Howard Gambrill Clark, Ph.D.

The views expressed on this post (blog) are Dr. Howard Gambrill Clark’s personal views alone. The views and findings do not imply endorsement by any government or private entity. Nothing on this page or website represents the views of any government or government-affiliated organization, private corporation, university, college, school, institution, or other entity foreign or domestic, private or public.

Citation: Clark, Howard Gambrill, "Five Pillars of Bravura Influence," unedited unpublished streamlined summary of a chapter (serving here only as a social media blog) in forthcoming book Influence Warfare Volume II: Primers, will be submitted to Narrative Strategies Ink, Washington, DC, expected summer 2022.

This document summarizes only one approach to influence campaigns in the realm of national security and warfighting. It is not exhaustive. It does not pretend to be a ‘theory of everything’. It is not appropriate for all influence campaigns. It is but one framework and checklist to analyze and design influence campaigns. As a guide, readers are urged to challenge each assumption and finding. Critically analyze all suppositions.

This particular framework, in itself, is not a stringent blueprint. The desired national security goal along with national interests and core values writ large will determine which of these five elements to emphasize. Which elements to ignore. And how to balance the appropriate elements for any given mission.

The framework emphasizes five pillars of bravura influence warfare:

1. Subconscious:^[i]

·       The subconscious (and in some cases the limbic system as explained below) is often the approximate target of influence.

·        Many influence campaigns exploit the foundational narratives that are internalized in the subconscious—play to the subconscious—or they will likely be ineffective.

·       The subconscious internalizes and responds to foundational narratives—personal, family, communal, state, transnational, and belief-system values that shape how we see the world, often deeply impacted by so-called national/tribal mythologies, cognitive constructs, imagined communities, etc.

·        Hundreds of repeated and repeatable neurobiological studies on six continents over the past two decades suggest between 65 and 90 percent of our reality, decisions, so-called logic, and outlook is defined or affected by our subconscious.

·        New research continues to hone our understanding of the subconscious. And many disparate theories pervade the rich literature. Important to the study of influence is understanding the basic ‘phenomenon’ of the subconscious especially after the so-called cognitive revolution when national mythologies and cognitive constructs allowed citizens to organize and plan beyond the clan, even as some societies remain tribal.

2. Subtlety:^[ii]

·        Influence exploits trends and ideas that already exist. Rarely directly introduces new ideas. The influencer (the protagonist government or non-state entity) seeks to silently and invisibly amplify or leverage existing narratives and networks.

·        When people realize they are being influenced against their will or values, they may well be resistant.

·        Oftentimes an influencer is not an effective persuader. The influencer may be distrusted. Or may tarnish the reputation of proxies executing the influencer’s plan. Therefore, hiding the identity, connections, and tradecraft of the influencer may be important.

·        This is achieved through deniable, low-footprint, no-presence, clandestine, covert, discrete, or under-the-radar approaches—wedded with layered deception stories.

·        Operational security and secrecy are never enough. Only through layered subterfuge may subtlety be achieved. Deception is the flip side of the influence coin.

·         Levels of bravura influence campaigns:

                                I.          People do not know who the (actual protagonist) influencer is.

                              II.          People do not realize they are being influenced.

                             III.         People become the unwitting amplifiers/agents of said influence campaign.

                            IV.         Historians in the future will not be able to recognize that there ever was a purposeful cogent influence campaign.

3. Narratives:^[iii]

·        For millennia authors in most scholarly disciplines have wrestled with the definition of narrative.

·        Some commonalities:

                                I.      Story: A story or set of stories. “A story is something that constantly unfolds” and is not a description of a situation—whether the story is mood, character, value, or plot driven.

                              II.       Identity: An expression of identity. Narratives may communicate identity, and identity may also, in turn, strengthen through narratives.

                            III.       Meaning: Storytelling that holds or provides meaning for a people especially in a time of crisis—explaining or perhaps normalizing life for some group of people.

                           IV.        Purpose: Storytelling that has a purpose often with a view to try to maintain or change another’s views or behaviors. In this sense a narrative may be a tool or weapon.

