Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Scott Fisher is an Army Officer whom has worked alongside CA in Information Operations. He is an Assistant Professor at NJ City University and has just received his PhD. His focus areas are: Information Warfare, US National Security Challenges in East Asia, and Open Source Intelligence.
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Transcript:
00:00:00 SPEAKER_01
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00:00:35 SPEAKER_02
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot. I'm your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Scott Fisher, assistant professor at the New Jersey City University. His focus is national and international security. Scott has recently received his PhD from Rutgers University. He also has an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown and an MA in Korean and International Studies from Seoul National University in South Korea. His research focus is on information warfare, U .S. national security challenges in East Asia, and open source intelligence. Prior to joining New Jersey City University, Scott has worked as a crisis management analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, deployed to Iraq as a DOD civilian, and served towards Afghanistan and East Africa as an Army Reserve Officer. Scott Fisher, thank you very much for being on the 1CA podcast. Hey, great. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:01:29 SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. Scott, we wanted to talk today about your work in information operations and the connection to civil affairs. When you were studying at the University of Michigan, you studied the history and cultures of Korea, China, and Japan. How did you make that leap from undergraduate studies to the Army, Army Reserve, and an interest connected to civil affairs and information operations?
00:01:53 SPEAKER_03
Coming out of undergrad, I really wanted to travel. Saw an ad in our school newspaper, teach English in Korea, we pay airfare.
00:02:04 SPEAKER_03
Mostly teaching, went to grad school, doing that kind of stuff. Really, really enjoyed it. So then when I came back to the States, it was probably about 10 years ago at this point, I wanted to continue working kind of related to that field. And frankly, it sounds a little weird, but every time I'd come home before that, I'd been home for a few months, frankly got a little bored, and then gone back overseas. So I thought, all right, well, if I join the Army, I'll at least be. So you went directly into the Army Reserve,
00:02:45 SPEAKER_02
you went directly into the Army Reserve, is that right?
00:02:47 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, went straight into the Reserve. I was living in D .C. at the time, going to Georgetown.
00:02:52 SPEAKER_02
Okay. And what was your branch in the Army?
00:02:54 SPEAKER_03
My original branch, I needed an age waiver, and so I could only choose from Signal, Quartermaster, and one or two others. So I chose Quartermaster, came in on that, and so that was my original branch.
00:03:07 SPEAKER_02
Right. Okay. And so you were with the CA unit, not qualified, I guess, as a CA officer at the time. Is that right? Correct.
00:03:14 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I came in as a second lieutenant, one of those guys you see at drill who is, you know, in civilian clothes, hasn't gotten to basic training yet. So I did that for a couple months, and then...
00:03:36 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it makes total sense. And then you switched over to information operations. Why do that switch from the logistics area to IO?
00:04:08 SPEAKER_02
That's great to hear. And we want to get to the connection between IO and civil affairs, but I want to first ask you about some of those deployments. You went to East Africa, and you've also gone to Afghanistan for IO missions. What were some of those big lessons that you learned?
00:04:23 SPEAKER_03
really do a lot. The JAG, sign off on most things. And so if there was something we wanted to do, we could generally do it essentially in -house. Occasionally you would work with a partner for us or something, but we could kind of do things in -house. Fast forward to East Africa last year, it's a completely different mission set. It's advise and assist, subject matter, expert exchanges. Completely different in that we directly couldn't do anything. It was working through bi -weekly. having to work with a whole bunch of other folks.
00:05:27 SPEAKER_02
Do you feel like you have a better grasp on what IO is and how to accomplish that mission? Definitely.
00:05:32 SPEAKER_03
So that was very clear guidance of how I could order everything. So to the extent that I could help him capture and kill the people he was targeting, great. But he was also interesting.
00:06:28 SPEAKER_02
Based on those experiences, Scott, how do you think, how have you seen or experienced information operations being connected to civil affairs?
00:07:15 SPEAKER_03
coverage in. And so that was my first opportunity to really work with CA, and it could not have happened without them. We can message all we want, but if no one has a radio, it's not going to do anybody any good. That was the first time I worked with CA. It had a demonstrable benefit. You could see surveys or information that we had gathered prior to that radio distro compared to similar surveys conducted after that radio distro and see a marked change in how the locals were viewing.
00:07:51 SPEAKER_02
Were there people from psychological operations in that mix as well?
00:07:56 SPEAKER_03
Yeah. For us on a deployment, it's CA, PSYOP, and IO that you're meeting essentially every day. Having lunch together, hanging out together. So everything we do is at the IO schoolhouse, they teach that you don't... et cetera. But it's really based on your success or lack thereof is based on how well you can get along. Okay.
00:08:30 SPEAKER_02
Do you call that a non -kinetic cell? Is there a name for the group that comes together? A lot of times,
00:08:35 SPEAKER_03
yeah. Sometimes it'll be an IO working group, a non -kinetic cell, the IO guys meeting. I mean, it's, but yeah, generally it's the non -kinetic cell comes together. What does he or she read? What radio stations do they listen to? That kind of stuff. Where are they located? But then also assessing the effects after.
00:09:00 SPEAKER_02
Does IO operate on the same structure as civil affairs and psyops in the teams and also supporting two echelons above?
00:09:31 SPEAKER_02
Do you find that there are a bunch of previous PSYOP and CA folks who go over to IO operations and units?
00:09:52 SPEAKER_03
areas, including I .O. So every I .O. officer came in as something else, and then you'll meet a lot of people who maybe came in as a quartermaster, infantry engineer, whatever it may be, maybe did CA or PSYOP after they did that, and then added I .O. somewhere along the way.
00:10:11 SPEAKER_02
Sure. So you have commission officers. Do you have senior NCOs and warrant officers as well?
