BY
Having just engaged in a chat over “old school” issues, today’s entry will
be retro too – for it seems what is retro to this blog remains (unbelievably) a
new discovery to others in this information age.
Do any readers remember Duran Duran? (It’s OK to admit it.)
How about a song called The Reflex?
“Oh the reflex what a game, he’s hiding all the
cards
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover, isn’t that bizarre?
Every little thing the reflex does leaves you answered with a question mark”
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover, isn’t that bizarre?
Every little thing the reflex does leaves you answered with a question mark”
If that was not contemporary commentary through art then – perhaps it is
now.
Whilst regressing a reader’s memory, there may be a few among that number
who recall the launch of a Russian journal called “Reflexive Processes and Control”
(launched around 2001).
It was not a journal for scientists simply producing material on a fringe
issue to swallow Russian governmental funding. It was a journal with a
heavyweight editorial council (not editorial board). That editorial
council contained members of the diplomatic corps, the Russian Federation
Security Council and FAPSI (the federal agency for government communications).
The subject was also far from a fringe subject within Kremlin thinking.
Certainly the “Cold War Warriors” on either side of the trenches are well
aware of Reflexive Control. Even if recollections may occasionally be
faded and/or tinted with a hint of nostalgia (among other failings), what is
witnessed today cannot help but give cause to reminisce.
The Soviet Union began to experiment with the concept of Reflexive Control
in the late 1960s – albeit a concept that took a while to gain traction within
both military and government. Eventually however traction was found in
both military and civil quarters. For those readers wishing to delve
further into its proponents during development, on the military side the names
Druzhinin, Ionov and Leonenko would be a suitable starting point. On the
civil/governance side then Schedrovitsky, Lepsky, Burkov and Lefebvre were prominent.
A reader will rightly deduce that Reflexive Control therefore has both
military and civil uses. It also has both human and computer uses – for
the objective of Reflexive Control is to influence decision making. That
in the contemporary world can be human decision making or that of AI.
A reader may also note a distinctive difference between western framing and
perception management and that of Reflexive Control. As the name suggests
Reflexive Control seeks to control rather than manage perceptions and decision
making.
Reflexive Control, at its most basic, is a process where one party seeks to
transmit, predominantly by means of maskerovka and disinformation, a line of
reasoning and/or logic that effects another party’s decision making – thus
allowing the possibility for the first party to control the decision making
process of the second party.
That control does not necessarily mean that the first party can control the
second party sufficiently into making “decision x”, but that control may
designed to interfere with the decision making process so as to avoid “decision
x” being made. (Thus it is sometimes a matter of insuring the other side
makes decisions that insure they do not win, even if we can’t win).
Staying clear of the battlefield tactical military uses of Reflexive
Control, and also regarding its abilities to interfere with relation to AI
decision processing, a reader perhaps now ponders Reflexive Control within the
parameters and framework of social media and MSM for example.
If Reflexive Control within this arena relies upon the ability to best
predict the thoughts and behaviour of “the other side” then psyops and
maskerovka within the Reflexive Control matrix become clear.
In the 1990’s distraction, information overload (sending huge amounts of
often contradictory information), paralysis, exhaustion, division, deception,
pacification, deterrence, provocation, suggestion and pressure had all been
identified as the core intellectual pieces in an effective Reflexive Control
operation in the information warfare arena by Russia – numerous public articles
stated as much.
Thus what is seen today is nothing new and not an innovation that should
have caught anybody by surprise by way of methodology employed.
The current Kremlin trend of providing an incomplete or erroneous
interpretation of events and attempting to pass it on to both a western and
domestic audience is not new.
Attempts to create a goal for the other party in which they act favourably
to The Kremlin narrative (for example attempts to entice the US into a joint
mission in Syria) are not new.
Feigning weakness to create a different narrative is not new (fortress
Russia surrounded by NATO, when geography simply discounts the possibility to
surround Russia).
The setting of the stage to imply to the other side one course of action
and then carrying out another is not new. (For example the Minsk process
or the “Syrian withdrawal” or the prima facie aim of supporting Mr Trump –
which has less to do with Mr Trump winning but much more to do with the lasting
undermining the US political system across the political board. In fact,
should Mr Trump win and prove to be far less destructive to US interests as
some fear/expect, perhaps a GOP and/or Trump email/kompromat dump would follow
if destabilising and undermining the system is the operational goal.)
The projection of a false self-perception and/or decision making process
for the digestion of the “other” – and accepting the increased risks this may
have – is not new.
The control by a third party over a bilateral party and/or proxy (be they
attributable or plausibly deniable) did not end with the Cold War within the
FSU geography or internally of Russia itself – what goes on today is also not
new.
Eventually the term Reflexive Control will return to mainstream discourse –
though it is not new.
If and when it does, should Duran Duran re-release “The Reflex”, for
younger readers, that too is not new!
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