Howard Gambrill Clark, Ph.D.

The views expressed on this post (blog) are Dr. Howard Gambrill Clark’s personal views alone. The views and findings do not imply endorsement by any government or private entity. Nothing on this page or website represents the views of any government or government-affiliated organization, private corporation, university, college, school, institution, or other entity foreign or domestic, private or public.

Citation: Clark, Howard Gambrill, "Influence Warfare Tradecraft Primer," unedited unpublished streamlined summary of a chapter (serving here only as a social media blog) in forthcoming book Influence Warfare Volume II: Primers, will be submitted to Narrative Strategies Ink, Washington, DC, expected summer 2022.

 The following tradecraft are mutually reinforcing. Each title and description point up aspects on how influence and subversion are achieved.

Influence:

…producing a desired outcome without apparent materialization of [hard power] by indirect or seemingly intangible methods…^[i]

·         Without use or threat of force

·         Without exercise of formal authority

·         Unseen or insensible

·         Not formally or overtly expressed

·         Perceptible only in its effects

Subversion:

Often assumes two layers of influence. One is to influence the subversives—this may be indirectly allowing, enabling, leveraging, amplifying, or strengthening. This often may mean only to observe and ensure you do not get in the way—that your ‘side’ is not accidently targeting the subversives friendly to your cause, not placing an unwelcome alien thumbprint on the subversives that may take away the subversives’ seeming independence and ability to influence, and not recording your interest in these subversives that the target adversary may uncover at some point.

The other layer is the subversives influencing a government or other political entity.

·         Systemic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working secretly from within^[ii]

o   Consists of actions ranging from the spreading of rumors (either true or false), to building up or tearing down the influence of key people or factions in the enemy camp…^[iii]

o   …whereas some injuries rally the victim by focusing its anger on the enemy, the defeats inflicted through subversion confuse the victim as to who the enemy is, and thus further erode the victim’s moral energies…

·         To overturn or overthrow from the foundation^[iv]…act of turning from underneath^[v]

·         To pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith^[vi]

Tradecraft and Statecraft

Consonance and resonance:

Consonance: Identify stabilizing civil-society native networks or those within a government whose goals are in consonance with those of the U.S. government.

Resonance: Enable consonant networks/allow an environment for consonant networks to thrive. This is done as subtly, stealthily, silently, invisibly, and distantly as possible. Consonant systems and leaders’ influence often, in whole or in part, derive their seeming independence from governments or outside interference.

This is sometimes dubbed national security by undisclosed proxy.

Unrestricted political warfare: A misnomer. Does not mean all-out political warfare. Instead points to using creative combinations of ways and means beyond traditional  diplomatic, information, military, and economic instruments of power in order to achieve a limited objective—but never to exceed said objective, never to cause backlash, never to escalate tensions. Updated with cyber and media in 1999 but is as old as mankind and has roots in literature dating to 14th century BCE found on three continents.

Active-measures subversion: Subvert adversaries/competitors (civil-society sects, nations, governments) so they cannot subvert or weaken you. Although attributed to Russia, this strategy by other names is as old as civilization.

Reflexive control: Influence an adversary to want to make decisions designed by the protagonist (the influencer) without the target’s knowledge of the influencer’s plan. This is central to influence warfare. What is behind the concept is not original to Russia as sometimes claimed and is as old as human history. And its title is unlikely used in Russian military and political warfare doctrine today.

Zugzwang: A German word (Zug meaning to move, Zwang meaning compulsion) for when any target’s countermove necessarily forces the target to weaken their position. Forces an adversary or competitor to weaken their position on their own volition. Derived from chess and other games.

Telemachus: Greek for conducting warfare from afar. Underlines the occasional necessity of conducting influence from another country or continent than the target so as not to create unnecessary attention or instability.

By, with, and through squared: Train or educate—formally or informally—government and military entities to conduct influence campaigns by, with, and through their own civil society or provincial governance systems to train or educate consonant systems.

Slow burn (a.k.a. salami slicing): Thousand-subtle-pricks approach. Each disparate tactic is indirect, subtle, and unthreatening, will unlikely raise alarms, and is often legal in the target country. Each tactic may offer a degree of deniability of direct interference. In its totality, there may be strategic effects only understood by the target eventually.

