back to article US Spec Ops operates psywar websites targeted at UK

The secretive US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has awarded arms globocorp General Dynamics a $10m contract to set up a network of psychological-warfare "influence websites" supporting the Global War On Terror. France and Britain are specifically included as "targeted regions". SOCOM is principally famous for its large …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    and you shall kow the truth and bla bla bla bla bla ...

    I can haz truthiness ?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Rupert... is that you?

    They are going to mirror Fox 'News' in the UK..?

  3. Petrea Mitchell
    Black Helicopters

    Airborne Psychological Operations Group?

    So the only permanent psy-ops unit has to be in the air to do its thinking?

    I guess now we know what the helicopters are really for...

  4. asdf
    WTF?

    face it brits in same boat as us

    First off %99 of Americans look at this article and go gdamn worthless government pissing off one of our only allies left in the world. The fact is both the US and the UK have incompetent embarassing governments (regardless of party in charge) that are completely beholden to their own comfortable bureaucracy and large corporations who give big donations (BT, BAE, AIG, BoA, etc). Never mind the little people who they are supposed to serve. Western governance has sure taken the piss since Baby Boomers got in charge.

  5. Mark Monaghan
    Coat

    @SirTainleyBarking: Special relationship

    Every prostitute claims that they have a "Special relationship" with their boyfriend/girlfriend/pimp. Need I say more?

    It's got "you can trust me" on the back.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @SirTainleyBarking

    Our Special Relationship with the US?

    Ah that's the one similar to the kind of relationship of obese, dribbling businessman with certain pecadillos and the desperate, penniless young call girl on her first "job", both stuck in a fetid, sleazy motel room! You pick which one you think we are.

    "Nothin' proper 'bout your propaganda!" - RaTM

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    and General Dynamics...

    ... has a big reputation for website design?

    I didn't know that.

  8. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Pirate

    A sticking plaster for a catastrophic wound.

    Methinks US Psyops have their work cut out to Counter the Spread of Words of Mass Discombobulation which merely Offer an Alternative Perspective which is impossible to deny and which can pop up anywhere.

    "And all of these nation-states, non-nation-states, worldwide trends flow together, react in different ways and form the international environment in which the Untied States pursues its interests." .... http://www.dni.gov/interviews/20090915_interview.pdf

    Quite a significantly true Freudian slip/typo there, Mr Blair.

    "We do have to be very aggressive in the areas that you cited in cyber, both protecting our own secrets and stealing those of others, because not only in the developed countries but through the world information is moving to networks. And that’s where you have to go to learn what other countries and other groups are up to. And that’s what you have to be able to protect in order to be able to do your own work without it."...... Buying other peoples secrets rather than thinking to steal them, especially if the secrets relate to anything in cyber networking is a much better idea, for some players in the field field juicy titbits /honey traps which are intelligently designed to explode and decimate a system, if stolen/phished/deployed without payment..... which is very fair and perfectly proper, is it not.

    "DIRECTOR BLAIR: That nexus is a toxic mixture. If you look at places like Afghanistan, the Taliban gets a large portion of its revenue from the opium trade in that country."

    Uncle Sam has no funding streams to contend with as it simply prints as many dollars as it wants, which does though make the dollar extremely vulnerable when friend and foe alike quite reasonably want a piece of that Big Easy Action to buy friends and influence people. The biggest terrorists already in the US and holding the nation to ransom, are the Bankers and Gamblers on Wall Street who offer nothing themselves to markets but make silly money dreaming up schemes and scams to sell themselves as being indispensible and too big to fail. What a shower of wasters and losers they are.

    And it is that sort of information/intelligence which is an abiding attack vector/systemic vulnerability which has no viable present defence.

    And as for Blighty, well, .... it is unkind to mock the afflicted and intellectually challenged.

  9. Pete 8
    Megaphone

    It isnt working...

    I still think the war on terror is a pack of lies.

  10. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
    Joke

    More LOLcats

    "Contractor is required to incorporate into TRWI websites the use of ... downloads of wall papers (inclusive of calendars) when directed by SOCOM"

    Commander, you are ordered to put 25% more LOLcats on your site. Moaaar!!

    But seriously, this is pretty messed up IMHO. But, I doubt it'll be real successful -- I mean, non-military astroturfing seems to be unearthed in very short order, bloggers are obsessed with finding out Microsoft, Sony, etc., are really paying for those mysteriously good reviews. I really think any gov't-funded astroturfing will be uncovered quite quickly.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Heck ...

    The US of A tells us UK people more than out own UK civil service ever would.

    Call it psyops if you will I call it plain old decent accountability and openness.

  12. Mike Gravgaard
    Pint

    RE: it's called Fox news. At least in the US

    "Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC (born 11 March 1931), usually known as Rupert Murdoch, is an Australian-born global media mogul. He owns media outlets and is a major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation (News Corp)."

