Month: Jun 2020

The Mutin- SOE clandestine sea transport.

After being acquired by SOE the ‘Mutin’ (Mutineer) was based in the Helford Estuary in Cornwall. Its paintwork was aged and was disguised as a French tuna fishing vessel and the all British crew dressed as Breton fishermen. Part of her refit was a more powerful diesel engine and a wireless using RAF frequencies to support the illusion that transmissions were not from an ocean vessel and its long aerial was built into the rigging. There is an account from a Quartermaster in the Royal Navy who volunteered for clandestine operations without being told what these operations were. This new volunteer later said, on his arrival at the quay he saw Mutin which had just returned from Brittany after dropping off agents: “I saw heaps of sail on the deck covered in blood. Shipwrights were digging shrapnel from bow to stern and I thought, God what have I let myself in for”?… “I was later told, after dropping off agents Mutin was spotted by a German aircraft and raked by cannon fire during which the engineer was killed.

More details in my forthcoming book SOE in France

Russian and Soviet Information Operations against the west

KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov reveals Russian Subversion Tactics – Full Interview (2016)

 

KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News | NYT Opinion

 

How Disinformation Is Taking Over the World | NYT Opinion

Although this video concentrates on the USA narrative warfare continues to be misunderstood by many western nations including the UK along with its power as a socio-political and economic weapon which also supports kinetic warfare.

Why the U.S. Is Vulnerable to an Iranian Cyberattack | WSJ

February 2020

U.S. tensions with Iran have escalated after the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and experts are worried about retaliatory cyberattacks. Cybersecurity expert John Hultquist and WSJ’s Dustin Volz discuss what new tactics hackers have at their disposal and whether the U.S. is prepared to defend itself. Photo illustration: Alexandra Cardinale.

Narrative Warfare (MA Global Security)

More on the MA in global security: https://spgs.asu.edu/global-security-ma

Ajit Maan, a new professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Future of War, was in Tempe this July to film a lecture for her first semester teaching online at Arizona State University. Maan is an internationally-recognized security and defense analysist and narrative strategist. In 1999, she published her breakthrough theory of Internarrative Identity. Then in 2014 Maan published, Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies, which focuses on deconstructing dominant and coercive narratives and demonstrates how certain narrative structures lend themselves to manipulation and how the weaknesses of those structures can be exploited. Most recently, in 2017, she coined the term “Narrative Warfare” to refine what has been referred to as information wars and psychological warfare