January 2025: First posted by Enigma’s CEO as a LinkedIn article…
– Why strategic communications poses a clear and present danger to democracies, and how the sector can be changed from within.
The truth is, that truth is in trouble. But not for the obvious reasons. Certainly, the current fashion for false equivalence between “my truth” and “the truth” is exasperating. And yes, the deadheaded notion of there being relative “truthiness” is infuriating. But these are passing semantic trends, nothing more. Instead, objective truth faces a much more significant threat in the form of a powerful, ruthless and largely unregulated industry: the influence industry. And specifically, the influence industry’s targeting of truth’s inherent flaw: its reliance on effect.
The problem for any truth is that its power only becomes apparent when it moves from theory into practice. A truth needs to be accepted by an audience and enacted, with consequences. And it is this delay, between a truth’s discovery and its effect that is now the focus of an unprecedented degree of investment and innovation by the influence industry. Because, until a truth achieves social acceptance, it exists only as a theoretical paradox – a Schrödinger’s truth – that can be considered both true and false simultaneously. And there are many clients, both public and private, who will pay big money to achieve this wilful confusion. In this modern context, absolute truths don’t stand a chance.
Of course, the undermining of truth is nothing new. In 1543, when Copernicus created his sun-centred model of the solar system, he had uncovered an absolute truth. However, recognising the impact that such a revelation would have on their own power, the church immediately implemented a coordinated campaign to undermine the veracity of Copernicus’s work. They couldn’t disprove heliocentrism, but they could delay its impact (by reframing it as a mere theory) for just long enough to revise their own biblical interpretations and avoid uproar among the faithful.
Exactly because objective truths often come at a cost to existing status quos, there has been a form of influence industry for as long as there have been social hierarchies. To suppress, undermine or otherwise coerce an objective truth before it can take root provides a cost-effective way in which to mitigate against its potential damaging effects. From augurs, shamans and magi, to Svengalis, publicists and spin doctors, ‘truth-traders’ have always been on hand to serve the needs of tribal chiefs, religious leaders, royal households, politicians, merchants and militaries. And, although their means and methods may have evolved over the centuries, their primary purpose remains unchanged to this day: to replace absolute truths with truth paradoxes for as long as possible, in the interests of gaining or sustaining power for their clients.
And we are now living through a boom time for the influence industry, which has evolved from specialism-specific descriptors (marketing, PR, applied psychology, military information operations etc.) into what can generally be categorised as a single sector: Strategic Communications, or stratcoms for short. The sector’s client base has expanded significantly from the church and royal households of the Elizabethan era, and now encompasses virtually all governments, militaries, religions, corporations, financial institutions, manufacturers, brands, charities and vested interests. Truth management is a need to have, not just a nice to have in the modern world and can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, subject to their ability to pay. From local pre-school nurseries and garden centres, to UNESCO, NATO and the White House, stratcoms provides off-the-shelf and bespoke solutions to help its clients reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time to influence their perceptions and behaviours in a planned and measurable way and in line with each client’s particular tactical or strategic intent. Like it or not, we are all either a stratcoms customer or a stratcoms target audience, or both.
There is no question that the sector does a significant amount of good across the globe. Stratcoms professionals are constantly at work, helping to give voice to people, institutions and ideas, in the interests of free enterprise, free speech and free expression. At its best, stratcoms works in service to our democratic processes, and helps to maintain a stable and peaceful world order. The sector is also a very significant employer with an unusually diverse employment catchment and adds huge sums to the exchequer through taxes.