Exploit foundational narratives: Use adversaries’ foundational narratives to undermine said narratives. At the least foundational narratives are the hook to gain traction for any influence campaign. Best to have intermediaries using stealth and deception stories.

Kairos: In America English, “a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action: the opportune and decisive moment.” However, in ancient Greek, the term has to do with ‘getting it just right’ on balance. Not too much. Not too little. Not too soon. Not too late.^[vii] In terms of influence warfare, the phenomenon is applied to adept balance of timing, subtlety, use of networks, use of narratives, and pivoting of the subconscious of the target audiences to earn intended effects with minimal destabilizing effects. It can also be applied to when to strike an enemy in war—best to strike while the enemy state or military is weak or in preparations.

Strategies and Stratagems

Kompromat: Compromise adversarial leaders by ensuring seeming private meetings with publicly maligned foreigners (even one low-level former government contractor may be enough to later publish exaggerations of untoward relationships and influence).

First and Flood: Some governments and non-state actors elect to flood communication channels with messages. This blunt approach when coupled with search engine optimization and trolling may perhaps help to ‘bury’ maligned webpages and social media accounts. When multiple means of communication are combined the goal may be to try to ‘win’ the story—be first and be overwhelming, forcing others to be reactive (reactive narratives may well, then, further the reach of the initial message).

Dietrologia: Refers, here, to exploiting, exacerbating, and evidencing deeply held conspiracies and wide rumors. The following are some common themes but certainly not exhaustive.

Find conspiracy theories potentially destabilizing to the target government or society and provide further evidence through stealth. This can be accomplished on and offline. Also, push memes and ideas of the conspiracy theory back to the conspiracy theorists to further play into biases and psychoses.

·         Saudade: A fiction of a once golden age to which to return. This longing to return to some golden age can reach what Brazilians and Portuguese call saudade. This deeply personal yearning and nostalgia may be conjured especially in cultures that discuss and look to the past to such a degree that people actually claim to ‘remember’ (not literally) a certain past era before they were born.

·         Dolchstosslegende: Stab in the back. Refers to a German conspiracy theory after the First World War, that the German military did not lose. Instead, soldiers were sold out and stabbed in the back by groups of civilians back home such as Jewish communities and those in power that signed the Armistice. Contemporary essayists use the term to describe baseless conspiracies that a political party or faction was previously successful except for subversion and has the moral right to rise to power again.

·         Common enemy: Governments throughout history have united warring tribes and internal divisions against real, exaggerated, oversimplified, and fictious existential threats. Our limbic system favors simplicity. Us versus them. Our football team against our rivals. My political party against yours. This tribal phenomenon may reward conspiracy theories that over-simplify the world into good and evil. Black and white. And governments may exploit this to unite internal divisions.

Glasnost: Surgical anti-malign-influence and anti-disinformation campaign built off of trust with civil societies—may include healthy robust competition between a government and private entities to include news services, educational institutes, and think tanks for checks and balances. The term has been used, such as by the Soviets during the Cold War, as a red herring to deliver misinformation under the glasnost in name/title only (a lie).

Black/grey/white propaganda: Outdated terms for the DOD but still used internationally. Includes strategies comprising many tactics such as fake news, disinformation, and flooding the information environment. White psychological warfare products/actions are attributable to the real source, such as an official statement. Grey psychological warfare includes purposefully abstruse attribution—may seem to derive from any benign source or have unknown attribution. Black psychological warfare products/actions purposefully appear to disseminate from a fictional or actual source concealing the identity of the true source.

This may include subtly amplifying narratives of influencers or building narratives that start with a deep understanding of the targets’ foundational narratives, subconscious biases, outlooks, and predictions. And should abide by as many narrative-strategy best practices as possible.

Trust building/partnership programs: Trust is earned through action over time. Trust cannot be surged. Education exchanges, cultural exchanges, security-force-assistance missions, development, stabilization, and inter-military training missions can emphasize, overtly and substantially, developing professional and personal relationships between participants. Through long-term relationships and trust—both sides affecting the outlook of the other (subconscious and conscious)—alliances can be built and strengthened.

