The Great Illusion: Why DOD’s Reinvigoration of the Term 'Perception Management' is Just Old Wine in a New Bottle with a Different Label

**The views expressed in this article are my own and may not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.**

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The term "perception management" has been associated with a range of activities aimed at shaping the perceptions of various audiences to align with desired strategic outcomes. It has been gaining traction again within the halls of the Pentagon and the Department of Defense (DoD) Components recently (https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_03october2023/). However, in the early 2000s, DoD deleted the term "perception management" as it is the de facto definition and function of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) under the Information Operations/Operations in the Information Environment (IO/OIE) construct. The deletion of the term from DoD lexicon reflected and affirmed that perception management is a core function of PSYOP, a critical component of a more comprehensive IO framework. The current push for the reintroduction of "perception management" as a separate term and concept within the DoD shows a misunderstanding of history, terminology, the operational environment, and established capabilities. These capabilities have already been resourced by DoD for multiple decades with policies, doctrine, funding, etc., and already reside within the DoD’s Joint Staff, Service Component, Combatant Command, task force J39/Service equivalent architecture, and Public Affairs Commander’s Communication Synchronization (CCS) process. If anything, it is another contemporary highlight showing a lack of understanding of influence activities overall within DoD. Specifically relating to this article, it shows how PSYOP has been increasingly neglected within SOF/DoD writ large, allowing its real capabilities and strategic efficacy to diminish since the PSYOP Master Plan of 1985; it is an issue that must gain greater and focused attention by senior leaders in DoD and Congress.

By definition, PSYOP is aimed at conveying selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of PSYOP is to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to objectives. To affect emotions, cognition, reasoning, and behavior, there is a direct link to perceptions. This is supported by the predominance of Psychology literature and studies. Thus, any successful PSYOP campaign inherently manages perceptions. It is a fundamental aspect of OIE as currently practiced and defined by DoD. One of the last definitions of Perception Management used within DoD before it was deleted was as follows:

“Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning; and to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.”

As you can easily see, it is essentially the definition of PSYOP. For experienced practitioners of PSYOP and military deception (MILDEC), through PSYOP’s understanding of human behavior and cognition, the creation of “conceal” and/or “reveal” activities (i.e. the buzz words current perception management pushes for the accepted and understood lexicon of OPSEC/Denial and Deception) naturally develop and one of the major reasons the term was deleted. The decision was supported at the time by numerous sources both internal and external to DoD. However, this argument was supported almost two decades earlier in 1982 by Ron D. McLarin in his chapter on “Objectives and Policy: The Nexus”, in his book Military Propaganda, and even 60 years earlier in 1941 by Hadley Cantril in his book The Psychology of Social Movements along with numerous other sources.

Lightheartedly but seriously, the perception management that should be done is the perception management of PSYOP (and OIE overall) internal and external to DOD. It must move far beyond the outdated and shortsighted “hearts and minds” concept that views PSYOP as simply winning over large populations through messaging. This perception is an inadequate understanding of what PSYOP is historically from over 100 years as a formal capability of the U.S, Military, and that must change to gain advantage over nation-state adversaries in the current and future information environment. History teaches that PSYOP is much more, and one of the most critical capabilities DoD has for great power competition. The information environment today is exponentially more complex, fast-moving, and multidimensional. Practitioners must granularly diagnose the unique cognitive landscape, network structures, motivations, and vulnerabilities based on the local context rather than taking a blanket messaging approach. This requires an advanced understanding of how beliefs form, values interact, and perceptions bias. PSYOP is the force that provides the very core of the perception management concept if it is meant to be effective. DoD should not forget lessons of the past but reinvigorate PSYOP to fix the current gap in executing activities it is designed to address.

The reintroduction of "perception management" as a separate construct from IO is not only unnecessary but potentially detrimental to the strategic coherence and operational effectiveness of DoD's efforts in the information environment at a crucial time where information warfare is at the forefront of strategic competition with Russia and China. The historical lineage and current application of PSYOP within IO demonstrate that perception management is already fundamentally an integral component of these operations, and just needs enforcement by senior leaders and policymakers. DoD does not need to obfuscate already challenging policy bureaucracy relating to influence activities, along with their congressional resourcing and oversight. To ensure DoD's strategic influence efforts remain focused and effective, it is crucial to continue to simplify, emphasize, reinvigorate, and evolve PSYOP's historic role within the existing and well-established IO framework rather than reverting to outdated, inadequate terminology that may lead to strategic misalignment and resource misappropriation. The need of the hour is to educate across DoD on the history, utility, and current state of PSYOP (and really OIE overall) to foster a better understanding and support for this crucial capability. Such focus will ultimately provide the critical element to the answer for the influence-related problem DoD is trying to solve rather than just resurrecting a term that had already been deleted for compelling reasons and without current and proper congressional understanding/oversight, policy, funding, an adequate operational concept, doctrine, etc.

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