However, let’s also not kid ourselves. Although it may be tempting to think that the influence industry’s ethics have developed and matured since the church’s malevolent antics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nothing could be further from reality. Today’s stratcoms sector was born from power’s need for continued control, and this foundational client base and its single-minded need has not changed. The sector continues to fulfil its original mandate and is now ruthlessly efficient and effective in its methods. Daily and globally, stratcoms is engaged in premeditated attacks on emerging absolute truths and ever-more ingenious ways to create truth paradoxes in service to existing status quos. It is instructive to remember that the same sector that now promotes healthier food choices was also hired to ensure the widespread distribution of inaccurate medical and scientific data to undermine the emerging truth that smoking (of combustible cigarettes) causes cancer and other respiratory diseases. Stratcoms professionals were hired to promote the false claim of there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to legitimise an illegal war. They helped mobilise the necessary Evangelical Christian and Amish voters to ensure Donald Trump’s re-election. They secured the Russian Orthodox church’s endorsement for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They were again involved again, but now on the opposite side, to ‘reinforce the commitment of friendly target audiences’ and ‘gain the support and cooperation of uncommitted or undecided audiences’ (Allied Joint Doctrine for Psychological Operations 2007) in support of NATO’s actions, while simultaneously arranging for RT Television to be banned from broadcasting an alternative narrative into European households. They are still involved in Ukraine, working to sustain the necessary ‘Iron Triangle’ of mutually reinforcing relationships between policymakers, military strategists and defence contractors. From China, they were actively involved in flooding the global media with a plethora of false explanations for the origins of the COVID-19 virus, including pangolins, bats and wet markets, to avoid any mention of a certain laboratory in Wuhan. They are currently working on behalf of individuals and companies that received eye-watering contracts as part of Britain’s VIP PPE procurement scheme, to ensure that the whole matter remains a Schrödinger’s truth paradox, rather than being subjected to robust legal scrutiny. And irrespective of whether the stratcoms sector would like to admit it, its representatives continue to be responsible for the production and dissemination of a constant stream of false accusations against politicians and business leaders who stand in the way of their clients’ best interests, including false accusations of fraud, sexual assault and even rape and murder. As a PR team are alleged to have stated when offering their services to discredit the Hollywood actress Blake Lively, “We can bury anyone”.
This entire article could continue in this vein: an uninterrupted list of all the major issues of our time that have been directed or misdirected by the hidden hand of the strategic communications sector. However, it is through the aggregation of these many individual examples that the broader social consequence of the stratcoms sector emerges. By flooding the global information environment with so many intentionally opaque truth paradoxes, stratcoms has successfully diluted the apparent existence and value of objective truth to such an extent that large swathes of the global public no longer trust their politicians, the media or ‘experts’. This can be evidenced by the unrelenting dis/misinformation that now engulfs an array of key issues including climate change, global mass migration and even the appropriateness of democracy itself.
If this was not already concerning enough, there are two additional exacerbating factors. Firstly, that the same stratcoms sector is now influencing, and in many cases directing, the very law-making systems and processes that were originally intended to regulate and curtail its own powers, including its exploitation of new technologies. For example, Elon Musk, owner of the world’s most significant information distribution platform / technology (X) and who was instrumental in the re-election of Donald Trump, now wields enough political power to influence future regulation of the stratcoms sector. Is it any wonder then that Nick Clegg has been sacked from Meta and Mark Zuckerberg has also dumped Facebook’s moderators for being too “politically biased” just ahead of Trump’s inauguration? Meanwhile, in Britain sector-specific stratcoms regulation was not forthcoming during the same period that certain Members of Parliament and civil servants happened to be serving reservists within Britain’s military psychological operations and information operations capabilities. The same military unit that provided personnel to serve at the heart of government (Cabinet Office) during the pandemic, and who were involved in COVID-19 policies and messaging… which remain the subject of ongoing debate as to their legality and ethical appropriateness. How our legislators can be expected to evaluate and regulate an industry that has already infiltrated and influenced their own systems and processes is arguable, if not laughable.
But this cross-pollination between the adjudicators and the strategic communications sector is not limited to politics. It would risk litigation if this think piece was to mention specific examples of the many times that stratcoms companies had influenced government policy on behalf of commercial clients, but suffice to say that techniques including ‘controlling the ground’, ‘astroturfing’, ‘sponsoring Think Tanks’ and ‘engineering a following’ are well-established and appear within many stratcoms pitch documents.
Secondly, and perhaps even more concerningly, is the fact that the stratcoms sector has now developed its techniques and technologies to such an extent that it is arguably more powerful that the elites that it previously served. Stratcoms has the motivation, methods and means to overthrow many of the politicians or legislators who attempt to stand in its way. As Alexander Nekrassov, a former Kremlin spin doctor remarked in interview, “There is a force that is much more powerful that all these silly people playing games and becoming prime ministers. What is a prime minister? Nothing.” Arguably, we have already passed the tipping point, and stratcoms is indeed now more powerful than the powerful. It is worth considering that it was Boris Johnson’s former spin doctor, Dominic Cummings, who was widely cited as being responsible for the campaign that resulted in Johnson’s ultimate downfall.
It is not right to suggest that the stratcoms sector is intrinsically evil. This is self-evidently not the case. However, stratcoms can and should be recognised for what it is: a weapons system that delivers defence-grade information to unsuspecting civilian audiences with an explicit intent to direct their beliefs and behaviours in line with a client’s tactical or strategic ambitions. And, when we consider that most of the information that is now consumed within the modern world has been created or at least amended by an aspect of the stratcoms sector, funded by commercial, political or defence interests, it seems not only logical but also imperative that the sector should be subject to sufficient oversight and controls to ensure that it conducts its business with transparency and accountability; guided by clear standards and internationally-agreed laws.
