J'Accuse our National Security community for influence, of putting our Republic, at significant risk.

Subtitle... Waste, Fraud and Abuse

TAT readers,

Today’s essay is a well-deserved and exceedingly harsh accusation against my former professional community, in uniform and afterwards. That community has many names within the National Security Community and many alleged experts but, also has at least four uninterrupted decades of failure that has American democracy on the ropes. It has cost us billions in nepotistic defense contracts and other government spending, and all we have to show, is a dramatically weakened democracy, failure to project democratic values globally and the weakest state of global democracy since the end of the 18th century. To rub the proverbial salt into the wound, the charlatans, fakes and misguided are still profiting wildly, for more failure. The entire community refuses to learn. We are simply paying outrageously, for the demise of global democracy and by association, security.

There are plenty to blame. There are the decision-makers who approve of an endless, four-decade long stream of boondoggle projects. There are their contracting officers who award contracts. Then, there are the charlatans called defense contracting firms, that use the gibberish of doctrine to create companies and programs leading to nowhere but more failure. Let’s not forget Congress because it is they, who are tasked with funding, oversight and the responsibility to assess whether the government got what we paid for. There are the IC/ Intelligence Community and Pentagon leaders, who rubberstamp the gibberish, useless doctrine of the fields called by a variety of names like; IO/ Information Operations, IA/ Information Assurance, IW/ Information Warfare, etc. Finally, there are the voters who put and keep leaders in office, that do not fulfill their duties of being good custodians of our taxpayer dollars.

How do I know all of this you may rightfully ask? It’s because this field has been the core of my national security experience and passion for a very long time. I am also one of a tiny handful in uniform, that has had the experience and privilege of being an operator, in support of our national security. This may come as a shock to everyone, because it sure as hell was to me a couple of decades ago, as I entered into the profession. Operators are also, the singular experts that our natsec community refuses to listen to. The core of alleged experts in the profession now, are mostly academics or tech-oriented upstarts that promise the moon and deliver darkness.

This topic is near and dear to me for countless reasons, and I have written often on the omnipresent failures of my community. I don’t write simply because I am angry, I write because the waste, fraud and abuse within my community, has put the US in the most acute danger internally, since the Civil War. There is no sign of any improvement on the horizon, anywhere within the community either. For example, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, N. Korean and violent extremist influence operations operate at will, against western democracies. Still, the US and our allies, are defenseless, generations behind our adversaries in influence and our nepotistic contracting system is still raking in record profits for failing us miserably. We are quite literally, almost entirely unarmed on the cognitive battlefield.

My earlier writings on this and related topics can be found in the links, bulletized at the end of today’s essay. Much of their content, will be incorporated into my next book, later this summer. The title will be, “Conned, the failure of the US influence community to protect democracy. If the community really wants to get a head start on fixing itself before our election, I recommend the recently published second edition of my last book, Modern Day Minutemen, Narrative Strategy and a Voter Education Guide, from, The Athina Press, May 2024. This second edition was written for and designed primarily for university students and national security teaching organizations, so that they can learn about influence from an operator, not the long list of alleged, failed experts they have been listening to.

Operating in influence, is the only way to learn influence. It’s the real-life “lab” for testing strategy, tactics, assessments etc. To not integrate operational experts into the field of research is like going to a doctor who had never once seen a patient or had even trained with their own hands. Don’t get me wrong, academia is critical but without operational expertise, will continue to fraudulently waste our hard-earned tax dollars, chasing made up, doctrinal concepts. The only thing that the natsec community has accomplished for decades, is inordinately expensive failure. A quote often but inconclusively attributed to Einstein, says it best; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The military does not train “operators” but only specialists. The IC primarily trains specialists as well. The concept of and ability to operate with full-spectrum influence, is fully foreign to the entire national security community. Meanwhile, our most dangerous adversaries are thrashing us round the clock, for decades. We are simply unarmed on the cognitive battlefield. Our adversaries learn by doing in an approach largely akin to trial and error. They are learning at a pace, at least two generations ahead of our alleged experts. They are operating, at least four or five generations ahead of not only the US, but NATO as well.

Not only doesn’t the community train operators, but the operational system is so broken, that there is zero ability to operate across the spectrum of the entire natsec community. Domestically, the job of protecting Americans from foreign and domestic malign influence (the bad guys) falls to DHS and the FBI. neither has a clue how to do this task. Outside of the US this role falls mostly to the Department of State, the IC and heavily on the Pentagon. Not one of them knows how to do their job either. The reasons why can be found in the paragraph above, beginning with; “There are plenty to blame.”

