During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) questioned Colby Jenkins, who performs the duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, about the status of U.S. information operations.
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00:00I will recognize Senator Shaheen. Five minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Mr. Jenkins, you talked about feeling confident about our irregular warfare capacity. Where do you put information operations in that irregular warfare?
00:18Thank you for pointing that out, because irregular warfare is just like when you think about a kinetic strike. There are regular warfare strikes that are just as potent or valuable or important and need to be timed accordingly.
00:29And so, the coordination for information operations actually resides within SOLIC, within my organization.
00:36And so, we have the unique opportunity to coordinate across the combatant commands, not only within DOD, but also with our sister agencies, with the agency, with Department of State.
00:45And so, those information operation plans are coordinated so that messages are comprehensive and complementary, was the word I was trying to think of,
00:57instead of getting each other off track and timed accordingly. So, it's very important.
01:02Well, I understand that you have the ability to coordinate. I'm concerned, General Fenton, you talked about the 3,000-person cuts to SOF.
01:13And my understanding is that many of those were enablers for the military information support operations, or MISO. Is that correct?
01:23That's correct, Senator.
01:26And I am concerned about our ability to compete in those information operations.
01:35We had a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee at the beginning of the year where our China experts said that China is spending $1.1 billion a year on information operations, disinformation, misinformation.
01:49And right now, we've completely dismantled our humanitarian and foreign aid presence in the regions where China has a foothold.
01:58We don't have anybody in charge of information operations across, as far as I can tell, now maybe we do and I just don't know about it, across defense, state, and the administration.
02:12And the president just fired General Hawk, the head of Cyber Command.
02:18So, help me understand how we're able to compete in the information arena when we don't have anybody in charge and when we've lost a lot of our people who are doing that work.
02:30Yes, ma'am. In terms of who's actually in charge and in coordination for the Department of Defense, that would fall by default to my organization because I support the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is the principal information operation advisor to the SECDEF.
02:46And so, we do have a coordination body and ability to do that, and I have a full-time team that's organizing and actively engaging with the combatant commands in terms of funding, also in messaging, and then they work outwardly with our state and agency partners so that if one agency is going to employ a message or an information operation, it's adequately coordinated with the other so that we don't have fracture side.
03:11So, if China's spending over a billion dollars a year on their messaging strategy, how much are we spending in the Department of Defense on our messaging strategy?
03:23Ma'am, I'd have to get back to you with that specific number, but what we are doing is we're trying to make sure that we are good stewards.
03:29Is it fair to say we're not spending a billion dollars a year?
03:31Correct. Yes, ma'am, that is fair.
03:33Significantly less.
03:34Significantly less. We are trying to be smart with every penny, for sure.
03:37But it's not likely that we're able to match the operations that China's doing, despite our intention and the fact that we think we can do it better, because we don't have the infrastructure to do that.
03:52We've dismantled our global engagement center at the Department of State.
03:55We're dismantling Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, all of the media that we've relied on really since the Cold War to get messaging across to accurately reflect the position of the United States against our adversaries.
04:14So, again, I would ask you, General Fenton, do you think you have, should we be doing more to resource those information operations?
04:26Well, Senator, you and I have talked about this for quite some time.
04:31My sense, I'll start with, information operations are absolutely critical.
04:35So, you know, there's a sense of you may not win a war with information operations like you could with artillery.
04:43Right.
04:43You can certainly lose it if you're not a key part of that in putting out the messages.
04:48And I would offer, I think, as the United States of America, we've got a great message to tell.
04:53And my sense is that there is a void.
04:55You mentioned misinformation, disinformation by any adversary.
04:58There's a void out there that's not being filled by our message.
05:03I think we take it certainly in special operations command with our information ops professionals to really work at that in concert with our, more often not, our country teams, our embassy country teams,
05:14to put those messages out that assure populations or reassure and also at points in time deter adversaries.
05:23That is also part of the information operations space.
05:26So thank you for the opportunity to comment.
05:29Thank you, Madam Chair.