·        Narratives may be written or verbal or refer to communicable actions and/or events.

·        People may communicate, change, believe, and behave through narrative.

4. Networks:^[iv]

·        Networks and narratives cannot be separated. Narratives reflect the identity and meaning of a network—be it community, clan, family, gang, corporation, government, civilization, or country. Narratives tell the stories of networks. And networks can employ narratives to inform, persuade, or influence others in their own networks and society or civilization writ large.

·        Often the influencer is indirectly or seemingly intangibly supporting, amplifying, leveraging, strengthening, or getting out of the way of networks that already exist.

·        Exploited or strengthened networks (those that are exploited or targeted as part of an influence plan) must be capable of meeting the influence campaign’s mission, resilient, and stabilizing (stability includes increasing popular support for legitimate governance, decreasing popular support for malign actors, and strengthening societal capacity).

·        Your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend.

·        In short, a network that will, by proxy or multiple intermediaries, carry out an influence plan should be:

                                I.          Consonant: In consonance with the goals of the influencer.

                               II.         Capable: Capable of meeting the influence plan’s goals.

                              III.         Resilient: Resilient, robust, or anti-fragile in the face of hardship.

                             IV.          Stabilizing: A force for long-term stability.

a)      Increases popular support for legitimate governance.

b)      Decreases popular support for malign actors.

c)      Strengthens societal capacity.

·        Indirectly or seemingly intangibly supporting, amplifying, leveraging, strengthening, or getting out of the way of networks whose goals are not in consonance with those of the influence plan is pointless.

·        Exploiting networks incapable of attaining the influence plan’s goals is pointless.

·        Supporting non-resilient networks is not a good return on investment if the network collapses under hardship.

·        Supporting destabilizing networks will often cause chaotic tertiary effects.

5. Limbic System:^[v]

·        In addition to the subconscious, influence warfare may target the limbic system.

                    I.       Terror: Influence campaigns may cause biological terror. More specifically, it may cause the untrained to flee, freeze, or fight. These are evolutionary automatic responses to fear—for survival.

                   II.       Disgust: May cause a person or polity to want to stomp out a threat as opposed to normal fear (freeze or flight) responses. Disgust may also materialize as outrage.

                 III.        Isolation and shame: The limbic system conflates shame and isolation (and the fear of isolation) with death. People are biologically tuned to want to be a part of community. So much that belonging and ingroup/outgroup dynamics can drive behavior.

                 IV.       Trust: The limbic system favors long-term trust and cooperation and has unlikely changed from the pre-cognitive-revolution clan society of Homo sapiens. To survive, those in a clan had to and wanted to deeply trust one another—communicating threats or opportunities honestly.

·        Scholars disagree about what parts of the brain and nervous system comprise the limbic system. Many also consider the limbic system as part of the subconscious—especially that the limbic system is activated (outrage) when one’s unconscious sacred values are under attack. Research continues to update our understanding. What is important for the study of influence is the ‘phenomenon’ of the limbic system (terror, disgust, isolation, trust). The ‘phenomenon’ includes reflexes, actions, and feelings that existed before the so-call ‘cognitive revolution’ (post-tribal societies), which continue to exist today.

·        We are born with a limbic system which may be conditioned in childhood and adulthood. For example, soldiers may learn to operate despite feeling fear through training and experience. The subconscious, by contrast for the sake of this primer, is developed as foundational narratives and ‘truths’ about the world are tattooed onto the unconscious brain—which interacts and affects the artificially (for the sake of this primer) separate phenomenon of the limbic system and prefrontal cortex.

·        I have chosen only these four phenomena for the limbic system, because I have found them helpful to focus on in my career. As well as my students and fellow operators. These four phenomena overlap and can be further broken down into an almost infinite number of ways. I choose these four phenomena described in this manner not just to simplify. But because I have found these specific four to be helpful when detecting, observing, studying, analyzing, conducting, and stemming influence campaigns.

These five pillars can be easily slipped into two or three pillars. And they can be further teased out into an almost infinite number of combinations and layers.