I have tried for an entire career to push effective and ethical influence as the most cost effective and sustainable national security posture as well as being the most effective strategy on actual battlefields. The entire natsec community shakes their head yes but does the exact opposite. Hence, today’s full-blown condemnation of them and calls for them to be investigated for waste, fraud and abuse. A nation unable to influence, is a nation in demise and acutely lacking in its own historical values.

Every single thing our nation and in fact all nations do, is to influence in support of their own goals. Yet… the natsec community is terrified of even saying the word, “influence.” That’s why they make up preposterous doctrinal terms like, IA, IO, IW etc. They were even so terrified of the word PSYOP that they changed the name to MISO/ Military Information Support Operations. Not one entity in the US government has the courage to acknowledge that every nation is deeply involved in influence… every, single day, both offensively and defensively.

Any reputable national security community that survives, must be able to operate with what I term, “ethical influence.” This happens all around the world daily. We make trade agreements, laws, alliances etc. in order to influence some future or existing benefit to national and allied security. We have huge, government funded Fourth of July celebrations to celebrate our nation’s founding as well as building national resilience to foreign, adversarial ideas and good heavens, every honorable, traditional celebration, influences citizens to honor true American values, largely built around our constitution.

During the Cold War, the US, NATO and much of the world was engaged in an all-out propaganda war to sway global citizens towards liberty and democracy, rather than communism. During WW II, it was a global campaign of Allied defense of liberty against the fascism of the, German, Italian and Japanese, Axis powers. In its simplest form, were talking a war of ideas or more professionally, a battle of narratives. Our natsec community uses the word narrative constantly and is clueless to its true meaning and how it works, especially operationally.

Narratives, although made up of stories, are not stories. Narrative Identities are made up of countless layers. The more shared layers in a group, the more cohesive they are in beliefs, actions or perceptions. Identities that share the most similar elements of identity, tend to see the world through a common frame. Narratives are exclusively influential and have been, since man has walked upright. Influence is the most human of attributes because it is a survival skill at heart and a foundational element of tribalism. The stronger a tribe, the better chance of survival and prosperity. The only question becomes, are the narratives of those tribes, moral or not. One would rightfully argue that Nazism was immoral, as a collective NI or Narrative Identity. Most of our decisions daily, are subconscious, based precisely on our own NI.

The reasons that I raise the issue of narrative, is because that it is the very core of influence success or failure. The issue of AI is currently irrelevant to influence success but is a cornerstone of its failure, until all of the fraudulent defense contractors promising huge successes from their boondoggle projects, learn from experienced academics and operatives in narrative-centric influence campaigning. It is just that simple. Influence is a uniquely human endeavor, not a machine’s. Until machines learn to be human or to understand how we make meaning, they will be operating without predictable success. In fact, AI is applied to influence operations at this point, it runs the perpetual risk of misunderstanding humanity and creating additional risk.

A particular recent announcement from my professional community was the proverbial, “straw that broke the back” of my attempts to persuade the community to listen. They have just continued their four decades of ignoring expertise, and the losses, just keep on coming. After nearly losing our republic to Russian and the associated global, right-wing extremist movements in 2016, my community is still having expensive, useless conferences and loudly celebrating their claimed, but non-existent successes.

The event in particular was the high-profile announcement of the new, National Center for Narrative Intelligence at the University of Mississippi or better known as Ole’ Miss. This is a boondoggle so overtly dishonest as to nearly define the term, waste, fraud and abuse. A few months before the announcement of this boondoggle, I and a highly respected, global leader in the field of Narrative Warfare met with the representatives from Ole’ Miss and carefully explained over an hour, that what they were doing may be interesting work, but that it had nothing to do with narrative. Ole’ Miss and the dishonest entrepreneurs from Edge Theory, still went ahead with their project. I should also mention that this global leader in Narrative Warfare and I literally, co-wrote the book on Narrative Warfare. It is called, Introduction to Narrative Warfare, a Primer and Study Guide.

The company called Edge Theory that falsely claims to produce “narrative intelligence,” is the backbone of the project, and is a tech company with no known narrative experience. They are also being paid to teach and mentor. How in the hell is this possible if they are clueless about narrative? They may have interesting insights into trends, weighted data and basics like sentiment analysis, but narrative… you have got to be kidding! Still, even commands as prestigious as my beloved USSOCOM, loudly backed the project. This is the nepotistic state of defense contracting. Using popular buzzwords and terms in the title of a project, in order to sell it to the US government for ridiculous amounts of money. While we fritter away our tax dollars and time that we don’t have on boondoggles, our adversaries are making real progress. Every single person or entity named as, “those to blame” are degrading US and Western national security, by awarding these contracts. All must be held accountable.

