The planning and execution of US Army information operations are the subject of a new Army manual for practitioners.
Information operations are activities that involve the use of information to support US and allied military objectives and/or to degrade adversary functions. The field of information operations includes military deception, cyberspace operations, and other sub-disciplines.
The first step is to characterize and assess the information environment.
Information Operations (IO) officers “identify human networks, groups, and subgroups that affiliate along religious, political, or cultural lines, including commonly held beliefs and local narratives.”
Once such networks are identified, information operators devise ways to influence, control or subvert them.
“IO officers focus their analysis on preferred means, methods, and venues that each social affiliation uses to interact and communicate and the ways each collectively constructs reality. Analysis examines biases, pressure points, general leanings, and proclivities, especially as they pertain to support or opposition of friendly and adversarial forces.”
SeeThe Conduct of Information Operations, ATP 3-13.1, October 4, 2018.
The clearinghouse will also neutrally mediate the assignment of auditors to audits—strengthening independence, trust, and ethical governance across the AI ecosystem.
The potential implication of these evidence gaps becomes more consequential when you look at how institutions actually make decisions day to day.
Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.