MAJ Collin Hayward
In his excellent podcast on the Pacific War, Supernova in the East, Dan Carlin referred to the Japanese attempt to use the Indian National Army to foment a broad-based anti-colonial uprising in British India as an attempt to “cloud-seed a revolution”. This is an apt description. In cloud-seeding, scientists cannot create rain but can assess favorable conditions for it and release materials into the environment to precipitate that desired outcome. Throughout history, irregular warfare practitioners have attempted to foment unrest in adversary populations. Emerging technological trends present new opportunities to subvert and destabilize adversarial regimes by exploiting rifts in their societies. This piece outlines the process through which such a campaign could be conducted, explores why states might choose this approach, identifies the relevance of this approach to the contemporary operating environment and to Special Operations Forces, and addresses the risks and limitations of this approach.
How to Cloud-Seed a Revolution
When directed by national leadership to pursue the destabilization of an adversary regime, information warfare professionals employ a phased approach. In the first phase, they characterize the information and political environment to identify rifts in civil society, susceptible demographics, key grievances, previous protest movements, and credible local voices, as well as preferred local messaging and networking platforms. With this data, they then conduct link analysis; map networks; identify narratives, themes, messages, and symbols that would resonate with the target audience; and initiate deliberate planning. After developing an operational approach, they prepare the information environment by creating and conditioning social media accounts in key demographics or identifying existing accounts they could employ for this purpose.
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