Visa programs: Quietly work with allies to allow ‘fellow-traveler’ influencers to gain followers or influence others across borders without that person or others knowing of government actions.

Szalámitaktika: Salami tactics (not to be confused with so-called salami slicing)—influence to exacerbate factions within enemy camps or instigate enemies to fight one another. And/or divide et impera (divide and conquer/rule).

Trust warfare (science and medicine): Exacerbate existing distrust of expertise through intermediaries or stealth. Distrust of scientists, doctors, and other professionals, whose ever-updating remediating findings usually attempt to better health. The classic example is exacerbating doubts about medical experts on their recommendations during COVID-19. This is not necessarily focused on exacerbating conspiracy theories but instead actual distrust of experts—founded or unfounded.

As Lavrenty Beria, one-time director of the Soviet secret police, stated, “…produce maximum chaos in the culture of the enemy…grown in chaos, distrust…and scientific turmoil.”

Institutional sabotage: Indirectly encourage or cause slow foreign bureaucracies. Can also encourage apathy/malaise. Find dissenting or questioning factions within the adversary government or industrial complex. Ensure they have access to tradecraft literature, especially under the guise of ‘management and business best practices’ (ironically), so that they can subtly slow or degrade government and industry apparatus over time.

Sabotage need not be dramatic or sudden. It can be discrete, subtle, even unnoticed, and long-term if, for example, a manager in a bureaucratic organization subtly institutes unnecessary policies, procedures, permissions, meetings, paperwork, attention to unimportant details, ‘paralysis by analysis’, excessive planning, excessive layers of oversight, and less-than-efficient management to retard the overall mission of the organization. His actions may be perceived by his superiors and peers as attentive and thorough oversight and management, perversely, at best; less-than-ideal but nevertheless sufficient-enough leadership; or just dismissed as a benign unique style of leadership. Similarly, a worker may labor slowly or inefficiently just enough to be acceptable to the organization with the intent to lessen the overall effectiveness of the organization or state.

Astroturfing: Governments, institutions, or individuals implement plans under the false premise of something that appears to be a grassroots movement to affect wide audiences. Protagonists hide and deny their involvement.

Entryism: With many English spellings in reference to a supposed Trotskyism tactic, entryism refers to a person or group of people joining a rival political party, group, government, or agency in order to discretely change that other group’s identity, rules, plans, or policies.

Joker effect: Display wildly changing tactics and strategies to confuse an adversary or competitor. Act outwardly seemingly without reason or care without discernable motive. This is one way to affect confusion or subterfuge so as to hide and then further your actual national interests and goals. Homo sapiens are a prediction and pattern seeking species. Nothing terrifies, confuses, or distracts like unpredictability.

1,000 doctrines: Display wildly changing tactics and strategies to confuse an adversary or competitor. Act outwardly seemingly without reason or care without discernable motive. This is one way to affect confusion or subterfuge so as to hide and then further your actual national interests and goals. Homo sapiens are a prediction and pattern seeking species. Nothing terrifies, confuses, or distracts like unpredictability.

During Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, for example, Soviets had to face rebels who differed in fighting style from area to area. Not only did Soviet infantry face desert, forest, mountain, river, and tunnel warfare. But they also had to face a different tribal fighting style from valley to valley and from village cluster to village cluster. To make matters even more troublesome, different Afghan areas held different motivations, devotions to fighting, ideological drives, warrior cultures, and definitions of honor. A scheme to pay off one clan might drive the next to fully committed all-out-war-to-the-death. Company commanders reported having to learn new tactics every few kilometers during some kinetic missions.

This approach can also be applied artificially. For example, cybersecurity and cyber deception for a global corporation could use wildly different approaches for each office and each database—possibly helping to foil or frustrate would-be cyberattacks.

S’éparpiller (overstretching): To stretch too thin. Compel, directly or indirectly, an adversary or competitor to stretch their composition, disposition, personnel, funds, and focus thin. As Colonel T.E. Lawrence wrote, about the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War:

·         Our aim was to seek the enemy’s weakest material link and bear only on that till time made their whole length fail…to impose on the Turks the longest possible passive defence, since that was, materially, their most costly form of war.