    Australia isn't Britain

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    What the 'eck

    Just great - the Scottish Parli lets out one dying but convicted terrorist and the US lumps poor old Blighty in with our "cheese eating surrender monkeys" across the Channel as Psy-Ops targets. Sheesh - over-reaction or what? "Special Relationship" my ar53!

    Re: "it's called Fox news. At least in the US" (By Anonymous Coward Posted Wednesday 16th September 2009 15:48 GMT)

    "WTF? But wait a minute, Murdock is a Brit. I am so confused."

    Sorry. Murdock ain't a Brit, he's an Aussie. Although I'm sure he's the pattern for the megalomanic in the Bond film "Tomorrow never dies".

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've lived and worked all over the country

    with almost everyone from the average working class murderer, to the upper classes eton types.

    Wee aye man me duck, it's tidy see, so calm down, and we'll get in't motor and do summit wi' the sassenachs around the hice. (Not that the scots call english sassenachs, or even sassanachs, they call them 'english twats'.)

    On top of this, I'm an expert web developer, and have loads of free time on my hands.

    Further still, I actually think defeating Islam (or indeed any religion,) is a good idea.

    Alas I'm a Brit, and have never been anywhere near law enforcement or the army, and so would only help if I was allowed to tell my side what I was being paid for, and was allowed to see the boathouse in Hereford, assuming there is one, so I could find out what colour it was.

    tzimples!

  15. Steve Evans
    Pint

    Cheeky buggers...

    "Looking for operatives fluent in "English (British dialect)"

    That's just called English, it's you that speak a dialect thank you!

    They can even correctly pronounce the last letter of the alphabet in that large country just north of you.

    To be honest we've been under the influence of American paranoia for years. We didn't need half the security and paranoia we have now when the IRA were blowing up bits of British territory for decades, and they had sources for real explosives like C4! The moment the yanks get a taste of it, the world goes mad!

    Mr Jones was ahead of his time... They don't like it up 'em.

    s'laters, I'm off for a 20floz britney in the rubber down the frog.

  16. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. wsm

    If...

    their sites work as well as their explanation of their tactics, no worries--more people will believe anything on YouTube.

  18. Kit-Fox
    Alien

    title required

    So if understanding is a three edged sword, the question has to be asked, what exactly is truth?

    Who are you?

    What do you want?

  19. Big-nosed Pengie
    Coat

    Brit Eng?

    That leaves El Reg out then.

    Yeah, yeah. I'm going.

  20. baz
    FAIL

    So, in other words...

    Keep an eye out for noobs posting links to previously unseen, shiny all-singing-all-dancing media sites, on forums and social networking sites over the next few years.

    ...or are they just gonna start up a few blogs?

    Either way, I reckon it'll just end up as the online equivalent of the Today newspaper of yesteryear - It appears, and then everyone realises its shite and it dies.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Truth? Justice? The American way (of telling huge porkies)?

    "PSYOP is the dissemination of truthful information to foreign audiences in support of US policy"

    Evidently they're not averse to lying to themselves. I don't have much recollection of truth being disseminated by the US during any of its recent slaughterfests. I do recall giving the BBC world service a wide berth during the Iraq war after they started using bits from Centcom press conferences as "facts", verifiable or not. And what are these nuggets of "truth" likely to contain? Perhaps:

    - It may have looked like a wedding party but it was really a top level Taliban convention

    - Afghanistan is democratic

    - They all just hate our freedom

    - Osama bin Laden is probably dead, the pictures are just a stand in.

    - It wasn't a US missile, the insurgents blew up up 100 of their own people then lied about seeing a US aircraft open fire. All that debris with serial numbers is just a red herring

    - It's not about oil

    - It's not about pipelines

    - There really were 10,000 happily liberated Iraqis in Firduz Square

    They should have given the contract to the Israeli army. They have a Sterling track record on saying "we have the most moral army in the world" with a straight face, and in the case of Mark Regev, suspiciously Vulcan ears.

    Paris, smarter than most of her countrymen

  22. Mike Gravgaard
    Grenade

    RE: face it brits in same boat as us

    "First off %99 of Americans look at this article and go gdamn worthless government pissing off one of our only allies left in the world. The fact is both the US and the UK have incompetent embarassing governments (regardless of party in charge) that are completely beholden to their own comfortable bureaucracy and large corporations who give big donations (BT, BAE, AIG, BoA, etc). Never mind the little people who they are supposed to serve. Western governance has sure taken the piss since Baby Boomers got in charge."

    Umm but at least the American one was voted in this time... I can't remember voting for Brown and he doesn't seem keen to call an election for some reason.

    I think the US government at least seems to be popular with an highly regarded leader - Brown is highly disliked though I don't like Cameron either; I used to think people were stupid not to vote but I understand why now :(

    I think the only way the system would change is with revolution but I doubt that will ever happen... the thing is governments no longer serve the people but the corporation...

