Helping the Army Special Operations Forces understand subversion in an age of countering violent extremism

Subversion: Non-Violent Warfare in an Age of Countering Violent Extremism  By J. Michael Waller, Ph.D. John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, NC, September 12, 2016 Abstract Subversion is an ambiguous form of conflict in war and peace that does not rely on violence. From the perspective of the target, subversion is so ambiguous … Read more

WikiLeaks game can turn Kremlin fortress into glass house

by J Michael Waller / Forbes / August 16, 2016. For the first time since the 1950s, Russian subversion of the American political process has become a presidential campaign issue. The Kremlin’s latest act of espionage-driven propaganda–document dump of Democratic National Committee emails via WikiLeaks–achieved its desired effect of immediate politicization. We should step back to learn two … Read more

US may hand Putin an excuse to stop monitoring of Russia’s breeder reactors

by J Michael Waller / AMI Newswire / March 30, 2016. The Obama administration risks giving the Kremlin a pretext to ban inspectors from  Russia’s plutonium-breeding fast reactors because of a U.S. budgetary policy change. Lawmakers and diplomats are concerned that the administration’s handling of cost  overruns on a controversial U.S. Department of Energy project … Read more

Muslim cleric in Iraq backs Trump

by J Michael Waller / AMI Newswire / March 10, 2016. A Muslim cleric who descends from the Prophet Muhammad’s family says Donald Trump can smash Islamic extremism. “Donald Trump – he is the 45th president of USA,” Ayad Jamal al-Din said Tuesday on Twitter. “I predict the start of the de-Islamization era” if Trump … Read more

Green police, Part 2: Tribesmen defend themselves against gangsters & government

by J Michael Waller / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / March 7, 2016. Continuation from part 1, published February 25, 2016. CHERÁN, MEXICO – Some rural Mexicans working in the United States are heading home to revive the forests of their ancestral homeland. Among them are illegal immigrants who found that life can be better back home. They … Read more

Green police, Part 1: Mexican tribesmen take up arms to protect their forests from crooked officials & cartels

by J Michael Waller / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / February 25 and March 7, 2016. I visited Cherán and walked the mountainside with the guardabosques, writing a two-part series for the American Media Institute that appeared February 25 and 26. Here are the stories, as published in the Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal: Part 1: “Green Police: Mexican tribesmen save their forests from … Read more

Secret emails reveal high-level Ecuador campaign to win US hearts and minds

by J Michael Waller / AMI Newswire / February 24, 2016. Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s leftist president, has a flair for publicity, as he demonstrated again last week in claiming vindication for harboring the fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. But a separate high-profile case shows just how far he will go to manipulate international opinion. American Media Institute reviewed … Read more

Putin propagandists pick up ex-Pentagon PSYOPers

by J Michael Waller / AMI Newswire / February 14, 2016. In an irony that illustrates the contrast in value that Russia and the U.S. place on sound information strategy, the Russian government’s international propaganda service has hired American PSYOP professionals left jobless after congressionally mandated program cuts. RT/Sputnik hired at least four contractors from the US Special … Read more

PSYOP/MISO class @ Fort Bragg

Returned from two days at Fort Bragg to teach a great group of officers and senior NCOs about psychological operations (PSYOP), still confusingly called military information support operations (MISO). There is no shortage of critical thinkers among the special operations soldiers in these units, a very encouraging thing to see, even though overall training doctrine … Read more

The Muslim Brotherhood: Doctrine, strategy, operations & vulnerabilities

by J Michael Waller / Westminster Institute / 2016. Want to discover the vulnerabilities of the Muslim Brotherhood? Study its doctrine, strategy and operations worldwide. That’s what we set out to do in “The Muslim Brotherhood: Doctrine, Strategy, Operations and Vulnerabilities,” a chapter in the newly published book, Meeting the Ideological Challenges of Islamism: How to … Read more