A very sharp post up over at Swedish Meatballs Confidential dissecting the failure of US public diplomacy efforts to support the Long War, concluding that efforts have been poor attempts to recreate our Cold War public diplomacy campaign in Eastern Europe. [FYI - Depending on your place of employment, Meatballs Confidential may not be safe for workplace viewing.]

But there is also a technical reason for this failure. As though it was not a difficult enough task to improve the image of the US in the Arab world at a time when this superpower has forces occupying an Arab country that is undergoing horrifying tensions and upheavals, and at a time when it encouraged its Israeli ally to go on the offensive against another Arab country in the hope of altering the map of regional alliances, the American media targeting the Arab world was consistently poorly managed. Programming and the substance of programmes never went beyond the blatantly propagandistic campaign to vindicate American policies. How could it possibly succeed?

This is why I’ve advocated an indirect approach through transparency. If the only product we have to offer is obvious propaganda, then then we shouldn’t be surprised when foreign populations choose other products that offer actual substance. A policy of radical transparency may be one way of increasing the actual content of our public diplomacy and creating a product that has more value to foreign populations.

From a UPI article about China’s information warfare strategies (H/T to M-1):

The Chinese military has also started applying so-called “human wave” tactics to establish its cyber war network, which is internally referred to as the information network squad. The first such cyber operation unit to be set up was the Shandong Zaozhuang Municipal Militia Information Network Squad, with members comprising staff from the Zaozhuang Municipal Telecommunications Bureau. The 48 members of the squad all hold professional titles in computer technology.

The hacker attacks upon overseas Web sites were quite likely launched by similar military cyber operation squads. The establishment of this “information militia” warfare network means that the concept of a “people’s war” has been officially introduced in the realm of information warfare.

The Chinese military has paid high attention to computer warfare over the years, and its capability to engage in information operations is now taken as an important benchmark in the improvement of the overall “soft combat power” of the Chinese armed forces. As a result, the PLA has introduced such slogans as “control information” and “information is combat strength.”

After the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was mistakenly bombarded by NATO aircraft in 1999 during the Kosovo conflict, Chinese hackers launched waves of attacks upon U.S. networks. Most of these attacks were from the “information militia” — who claim to have set a record of successfully invading 10 U.S. government Web sites each hour.

In a strategy aimed at attacking the enemy from the rear, China is already launching an information World War, a new type of People’s Information War.

Intriguing concept, this information militia. What are the implications if active membership becomes supported by more passive support? Current zombie networks depend on the spread of trojans and viruses that users don’t realize they have. What if a population were enlisted by its government to show support by intentionally installing such software on their machines. Sort of like a 21st Century war bonds drive: “Contribute processor cycles to the national defense!” Given the low cost of entry and nearly zero technical expertise needed, any citizen with a computer could participate. This could dramatically expand the zombie nets available for the more highly trained citizen-hackers to use in their operations.

For that matter, this sort of effort wouldn’t even need to be aligned with a state. Imagine an online campaign (like the movements to put red ribbon .gifs on blogs to show support for AIDS research or “click here to donate” links) where an explicit or a secret component of the movement was making each member’s computer a part of the movement’s personal zombie net. Explicit support might be a bad choice, since it would make members vulnerable to charges of supporting hacking with no offsetting benefit. A better strategy might be to have members download an “information orientation package” or some such material that would include the trojan. Members would then have deniability (”I’m just a victim of another nasty trojan!”) and the group would still get its zombie net. A small team of skilled hackers could then use these resources to further the group’s policy goals.

Approaches such as this translate the democratization of computing power into information operations capability. Each person may not have the will or skill to be a food soldier or a hacker, but they do have an immensely powerful asset that they can contribute to the cause: their processors.