Robot Pirate Ninja

Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’ | Danger Room from Wired.com

A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach — co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. “Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” write the report’s co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

The fact that “Blogs and Military Information Strategy” are even being talked about in the same breath is hilarious. But then again, one of my first 50 visitors at the new place was from a domain called “centcom.mil” so yea…they monitor the net.  Big-time.

Alternate Title : The 21st Century Propaganda Challenge.