This New Yorker cartoon perhaps says it best, although a problem with this simple cartoon is it may go a bit far by implying like Batman the jester has enforcers, rather than the other way around — enforcers have a jester:
The “official website for BBC History Magazine, BBC History Revealed and BBC World Histories Magazine” presents some graphic details for Medieval messaging protocols:
…jesters were often required to go to the battlefield with their masters to carry messages between the leaders of warring armies, demanding that a city surrender to a besieging army or delivering terms for the release of hostages. Unfortunately for the jesters, the enemy did sometimes ‘kill the messenger’ as an act of defiance (especially if they regarded the terms being offered as an insult) and some used a catapult or trebuchet to hurl the unfortunate messenger (or his severed head) back into his own camp as a graphic illustration of what they thought of the message.
The story ends with this “grave warning” from a certain jester’s final resting place:
If chance has brought thee here, or curious eyes
To see the spot where this poor jester lies
A thoughtless jester even in his death
Uttering his jibes beyond his latest breath.
Leaflets have been so basic, so very black beret and prone to failures, that something higher up on the hat color chart seems to be in store for the military:
How better to attract talent into a modernizing Psychological Operations (PSYOP) group than a grey hat? Or imagine the “grey berets” calling in “knowledge bombs”…
Nothing is decided yet, I mean there’s still a chance someone could influence the decisions, but rumors have it that the next generation of psychological warfare troops could expect to be represented in a beret the color of white noise:
The idea is essentially still being floated at this point, but it could be a recruiting boon for the PSYOP career field, which is tasked with influencing the emotions and behaviors of people through products like leaflets, loudspeakers and, increasingly, social media.
“In a move to more closely link Army Special Operations Forces, the PSYOP Proponent at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School is exploring the idea of a distinctive uniform item, like a grey beret, to those Soldiers who graduate the Psychological Operations Qualification Course,” Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, a USASOC spokesman, said in an emailed statement to Army Times.
While still being a little fuzzy on the details, reporters also dropped some useful suggestions in their story:
1) The new Army Special Operations Command strategy released just a month ago states everyone always will be trained in cyber warfare and weaponizing information
LOE 2 Readiness, OBJ 2.2 Preparation: Reality in readiness will be achieved using cyber and information warfare in all aspects of training.
2) Weaponizing information means returning to principles of influence operations in World War II (e.g. Mission 101, and Operation Torch), let alone World War I (e.g. Battle of Beersheba)… I mean adapting to the modern cloud platform (Cambridge Analytica) war.
“We need to move beyond our 20th century approach to messaging and start looking at influence as an integral aspect of modern irregular warfare,” Andrew Knaggs, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, said at a defense industry symposium in February. Army Special Operations Command appears to take seriously the role that influencing plays in great power competition.
As some of the most highly trained military personnel, the “grey beret” are a force to be reckoned with. Until SOWT gives the “all-clear” the mission doesn’t move forward.
Kessler AFB: “Team members collect atmospheric data, assist mission planning, generate accurate and mission-tailored target and route forecasts in support of global special operations, conduct special weather reconnaissance and train foreign national forces.” Click for original.
Meanwhile over at the Navy and Marines there’s much discussion about vulnerability to broad-based information attacks across their entire supply chain.
…a massive cyber campaign is being waged against the Navy, and every organization associated with it is mounting. The defense industrial base and associated supply chains are under constant assault. The hackers have two objectives: steal U.S. defense secrets and undermine confidence…
While Brigadier General (BG) William P. Yarborough, commander of the U.S. Army Special Warfare Center, waited at the pond, the presidential caravan drove down roads flanked on both sides by saluting SF soldiers, standing proudly in fatigues and wearing green berets.
“Late Thursday morning, 12 October 1961, BG Yarborough welcomed the 35th President, Secretary McNamara, GEN Decker, and the distinguished guests at the reviewing stand.”
General Yarborough very strategically wore the green beret as he greeted JFK and they spoke of Special Forces wanting them a long time (arguably since 1953 when ex-OSS Major Brucker started the idea).
The challenge of this old but new form of operations is a real one…I am sure the Green Beret will be a mark of distinction in the trying times ahead.
Just one month later, 58 years ago (November 1961) the green beret became official headgear of the Special Forces, which earlier that year started being deployed into Vietnam. Finally on April 11, 1962 JFK issued a White House Memorandum to the US Army:
The Green Beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.
What will the grey hat symbolize and what will become its history?
