USPACOM requested that the Strategic Multi-layer Assessment (SMA) team conduct an “Examination of future political, security, societal, and economic trends to identify where US interests are in cooperation or conflict with Chinese and other interests particularly in the East China Sea.” More specifically, USPACOM requested an examination of future political, security, societal, and economic trends; identification of where US strategic interests are in cooperation or conflict with Chinese and other interests, particularly in the East China Sea; and suggestions as to how USPACOM might best leverage opportunities when dealing with China in a “global context.” The project request also included a series of questions (see Appendix A) that, taken together represent two broad concerns.

This Conference assessed what today we rightly or wrongly perceive as historically unprecedented changes from the perspectives of politics and history, sociology, biology, information science, and technological innovation. There is a large body of scientific work that supports the notion that human societies are complex adaptive systems with emergent properties that contain core commonalities, but the actions of which cannot be predicted with certainty. Given the properties of human cognition and social behavior, the question remains: How might nations and societies best position themselves to prepare for and manage the risks associated with rapid change under conditions of fundamental uncertainty? The conference speakers and panelists addressed these issues relevant to key domains and dimensions of global security.

In pregNSI participated in a large effort focused on identifying areas of strategic risk and opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region over the next two decades. A rising China resides within a very dynamic Asia-Pacific region. A long list of Chinese influence and investment activities abroad together with an active military enhancement program indicate that China is positioning itself to pursue national security interests well beyond the Pacific Rim. As Chinese interests and policy objectives broaden to farther reaches of the globe there is greater likelihood that they will run up against key US international interests. The intersection of US and Chinese interests could represent either a source of conflict or opportunity for cooperation. The main question that US policy makers and planners must consider carefully is: Where and which Chinese interests are most likely to conflict with US global interests, and where may there be opportunities for cooperation? The current problem this project addressed is uncertainty about the likely trajectory of increasingly global Chinese national interests abroad and how these relate to key US interests. The primary objective was to provide decision-makers the tools to make better sense of the non-linear dynamics and feedback mechanisms at play in the complex environment in which they, and their competitors, operate in the Asia-Pacific region, and broaden the horizon of strategic thinking and inform planning.

This study analyzed Chinese web media in an effort to uncover key frames and cultural scripts that are likely to shape potential geopolitical relationships in Asia. The team provided an overview of Chinese media and developed individual reports on cultural scripts in media coverage of three key issues: a) China’s relationships with its regional neighbors, b) the geopolitical dimensions of the “China Dream” (中国梦), and c) Chinese discourse around the “New Style Great Power Relations” (新型大国关系). Data was collected from May to October 2014. Over 2,200 media articles were analyzed from 25 different Chinese media sources controlled for ownership, political slant, official versus, and popular media outlets.

This is Part 1 of a 9 part series of SMA Reach back responses to questions posed by USCENTCOM. Each report contains responses to multiple questions grouped by theme. At the request of United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), the Joint Staff, jointly with other elements in the JS, Services, and U.S. Government (USG) Agencies, has established a SMA virtual reach-back cell. This initiative, based on the SMA global network of scholars and area experts, is providing USCENTCOM with population based and regional expertise in support of ongoing operations in the Iraq/Syria region.

There was general acknowledgement among the experts that wide-spread, public access to smartphones has been both a game-changer for both the distribution and production of propaganda materials. Smart devices with web access were also cited by many as the predominant medium by which both global and local audiences receive ISIL propaganda and the catalyst for the fading of former distinctions between means used to communicate with “macro” versus “micro” audiences. Even ISIL messages primarily intended for local audiences (e.g., weekly newsletters) do not stay local; they are digitized and may be found on the internet and thus are available globally.

Evaluating strategic risk in the Eurasia region over the next two to three decades is a complex challenge that is vital for USEUCOM planning and mission success. The depth of our understanding of the diverse set of political, economic, and social actors in the region will determine how effectively we respond to emerging opportunities and threats to US interests. A better understanding of Russia’s priorities and interests, and their implications, both regionally and globally, will help planners and policy makers both anticipate and respond to future developments.