The hyper-partisanship, that is shredding the fabric of our republic is cold, calculated influence operations or as the Soviets called them, Active Measures. They began with the early Bolsheviks in the 1920s and now are cooperative with right-wing US and western movements, based on Russian oligarchism and spread by Christian nationalist ideology. After nearly nine years of being bombarded daily with MAGA and global far-right ideology and propaganda, my community is still holding those conferences and handing out accolades for failure, while that you and I foot the bill. This is wrong on every moral level. When it comes to national security, it is downright dangerous.

Looking back over a map of healthy, global democracies at the end of the Cold War, compared to now, you will see a dramatic decline. Nationally, divisiveness over social issues or what the MAGA GOP calls culture wars, are simply the seeds that the Soviets and now Russians have planted in US and western societies, decades ago. Now, all they have to do to perpetuate and control their audiences, is to be like a farmer and continue to tend the fertile fields of organic western divisiveness, with an ongoing steady stream of enculturated propaganda. This is what those practicing Active Measures called, reflexive control.

The core to resilience against such divisive propaganda, is a national identity built around our true values, not the fake patriotism of MAGA. We can’t get there though without narrative and expert operator guidance. There is an old saying in my community that is tragically accurate. It goes something like this; “when our last concept fails, we will just change the name, get a new contract and then have about five years before we have to do it again.” This still exists. It’s deeply dangerous and expensive trend that I have seen many cycles of. Still, our combined US and NATO natsec communities, remain impotent. Sardonically speaking, maybe they will just hold another expensive conference to discuss this amongst themselves while billing us taxpayers.

Well, while that our fraudulent and failed experts continue to spend our hard-earned dollars wastefully, I highly recommend that citizens demand an OIG/ Office of the Inspector General investigation, into defense contracting within this profession. As a national security professional, I fully understand investing heavily in our security, but as a taxpayer, I expect it not to be wasteful. Our citizenry is so under threat from malign influence that our adversaries have reflexive control over roughly 60 to 70 percent of our voters. Our natsec community is still pontificating at conferences as our national resilience to foreign influence, degrades at an alarming pace.

MAGA voters are reflexively controlled, to the point that they are an acute threat to the republic and regardless of how they poll, will vote for a traitor and fake patriotism. On the other side of the aisle, recent campus protests indicate that roughly 20-30 percent of the left, are the same. Both sides are prisoners to the long running narratives operating between their ears. They have, like Pavlov’s dog, been conditioned to predictably triggered responses by select stimuli. And what do we have to combat such narratives… nothing but fake and fraudulent experts like the Edge Theory and Ole’ Miss contractors and an entire national security profession that is operating like it’s the late 1980’s while refusing to update.

From the perspective of national security, we might as well go back to horses for the Cavalry and muskets for the infantry. There is little difference when it comes to those in the influence profession.

The reading list:

• Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Arrogance, waste fraud and abuse and cronyism in national defense contracting, are putting our republic at severe risk. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• The US National Security community is incapable of managing mis/ disinformation threats (truthaboutthreats.com)

• The US National Security Community has left us a critical vulnerability in US national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Failure in the National Security Influence community is habitual (truthaboutthreats.com)

• A Five Point Strategy to Oppose Russian Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)

• We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Protecting our nation from Mis and Disinformation, requires true expertise at Ethical Influence (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Guest article, by Friend and Narrative Strategies Founder, Dr. Ajit Maan (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Dear America, I dare you! - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)

• FOX News is an acute, national security threat that the Pentagon and national security community allows to be viewed in offices, bases, ships and commands. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Without a core, shared, national identity, there is no national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• National Resilience to anti-American influence is badly wounded and we're unarmed and flailing. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• A look at Xi's Narrative of Ascencion, via narrative analysis (truthaboutthreats.com)

• To deny Putin popular support at home, we must lead with Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)

• DoD must modernize their approach to conflict... and Great Power Competition (truthaboutthreats.com)

• My podcast, hosted by the Lincoln Project and discussing narrative, re: today’s extremist controlled, GOP (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Influence Operations are centric to every aspect of National Security (truthaboutthreats.com)

• The military calls this, M.O.E., an indicator of the success of Putin's propaganda against the US. (truthaboutthreats.com)

• Fake News is Yellow Journalism 2.0 - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)

Please join me in petitioning your elected representatives and senators, to do their job, and investigate the waste, fraud and abuse, in this critical national security profession.

My very best for your week,

Paul