The Russian Concept of Reflexive Control - TTG

In 1996 I heard the siren song of the developing field of Information Warfare (IW). The concept intrigued me, but I found it was little more than a conglomeration of well established aspects of warfare. IW was visualized as an image of a Greek temple with five columns. The “five pillars” of IW at that time were OPSEC, PSYOPS, military deception, electronic warfare and physical destruction. See. Nothing new. In retrospect, these early attempts were rather crude and simplistic.

Shortly after that, I had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting Tim Thomas.  He was a Russian FAO and an analyst at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. He was an expert in Soviet/Russian military doctrine and in the Russian equivalent of IW, commonly referred to as information confrontation or information-based warfare. We shared an interest in all things Russian and, between us, had a fair amount of experience dealing with Russians. I told him of my experiences with Russian trained cyberneticists and he introduced me to the concept of reflexive control. This theory has been a subject of study in the Soviet Union for over fifty years. It became the guiding principle in the development of the Soviet Union’s/Russia’s growing capability in information confrontation.

Tim Thomas describes reflexive control in his July 1996 article “Russian Views on Information-based Warfare.” He’s written a lot on this subject since then. 

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"Information manipulation/perception management"

"Disinformation is a Russian technique that manipulates information and misinforms people or groups. Some disinformation procedures are obvious, some unconvincing, and some work through delayed perceptions, rumors, repetition, or arguments. Specific persons or particular social groups can serve as disinformation targets. The purpose of a disinformation campaign is to influence the consciousness and mind of man. In Russia today, where there is an unstable public-political and socio-economic situation, the entire population could serve as the target of influence for an enemy campaign."

"The authorities in Moscow recognize this and are trying to gain control over a most dangerous situation in their view. Clearly, the management of information is essential to their maintenance of stability. Historically, the Soviet Union was very good at developing theories of information management. Their propaganda machine stood at the apex of this effort. One of their most interesting Cold-war methods for managing information and getting people (or an opponent) to do what an action's initiator wanted was described by the theory of reflexive control. Reflexive control is a "branch of the theory of control related to influencing the decisions of others. In a military context, it can be viewed as a means for providing one military commander with the ability to indirectly maintain control over his opponent commander's decision process." Reflexive control involves creating a pattern or providing partial information that causes an enemy to react in a predetermined fashion without the enemy realizing that he is being manipulated. Its aim is to force an enemy commander to make a decision that, through the manipulation of information, was predetermined by the opposing side.“

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Our doctrine of IW, now information operations, has come a long way from those early days of the five pillared temple. Perception management, now a core concept of our doctrine, is a first cousin of reflexive control. And we are equally good at it. 

I share all this with you, my fellow correspondents, so that you may read two articles from “War on the Rocks” with open, yet critical minds. “WHODUNNIT? RUSSIA AND COERCION THROUGH CYBERSPACE” by Robert Morgus and “TROLLING FOR TRUMP: HOW RUSSIA IS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY” by Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts and J.M. Berger describe this year’s series of hacks, leaks and false news as a deliberate Russian information operation targeting the U.S. If you have the time and/or inclination, I suggest you drill down through all the embedded links in the articles. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

As many of you know, I am convinced that all this was the result of a well planned and executed information operation undertaken by the Russian government. I’ve spent a decade working in and around this type of thing and can recognize an elegant information operation when I see one. And elegant it was. No drone assassinations. No extrajudicial kidnappings and imprisonments. No arming of terrorists. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, you magnificent bastard, I salute you.

What I don’t know is the true objective of this operation. Was it to defeat Clinton and elect Trump? Was it to destroy confidence and increase doubt in our political system and/or media? Perhaps it was it something else altogether. One’s answers to these questions seems totally dependent on one’s political inclinations. Since there are so many other factors that brought about our present situation, I doubt we’ll ever know the true motives behind this information operation. Nor will we know its true effectiveness or ineffectiveness. But one thing I can assure all of you, it's happening, baby.

TTG

Comments

[Bill Herschel]

I apologize for the comment that got me banned. It was intemperate and "way off" in the words of Rodney Dangerfield.

Interesting. Your comment raises more questions about "b" than TTG. The entire issue with the hacked material is not how it was done, what what was done with it. Your "12 year old" is a red herring, and perhaps you know that.

