A document produced by the American Defense Science Board calls for a new war launched by US government and corporate interests on the people of the world waged through all forms of their media. The American Defense Science Board is a senior advisory panel of defence and private corporate experts who offer policy advice to the Secretary of Defense.

Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary of Defense and chief neo-con in the Bush administration, in May of this year formed a special Task Force on Strategic Communication at the Science Board to find solutions to the problems the American corporate empire has in capitalizing on the success of the country's conventional military in wars it launches around the world.

Wolfowitz points out that his department has noticed that winning conventional wars of bullets, bombs, and bodies does little these days to advance American corporate and government interests in the target nations, as well as among the public around the world.

Finding “enemy leaders, [the] location of weapons including WMD, interruption of terrorist's financing, and interdiction of couriers providing communication” are necessary elements in consolidating conventional military successes, Wolfowitz says in the May memo to the board calling for the creation of the task force. But, “achieving these ends,” which also include, Wolfowitz is careful to add, stability, democracy, and human rights, can only “be facilitated by successfully shaping activities in the years before the outbreak of hostilities,” in addition to shaping activities after the cessation of those hostilities.

To that end, Wolfowitz posed this issue for the task force to concentrate on: “The gathering of long-lead intelligence and effective preparation of the battlefield—in the absence of an immediate threat—requires diligence, foresight, and preparation.” Of particular concern, he writes, is “the handoff from long-term shaping efforts to shorter term Department of Defense interests.”

By “shorter term Department of Defense interests” Wolfowitz clearly means the waging of aggressive war. But what does he mean by “long term shaping efforts,” particularly those aimed at preparing a battlefield where there is no threat to American interests?

The answer is obvious in the report The Task Force returned to Wolfowitz on September 23 this year. Battlefields in non-threatening regions are to be prepared for attack by conventional US military deployment as much as “many years” in advance by first deploying a surreptitious attack on the target through channels in the region's private sector media.

The report states that “strategic communication is a vital component of US national security,” and that “collaboration between government and the private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative.” The report insists the US “is engaged in a generational and global struggle about ideas.” To succeed in that struggle, the US government must “map perceptions and influence networks” and “adapt techniques of skillful political campaigning.” It must also “search out credible messengers and create message authority” and persuade the public “within news cycles, not weeks or months.” “Public diplomacy, public affairs, psychological operations, and open military information operations must be coordinated and energized,” it says. Such efforts are how a battlefield in a non-threatening nation is to be prepared by long-term Strategic Communications deployments prior to their handoff to short-term defence interests, that is, the bombing campaign.

The report warns that US strategic and corporate “interests, not public opinion, should drive policies.” It goes on to say that “finding new ways to harness strategic communications to the flexibility and creative imagination of the private sector will be central to successful strategic communication.” Private sector competencies can be “leveraged,” it says, using “a degree of distance that attracts credible messengers . . . creative thinkers and talented communicators uncomfortable working with government agencies.” It will be made intentionally difficult, in other words, for audiences of TV news broadcasters and newspaper columnists to be able to tell whether a commentator who appears free and independent is actually working for US strategic interests in helping to prepare that audience for eventual US military invasion.

The traditional distinction in free societies between private sector, independent media and government propaganda is not to be blurred, it is to be completely and effectively erased, becoming one and the same, the report hopes. The new war is to be waged with the full cooperation of the established media networks: “Teamwork among civilian agencies and military services,” it states, “will be necessary to draw effectively on . . . the imagination of the media production industry.”

The task force recommends the creation of a new, “independent, non-profit, non-partisan Center for Strategic Communication,” but then goes on to suggest that a Strategic Communication Committee comprised of under secretaries designated by Homeland Security, Department of State, CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, should “provide program and project direction” for this nominally independent “Center for Strategic Communication.” The board of the Center would also include high-ranking members of the US private sector media industry captains.

This newly proposed Center for Strategic Communication appears to be the key to the Department of Defense plans for its new global media war. The purpose of this Center would be to “support government strategic communications through services . . . that mobilize non-governmental initiatives.” Non-governmental initiatives are defined elsewhere as the activities of the private sector. “Building an insurgent global strategic communication culture that borrows the most effective private sector marketing and political campaign techniques” is part of what the report means by the phrase “mobilizing non-governmental initiatives.”