·         For example, a non-state actor or government can feign presence throughout continents and compel an adversary to ‘keep up’, collect intelligence, or counter your efforts beyond the adversary’s capacity. Such actions may weaken the adversary’s state and nation.

·         As an illustration, a violent extremist group can overstretch a government who has declared war against global terrorism. Through limited planned attacks—feigned or legitimate, blueprinted only or followed through—over six continents one loose-knit violent extremist group may cause that government to overfocus on counterterrorism and overstretch resources globally and enduringly.

Eventually the target state may find its flanks and thinning branches vulnerable to attacks from exploitation, manipulation, toxic corruption, theft, graft, and counter-intelligence collection. The adversary may become embroiled in mission creep and eventually become bankrupt and ineffective.

Induce reckless success: Seduce an enemy or competitor—driven by ego or ambition—to grow their enterprises too quickly and too thinly. Artificially compel aggressive and unsustainable expansion. Impel the target to believe they should, can, or must grow rapidly through perceived sudden successes, perceived lack of obstacles, perceived spike in opportunities, and perceived benefits from aggressive expansion.

Hurried growth can kill any business or mission. When an enterprise is too successful too quickly without prudent leadership and careful planning, that enterprise may suffer from substandard quality, stretched resources, overworked operators, low morale, poor managerial and logistical support, and unfulfilled ego-driven promises. The enterprise subverts and sabotages itself.

In short, compel an adversary to break under its own weight and own reckless success. If, for example, a competitor attempts economic influence through massive loans, compel him to provide loans and assistance beyond any capacity for quality or repayment. No corporation, no bank, no government can enduringly and globally manage aggressively weak loans, poor oversight, or punish surges in defaults everywhere.

Agents of Influence and Subversion

Fellow travelers: Individuals abroad who happen to already be working towards your government’s goals. May wish to avoid overt relationship (especially if fellow traveler’s influence derives from her independence) and instead subtly, silently, invisibly, and distantly support/amplify. “Vladimir Lenin…used [the] pejorative phrase [useful idiots] to describe fellow-traveling Western intellectuals who defended and promoted, in the name of equality and justice, Lenin’s totalitarian program.” (Colonel Eric E. Hastings, USMC, Ret). Much pop literature argues about the origins of the terms useful idiots, fellow travelers, and fifth columnists (an organization of fellow travelers). None is accurate. All terms predate Lenin, Trotsky, Hemingway, OSS, and other supposed sources.

Fifth columns: Civil society/government networks in an adversarial state that will work against that state and/or for an outside power. Some scholars consider fellow travels as fifth columnists. But a fifth column, unlike a group of fellow travelers that operate completely separately, assumes that there is some attempt at network organization. Even if that network is a leaderless-seeming movement with the weakest of positive feedback loops. Even if it is a complex adaptive system on the ‘edge of chaos’.

Third options: Unaffiliated third parties (contractors or mercenaries not paid or hired directly by a government and not formally affiliated with a government) of a state that will act directly on the state’s behalf abroad. Some act out of patriotism or ideology. Others may be paid through many disparate unaffiliated intermediaries especially when said payments are, on the surface, for unrelated work.

Agents provocateurs: Agents infiltrate into or pretend to be part of a targeted network/movement to discredit that targeted network/movement. These agents conduct or spur/inspire actions that would lead to public outrage or an excuse to spark police/military action. Effective agents will inspire the targeted network to conduct malign actions but not be at the sites of any recordable events and would remain unknown to all but the original antagonist.

Private investors: Private investment/donation to secondary parties that will eventually support fellow-traveler influencers. Investors should only have informal and perhaps unknown relationships with the protagonist government. And funds should be funneled or ‘cleaned’ through as many intermediaries as possible before landing in the lap of unwitting agents of influence (grants, fellowships, donations, etc.).

Institutional saboteurs: Those who conduct institutional sabotage as unaffiliated individuals or as part of a loose network—on behalf of another party or government or on their own. Individual leaders of bureaucratic institutions may singlehandedly weaken the efficiency, ability, and efficacy of a government writ large—often under the guise of ‘good’ or ‘detailed’ management. Multiple middle managers, staff, and workers—cumulatively—can also cause enough inefficiencies to weaken and eventually implode an entire state or non-state entity.