Russia has experienced at least since Reagan a constant effort by the United States to disrupt Russian society, disrupt and take over the countries bordering it, and smear its name. And we are, I take it, supposed to believe that no such effort on their part will be directed toward the United States?

I ask a simple question. Donald Trump is the President elect. Why is he still flying around in a plane that has his name printed on the side and that belongs to him? Why has he, out of the blue even for him, said that he does not want to take delivery on the new Air Force One from Boeing? What's that about? And why is the new Secretary of State someone who could have been hand-picked by Sergey Lavrov?

Throughout history a lot of people have underestimated the Russians. Despite all the hysterical bleating about how terrible Russia is, is it possible that they have been underestimated?

[Eric Newhill]

TTG,

My point is not that the techno jargon has no meaning in any context or that the Russians haven't done anything of the sort. Rather that going along with the "Russians did it" meme without concrete proof that a) they really did it and b) it had an impact on the election, is extremely reckless with regards to the larger picture.

The meme implies that millions of Americans (myself among them) voted for Trump because we were duped by a foreign government. Furthermore, it is implied that sans the Russian IO, we would have made the correct choice, Clinton (personally, I never liked Clinton and did not support her when she ran against Obama - long before the alleged Russian IO). Thus the assertion that the Russians undermined the US system is, in itself, undermining the US system by de-legitimizing the election results and Trump's presidency. Which makes me think that it is the asserters who are waging the true IO campaign against the American people and that you - again with all due respect - have been duped and victimized by the real deal IO, brewed up right here at home.

Furthermore, I think it is highly reckless to continue to insert anti-Russian sentiment into the American zeitgeist; especially if there isn't a good solid reason for it.

Maybe the Russians truly are behind some of the hacks. Again, I would say, if they were, "So what"? As already noted, all major countries do this sort of thing. What impact did the Russians have? I see very little to none. If that's the best they can do, then Russian IO capability is pretty lame and we should just shrug and let the whole thing go. The need to hold onto the concept and talk about it endlessly is more destructive than what - if anything - the Russians may have done.

[Edward Amame]

Lemur

A great public service directed ONLY at powerful political officials on one side of the aisle tells only half of the story and seems more to me like a covert action than an effort to present information which is very clearly in the public interest.

Now watch as Pence, McConnell and Ryan prepare a whole slew of proposals that have nothing to do with why Trump voters put him in office.

[Enrico Malatesta]

Your "cheap and easy" solutions all bolster the Media Elite that have caused the bulk of their their de-legitimization crisis.

A less authoritarian idea might be to find a modern way back to the tenets of the 1927 "Fairness Doctrine", and allow #fakenews to be countered from the ground up.

[Babak Makkinejad]

In regards to the psychological void etc.:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/when-islam-breaks-down-12512.html

There is also the very important fact that one cannot discuss and critique Islamic Tradition without fear of death in much of the Muslim World; if problems and issues are not put on the table, they cannot be resolved.

I was told, by a Punjabi, that my discourse on alteration to rules governing fasting period during Ramazan will get me murdered in Pakistan.

[jsn]

"The first is to shake Americans’ confidence in public institutions, to include political parties, democratic processes, and the media. The second, slightly less obvious, goal is likely to deflect some attention away from other Russian actions around the world, like their ongoing questionable operations in Syria and Ukraine."

These two sentences sum up the problem with the "Ruskies did it!" scenario. If our own elites had not committed most of their own efforts over the last two or three decades to shaking " Americans’ confidence in public institutions, to include political parties, democratic processes, and the media" and if Russia's efforts in Ukraine and Syria were somehow dubious, like our own, there might be a plausible basis for saying the Russians have influenced the outcome of our recent election.

I agree with PL that Russian cyber-agents are certainly up to all the things posited in his post and his links, but in the same sense that if you have Bill Casey as your campaign manager and he isn't doing a deal with Iran he isn't doing his job: if your opponent is tripping over a Jacob's ladder of its own knotted dicks and your not pushing at the stumbling buffoon, your not doing your job as an intelligence agency.