Just like any other weapons system, stratcoms is in and of itself morally ambiguous as made clear by one of the sector’s leading innovators and proponents, Nigel Oakes, former CEO of the ill-fated SCL / Strategic Communications Laboratories, which later became Cambridge Analytica, “We’ve developed a gun that works. And should it be regulated? Yes, it should, very much so. Now is the time regulation should come in, just as you would regulate gun sales”. When discussing the advanced applied psychological techniques that underpinned his work, Oakes went on to state, “For many years I operated without much of an ethical radar because I was just so impressed we’d got something that actually worked”.
Our daily news and information are heavily controlled by a sector that, by its own admission, is not governed by the moral or ethical frameworks that society could and should expect to come with such power. Techniques that were originally created for a war-fighting context are now widely used to influence civilian audiences and the definitions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and what constitutes misinformation and disinformation are themselves now being (in part) controlled by the very people and consultancies that would face possible legal action if their stratcoms output was deemed to have failed to achieve these required standards. The sector continues to operate just below legal and ethical thresholds because it sets the thresholds.
So, what can and should be done? How can we as a society respond to this new reality? Is it possible to demand or force the stratcoms sector to be regulated to a greater extent, perhaps through a process of public awareness and subsequent pressure on our legislators?
Maybe our politicians could be of assistance? Then again, maybe not. Because governments are in fact some of the most significant purchasers of stratcoms services, which they rely on to secure the public’s consent across a wide range of policy areas including healthcare, education, defence, employment and skills. The sad truth is that our lawmakers are arguably the very last people who are likely to legislate to control a sector that they themselves rely on to secure and maintain their own power (and that has the ability to remove them from power). Let’s not forget that the Conservative Party in the UK dropped plans to have platforms such as Facebook and Instagram liable for significant financial sums (for breaching regulations proposed within the Online Safety Bill) just months ahead of a general election.
So, if not our politicians, perhaps we could instead turn to our media corporations in the hope that they would help shine a light into the darker areas of the strategic communications sector and thereby increase the public’s appetite for tangible action? Again, no. The media companies are already working in partnership with the exact-same stratcoms suppliers to further their own commercial and influence needs and are financed by sponsors who are also using the same consultancies and services. Therefore, if the media was to challenge the existing status quo, it would result in two immediate commercial hits: a reduction in their own influence, as well as their advertising revenues. However, this presupposes that the media companies would be motivated to address the unfettered power of stratcoms, when the opposite is likely true. When for example, the Leveson inquiry suggested the introduction of legislation to address ‘the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations, or other organisations’ it is quite possible to imagine that stratcoms consultancies were hired to undermine the government’s efforts. Sure enough, on the 1st of March 2018, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Matt Hancock, announced the scrapping of Leveson 2. Let’s just say that to turn to the media in the hope of limiting the power of the modern stratcoms sector would be unrealistic, considering that the media companies are themselves part of the stratcoms apparatus.
Maybe then, we should go straight to the money and appeal to the City. Is there is a way to have the funding for the stratcoms companies restricted or removed in some way? Again, this seems improbable when one considers that financial institutions now represent some of the most significant global purchasers of stratcoms products and services. At the time of writing, the influence solutions being implemented across banking, investment, insurance and final services technologies include, but are not limited to: applied psychology and behavioural nudge methodologies to increase the efficacy of consumer-engagement and financial management tools and platforms, internal and external audience messaging, crisis communications, the provision of compliance products and training for techniques including cross-selling, up-selling, time-based selling and the design and control of conversation experiences including through the integration of AI. The idea that banking or the wider financial services industries would do anything to limit the stratcoms sector is again for the birds.
Surely academia must be clean of the influence of the influencers? If the greatest minds of our time could be persuaded to refuse to work for the stratcoms sector wouldn’t this at least restrict further development of the most egregious research areas including the use of brain monitoring for the purposes of achieving mass compliance among civilian audiences (a research project that was conducted by a UK stratcoms firm in partnership with UK academics on behalf of a government in the Far East). If such a withdrawal of labour was to be possible, it would require a globally agreed stance by academic institutions, which seems unlikely given the significant financial rewards available to those who move into the private sector. The interrelationship between stratcoms and academia has always been especially strong, with many longstanding mutually-beneficial financial and reputational arrangements between institutions and private sector consultancies. The private sector pays for research and sponsorship, as well as providing students with placements and career opportunities – and academia reciprocates with a steady stream of cutting-edge techniques and technologies as well as legitimacy for stratcoms consultancies that need a point of difference within a competitive commercial marketplace. In short, turning to academia for help in restricting the power and influence of the stratcoms sector would be a fool’s errand.