This study sought to examine future political, security, societal and economic trends to identify where U.S. interests are in cooperation or conflict with Russian interests, and in particular, identify leverage points when dealing with Russia in a global context.

At the request of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) the J-39 Strategic-Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Branch undertook a Coordinator’s Mission Review in July 2014 and concluded it in February 2015. This SMA project resulted in an unprecedented collaborative effort among over one hundred subject-matter experts from numerous organizations across the Department of Defense, U.S. Government Departments and Intelligence Agencies, Academia, Think Tanks, and Private Industry. The work of these subject- matter experts is summarized in this white paper.

During FY 2014, the SOCCENT Commander requested a short-term effort to understand the psychological, ideological, narrative, emotional, cultural, and inspirational (“intangible”) nature of ISIL. As shown below, the SMA1 team really addressed two related questions: “What makes ISIL attractive?” or how has the idea or ideology of ISIL gained purchase with different demographics; and “What makes ISIL successful?” or which of the organization’s characteristics and which of the tactics it has employed account for its push across Syria and Iraq.

This report suggests potential types of actions and messages most likely to influence and deter Bashar al-Assad from using force in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This study is based on multidisciplinary discourse analyses of Bashar al-Assad’s speeches, and how he reacts to real events and verbal messages from external sources.

This report suggests potential types of actions and messages most likely to influence and deter Bashar al-Assad from using force in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This study is based on multidisciplinary analyses of Bashar al-Assad’s speeches, and how he reacts to real events and verbal messages from external sources.

SOCCENT has requested a short-term effort to assess the appeal of ISIL, specifically to answer, “What makes ISIL so magnetic, inspirational, and deeply resonant with a specific, but large, portion of the Islamic population allowing it to draw recruitment of foreign fighters, money and weapons, advocacy, general popularity, and finally support from other groups such as Boko Haram, several North African Extremist Groups, and other members of the Regional and International Sunni Extremist organizations?” A study was undertaken to understand the psychological, ideological, narrative, emotional, cultural and inspirational (“intangible”) nature of ISIL. This white paper summarizes results from analytical efforts and key results and observations.

Radicalization is a complex phenomenon informed by various disciplines. The social sciences have provided planners and operators with an understanding of the ‘who’, ‘what’, and more recently the ‘how’ of radicalization. The neuroscience community is working to expand the understanding of ‘why.’ It is essential that planners and operators, who are often on the front line of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency campaigns, have a deeper understanding of the why and how radicalization occurs. With a better understanding of the ‘why’ aspect of radicalization, planners, operators, and social scientists can move beyond purely correlative work. This report offers insights from these various fields in an easily accessible format for the operational and planning communities.

This White Volume assesses U.S. long term national security challenges, employing a global perspective that accounts for the changing political, economic, social, and psychological profiles of populations, and the rapid changes they experience in a globally connected information en- vironment. It addresses many of the key national security challenges iden- tified by LTG Flynn in the Preface. The collection of essays explores future population-centric national security challenges through the lens of the lat- est research from the social, neurological, and complexity sciences. The papers emphasize “enduring” long term themes that are focused on the in- teractions of populations and their environments. They are not U.S.- centric, but multi-perspective and examine underlying long term phenom- ena.