00:10:16 SPEAKER_03
We'll have most of the training that we have is officer -specific or for EAD -9s. And for warrants. So usually when you deploy, IO is pretty much a planning effort. So it's mostly officers with a few senior NCOs and occasionally warrants. Though for whatever reason, our unit is usually pretty light on warrant officers. They have a hard time getting them in. And it's not a clear career path. The amount of time I spend in IO, I'm looking to make general. I'm not going to do that if I spend a lot of time doing IO. at some point to my main branch to be competitive when it comes to promotion.
00:10:56 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I understand that's very similar to the way that the Marine Corps handles civil affairs. It's a secondary job for them as well.
00:11:03 SPEAKER_03
Exactly. For us, as a reservist, it can be not a lot of us are maybe trying to make general or make full bird. So people who do I .O. for a long time generally do it because they're attracted to it and want to stick with that specific field or maybe a subset within that field. If you're trying to make promotions and stuff, it's not a good good thing. place to come,
00:11:22 SPEAKER_02
frankly. Right. Well, it sounds like it may be a perfect functional area in the Army for the new National Defense Authorization Act had approved DOD to, I think it's down to the service level. If needed, they can direct commission some people and bring them in up to an 06 level, I believe, if they have some specialties and also allow in the officer ranks people to sit in a rank for a longer period of time and become more specialized.
00:11:51 SPEAKER_03
Especially the ones who deploy a lot who are really into I .O. itself. They would like that because, yeah, they're focused on, quote, doing I .O., not so much on, you know, becoming the I .O. kernel. There just aren't that many. Right. Yeah, that would be perfect. And then if we're getting people in off the street, you know, like everything else, we're affected by increased demands of technology, the cyber arena, et cetera. So being able to bring in folks with the cyber background and training would be a huge... plus. Scott,
00:12:19 SPEAKER_02
you talked about the training programs. What are the military training programs for information operations?
00:12:24 SPEAKER_03
So if you want to be the FA -30, then you need to go to the FA -30 school. And Iowa is interesting. You can go to the full -time school out at Fort Leavenworth, the active duty school. They take reservists and guards, people from the guard as well. Or the Vermont National Guard also has training for FA -30. And that one's a little different. It's six, seven months of online training with a culminating exercise for a couple weeks at the end of the training. And they also take active duty in addition to Guard and Reserva. So there's two ways to get your FA. That said, a lot of people on the IO side don't get or delay getting their FA -30 because... They have a gypsy course, Joint Information Operations Planners course. Fantastic. Best training I've ever had in government, let alone in the Army. And a month -long course teaches you everything you need to know about IO planning. And then coming out of that course, I felt, and most of the people I went there with, felt they were capable of stepping into an IO role, whatever it may be, in a SOCOM element, bigger unit, et cetera. And there you'll run in. force, Navy, Marines, you know, a lot of the joint forces.
00:13:41 SPEAKER_02
Scott, I want to ask you about parts of the U .S. military that you believe are effective in I .O. campaigns. Is it I .O. elements supporting, like, your element supporting SOCOM? Are other parts of the Army conducting I .O.? Dave, and that's a hard question to answer,
00:13:57 SPEAKER_03
to answer, because I .O., a lot of times, we're in a supporting role. We're not in the driver's role. They kind of joke around that you'll be on a deployment, the commander will go over, okay, here's the mission, we're going to do this, and oh yeah,
00:14:11 SPEAKER_00
the mission, we're going to do this,
00:14:13 SPEAKER_03
sprinkle some IO on. And so it's not really a focus. Occasionally you can get with a commander based on, frankly, oftentimes personal relationships, credibility, nature of the problem set, and be able to run kind of an information. in people, but it seems like it's, I .O. occasionally has success, but it's not something that's replicated often. The next mission, you may, just the certain elements of that mission, you may not be able to do something that achieves the success, or you may rotate home, and it'd be six months before you find out, you know, did we have any success on that? And then how do you measure success? If you're trying to measure public opinion, for example, you can have all the data in the world, like the U .S. election in 2016. Plenty of data there. Plenty of people made the wrong call. your plan, figure out how you're going to assess it, and then actually be able to assess it accurately. I always talk, you really got to get down into the weeds sometimes to make something successful.
00:15:28 SPEAKER_02
You think that's true?
00:15:56 SPEAKER_03
The example I like to give to this is, you know, why are the Russians effective? Counterpoint, flip side of that coin, why is the U .S. ineffective? It's a weird metaphor, but I think it accurately summarizes it, is the Iranian female Olympic swim team. You know, these Iranian women, they want to join the Olympic team. Decent swimmers, but for cultural, religious reasons, were forced to wear much heavier, thicker, much more covering swimsuits. So their performance was not as fast as some of the other ones. Does it mean they were a bad swimmer? No, it means they had certain requirements that they had to meet that prevented them from achieving everything they could achieve. IO in the U .S. is somewhat similar in that there's a lot of restrictions. There's a lot of concern and justifiable about the government, whatever component that may be, messaging in a way that influences the American public. Back before the Internet wasn't so bad. If you're broadcasting radio for Europe into the Soviet Union, you didn't have to worry about influencing much of the U .S. public. But now if you're messaging on the Internet. U .S. citizens could see that, especially citizens maybe of a group that speaks a language that you're targeting for a terrorist group or whatever organization. So then those concerns always raise red flags, and that prevents, especially at some of the higher levels, higher operational or the strategic level, of being able to do messaging because people are so concerned about it affecting U .S. citizens. Russia doesn't have to worry about that. North Korea is not concerned about that. Chinese, Iranians, etc. to take the gloves off a little bit more, kind of like we could back in Afghanistan, to bring the full capabilities to bear that we have a hard time res