The US Army's Unsettling New Recruitment Video for Psychological Warfare

Task and Purpose reports on 'a new and somewhat unnerving recruiting pitch from the U.S. Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group' that asks viewers one simple question: 'Have you ever wondered who's pulling the strings?'

The three-and-a-half minute, movie trailer-esque video was released by the 4th PSYOP Group on Youtube on May 2. Since then it's brought in 329,396 views, and it's not hard to see why: This is not your father's recruiting commercial. Complete with eerie whistling in the background and suspenseful music, the video is far from the sometimes-cheesy Army recruiting commercials we often see on television. It's dark and palpably tense, the clips of old cartoons and radio segments from world events combining perfectly to create something that is both intriguing and unsettling.

It accomplishes exactly what psychological operations soldiers set out to do: Influence an audience. As one commenter on Youtube pointed out: 'Everything is a weapon. Even this video.' Col. Chris Stangle, commander of 4th PSYOP Group, told Task & Purpose on Friday that the video was created in-house, both as a recruitment effort but also to literally show people what they can do — part of psychological operations is creating persuasive media.... Throughout the world, Stangle said, psychological operations are occurring 'literally everywhere, every day, in every component of our lives.' We're seeing it play out in real-time in eastern Europe, where Ukraine is proving much more successful in the information war than the Russians.
That's no coincidence. Stangle said after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the U.S. PSYOP community, along with other NATO allies and special operations communities around the world, got to work helping Ukraine build their own abilities.... 'We've helped through [military-to-military] partnerships, us as well as more than 12 allies and partners. And what we've been able to do is just sit and watch how amazing their arguments are... Ukraine has done a masterful job, they've taken the training and the work we've done with them, as well as their own inherent skill, and have just really blown it up....'
U.S. Army PSYOP soldiers are working daily with over 40 countries around the globe, according to Stangle. And those partnerships will be critical to success both in preventing future conflicts, and in future conflicts as they unfold.

As the video says: 'Warfare is evolving, and all the world's a stage.'

Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the link!

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