Warfare is a constantly changing landscape, from the weapons that are used to the battlefields they're fought on. Amidst mountains of Snowden leaks
from the NSA and GCHQ, it's no longer a mystery that the digital
warfare is advancing quickly, and the British Army just upped its
digital artillery.
A new group
of soldiers, referred to as "Facebook Warriors" will " wage complex and
covert information and subversion campaigns," according to the Financial Times. This unit will be named the 77th battalion, whose number also has a historical significance. FT says:
The original Chindits [77th battalion] were a guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success.
These
Facebook warriors will be using similar atypical tactics, through
non-violent means, to fight their adversary. This will mainly be
achieved through "reflexive control," an old Soviet tactic of spreading
specifically curated information in order to get your opponent to react
in the exact way you want them to. It's a pretty tricky trick, and the
British army will be doing just that with 1,500-person (or more) troop
using Twitter and Facebook as a means to spread disinformation, real war
truths, and "false flag" incidents as well as just general intelligence
gathering. The 77th battalion will reportedly begin operations in
April.
Britain is far from the only country making a social media-focused investment. The Guardian notes
that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) used 30 different social media
sites in several different languages during Operation Cast Lead in an
effort to "engage with an audience we otherwise wouldn't reach," says an
IDF spokesperson. ISIS is also annoyingly adept at recruiting
through social media and its sympathizers have hacked the U.S.
military's social media accounts, including U.S. Central Command.
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