Savvy saboteurs can hide their intent under the guise of dedication to standards, procedures, processes, rules, and details. When in fact, these saboteurs are building inefficiencies, toxic work environments, and unnecessary stresses—focused on low priorities at the cost of overall efficacy. A savvy saboteur will never reveal his actual intentions behind his policies and will cover them in false labels of good leadership practices. A worst-case scenario, if his bosses become aware of inefficiencies, would be that the saboteur may be eventually demoted or moved. But more often a savvy saboteur will be, ironically, promoted.

If you are conducting institutional sabotage inside a government, you may be in a place to promote toxic managers.

If you are influencing institutional sabotage in another government or organization, you may wish to give the appearance or ‘wins’ and measures of effect to toxic and inefficient managers so that they are promoted. For example, you can leak false intelligence to an adversarial or competitive government that ‘so-and-so’ (and his policies) is causing you great damage and is a grave threat. If subtle enough, an adversarial state may then promote ‘so-and-so’ to higher office.

Viral agents: Those who can artificially amplify narratives and narrative threads. Online and off. Includes savvy at creating realistic, living, breathing avatars in social media and other mediums to spread ideas through existing networks; those who can reengineer algorithms (sometimes multiple times a day) to search engine optimize stories; those who are able and willing to trigger narrative virality to flood an information environment via base impulses; and those who can and will artificially amplify a writer’s book to a bestseller list or a YouTube filmmaker to fame. Such agents and their staff are expensive—especially as you should funnel funds through a third option who will then ensure anonymity through deception, stealth, and multiple intermediaries. You can affect most any narrative thread or even e-book to go viral in less than a day if you have already set up the indirect (with deception) funding schemes.

Rafīqūna: Literally a friend. A fellow. In a certain context, it can also mean a go-between—especially a companion that can ensure safe passage in an area controlled by another person or group. This plural Arabic word may, in some contexts, denotes representatives of that area’s tribe, leader, governance (formal, traditional, or illicit) or some neutral party that claims to guarantee safety for the outsider—especially if that outsider is distrusted, unknown, or under other circumstances might be considered adversary or threat.

Subtlety, Stealth, Subterfuge

Note: Deception is the other side of the influence/subversion coin.

Stealth and subtlety: Most influence campaigns at the strategic, global, and regional levels cannot be classified. There might be one or two tactical lines of effort that are covert or clandestine. But a U.S.-led campaign, for example, will require strategic lines of effort with wide working groups—many of whom cannot work within any official secrecy. For example, an effects strategy cell in Latin America will include at least the Department of Justice, multiple country teams, USAID, Department of Agriculture, Drug Enforcement Administration (especially for identifying influencers in the so-called “black markets” and illicit economies of country or region), NGOs, IGOs, unions, etc.

In addition to deception, it is best to keep your efforts out of formal reporting when appropriate and when possible. At the least you do not wish to bring unwarranted attention to your means, ways, and ends. For example, the more advanced the encryption in your planning communications, the more this might attract interest and intrigue from adversaries. Sometimes simplicity, simple codes, and simple in person chats are best.

Be subtle in all communications, plans, and execution. President Lincoln’s genius in influence warfare was, in part, because he never kept any records of certain activities and always had a cover story that even historians bought until recently.

The mindset and spirit of stealth is best summarized by an illustration and analogy attributed once Louisiana Governor Earl Long:

·         Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.

Gaps and seams: One method for subtlety and stealth is planning and executing influence campaigns in temporal, geographic, and bureaucratic seams.

The same mindset may be helpful when planning and then executing influence campaigns. Conduct them when a target government, for example, is focused elsewhere or internally. If low footprint presence is required, consider executing the mission along municipal, provincial, national, and military borders and seams.

From journalist and novelist Don Winslow on New York City:

·         …[criminals] stroll the streets that border precincts, because no cop wants to make a bust across the line. Too much paperwork. Low-level dealers…see a cop coming they just cross the street… (The Force, 2017)

Subterfuge as a continuing effort: Hide all ways, means, and ends while conducting influence. Because influence is by definition indirect and/or insensible, deception is the other side of the influence ‘coin’. Deception can come in many forms to include, but not limited to, confusing, distracting, or overwhelming (with disinformation) an adversary or competitor.