“We now face an enemy of tiny proportions and relatively meager resources,” the report explains, but this enemy is nonetheless “clearly in control of the political dialogue in the war on terror. . . . This dynamic must be changed. In essence, this means the US must adopt the strategies and tactics of the insurgent,” it goes on. “Waging a proactive, bold and effective US strategic communication effort” is how battles of the future are to be won.

That effort is to fully include the private sector media. The report calls for mobilizing “greater private sector initiatives that contain a built-in agility, credibility, and even deniability that will be missing from government-sponsored initiatives. . . . The US private sector's stake in more effective US strategic communication efforts will increase. More and more, they will be looking for channels to contribute where they can.” Eventually, through the culture created among private sector media bosses and military generals at the Center for Strategic Communications, the mainstream private sector media in America and around the world can be co-opted into doing all the work of preparing future battlefields for US military attacks.

In essence, what this 111-page report is calling for is a new, highly coordinated propaganda war commandeering the resources of the private sector media to help deploy a blanket of words and images throughout a target society, secretly organized and conducted over the course of years, with the intention of preparing the target nation's population, as well as world opinion, for full-scale military assault. The job is challenging because the targets, as Wolfowitz pointed out in his founding memo, do not currently pose threats to American interests.

“The new US strategic communications effort should utilize the same media as do the private sector marketing and political campaigns. Their deployment tactics should be adapted to government needs. Channels include classic broadcast media such as television, film, newspaper, radio, periodicals, and e-magazines,” the report suggests. This means that popular films, television sitcoms, even video games and on-line “blogs,” the report points out, will be saturated with messages meant to “shape events and activities” in order to prepare the battlefields. Popular sports celebrities and compelling music recording stars, the report says, can be recruited to emphasize the messages.

“US strategic communication efforts must be synergized by the public sector. The bottom line: The government alone cannot today communicate credibly and effectively to foreign populations. It must be assisted by adjunct private sector efforts.” The report nowhere expresses doubts about whether the private sector will accept an adjunct role in creating and disseminating state propaganda, nor is there any question of whether it is proper and safe for a democratic state to commandeer the private sector media for this purpose.

The new war, of course, requires good soldiers at home and abroad. To that end, the report points out that journalists and other media personalities that influence public opinion are to be recruited to the war effort and deployed strategically throughout the media landscape.

“Strategic communications must be infused with new blood,” the report says. “A concerted communications effort must be planned and launched to attract a next generation of cutting-edge, risk-friendly, private sector talent. And this talent must be hired, trained, prepared, groomed, motivated, and promoted to communicate with an insurgent-like efficiency and effectiveness,” it says. There can be no doubt that US Army recruiters will be showing up at journalism schools in the near future, offering good pay and lots of opportunities to those willing to go undercover as bona fide reporters, for example.

“America needs a revolution in strategic communication rooted in” among other things “support from an orchestrated blend of public and private sector components.” The office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, the office to be in charge of waging important parts of the new propaganda war, would be strengthened to increase the office's “ability to foster mutually-reinforcing opinion and media research activities with the private sector and other government agencies.”

This report was not classified by the Department of Defense, though it was also not released to the public, except apparently through a standard “leak” mechanism. It does not contain information that the US government truly wishes to keep secret, though it does seem to wish for there to be a public perception that it was supposed to be kept secret.

There is little in the report's analysis and recommendations that come as a surprise to anyone familiar with standard US imperial actions abroad. This report could well have been written prior to the CIA deposing of Iranian elected leader Mossadegh in 1956, with only a few changes to media technology it mentions. Few who study US foreign policy, both covert and overt, would find much new in this report, and instead would have long suspected most measures recommended in it had in fact already been followed for decades.

Because the report was prepared by a panel of experts well practiced in the arts of deception using unwitting (or otherwise) private sector media, there is grounds for considering what purpose is served in releasing this particular report to the media in the manner that it was at the time that it was released. Everything about the new propaganda war to take place in the media should henceforth be automatically considered a planned event, including the release of this report, announcing that such a war has been engaged, and how and where it is to be fought.

At the beginning of the report, there are a few comments criticizing the lackluster communication abilities of the current regime in the White House, and a few comments about how the war in Iraq is shaping up different from what some analysts expected. These brief comments were seized upon by global media, to the complete exclusion of the vast bulk of the report describing the shape of future media wars the Department of Defense intends to wage.

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