[leroy_masochist]

One thing that mystifies me is why the general population thinks that uniformed PsyOps people are like a real-life version of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones. They're basically the military's version of PR reps; most of their time is spent doing stuff like making fliers and taking photos of bags of rice being handed out. Maybe once in a while they get to blast Slayer at a building of holed-up insurgents. Meanwhile all the HN comments treating this guy like he's using Twitter as a cover to put LSD in the Saudis' water supply or some shit.

[5trokerac3]

PsyOps main job is convincing occupied peoples that the occupier is their friend. One of the ways they do that is by taking photos of bags of rice being handed out. They also actively work to spread (dis)information.

[doktrin]

So, like a PR rep?

[ratacat]

The term public relations was actually an explicit rebranding of the term Propaganda after it started to develop a negative association in the public eye. Look up Edward Bernays, it's a fascinating bit of history that's not really talked about much.

http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-...

[throwaway829]

If you're into documentaries, "The Century of the Self" covers this subject excellently: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self

[news_hacker]

One of my favorite documentaries! It didn't just give me new knowledge, but re-framed the way I view & process future knowledge.

[umeshunni]

Which also happens to be his role at Twitter, never mind the clickbait "Executive" in the headline.

[markdown]

If they're on "our" side, we call them PR reps, yes.

[a012]

In the other word: propaganda machine.

[dogma1138]

You’ve seen one too many movies, mostly they are doing about the same job as brand influencers just their brand is HMAF in this case.

[5trokerac3]

No, I was stationed as security for a PsyOps team in Gardez, Afghanistan for four months in 2003.

[AcerbicZero]

I suspect very few people have any first hand experience with "PSYOP" (MISO now). Its mostly reservists, they were kicked out of SOCOM for a reason (the reservists at least), and Civil Affairs does all the stuff people actually care about anyway.

The real manipulation of a population is being undertaken at levels so far outside that military structure, its almost unrecognizable.

[diminoten]

Sounds like one particular viewpoint that, while somewhat relevant, doesn't actually shed much light into this vastly different (both geographically and temporally) situation.

Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time.

[5trokerac3]

"Winning hearts and minds" isn't a bad thing on its own - NATO forces are objectively better than islamic extremists like ISIS and the Taliban - but acting like our military is wholly altruistic is naive at best and purposefully disingenuous at worst.

[diminoten]

No one here was acting like anyone's military was wholly altruistic...

[navigatesol]

>Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time.

Person with zero experience lecturing someone who actually performed the role, in service of the country, is such a HackerNews thing.

Bonus points for referring to their real-life experience as "somewhat relevant".

[diminoten]

The fact that you think this person performed the PsyOps role means your lack of reading comprehension undermines your scolding tone.

But please, tell me more about what a "HackerNews" thing this is.

[Cpoll]

What part of the parent post is movie-like? I may be too cynical, but I don't see a difference between "the same job as brand influencers" and "spread (dis)information"

[dogma1138]

Because most of their job isn’t spreading disinformation but rather providing good PR for recruitment at home or in the Middle East countering the disinformation campaigns that the likes of ISIS run unless you think that their recruitment operations are not disinformation.

The British army information warfare unit also famously runs the BBC radio relay station in Cyprus providing access to the Middle East and parts of Asia.

[5trokerac3]

"Good PR" is also seen as the lack of bad PR. Like when we drop a bomb on a school and kill a bunch of kids. PsyOps are the ones who pay off the village.

[vkou]

What makes you think the good PR is not disinformation?

[PhasmaFelis]

"They're just like brand influencers" makes them sound worse, if anything.

[ptero]

Not sure about the general population, but folks here are largely zeroing in on the conflict of interest issues. At least in the US, I would expect serving "PsyOps" people to be government employees, supported by taxes and subject to general oversight that taxpayers (at least in theory) should be able to exercise.

I would have no problems if he went to Twitter after retiring, but I see such double-dipping as a current gov't employee as a big problem. My 2c.

[chrissnell]

What? I am a US Army Reserve officer and I've served my country for the last ten years while working in tech. I've been in the technology industry for 25 years and have been in management and am currently a principal engineer for a large SFBA company. My military service is what I did one weekend a month and has no connection to my tech job, other than providing me with people leadership experience that readily translated into my day job.

I even served in a PSYOP unit for a few of those years. My fellow soldiers were cops, school teachers, software developers, construction workers, and PhD students. Just a bunch of young people that loved their country and wanted to help out while making a little extra money on the weekends.

You will find current and former military at virtually every sizable tech company. We're not here as part of some covert government plan to subvert the industry. We are here because you can't support a family on the $300-500 a month that you get from reserve duty. We're just a slice of the nation and no different than you.

[robert_foss]

Clearly there can be a conflict of interest when working for international tech firms. If Russian PSYOPS reservists were heading up an American division of Twitter, surely people would be screaming bloody murder (and with good cause).

[ratacat]

This really hit the nail on the head I think

[ANPEQ-1]

If the partnership between tech and the US government were as tight as you might think, we wouldn't be losing so badly on the information warfare front.

The fact is that the United States has such a massive bureaucracy between itself private innovation. If we had anyone dual-employed in both government and the private sector, they're in the latter because they can'd do anything useful for the former.