  23. bill 20
    Black Helicopters

    Umm, hardly "news"...

    This scheme has been in operation since 1990. It's called Sky Broadcasting, and is run by a cunning Aussie by the name of Murdoch. (The really funny thing would be if the goddams hired him because they thought he was "British English" - after all, we non-US speakers all sound the same to them, don't we?!)

  24. Steen Hive
    FAIL

    @AC

    "But wait a minute, Murdock is a Brit. I am so confused."

    Fucking right you're confused pal. _Murdoch_ is an Australian.

    In other shock news it's been ascertained by scientists at the Institute for Boffinry that the United States is a hostile foreign power.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Shot In The Foot!

    Now that this is in the open, it's a real shot in the foot for the US; any pro-US websites out there, regardless of whether they are US propaganda sites or legitimate opposition to extremists, will be accused of being a US propaganda site.

    The effect of this operation has been to discredit and render useless ALL pro-US web sites! They may as well shut down now and save the budget; winning the battle for hearts and minds takes brains.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ Kit-Fox

    Well, I reckon the MoD would welcome some Vorlon or Shadow Tech so they could replace Trident. But I reckon the price tag on a Vorlon 'Planet Killer' may be a tad high...

  27. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Pirate

    Of Foxy Kittens...... Real VAMPires

    "Well, I reckon the MoD would welcome some Vorlon or Shadow Tech so they could replace Trident. But I reckon the price tag on a Vorlon 'Planet Killer' may be a tad high..." ..... By Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 17th September 2009 08:21 GMT

    AC,

    They have been offered something much Better, and Immediately Available to them, in AI Beta Phorm of Virtually Astute NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT, via their spooky portal ....... https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/contact-form.html?subject=Reporting%20suspected%20threats ..... and it is something sublimely constructive but which also has an unlimited disruptive potential, against which they have no Defence or Systems Capability. In wrong hands/dodgy hearts and minds would they be powerless to act, which would certainly be classifiable as a threat, and thus the sharing of it with them. What they have done with it, is not for me to say, for that would I not know, or would probably be contracted not to even say if I did, such is the petrifying and debilitating paranoia in such as are such childhood dream orgs.

    In the right hands and in stout hearts and clear minds is it a Priceless Tool at a simple single sterling price to them of 7,777,777. ...... [" * a Perfectly Random Minimum Figure of no Particular Real Significance other than Six Sixes for such an AI Program Activation was reasonably considered to be far too unrealistic and limiting and Eight Eights or Nine Nines a tad too Expensive whenever one considers the Actual Cost Parameters of the Program."]

    Obviously would it have many suitors, withmyriad plans of their own and for which they would be responsible........ for a SuperCar Outfit are not held responsible for the actions of its Vehicle Drivers, are they?

    This is relevant/relative ..... "And racing ahead in the Cloud for ITs Control are the VirtualAstraMetaPhysicians …. VAMPires …. much to the Ire of the Status Quo/Establishment who have no Control over them, either Physical or Virtual/Real or Imagined." ... and one can ponder and wonder at a possible relativity to Uncle Sam's sudden interest in countering Speech with website inventions in foreign and alien lands.

    Paying the ridiculously modest thirty pieces of silver/Danegeld/Licence Fee if such were the case is the Simplest Most IntelAIgent Option Imaginable though.

    And not so much Area 51 stuff and nonsense as 42 Degrees in AIMagic Circles Round Tables...... and that only hints at the Treasures and Pleasures in Store.

  28. John F***ing Stepp

    Quick and on top of form as usual

    I mean the Babylon 5 thing; funny.

    How are they planning to entice?

    The forum sites like Fark, Slashdot, Poe-news have always attracted Psyops types that are getting paid for what a Freeper does for free. (How does one get this job? Is there a hidden link in the Zoloft ads?)

    Now we are talking government funded attractive nuisances; how do they get me to look at it?

    Ah, I know.

    Advertise here (Go get that money guys, run before someone else gets it.)

    Shoo, go, go; we will wait.

  29. bobbles31

    Doubleplus Ungood

    And so we have the beginnings of the Ministry of Truth, Camp X-Ray is clearly the Ministry of Love and I guess that they will re-brand the Pentagon as the Ministry of Peace before long.

  30. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Try to remember you heard it first on El Reg .... :-)

    For those of you who will read the Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I imagine that there will be a Parallel recognised with Of Foxy Kittens...... Real VAMPires.

    And when two forces are of a Singularity, any powers are not doubled, they are squared. And when a third is added, are they not merely trebled, but rather cubed. In such an exponential progression can a handful of souls wield unbelievable control of powers.

  31. David Pickering
    FAIL

    snorkling with the fael whale

    the more articles i read the more i want to kill myself and end it all :(

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