The Propaganda Wars

Two pieces relating to the effort to fight the War on Terror online:

Will McCants reports in Foreign Policy.com on the efforts of some "cyber jihadists" to counter the State Departments counter-propaganda office by either wrecking their Twitter feed or those of any Arabs who follow State's Digital Outreach Team. To date, the effort has failed, although it still remains unclear how effective the DOT effort has been since its founding in 2011, although as McCants suggests, if the jihadists are worried about it, perhaps it is doing something right.

On the other hand, the Defense Department's efforts to combat jihadists through strategic communications faces a different foe . . . the U.S. Senate. According to the Military Times, the Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to approve Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI)'s measure to eliminate the $19.7 million in funding for the Pentagon's Trans Regional Web Initiative (TRWI), which is run by U.S. Special Operations Command. The SASC "believes that the costs to operate the websites developed under TRWI are excessive. The effectiveness of the websites is questionable and the performance metrics do not justify the expense." The defense authorization bill will go before the full Senate sometime after August recess.

Even if these programs were working brilliantly, metrics is always a problem when trying to assess strategic communications, as it is difficult to measure how many dogs do not bark. I'd be curious to ask Senator Levin or the other committee members who support the defunding of TRWI what they propose as an alternative for countering online recruitment of terrorists during the floor debates, or whether the entire effort is folly if success can't be quantified.