If there were a simple solution for countering violent extremism, a solution would have been found centuries ago. Countering violent extremism successfully requires a balanced approach between security-related strategies and initiatives and those that address the underlying motivations and causes for participation in, and support of, a violent extremist organization (VEO). These strategies and initiatives need to be based on nuanced understanding of the various aspects of violent extremism—not only the environments that are likely to spawn violent extremism and sympathetic supporters, but also

This project examines global perspectives on evolving nuclear challenges and deterrence approaches by analyzing discourse across media, arms control experts, and social platforms in major nuclear-armed nations. Using computational analysis and qualitative coding, it compiles insights from news articles, arms control blogs, and Twitter commentary over the past decade. The goal is to gain an expansive view of public conversations regarding nuclear weapons issues to inform strategic planning and assessment of the strategic environment. By compiling diverse qualitative data points, the project aims to identify areas of alignment and mismatch between official deterrence policies and public discourse that could illuminate whether existing strategies sufficiently account for media, arms control experts, and public perceptions of emergent risks. The key findings include:

This report provides a comparative analysis of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan media narratives regarding visions of the future of global competition, including their instruments of exerting power (DIME), purported vulnerabilities and necessary capabilities, projected allies and adversaries, views on the future of global order (FGO), the US, and EU, as well as the available means by which global competition should be managed.

The following study explored how extremist organizations may take advantage of the Kashmir crisis; it identifies prominent extremist organizations and stakeholder interests reported in Indian and Pakistani news media. Data was collected from 54 Indian and Pakistani news sources from May 16th to August 16th, 2019; a total of 437 articles were analyzed.

The following highlights Iranian perspectives on: geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East, the US, the global order, and the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region coming from Iranian news media intended for domestic audiences. The study analyzed 134 Iranian news articles across four native Iranian news media publications from 2014 to present.

This paper reports a number of the top-level findings from the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Strategic Outcomes in the Korean Peninsula project requested by the Joint Staff and USINDOPACOM. They are based on an integration of the results of the eleven different analytic efforts included in the project.

SMA hosted a speaker session with Dr. Herb Lin (Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security, Hoover Institution & Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University), as part of its SMA STRATCOM Academic Alliance Speaker Series.