[AaronFriel]

Yes, but did you ever have a conflict of interest between your two positions? As other people are pointing out, psyops (generally speaking) involves tweaking public opinion in ways that favor the government. This person also happened to have editorial control and influence on Twitter.

If he were just a developer, it might be different, no?

[chrissnell]

Your argument is logical but if you had served in the military (at least the US military...can't speak for others), it's laughable.

The day-to-day of the average reservist's military (even a senior officer!) is mind-numingly boring and not important in the big picture. In a MISO unit (the new US Army name for PSYOP), an officer's day is spent planning training events and doing simulations of what their job might be "downrange" in wartime.

We're not scheming on ways to infiltrate our civilian employers--we're too busy trying to get hold of the lazy DoD civilian at Fort Bumblefuck with the full voicemail to get our training area allocated for the mandatory annual trip to the rifle range in November.

Now, is it possible that if we went into full-scale conflict with Iran and the Middle East was on fire that the UK and US might call upon this Twitter exec/reserve officer to help out? Sure. But, it would be above-the-board. He would get orders to active duty and turn in his Twitter laptop before heading off to spend the next year and a half at a military installation advising on Middle East info campaigns. This happens all the time and happened to a lot of us during OIF and OEF. The whole reason for existence of the reserve forces is to leverage critical knowledge learned in the civilian sector.

[AaronFriel]

You seem to be suggesting that we should just ignore conflict of interest concerns when the military is involved?

Most jobs involve large periods of mind-numbingly boring work that's not important to the big picture. The problem is the small, sometimes minute, fraction of time spent where the work is important to the big picture and there is a conflict of interest.

[corodra]

So, do you believe the general public should create a list of past government employed individuals and ban them from accessing the job market? That completely has no chance, what so ever, to have any negative repercussions in time. But draws the line to solve the problem you're having. Then no one with a conflicting interest from the gov can persuade their opinion into the public through private enterprise means.

[ptero]

IANAL. Clearly reservists are an important group that I did not cleanly address. I originally meant full time employment.

> My military service is what I did one weekend a month and has no connection to my tech job, other than providing me with people leadership experience that readily translated into my day job.

This, to me, is a key distinction. What you describe is similar to a second job some folks hold -- no problem for 99.9% of the population, but starts drawing much more scrutiny when people climb into senior management at either job. IANAL. Just my 2c.

[jackvalentine]

> We're just a slice of the nation and no different than you.

I don't want to be a dick to you because I should take you at your word in the absence of evidence otherwise. I think the issue here is you're paid by and subject to a military hierarchy with all the baggage that entails - that makes you different.

[vonmoltke]

So, do you think the entire concept of reservists should be abolished?

[austincheney]

That isn't accurate. In a modern military the role of interfacing with an external public is divided into three distinct roles:

* public relations

* civil affairs

* psychological operations

Public relations' job is to interface with media and community leaders where the military is an established asset. This means in area where the military is not conducting active (non-training) military operations.

Civil affairs' interface with media and civilian leaders in areas where the military is conducting active (non-training) operations. This may include areas where the military is operating in a peace keeping or humanitarian capacity. This communications responsibility may be more diplomatic or business oriented in nature and focuses on welfare and humane needs of a supported civilian population.

Psychological operations operates against a military enemy.

It is the job of all three roles to provide some amount of influence and general information. The public relations and civil affairs are far more restrictive in the information they provide, almost as if in a journalistic capacity. Psychological operations will provide any information as helpful to win military engagements and is primarily restricted by military tactical conditions.

It is best not to intermix or confuse those 3 separate communications roles, because the overlap between them is extremely limited.

[mcsmash]

I would imagine that this is true for the vast majority of PsyOps people. However. Just because it's true for the vast majority of people doesn't mean it's true for everyone. By your logic the fact that the majority of developers being people trying to make a living banging away at keyboard implies that there are no kernel divers, or AI magicians, or black hole image processors. Yes, it's mostly bags of rice, but someone at the executive level of a major social media platform might, just _might_ be getting orders that are a little above and beyond taking pictures of rice.

[Synaesthesia]

Public relations is simply the modern terminology for propaganda. He is a military propaganda officer.

[im3w1l]

Remember when Facebook experimented with mass emotional manipulation by boosting negative/positive content?

That's one thing I'd expect a psyop guy might do.

Another is boost posts from allies and demote posts from enemies.

[vkou]

I must note that when there's a tie between an exec in a foreign country, and it's military/government, nobody has time for that kind of hair splitting.

[xkcd-sucks]

"Militarized adtech" does sound pretty terrifying though

[colordrops]

Whether it's fliers or LSD the intention is the same. And sometimes it does end up being worse than LSD, such as gun fire and cluster bombs.

[dfsegoat]

"kinetic operations" (read: shooting) are not generally within the purview of Psychological Operations units... Do you have any cites to support your claim?

[colordrops]

It should be obvious that my point is that it's one organization with a unified purpose regardless of what unit they are part of.

[tptacek]

It was not at all obvious, and further, you made a claim ("gun fire and cluster bombs") that implied you had some direct knowledge of the topic. Do you, or did your claim just sound right to your ears?

[colordrops]

Are you at all serious in implying that military propaganda and warfare aren't obviously related?

[cwkoss]

This comment is a great example of what kind of disinformation the PSYOPs might want to propagate. Probably isn't, but just saying...

[mshockwave]

dude I think you underestimate how important social media plays in interfering internal affairs of a country