Pentagon Report Calls for Office of ‘Strategic Deception’
January 28th, 2010Via: Wired:
The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”
Tricking battlefield opponents has been a part of war since guys started beating each other with bones and sticks. But these days, such moves are harder to pull off, the DSB notes in a January report (.pdf) first unearthed by InsideDefense.com. “In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries.”
The U.S. can’t wait until it’s at war with a particular country or group before engaging in this strategic trickery, however. “Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime,” according to the DSB. “In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should [begin] deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations.”
Doing that will not only requires an “understanding the enemy culture, standing beliefs, and intelligence-gathering process and decision cycle, as well as the soundness of its operational and tactical doctrine,” the DSB adds. Deception is also “reliant … on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe.”
Such wholesale obfuscation can’t be done on an ad-hoc basis, or by a loose coalition of existing agencies. The DSB writes that ”to be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational expertise needs to be established.” I wonder: what would you call that organization? The Military Deception Agency? Or something a bit more … deceptive?
Kind of the ultimate limited-hangout: “Oh, no, we’ve never had anything like this before, but NOW it occurs to us it might be a good idea.” Yeah, right.
name?? they don’t know what to name it?? why, The Ministry Of Truth, of couse.
…seriously, any security based on secrecy is no security at all… never has been, no matter old and established the practice is. duplicity always undermines the perpetrator more than it’s victim.
“Doctrine”. These morons take themselves far too seriously. Is it any wonder the US is reviled the world over?
Ministry Of Truth indeed. Ever wonder how the thought processes work at the higher levels of power? I think this one went something like this:
“All this transparency garbage is really screwing things up. Everybody keeps ripping the lids off all the cans and peeking at things they shouldn’t see. Let’s build a barrel that you can’t open, and put everything in it.”