Operational security is rarely enough. Given enough time an adversary will likely overcome your security procedures. Also keep in mind the paradox that the more secrecy (higher classifications, more caveats, less access) will warrant attention and extra effort from an adversary. In other words, do not hide an important operation in an obvious ‘vault’ just as you should not hide precious heirlooms in an obvious safe in your home as that will draw most of the attention and effort of would-be burglars.

Strategists may employ deception plans for influence and counter-influence strategies to protect plans and systems (informal terms follow):

1.      Fence: A virtual or physical “wall” is built to keep adversaries from observing something—careful not to let this fence bring unwanted attention to what is being protected. Fences may include encryption or camouflage, for example.

2.      Fake: Deception may include a plan to make an adversary think something else is happening—expending their focus, time, and energy.  A fake is something normally conducted continuously over the long-term.  It may change and may include a number of deceptions. Examples may include fake databases to confuse adversaries and false “leaked” information about the plans for a military campaign.

3.      Feint: As the decisive hour approaches (whether it be the beginning of an offensive military operation or when a hacker comes near to reaching secure information) a feint confuses the adversary and draws their attention away from the target. A feint is a last-minute fake.  It may be part of the fake or separate.

4.      Fix: As the decisive second approaches, one wishes the adversary to focus their attention in the wrong direction. It fixes an enemy’s “eyes” away from what is protected at the very last second.

Deception warfare: “It is almost impossible to maintain [secrecy] but often can be better achieved through the use of misleading rumors than through tight security. To provide the enemy with several stories...” (H. Van Dach). Layered deception of state interests, identities, strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, goals, and intentions may be vital to some aspects of national security.

Feed an adversary false intelligence backed up by distorted corroborating unclassified reporting so that the adversary wastes time and resources on a misunderstanding of your goals, strengths, weaknesses, will, and composition. False intelligence and information may be most effective when they play to existing biases and misunderstandings the enemy has about you. In general, one wishes to make weaknesses look like strengths, and strengths look like weaknesses.

Falsely generated attacks: Generate bogus adversarial attacks or indirectly impel defeatable probes from adversaries or third options that appear to observers to be adversarial. These planned intelligence probes, cyberattacks, or subversive attempts may generate misleading intelligence of adversarial intelligence services.

Adversaries watch your strengths, weaknesses, centers of gravity, critical vulnerabilities, composition, disposition, operational security, and deception plans probed, attacked, or uncovered by third-party attacks. Realistic-looking targeting provide intelligence to adversaries to inform them on how to attack you. So lead adversaries astray.

As an illustration, allow unwitting private criminal hackers as well as third-option hackers to uncover and target in such a way that it wholly misleads an observing adversary. You can provide small successes, false successes, and near wins to such false threats.

Deception through exhaustion: Hide a piece of sand on the beach. Throw out so much information, so many data points, so many believable deception stories, so many real stories about unimportant matters, that observers are unable to know truth from fiction. For example, a non-state actor may publish on social media the intent to protest or even riot hundreds of times on hundreds of occasions—some may even become real legal, peaceful, coordinated protests. The real intent is to actually incite or conduct a riot on a particular date.

Aimed deception: Pinpoint an adversary’s most valuable method to undermine your national interests. And most valuable methods to detecting your security vulnerabilities. And overwhelm them with data.

Some argue Russia does this by helping or enabling the amplification of dis/misinformation while most of their money, time, personnel, and focus appear to be offline real-world attempts at influence and subversion. Our apparatus is so overstretched by attempting to develop ways at countering something that is near impossible to stop (online disinformation writ large), that there are fewer resources to track or counter or stem or collapse more subtle and sophisticated real-world attempts at subversion and influence.

Another illustration is overall quantity of deception. If you have databases to hide, then create so many honeypots and so many deceptions within deceptions within deceptions that the adversary will second-guess everything they observe and do. They will waste resources at low-cost deception stratagems in the millions and likely suffer paralysis by analysis.

This approach is like hiding a grain of sand on a beach.