If only as a last resort, could we turn to the army? Our senior military personnel are responsible for the security of the UK, and this comprehensive undermining of our media, academia, legislature, economy and democratic infrastructure surely meets the threshold to be considered as a legitimate threat to the proper functioning of our country and society? Not a bit of it. Psychological operations / information operations already account for a significant slice of global defence budgets, with the proportion of overall spending only likely to increase. A revolving door currently exists between public and private sector employees, with former military stratcoms operators, as well as current reservists, now holding positions of influence within many media organisations, law firms, banks and government departments. Although the Geneva Convention has strict rules determining when and how military psychological operations can be used within a war-fighting context, with specific restrictions relating to the use of psyops techniques on civilian audiences, there are no such rules governing the use of the exact-same techniques by former military personal who join private sector stratcoms consultancies, or reservists who transition between both worlds. Again, rather than being in a position to provide a remedy, our military in fact represents a very tangible example of the problem.
The reality is that the stratcoms sector is now so powerful that there is no authority, whether national or international, that would be able to control its behaviour or further expansion, even if it were minded to do so. It is now common for political leaders to have to bend to the will of their financial sponsors (controlling their election campaigns) or face the withdrawal of financing and stratcoms support. This includes party leaders having to redraft their election manifestos for the benefit of their paymasters with the addition of entirely new taxation policies, infrastructure investment commitments and other fiscal guarantees: the payback for having been delivered into power. Similarly, the use of false accusations against politicians by stratcoms consultancies on behalf of commercial interests, to either ruin them or ensure their ongoing compliance, is now widespread.
Consequently, as a global society, we must face several inconvenient but absolute truths:
– We already live in a modern information environment in which lies are knowingly and maliciously weaponised, and in which objective truths are regularly delayed, undermined or entirely hidden by a sector that is not subject to any meaningful international oversight or regulation.
– Stratcoms has done everything it can over centuries to shrug off the many previous attempts to restrain its more fervent practitioners and practices – and the sector now boasts techniques, technologies and self-serving influence networks that are so advanced that any external attempt to curtail their power would be likely to fail.
– We as individuals, are regularly targeted with defence-grade information operations that fall outside of a legal framework that was anyway only created to govern their use in war. The world’s governments, militaries, media, social media and emergent agentic Artificial Intelligence systems are already using stratcoms perception and behaviour-change techniques to achieve their ends – again, beyond the reach of any effective legislation or regulation.
Ultimately, we need to accept that we all now exist as a target audience within someone else’s information operations strategy, and that stratcoms is a mercantile sector that is willing to set aside morality and ethics in the name of delivering increased power to its clients. As Lord Tim Bell, the CEO of the now closed stratcoms firm Bell Pottinger, once stated in interview, “I’m not a priest, I’m a PR man. If you want a priest, go get one.”
Given this context, there would seem little purpose in writing a think piece about the importance of ethical influence. However, despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, and while recognising the general public’s inability to influence the influencers, I do still believe that the sector can be made to change by using its own techniques to coax it towards a more responsible and ultimately more ethical modus operandi.
What seems clear is that a full-frontal assault on the sector with calls for increased regulation has already failed to deliver results and is unlikely to work in the future for all the reasons previously described. Many politicians and legislators have tried, failed, and lost their reputations and jobs in the process. Instead, I propose that the sector’s base instincts should be recognised and turned against it. This is the technique known within military psychological operations as ‘Psychological Judo’ and was first coined and used by Sefton Delmer – a member of the Political Warfare Executive – in the Second World War. Just as the Nazis had used expat Britons and Americans to target dispiriting radio messages at the Allies (Lord Haw-Haw for example), Delmer created radio stations that were specifically designed to undermine the will of Germany’s military minds; most notably a station named Gustav Siegfried Eins (GS1).
From May 1941, GS1 broadcast the voice of a man purporting to be a Prussian officer (introduced as der Chef) as he set about admonishing the British and Russians, as well as jews, homosexuals and other Nazi-defined untermenschen. However, during each broadcast der Chef would also vent his frustration at Germany’s high command; drawing attention to its inadequacies and scandals, peppered with accusations of corruption (gleaned from military intelligence reports). The term Psychological Judo referred to the way in which Delmer used the momentum of the audience’s latent xenophobia, racism and homophobia, and then turned these same negative cognitive biases against their hosts. Arguably, it is this exact-same technique that could be used to divert modern global stratcoms from its current malevolent trajectory.
