Global Reach

Hugh Hewitt talks information warfare with Donald Rumsfeld:

HH: Are the pressers like the sort you just concluded, ten minute interviews and an occasional Sunday show, sufficient for you and the military to get across not only the good news, but the bad news, the challenges, the strategy? Are you using last war techniques in the new war?

DR: To a certain extent, we are still using the old 20th century techniques. And we're trying to figure them out and adjust them, and adapt them to the 21st Century. But it's painfully slow. People get set in their ways, and it's a difficult thing to do. We do provide, the Pentagon does, an enormous amount of information. There's someone briefing at the Pentagon, somewhere in the world, every day. And there are people providing information to people in a variety of different ways: through our website, through the Pentagon channel, through radio and television and print media. But it is still basically, I would guess, 80% 20th Century, and maybe 20% 21st Century.

HH: You've got people like Col. Austin Bay down in Austin, Texas, you've got Mudville Gazette, a bunch of bloggers, you've got Specialist Claude Flowers down at Centcom. They're all fighting the new media battle. Are any of those inside the E-ring, close to the control of actually the message machine?

DR: I don't know how to answer that. First of all, the truth is, and it's embarrassing to confess this, that I suppose I work about 13 hours a day. And I'll bet you that 12 1/2, or 12 3/4 of those 13 hours a day, I spend doing things instead of thinking about how I communicate, and what the message ought to be, and fighting the enemy on their level, against their media committees, and their active efforts at disinformation. And I probably ought to spend, and we here in the Department, ought to spend more time thinking about those messages, and how we can counteract the lies, because they are enormously successful. They can put out a lie, and then we're asked the question is that true. And we can know we think it's not true, but we have to be honest, and we have to be accurate. So we then have to spend two or three days trying to find out what the truth is, before we can rebut the lie. Well, the lie's been around the world 15 times by the time we even get our boots on.

HH: Right, quoting Twain. Specialist Flowers, for example, sent me your foreign relations speech, your Council on Foreign Relations speech from a few weeks ago, where you talk about this new media thing. And I want to press you on this, Mr. Secretary. Do any of the generals care? Or do they just view that as the press office will handle the American public's information, and we've got an enemy to kill?

DR: Oh, I think it's uneven. You know, when you're coming up through your career, these folks are not necessarily trained extensively in communications. They're trained in war fighting and specialities, which is understandable. Second, people who stick their head up in the media get bitten. They get hurt. And they say something that comes out a different way, or someone prints it a way that's different than they actually said it. And then somebody says to them, well what in the world? Why'd you say that? And then they have to say well, I didn't say that. They printed it wrong. And then you're on the defense. And so people, you know, they become conditioned, and learn that it's not necessarily career enhancing to stick your head up and be the one out in front on the spearpoint talking, because you've got a whole array of people who are just waiting to pop you every time you open your mouth.

AB: All right, look. Milblog conference on April 22, 2006, there in D.C. You gave it a big plug on the internet, I did, and I was the master of ceremonies. Do you know how many Pentagon bigwigs showed up at that?

HH: Zero?

AB: Zero. The two highest ranking officer, Col. David Hunt, who ran a panel, and retired Col. Army Reserve, Austin Bay, who was sitting up there, standing up there on stage every so often. There were a smattering of regulars from the Marines, Army. I think there was an Air Force guy there that showed up. Lower ranking. No vis at all. Why? They're more concerned about what the New York Times is going to print.

But speaking of reach, here are some traffic graphs from Alexa.com:

I think I could do better, but I'm just a guy with a couple hours to spare for this a day. (But fortunately with a wife that does more!) There are milblogs with more traffic than Mudville, too. Imagine the total reach of all milblogs...