[Seamus Padraig]

Exactly. If anti-government propaganda now works in the US, it's because the government no longer works for the people and has therefore lost legitimacy. Otherwise, people would just ignore the propaganda or scoff at it. Same is true of the media: if the MSM in the west were actually still worth a d*mn, no one would feel compelled to watch RT, or scout alt-sites on the internet.

[jonst]

You lost me when you wrote: 'Historically, the Soviet Union was very good at developing theories of information management". Maybe. But they were 100% bad then, at implementing them.

i'm thinking the Deep State has lost their minds. And I agree 1000% with the Col. Messing around with this election result, and the Clinton briefing is doing precisely that with their 'briefing' of the Electors, is play with fire. This can blow up very quickly I think.

[kooshy]

TTG and Colonel sorry for OT wondering if anybody seen this report already a very interesting story on Syrian peace negotiations between Iran and Turkey back in 2013. What a messy miss for Turkey

“Iran and Turkey's secret talks on Syria revealed”

The Turkish president at the time, Abdullah Gül, told the ICG “our government did not pursue an agreement with Iran because it thought Assad would be toppled in a few months”.
“From Ankara’s perspective, Assad’s battlefield losses would remove need to compromise or at least improve a deal’s terms,” the report said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/13/iran-and-turkey-held-secret-talks-on-syria-peace-proposals-in-2013-and-2016

[jonst]

Now you are entering into my wheelhouse......Since you are in an investigatory I say we should start with the "we have the investigations of the " 'private' computer security firms" providing us with the narrative the media is running with. Lets examine their connections and personal.

Keep pulling on this thread and the entire suit of Emperor;s clothes are likely to come apart.

[shargash]

Eichenwald is the guy who made the rounds in the MSM claiming that Wikileaks was releasing fabricated emails. No one has ever found evidence that any of the emails were anything but what Wikileaks purported them to be.

In other words, Eichanwald makes stuff up to help Clinton.

In any case, there is no requirement that the president release old tax returns. If some investigative journalist wants to dig around and can show that Trump broke the law, that would be reasonable and proper. But that's not what Eichenwald does (despite being a Newsweek "journalist").

[Fred]

Col.,

I agree. It won't look anything like the last one either. If I were a member of the media or a university hack or city council member in some "sanctuary city" I'd be awful damned worried that some of those guys with guns might show up at my door and rather doubtful of the protection from the local police force too.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Speaking of interests shared by the US and Russia, Ian Welsh addressed just this in a post yesterday about the US/Russia/China triangle:

"the problem with NATO expansion and overthrowing the Ukrainian government and the color revolutions and sanctions against Russia and all that stuff, is that it was forcing Russia into China’s camp. . . Russia does not want to be China’s ally. Russians (at least in the past, not so sure any more) would far rather have allied with Europe and the US, but Europe and the US would simply not allow it. Running on crazed fumes from the Cold War, they feared Russia, who is no longer a threat to take first sport, rather than China, which was. . . . Note that Trump has also expressed great skepticism about NATO. He puts it in money terms “why should we pay for Europe’s defense”, but the end is the same, a NATO pointed at Russia doesn’t make sense to Trump or his advisors."

http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-trump-china-showdown-aligns-with-reality/

[Jay]

Malcolm Nance was the first to identify this phenomenon before anyone else on the ground started writing about it, and you should include his book, The Plot to Hack America in your list of suggested reading: https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Hack-America-Cyberspies-WikiLeaks/dp/1510723323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481648031&sr=8-1&keywords=the+plot+to+hack+america

[HawkOfMay]

I definitely believe that the Russians tried influence the election. It may not have been the Kremlin directly but rather the oligarchs who have common interest with Putin. I've never had such a negative visceral reaction to a President (Elect) in my life. None of that changes the legitimacy of the election.

It was all out there; the good news, the bad news, the fake news, the opinions, and the propaganda. Most everyone had access to the same information and if people chose to stay in their information bubbles, so be it. "Porkchop Express" explained it well earlier in this thread: "unless SVR or GRU agents were literally handing in ballots or hacking directly into voting machines, I can't blame the Russians for trying to influence...... If the Russians did anything, they simply heightened the contradictions that already existed."

If the underlying systemic issues did not exist there would not have been anything to leverage.

[Valissa]

As academic terms go... I like it!

