A new White House report to Congress (pdf) defines “strategic communication” as “the synchronization of our words and deeds as well as deliberate efforts to communicate and engage with intended audiences.”
“This understanding of strategic communication is driven by a recognition that what we do is often more important than what we say because actions have communicative value and send messages,” the report stated. “Every action that the United States Government takes sends a message.”
Unfortunately, the report does not begin to acknowledge any instances in which U.S. government actions are inconsistent with U.S. government words, thus necessitating their “synchronization,” and so it is not very illuminating.
A copy of the report, transmitted to Congress on March 16 and reported March 25 by Inside the Pentagon, is available here.
The report refers in passing to a Presidential Study Directive on Development, a document that has not yet surfaced in the public domain.
In recent months, we’ve seen much of these decades’ worth of progress erased. Contracts for evaluations of government programs were canceled, FFRDCs have been forced to lay off staff, and federal advisory committees have been disbanded.
This report outlines a framework relying on “Cooperative Technical Means” for effective arms control verification based on remote sensing, avoiding on-site inspections but maintaining a level of transparency that allows for immediate detection of changes in nuclear posture or a significant build-up above agreed limits.
At a recent workshop, we explored the nature of trust in specific government functions, the risk and implications of breaking trust in those systems, and how we’d known we were getting close to specific trust breaking points.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.