must address early in the struggle and periodically review and revise as situations change. Related to the question of rules of engagement is addressing how we deal with the religious aspects of this ideological conflict. While U.S. leadership has clearly stated we are not at conflict with Islam, it is clear that the tenets of radical and violent terrorist organizations have been cloaked in religious (Islamic) terminology and imagery as a means of recruiting among disaffected peoples. The U.S. must also be able to tap into this terminology and imagery as a way of delegitimizing the radical Islamists message. OTHER REPORTS OF INTEREST ! Defense Science Board (DSB) 1. Strategic Communication (March 2009) 2. Managed Information Dissemination (October 2001) ! Bipartisan Policy Center, Preventing Violent Radicalization in America (June 2011) ! Strategic Communication Joint Integrating Concept (October 2009) ! RAND, Whither Strategic Communications? (2009) ! CNAS, Rhetoric and Reality: Countering Terrorism in the Age of Obama (June 2010) ! Brookings Institution, Voices of America: US Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century (November 2008) RELEVANT PAST HEARINGS ! July 10, 2007: Strategic Communications and the Battle of Ideas: Winning the Hearts and Minds in the Global War Against Terrorists ! November 7, 2007: Strategic Communications and Counter Ideological Support for Terrorism ! February 12, 2009: Strategies for Countering Violent Extremist Ideologies ! December 16, 2009: Understanding Cyberspace as a Medium for Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization ! June 22, 2011: Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat Since 9/11 The following verbal exchange is taken from the transcript of the June 22, 2011 ETC hearing: I have been in several meetings the past couple weeks with Members where this idea of the ideological war, the extent to which what we call, some call, "strategic communications" makes a difference. And so I would like to get from each of you your thoughts on that aspect of this struggle against terrorism. And not to go through it, but some people argue this has to be fought out within the Islamic faith, that we have no role in it. Other people say that, you know, we have a much greater role and we have diffuse messages coming out and nobody knows really -- you know, so we are not doing anything very well. 7

But not just doing talking about broadcasts, the ideological part of this struggle I would appreciate your comments on. Mr. Bergen. Go ahead. Mr. Jenkins. There are going to be two views on this. And this is really a bit of a difference of views on this. One is the view that, look, terrorists themselves do have tactical successes. 9/11 was a tactical success. These other terrorists attacks were tactical successes, operational successes. But, as I think we all agree, that the attack of 9/11 backfired for Al Qaeda and created consequences that it didn't expect, and that Al Qaeda's wanton slaughter of fellow Muslims has backfired on it, and that, therefore, what terrorists cannot do is translate their tactical successes into strategic successes. And this is the inherent limitations of terrorism as a strategy. And, therefore, the consequence for us is that, if we maintain our capability to blunt them operationally and, in the process, hold on to our values, that, ultimately, our institutions and our values will triumph over this. So it is not that we have to intervene directly to counter their message. Now, that don't negate tactical psychological operations and doing other things to create difficulties. What it does require, however, is a continued adherence to and projection of American values. Now, we did this during the cold war, and we devoted a lot more resources to it than we do today. The issue there was -- I mean, we had libraries where people could in quiet read about Thomas Jefferson and things of this sort, and it had a great impact. It was useful stuff. The other view is that we have to intervene more actively to directly take on the jihadist ideology. I am not so certain about that. First of all, the problem we have is that, with the massive amount of communications going on in the world and the United States being a media drenched society and, indeed, a source of a huge export of various things in communications, good and bad, that to try to craft a specific counter jihadist message in this is, first of all, going to be lost in the noise and, second of all, is intervening in an area where we don't really have the credentials to do so. And, therefore, we might instead take a very cautious approach and say, we are Americans, this is what we believe, we will stop terrorist attacks, and within the Muslim community they have to deal with Al Qaeda themselves. Now, I realize limitations of polling, but I think Peter Bergen's polls will also show that, within the Muslim community worldwide and in the United States, even those who may be deeply resentful of certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy at the same time think Al Qaeda and its leaders are a bunch of crackpots. So there isn't that kind of widespread support. They are not getting traction. And they place a great deal of emphasis on this Internet campaign to recruit a lot more retail outlets in the form of Web sites, American born salesmen like Gadahn and Awlaki and Hammami, but they are not selling a lot of cars. And that is important. Mr. Bergen. And following up on what Mr. Jenkins said, yeah, the ideology is sort of imploding around the Muslim world. And for the United States to engage in the debate, there are two problems, really. One is the lack-of-knowledge problem. We are not Islamic scholars. Two, the kiss-of-death problem, which is, anything associated particularly with the United States Government is problematic. Which is not to say that you can't say certain things. And I think there is one area 8

where we can just hammer away in the kind of ideological struggle, which is on the issue of killing Muslim citizens. It is a tough one sometimes, because we are killing Muslim civilians in Afghanistan, although that number is going down pretty substantially. But this is really their Achilles' heel. And I remember the first time the U.S. Government, as one, really reacted. It was during the Bush administration where, you may recall, two women, one with mental problems, went into the central market in Baghdad, killed a hundred people in a suicide attack. Everybody in the U.S. Government, from Condoleezza Rice down, immediately said, you know, this is against Islam, a bad thing. And so, if you can kind of hammer away on this issue of them killing a lot of Muslim civilians, that is pretty effective. To get into an arcane debate about Islamic theology won't work. Mr. Gorka. The attacks of September 11th may have backfired for Al Qaeda but not for Al Qaeda's ideology. On the contrary, the events of September the 11th branded this ideology as something powerful because it could take violence to the heart of the United States. With regard to the question of, are we allowed to be part of this discourse inside Islam, after September the 11th of course we do. We have a dog in this fight, and we have every right to be part of that discourse. I think we have to remember that the cold war, for all its thousands of nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and battle tanks across the German plain, was won in the ideational plane. It was won primarily on the grounds of ideology. And we need to do the same kinds of things we did then today. I agree that we have to start with who we are, as Mr. Jenkins said. We have to be clear about what it is that these individuals threaten in this Nation, why it is constitutional values that are undermined by anybody who believes in this ideology. And that Congress also has some work to do on this, because not only do we have confusion in the executive, but we have very out-of-date acts, such as the Smith-Mundt Act, which makes informational campaigns in this Internet age almost impossible for members of the national security domain. Lastly, on the issue of our current label for this part of the war, which is countering violent extremism, this is deleterious to the national security of the United States. We did not say when we were fighting the Ku Klux Klan that we are fighting violent extremism. We said that these were white supremacists and racists. You have to be clear about the ideology and what they say about themselves. This is an ideology of global jihad, not a grab bag of violent extremism. So let's begin to be specific, and let's start to take the fight to the enemy on the ideological plane as well as the kinetic.