The strategic communications sector has always attributed premium value to obfuscation and deception, whether by impeding the credibility and socialisation of existing absolute truths, or by the promotion of outright falsehoods. This work is conducted on behalf of clients for the purposes of empowerment and enrichment, without the complication of ethical or moral overlays: simple supply and demand. By the same reasoning, if the protection of absolute truths was established as more effective in the delivery of the desired influence (for clients) and more commercially opportune (for both clients and the stratcoms sector), then stratcoms consultancies would use their techniques, networks, technologies and methodologies to protect and guide truths to the masses, without adulteration. Not motivated by any newfound morals or ethics, but exactly because of the sector’s lack of morals and ethics. It would simply be more fruitful and lucrative to pursue this course of action because the value of the truths would outweigh the value of the falsehoods. All that is required is to drive the truth-demand among clients, to ensure that the truth-supply increases, and the value of falsehoods falls.
For an example of this strategy in action, we could look to the success of B Corp certification in increasing good governance and working practices among many disparate companies and business sectors. (I am aware that some people reading this will argue that B Corp is part of the problem, not the solution, because they may be guilty of imposing gender ideology masquerading as objective truth… but for the sake of this piece, I’ve chosen to use them as an example of effective sector impact).
B Corp describes itself as, “a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.” The initiative has been effective because, although the companies applying for certification have to go through an arduous process to achieve the required standards (which costs them both time and money), the final status that comes from B Corp accreditation is now valued to such an extent by (some) clients that the benefits outweigh the effort. The irksome requirements are now treated as a premium value-add by the same companies that may have previously resisted any imposed changes to their systems and processes. Whereas clients may have previously wanted their suppliers to simply deliver at the most competitive price, they are now acutely aware of the need for suppliers to reflect their own standards and ESG commitments: the risk of bad publicity is simply too great. The demand for B Corp status among clients has driven the supply.
Why couldn’t such an approach be adopted by those commissioning strategic communications consultancies and services? Either as a stand-alone business obligation, or as an add-on to the B Corp certification process and requirements? If the protection of the truth is recognised as a vital aspect of a company’s ESG commitments, the sector can and will be transformed from within, by a process of Psychological Judo that harnesses the sector’s ruthlessly meritocratic method of working. With such a demand-side paradigm shift, ethical influence could become gradually more valuable in the modern world, not just among clients, but also society… and ultimately the stratcoms sector itself.
As a sector, we find ourselves on the edge of a precipice of our own creation. Stratcoms has, by both accident and design, already created a world in which a significant amount of messaging and information is treated with suspicion. But at what point will the sector be satisfied? When all commercial, political and military communications are disregarded? The worst behaviours of the sector are in direct response to the emergence of new truths within the information environment. Stratcoms continues to be responsible for slurs, half-truths and conspiracy theories that are designed and disseminated to protect clients from being held accountable, or from losing their status and power, by fair means. But how many of these objective truths can be suppressed before the hijacking of societal progress for our clients’ needs cannot be justified? By continuing on its current path, the stratcoms sector risks enabling informational totalitarianism on a global scale rather than at the regional level that was previously witnessed in the former Soviet Union and that is now in evidence in modern-day China and North Korea. No doubt this is not the premeditated intent of the modern stratcoms sector, but it will be its likely consequence unless there is a swift and significant change of course.
The stratcoms sector should and must step back, reassess, and introduce some mutually agreed ethical guardrails to ensure that absolute and inconvenient truths are allowed to flourish, exactly because they challenge status quos and ossified power hierarchies and ultimately drive innovation and the redistribution of both wealth and power. Fundamentally, this will require an increase in the client-side demand for consultancies and methods that achieve higher ethical standards – although, this demand is unlikely to come from an existing client base that currently benefits from the status quo.
Assessed based on the evidence, it seems likely that there is now a window of opportunity for challenger brands – commercial, political and defence – that see the potential of truth as an emergent opportunity rather than an inconvenience. Tomorrow’s leaders will be those who recognise today that their communications represent an important aspect of their future ESG standards and commitments. Similarly, first-mover advantage will be available to those brands and clients willing to accept that a more robust oversight of their information supply chains will create a significant positive point of difference between themselves and their outdated competitors. These more progressive clients will benefit significantly (commercially, and in terms of brand cut-through) from unlocking previously apathetic and cynical audiences, as well as from basing their growth strategies on social enablement and progression, rather than defensive counter-messaging for the protection of latent status quos and power hierarchies.
The irony is that it will be for stratcoms to sell the value of absolute truths to these new clients, in order to stimulate the demand that will ultimately require the sector’s own rehabilitation. But if there was ever a sector that could deliver such an ambitious global behaviour change campaign… it would be stratcoms.