{"id":40844,"date":"2018-11-23T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T11:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40844"},"modified":"2018-11-23T06:30:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T11:30:31","slug":"inside-the-british-armys-secret-information-warfare-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40844","title":{"rendered":"Inside the British Army’s secret information warfare machine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inside the British Army’s secret information warfare machine<\/a><\/h3>\n
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They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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Future Publishing\/Getty Images\/WIRED<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A<\/span>barbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and out of a squat guard\u2019s hut in the middle of the road. Through the hut, and under a row of floodlights, I walked towards a long line of drab, low-rise brick buildings. It was the summer of 2017, and on this military base nestled among the hills of Berkshire, I was visiting a part of the British Army unlike any other. They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain\u2019s information wars.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn\u2019t thinking,\u201d was written in foot-high letters across a whiteboard in one of the main atriums of the base. Over to one side, there was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software. The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics. Some may have taken the army\u2019s course in Defence Media Operations<\/a>, and almost half<\/a> were reservists from civvy street, with full time jobs in marketing or consumer research.<\/p>\n

From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating \u201cattitude and sentiment awareness\u201d from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside the British Army’s secret information warfare machine They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare. Future Publishing\/Getty Images\/WIRED Abarbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[23177,3081,23176,23178,9008,512,655,1169,2007],"class_list":["post-40844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-77th-brigade","tag-british-army","tag-carl-miller","tag-data-analytics","tag-information-warfare","tag-media","tag-propaganda","tag-social-media","tag-wired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40845,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40844\/revisions\/40845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}