Back during my second run at college I wrote for the Daily Texan. Here’s a piece worth revisiting: Free Tibet, stop Darfur, save Congo! The Daily Texan April 11, 2007 While dodging flyers for the cause d’jour, I chuckle a bit at the student lobbyists who ask me if I’d like to “help free Tibet today,†“stop the genocide in Darfur†or “bring peace to the Congo†while … [Read more…] about Looking back at 2007 and Darfur
Recently, you’ve probably heard a lot about Influence Activities or Influence Operations, usually in the context of Russia and the 2016 election. For many Americans, this topic may seem to have come out of nowhere. At SOFREP though, we’ve been talking about it for a long time. See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Many news sources either dismiss the matter or … [Read more…] about American Universities and Influence Research
The Chinese government has spent the last several years developing soft power and influence capabilities. Like many other countries, this effort includes investing in schools. Schools are ideal platforms for propaganda dissemination. China has established Confucius Institutes around the world. The China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) has the benign mission of … [Read more…] about UT Austin rejects communist influence
Saturday the Civil Defense system in Hawaii sent out a mass alert regarding an inbound ballistic missile, sending many residents of the 50th state into a near panic. Luckily, the alert was an error. But what if it wasn’t? The fact is that the North Korean regime is trying to develop a nuclear delivery capability. Experts believe there’s an even chance we’ll be going to war … [Read more…] about Hawaiian nuclear alert: What if it was real?
You’ve probably heard about the Russian special operations troop killed recently in Syria. As the story goes, he was alone, low on ammo, and surrounded by Daesh attackers. He called in an air strike on his own position, martyring himself to kill the enemy hordes converging on his position. If you read SOFREP regularly, you’ve probably already seen Jack Murphy’s scathing … [Read more…] about Russia’s viral hero story almost certainly Kremlin propaganda
Daesh propaganda is good. It’s very good. America has been struggling along the ideological front since before 9/11. After 9/11, Secretary Rumsfeld famously graded our line of efforts there a D+. Unlike our psychological warfare approach in WWII, we’ve had several halting starts and stops since the GWOT began. Rumsfeld closed down the Office of Strategic Influence shortly after … [Read more…] about Should a Navy SEAL be Leading our ISIS Counter-Propaganda Efforts?
Political luminaries, including Adams and Marshall, have long affirmed that the United States is a nation of laws, not men. When President Nixon resigned following his association with the Watergate crimes, Vice President Gerald Ford stated, “Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.†Our government’s legitimacy rests on this … [Read more…] about Are Clinton and Trump Too Powerful to Touch?
With hardly a peep, the Army recently closed the book on the controversial Human Terrain System. HTS provided commanders with anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists to conduct field research with the purpose of generating a higher (and more accurate) level of socio-cultural awareness in the battlespace. Regardless of ongoing criticism from the academic … [Read more…] about Army Shuts Down Human Terrain System
Recently, a professor of management at my alma mater kindly asked me to provide some insights for one of her undergraduate classes on negotiations. The article they were studying was written several years ago by renowned negotiation expert Jeff Weiss for Harvard Business Review. Weiss was exploring what the U.S. military could teach corporate America about high-risk and … [Read more…] about High-Stakes Negotiations: From Conflict to the Conference Room
