Influence

Having a passion for books and an eight-month-old baby that’s feverishly growing a mouthful of teeth makes for some difficult evenings. You think she’s finally drifted off to sleep for the night and you make your way into your office with firm intent. I’m going to spend an hour reading before I get back to […]

Earlier this month, the United States Special Operations Command gathered a group of experts in New York City to discuss a significant threat facing the nation. SOCOM has a storied history of staying at the forefront of the warfighting endeavor; taking the fight to places Americans don’t always expect and operating beyond the confines of […]

Anytime Russian influence campaigns are addressed in an article, you can count on two comments popping up in short order. The first will be from an old timer that doesn’t believe perceptions can be managed through the digital sphere, so they’d prefer to keep their head planted firmly in the sand, and the second is […]

Recently, you’ve probably heard a lot about Influence Activities or Influence Operations, usually in the context of Russia and the 2016 election. For many Americans, this topic may seem to have come out of nowhere. At SOFREP though, we’ve been talking about it for a long time. See here, here, here, here, here, here, and […]

It is no secret the Iranians are trying to export their own brand of influence across the Middle East. They are supporting the Assad regime in Syria during the bloody civil war there are trying to establish bases near the border with Israel. Tehran and their proxy terrorist group Hezbollah are preparing for their next […]

BEIJING — When President Trump withdrew from the ­Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in January, critics said he was leaving a vacuum at the heart of the Asia-Pacific region, ceding the United States’ role as regional economic leader. On Sunday, China plans to show how it is filling that vacuum. At a major set-piece event in […]

You thought you would never see the day, a SOFREP article about Lindsay Lohan.  Believe me, I never thought I would be writing one.  While celebrity gossip is not exactly our purview, once in a while you catch of whiff of something that just doesn’t quite smell right.  Case in point: Lindsay Lohan becoming a staunch […]

According to Dolan, “intercepts near Russian territory” are “expected” and “in a word – commonplace.” He adds “aggressive behavior by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy in the Strait of Hormuz” also “is nothing new.”

Some critics, however, blame the encounters on President Obama’s foreign policy weakness, both toward Iran, with the hammering out of the Iran nuclear deal, and toward Russia, with the administration’s measured response to the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea.

Dolan thinks, however, there’s “strategic communications” in the incidents.

Every map has a Who, What, Where and When about it. But these maps had another element: Why? Since they were primarily ‘about’ something other than geography, understanding the map required finding the reasoning behind it.

Experts have studied high-stakes negotiations for years. What they’ve discovered can help the military. What they’ve missed needs to be addressed.