I chose these five pillars because my colleagues, my students, my commanders, and I have found these helpful for most influence campaigns.

Why separate narratives from networks? Aren’t narrative just the identity, meaning, and purpose of networks? Don’t networks naturally ‘carry’, expose, strengthen, and grow their narratives on their own? Yes. And yes. I artificially separate them because sometimes one is easier to identity and define than the other.

Sometimes, we know who a network is that we want to amplify or leverage. But we barely understand that network’s millions narrative nuances—often narratives are never expressed in oral or written traditions but instead in unseen and unheard interactions. In this case, I will still try to struggle to better understand the network’s narrative but will spend most of my limited time on leveraging the network.

Other times, we have no idea who the network comprises. For example, a stealthy underground network in another country. A network we want to strengthen. But a network we cannot see. A network whose effectiveness hinges on that network’s anonymity from their government and from the world. In such a case, their ‘war’ narratives (narratives to counter their government, rally support, and recruit) may be known. In which cases, I will look to subtle non-attributable ways to see that those ‘war’ narratives are amplified and leveraged by other stealthy third parties. The game is about strengthening an unknown network through their known narratives—when that network’s goals are in consonance with ours and when any narrative amplification will not endanger the effectiveness, independence, or anonymity of that network.

Why separate the subconscious from narratives? Are we not interested in how foundational narratives tattoo themselves on the subconscious? Does the foundational narrative not shine a light on how to affect the subconscious? Yes. And yes. And yes. But here, we are looking just to functional narratives that are like branches to the root system that comprises the foundational narrative. Foundational narratives are broad, deep, relatively unmoving. Narratives are branches, growing and breaking and regrowing and running in different directions with different strength. Also, we target the subconscious because the mind may be affected by numerous foundational narratives (vice just focusing on one or two foundational narrative). And it is through the subconscious that target audiences behave. And behavior is the goal. Behavior changed. Or behavior unchanged. And we must keep our eye as close to the goal as reasonable.

Why separate the subconscious from the limbic system? Some scholars see the limbic system (hippocampus and amygdala and so much more) as part of the subconscious. And if not part of the subconscious, then at the very least a contributing factor of the subconscious. For example, if someone grates against the foundational narratives tattooed on your subconscious, your limbic system phenomena of outrage and disgust may be activated to protect said foundational narratives.

However, in general, we could, for campaigning purposes, tease out the subconscious and limbic system in the following way. The limbic system is something we are born with. Fight, flight, freeze, etc. are part of us the day we are born. And over time, through training and therapy and experience we can somewhat adjust how we deal with these innate drives. The subconscious, on the other hand, is something we are not necessarily born with—at least for the sake of strategic influence. Instead, the subconscious comprises that which we learn, are taught, experience, observe, imitate, and grow up with. It is what allows us to simplify the world to help us get through the day, stay away from danger, understand how to interact with others, and make decisions that will offer both survival and transcendent meaning.

Typically, an influence campaign will either target the subconscious or the limbic system. To target the subconscious, we want to play into people’s preconceived notions of the world, threats, time, values, faith, and more. To target the limbic system, we are targeting the primordial ‘lizard brain’. For example, smaller countries (such as Finland and Estonia, as will be discussed in the next volume) may deter a larger country (Russia in 2021) by promising a campaign of sheer terror through bloody, brutal, protracted, berserker, transcendent partisan warfare should Russia decide on incursion or hostilities.

Some will view these five pillars through a traditional national security strategy framework. The limbic system and subconscious are targets. Narratives and networks are the means. And subtlety and stealth are ways. I elect not to categorize these pillars in this way because each campaign will focus on some and less on others. Some campaigns will focus only on one or two without the others. Some campaigns will focus on all five equally. Although the subconscious comprises one of two main targets. It may, in some cases, serve us to understand networks if our activities comprise simply observing, reporting, allowing, getting out of the way, and ensuring we do not get in the way (or accidently arrest, for example) certain networks. In short, these pillars do not always fall neatly into targets, means, and ways. And often we will only address a couple of the phenomena for a strategic influence campaign.