Dr. Posard began the speaker session by stating that he and his colleagues examined Russia’s past interference in the 2016 US presidential election in an effort to mitigate the impact that Russian interference could have on the 2020 election. He emphasized that Russia’s ultimate goal in its election interference efforts is not to aid one candidate in winning but rather to paralyze the US election system. Russia aims to achieve this goal by halting political cooperation between legislators, further polarizing the US civilian population, and ultimately leading citizens to not participate in future democratic elections. Dr. Posard stated that while the US has been targeted by a foreign power’s influence campaigns before, Russia’s influence campaign has been the most effective due to its efficient use of technology.Dr. William Marcellino then described the research team’s methodology. According to Dr. Marcellino, the team documented more than two million Twitter conversations from 630 unique accounts to create an overlay of the communication network that makes up the information environment (IE). The team created its model of the IE by first using a community detection algorithm and then giving the data to human analysts. Dr. Marcellino stated that the research team was able to identify which organizations communicate with each other and which groups act as communication hubs.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Stuart Shulman (Texifter) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Dr. Shulman’s brief focused on the ways in which one identify Internet bots and trolls by using text classification programs. He stated that though machines enable one to classify large bodies of text, it remains difficult for machines to be consistently accurate; therefore, a human must remain in the loop. Dr. Shulman then spoke about CoderRank, a program that ranks humans based on trust and knowledge vectors. The idea behind the program is, when training machines for text analysis, greater reliance should be placed on the specific inputs of those humans most likely to create a valid observation. CoderRank, therefore, is designed to identify those who are most qualified to code and classify text. Dr. Shulman proceeded to discuss lessons learned from tracking down fake accounts in the Trudeau and Biden campaigns. In the Trudeau campaign, Dr. Shulman and his team looked for biographical indicators that were not Canadian, conducted searches based on keywords, and analyzed abnormal text. In the Biden campaign, Dr. Shulman and his team looked for accounts with significant followings that had, in reality, purchased social media followers. He stated that as we move into this next technological landscape, it is only going to become more difficult to discern who is real and who is not online. Moreover, if one immerses oneself in social media profile data and looks for specific indicators, one can see a mixture of real, authentic people; human-assisted bots; bot-assisted humans; and pure bots. Dr. Shulman then spoke about bot detection based on the frequency of tweets. He and his team of coders create filters, labels, and other features in order to determine where the tweets are coming from. They also examine Twitter accounts’ networks to decipher whether or not the accounts of interest are operated by humans. Dr. Shulman expressed, however, that gaining access to data is becoming increasingly difficult due to increased regulations and data privacy restrictions, which makes it harder for him and his team to identify bots. To conclude, Dr. Shulman spoke about how his text classification and bot detecting techniques can be applied to a gaming environment, specifically with regards to veteran suicide prevention and school shooters prevention.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Skye Cooley (Oklahoma State University) as a part of its SMA DHS CAOE Speaker Series. During his presentation, Dr. Cooley discussed his and his colleague, Dr. Robert Hinck’s (Monmouth College), research, which uses Northern Triangle media perspectives on migration as a reference point to contextualize larger system disruptions taking place within Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. He then stated that contextualizing decisions is imperative. In other words, making sense of outside perspectives and interdependencies is critical to taking sensible actions. Moreover, considering context can also help one address the problems presented by so-called “gray rhinos,” rather than continually neglecting them until they collide with their victims (in this case, US decision makers). Dr. Cooley explained that institutions and contextual structuring allows individuals to co-create meaning and identity. Furthermore, the stability of the structures around individuals allow them to create meaning and community with one another. However, individuals’ actions inform others of who they are only when they can make sense of them via a common reference point, and if social institutions disintegrate, so does one’s understanding of others. Dr. Cooley then discussed his and Dr. Hinck’s research on the violence that is eroding the social institutions of Northern Triangle nations and, more specifically, the mass scale migration that has resulted from this violence. He further explained that migration itself serves as a useful common reference point because it highlights relational interdependencies, commonalities, and contrasts across the region. To conduct their research, Dr. Cooley and Dr. Hinck used narrative analysis as a tool of contextualization and examined 199 articles from ten news sources coming from Northern Triangle nations. Dr. Cooley presented the team’s findings regarding violence, institutional failures, incentives for migration, the role of the US, and consequences and solutions. To conclude, he advised that US decision makers develop regional solutions; clarify US positions in relation to the region; consider a multi-pronged, multi-staged approach rather than an iron-fist approach; combat corruption; and offer economic lifelines.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Kathleen Carley (Carnegie Mellon University) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. Dr. Carley first defined and characterized social cyber-security. She then stated that social media is about networks and identified three influential groups that interact with users within these networks: 1) echochambers (a toxic group of people connected to each other that share the same ideas), 2) superspreaders (individuals that spread information and alert people of changes), and 3) superfriends (individuals that engage in dialogue to change others’ beliefs and get them to act). Dr. Carley proceeded to discuss the four D’s of traditional information warfare (dismiss, distort, dismay, and distract) and present her key findings regarding technology exploitation, social cognitive manipulation, and more general manipulation.

SMA hosted an exclusive Q&A session featuring Dr. Peter Singer (New America) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series.

Ms. Alexander began by emphasizing the importance of recognizing that organizations have spread ideas by exploiting contemporary media for decades and that this is not a new or shocking approach.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Kristina Lerman (University of Southern California [USC] Information Sciences Institute [ISI]) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. Dr. Lerman spoke about her research, which examines the role of political ideology and social bots on Twitter during the 2016 US election and distinguishes which users may be susceptible to manipulation. She and her team collected millions of tweets between 15 September and 9 November 2016 and identified which troll accounts generated the most tweets and which media outlets liberals and conservatives retweeted. Dr. Lerman identified the topics that were most frequently discussed among liberal and conservative users, distinct characteristics of the most prolific spreaders of various tweets, and where the majority of tweets about the election originated from. To conclude the session, Dr. Lerman provided insights as to what variables are most important to consider when successfully predicting spreaders and what lessons were learned as a result of this research.