In remarks by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield at an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, he made the following statements:
[G]overnment public affairs and public diplomacy efforts must reorient staffing, schedules and culture to engage the full range of media that are having such an impact today. Our U.S. Central Command, for example, has launched an online communications effort that includes electronic news updates and a links campaign that has resulted in several hundred blogs receiving and publishing CENTCOM content.
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I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to right decisions. Throughout the world, advances in technology are forcing a massive information flow that dictatorships and extremists ultimately will not be able to control. Blogs are rapidly appearing even in countries where the press is still government-controlled.
I don't think that anyone five years ago could have predicted the power of the blog, but since then it can not be denied. With each successive election, the blog has become more of a player and more influential. The influence isn't always overt. Small bloggers, A-list bloggers, or part time bloggers all have some influence. If something is read here by only one person and that one person is motivated to send an email to a friend or write a letter to an editor or mention it around the water cooler, the information is spread exponentially and ends up affecting future discourse and ultimately decision making.
Secretary Rumsfield is recognizing the value of the new media and the power of the electronics age.
Following up on these remarks, Rumsfield was a guest on the Charlie Rose show on PBS tonight. He repeated the above sentiments and told Charlie - I don't have the answers, I'm asking the questions - how do we position ourselves to be competitive with an enemy (al-Queda) who is way ahead of the U.S. on the communications front and that 21st century war is a more a "War of Wills" than a war of armies, navies, air force and marines. He stopped short of openly criticizing today's mainstream media, but it is quite clear that he doesn't think they are doing the job. When al-Queda has committee planning meetings on how to manipulate the U.S. press and define the story in their terms and we are light years behind in countering their efforts with new methods of our own, we continue to be at much greater risk.
The Council on Foreign Relations website continues the discussion:
The internet is an increasingly useful tool for terrorists, whose online activities include information-sharing, propaganda, and possibly, cyberterrorism. Over the last ten years, the number of terrorist sites has jumped from less than 100 to as many as 4,000. "This has particularly taken off since the war in Iraq, as many of the insurgency groups there have many sites and message boards to help their network," says SITE Institute, a Washington DC-based terrorist-tracking group. "The greatest advantage [of the internet] is stealth," says John Arquilla, professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. "[Terrorists] swim in an ocean of bits and bytes." But the same anonymity that draws terrorists into the cyber world may also enable law-enforcement officials to spy on them undetected. [CONT'D. HERE]
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