Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week ordered military commands involved in online psychological operations to provide full records of their activities by next month after the White House and some Federal agencies have expressed growing concerns about the Defense Department’s attempt to manipulate the public overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter. Twitter and Facebook’s takedown of more than 150 fake personal and media websites created in the United States in recent years was revealed last month by Internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. Although investigators did not attribute the false reports to the US military, two officials familiar with the matter said the US Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. Investigators did not say when the seizures took place, but those familiar with the matter said they were in the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and included posts from the summer that promoted anti-Russian narratives invoking the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s immediate impact on Central Asian countries. Importantly, they found that impersonators – using tactics used by countries like Russia and China – did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers. Centcom, based in Tampa, has responsibility for military operations in 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia. A spokesman declined to comment. Air Force Brigadier General. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that the military’s information operations “support national security priorities” and must be conducted in accordance with relevant laws and policies. “We are committed to enforcing these safeguards,” he said. Representatives for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. Facebook and Twitter remove pro-Western fake accounts originating from the United States According to the investigators’ report, the accounts taken down included a fabricated Persian-language media site that shared content republished by the US-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe. Another, he said, linked to a Twitter handle that had previously claimed to work on behalf of Centcom. A fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of dead Afghan refugees had reported returning bodies from Iran with missing organs, according to the report. The tweet linked to a video that was part of an article posted on a website linked to the US military. Centcom has not commented on whether these accounts were created by its staff or contractors. If the tweet about the organ collection turns out to be from Centcom, a defense official said, it would “absolutely be a violation of doctrine and training practices.” Regardless of the report, the Washington Post has learned that in 2020 Facebook disabled fictitious faces created by Centcom to counter disinformation spread by China suggesting that the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 was created in a US military lab at Fort Detrick, Md., according to officials familiar with the matter. The fake profiles — active in Facebook groups conversing in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, officials said — were used to bolster truthful information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the virus’ origin in China. The US government ersatz social media use The bills, though approved by law and policy, have sparked controversy within the Biden administration, with the White House pressing the Pentagon to clarify and justify its policies. The White House, agencies such as the State Department and even some Defense Department officials worry the policies are too broad, leaving room for tactics that, even if used to disseminate truthful information, risk eroding U.S. credibility, several said. US officials. . “Our adversaries are absolutely active in the intelligence sector,” said a second senior defense official. “There are some who believe that we should not do anything clandestine in this space. Assigning an entire domain to an adversary would be unwise. But we need stronger protective policies.” A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, which is part of the White House, declined to comment. Kahl revealed his assessment at a virtual meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday, saying he wants to know what kinds of operations have been carried out, who they are targeting, what tools are being used and why military commanders have chosen those tactics, and how effective they have been. , several officials said. The message was essentially: “You have to justify to me why you’re doing this kind of thing,” the first defense official said. Pentagon policy and doctrine discourages the military from peddling lies, but there are no specific rules mandating the use of truthful information for psychological operations. For example, the military sometimes uses fiction and satire for persuasion purposes, but generally the messages are supposed to stick to the facts, officials said. In 2020, officials at Facebook and Twitter contacted the Pentagon to raise concerns about fake accounts they were supposed to remove, suspected of being related to the military. That summer, David Agranovich, Facebook’s director of global threat response, spoke to Christopher C. Miller, then assistant director of Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, who oversees corporate influence policy, warning him that if the Facebook could smell them, so could the US. rivals, several people familiar with the conversation said. “His theme,” one person said, “was ‘Guys, you’re caught. This is a problem.’ “ Before Miller could take action, he was tapped to lead another agency—the National Counterterrorism Center. Then the November election happened and time ran out for the Trump administration to address the issue, although Miller spent the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency as deputy defense secretary. With the rise of Russia and China as strategic competitors, military commanders wanted to fight back, even online. And Congress supported it. Frustrated by perceived legal obstacles to the Defense Department’s ability to conduct covert cyber activities, Congress passed legislation in late 2019 confirming that the military could conduct operations in the “information environment” to defend the United States and push back foreign disinformation. in undermining its interests. The measure, known as Section 1631, allows the military to conduct covert psychological operations without crossing what the CIA has claimed is its secrecy authority, easing some of the friction that has hindered such operations in the past. “Combatant commanders were very excited,” recalled the first defense official. “They were very willing to use these new principles. Defense contractors were equally willing to land lucrative classified contracts to enable covert influence operations.” At the same time, the official said, military leaders were not trained to oversee “technically complex operations conducted by contractors” or to coordinate such activities with other stakeholders elsewhere in the US government. Last year, with new management in place, Facebook’s Agranovich tried again. This time he took his complaint to President Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyberspace, Anne Neuberger. Agranovich, who had worked at the NSC under Trump, told Neuberger that Facebook was removing the fake accounts because they violated the company’s terms of service, according to people familiar with the exchange. The accounts were easily traced by Facebook, which since Russia’s 2016 presidential election meddling campaign has beefed up its ability to identify virtual faces and websites. In some cases, the company had removed profiles that appeared to be linked to the military that promoted information deemed false by fact-checkers, a person familiar with the matter said. Report on Russian disinformation amid 2016 election shows scale and sweep of operation Agranovic too spoke with officials at the Pentagon. His message was: “We know what DOD is doing. It violates our policies. We’re going to enforce our policies” and so “DOD should repeal it,” said a A US official was briefed on the matter. In response to White House concerns, Kahl ordered a review of Military Intelligence Support Operations, or MISO, the Pentagon’s nickname for psychological operations. A draft concluded that policies, training and oversight needed tightening, and that coordination with other agencies, such as the State Department and the CIA, needed strengthening, officials said. The review also found that while there were instances in which fictitious information was promoted by the military, it was the result of inadequate oversight of contractors and training of personnel — not systemic problems, officials said. Pentagon leadership did little with the review, two officials said, before Graphika and Stanford released their report on Aug. 24, which prompted a flurry of news and questions about the military. The State Department and the CIA have been disturbed by the military’s use of covert tactics. State officials warned the Defense…