Charles Hugh Smith has an interesting take... and btw, has a great diagram of the Deep State, which seems to match well with Lofgren's definition of that. Here we might call it The Borg Superset, or Borg+ ;)

Is the Deep State at War--With Itself? http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2016/12/is-deep-state-at-war-with-itself.html
OR HERE http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-13/deep-state-war-itself (for those who enjoy comments)
[concluding paragraphs] We can now discern the warring camps of the Deep State more clearly. On the one side is the C.I.A., the mainstream media, and the civilians who have feasted on wealth and power from their participation in the neocon's Global Project.
On the other side is the Defense Department's own intelligence agencies (D.I.A. et al.), the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and at least a few well-placed civilians who recognize the neocon agenda as a clear and present danger to the security of the nation.

From this perspective, the C.I.A.'s rash, evidence-free "report" is a rear-guard political action against the winning faction of the Deep State. The Deep State elements that profited from the neocon agenda were confident that Hillary's victory would guarantee another eight years of globalist intervention. Her loss means they are now on the defensive, and like a cornered, enraged beast, they are lashing out with whatever they have in hand.

This goes a long way in explaining the C.I.A.'s release of a painfully threadbare and politicized "report."
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[LeaNder]

Now you are entering into my wheelhouse......Since you are in an investigatory I say we should start with the "we have the investigations of the " 'private' computer security firms" providing us with the narrative the media is running with.

Steve, 1996 triggered memories of 1994 when I started to work for an NGO. I vividly recall they had not the least knowledge or interest in the internet. Their American counterpart had. It was rudimentary at the time ...

From my endless babbling universe: I had a personal computer long before it was used in the average firm over here. I do recall the first time I asked my brother, who worked for IT all his life, if I shouldn't better get some security, since everyone around me seemed to 'have caught flu', his answer was: whose best interest would it be to plant those viruses? Times have changed a lot since then.

*****
Nutshell: i do not believe in emperor's whose clothes can be pulled down easily, never mind 'the naked one'.

[Lefty]

You've got it. It is reminiscent of "Give 'em Hell Harry" and Truman's response "I just tell the truth and they think it's Hell".

If I were running this operation and had the opportunity to be successful by being mostly truthful it would leave me grinning from ear to ear.

[Edward Amame]

Lemur

There will be no EC revolt.

However,'there is no possible outcome where you will get your way' still applies. McConnell, Ryan, Pence and co will see to that. What then?

[robt willmann]

A good article was published yesterday, 12 December, and presented a brief but clear explanation about the question of whether Russia did computer hacking regarding the U.S. presidential election. The organization that can answer the question, if it can be answered, is of course the NSA. The obvious, primary authors are William Binney and Kirk Wiebe, former high-level NSA employees who were involved in creating the surveillance system that operates worldwide, and who went "through channels" to expose the money-wasting fraud and illegal domestic spying at the NSA, but that effort got nowhere, as could be expected from the spayed and neutered Congress. What did happen was that they were raided by the FBI, but then were charged with nothing--

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/

Their opinion is that the disclosed e-mails were the result of a leak and not computer hacking.

When Congress conducts its expected "investigation" of the alleged Russian activity, what are the odds that Binney, Wiebe, and Ed Loomis will be called as witnesses so that the people and their "representatives" can hear them?

[Nightsticker]

TTG,

So now war between the US and Russia,
if any, will be conducted via Twitter.
I am OK with that. For most of my life
the possibilities were a lot worse.

Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96

[Donald]

" But they were 100% bad then, at implementing them."

Agreed. I have no expertise in hacking whatsoever, but if the Russians are good at propaganda warfare in their own country, they really stink at it here. Until recently the Israelis were a hundred times better at it and they are only flailing because Netanyahu got a little overconfident and tried to turn Congress against Obama on the Iran deal. That was a bridge too far. Even the Saudis are better than the Russians, though in that case it is probably just the money they spread around.

[Edward Amame]

Lemur

Oh please. Where exactly do you think McConnell, Pence and Ryan get their marching orders from?

[steve g]

TTG
Would you consider "the Saker" part of IO?
The main thrust of his articles to me speak
of the "AngloZionist" elite and their constant
attempts to control the narrative. He being
the counter narrative.

[The Twisted Genius]

Nightsticker

I'm OK with that, too. And for the same reason.