Readings in cognitive warfare at the societal level — #7:

The lead Editorial in the latest issue of the Journal of Information Warfare includes a recognition I'm pleased to see of John Arquilla’s and my old RAND work on information warfare, including our concept of “guarded openness”. It’s still a timely concept, for I’m now concerned that America’s relatively high connectivity and transparency is partly what has made us so vulnerable to the “weaponized narratives” (Allenby & Garreau) and “weaponized social media” (Robb) that are tribalizing us. The grand purpose of strategic information warfare at the societal level is to tribalize (even atomize) a society; and to do so by way of undermining peoples' trust in and ties to their institutional and market systems, as well as emerging network systems, so they have nowhere to go but back to the tribal form — all in accord with TIMN theory. America is being riven by that now, and finding ways back appears to be a far greater challenge than we’ve recognized yet.

https://www.jinfowar.com/journal/volume-16-issue-4/volume-16-issue-4-editorial