Update May 2020: Perspective from USSOCOM on SOF and US Strategy.
“During his most recent trip to Afghanistan, Clarke said, he found that commanders now spend 60 percent of their time working in the information space. Commanders think about how to use the information space to influence the Taliban’s thought processes and how to influence the Afghan.”
Founded in 1952 as part of the U.S. Army Psychological Warfare Division, the 10th Special Forces Group was the first of its kind, according to Army archives. It was named the tenth group to make the Soviets think there were at least nine others just like it, Anne Jacobsen wrote in her book “Surprise, Kill, Vanish.” […] Wanting to distinguish themselves from conventional Army forces, Special Forces soldiers selected the wear of the beret because of OSS influence, since a number of its teams adopted headgear worn by soldiers in France. And the color green came from the influence of British Commandos during World War II.
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has created a new joint task force to fight against Chinese information operations in the Pacific.
[RAT LEAFLET] Translation: “The Invisible Sheikh with the expansion of his false caliphate… will soon have none to help him achieve his illusions.” Target Audience: ISIS members. Objective: Encourage desertion to weaken ISIS. This is a reference to the leader of ISIS and self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He is called ‘invisible’ because his exact location remains uncertain and he hides among civilian populations in ISIS-controlled areas rather than anywhere in the open or near immediate danger. An example of a PSYOP leaflet used against the Islamic State (ISIS) that was dropped before the Delta Force raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. (USASOC).
This new NY Books essay reads to me like prose and raises some important points about the desire to escape, and believing reality exists in places that we are not:
…when I look back at the series of wilderness travel articles I wrote for The New York Times a decade ago, what jumps out at me is the almost monomaniacal obsession with enacting Denevan’s myth by finding unpopulated places. Camped out in the Australian outback, I boasted that it was “the farthest I’d ever been from other human beings.” Along the “pristine void” of a remote river in the Yukon, I climbed ridges and scanned the horizon: “It was intoxicating,” I wrote, “to pick a point in the distance and wonder: Has any human ever stood there?”
Rereading those and other articles, I now began to reluctantly consider the possibility that my infatuation with the wilderness was, at its core, a poorly cloaked exercise in colonial nostalgia—the urbane Northern equivalent of dressing up as Stonewall Jackson at Civil War reenactments because of an ostensible interest in antique rifles.
As a historian I’d say he’s engaging in a poorly cloaked exercise is escapism, more like going to Disneyland than trying to reenact real events from the past (whether it be the white supremacist policies of Britain or America).
Today is the day, that new Civil War movie I recently wrote about is released in theaters, documenting the life of American hero and abolitionist General “Harriet” Tubman. It’s long overdue, considering how important and well known her story should be for every American.
This “be free or die” movie is a hugely historic event in America and definitely should not be missed.
The movie delay isn’t alone. Recently I also wrote about the slow pace to restoring dignity to the $20 bill, replacing the disgraced face of genocide and slavery (President Jackson) with hers. It seems a bit odd that anyone would balk at removing Jackson’s tyrannical face, given how a heroic Tubman design stands ready to liberate the currency.
Consider how the U.S. treated Iraq, for example, where not even a year passed before new currency was rushed out to remove a tyrant’s face.
But less than six months after the war was declared over, Iraqis queued outside exchange points across the country yesterday to swap Saddam’s smiling face on the old banknotes for bills bearing images of ancient Babylonian rulers and historic monuments. “We’re liberating the currency,” said Ali Hussein, the manager at Wahda Bank in central Baghdad, one of 250 branches in the city where Iraqis can exchange old notes dinar-for-dinar with the new. “We’re urging people to change their money as fast as possible so that we can get rid of his ugly face for good.”
Even more odd is how the movie-industry has been unwilling to honor or depict the amazing story of Tubman in theaters, despite her being one of the most famous American heroes in history.
Tubman used “Wade in the Water” to tell slaves to get into the water to avoid being seen and make it through. This is an example of a map song, where directions are coded into the lyrics.
Steal Away communicates that the person singing it is planning to escape.
If slaves heard Sweet Chariot they would know to be ready to escape, a band of angels are coming to take them to freedom.
Follow the Drinking Gourd suggests escaping in the spring as the days get longer.
Unnamed song sung by Harriet Tubman when approaching her group after taking a detour to get food for the day. This song lets them know it is safe to approach her.
Another unnamed song sang in the same situation but letting them know it is not safe to come out, there is danger in the way.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
