Loose Tweets Sink Fleets...

 

Social media is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful and effective instruments of military power. This may sound hyperbolic but recent events have shown that in terms of ability to influence outcomes, deliver strategic effect and undermine morale and the opponents ability to operate effectively, then it is hard to argue that social media is probably the most effective weapon of war out there. Its effective use and the way it can be easily misused cuts to the heart of the debate around the values, standards and role of the modern British armed forces.

The first way social media can be a challenge was in recent media coverage about the use of Strava and other run tracking activities at Faslane naval base. Apparently large numbers of forces personnel are recording their runs each day and uploading it to the site – this in turn could reportedly be seen as a threat to security of the site, by highlighting the running routes of people based there. On the one hand this is good advice, showcasing known routes where service personnel can be found is never a great idea. But equally, is the risk really that great?

 That Faslane is home to a major Royal Navy base is not a secret, nor are the broad running routes within the site – it is a narrow and obvious place to run if you’re not going outside the wire. Anyone using such information for research would then struggle to work out how to use it, given that Faslane is one of the most secure sites in the nation due to its nuclear work. Given that on Bing Maps it is possible to see the labels of many the buildings in Coulport, home of the UK’s nuclear warheads, it has to be asked if knowing a running route makes much of a difference when we’re already so causal about our security arrangements?

There is a strong case to be made for telling people not to post runs, or share imagery online when it comes to deployments – in particular geolocation data of sites like accommodation or secure areas. Many obscure US bases havebeen picked up around the world through the use of Strava showing the running routes taken by bored soldiers. Yet to the modern internet generation, there is a tension between being told don’t do something’ and the chafing at being told they cannot do something which they instinctively take for granted.

Information and data sharing defines the current generation of new entrants who have grown up in a world of constantly available data. They are used to posting images, sharing running routes or providing updates. To arrive in the military and suddenly be told ‘no you can’t do this’ may make sense from an OPSEC perspective, but it runs the risk of alienating people and making them less likely to stay in. Why do a job which takes you away from things you take for granted? This is not about being ‘woke’ but about asking whether ‘because I said so’ is the right approach to take to an information savvy audience who know far more about digital use than the people pushing the security campaigns do.

There is a real challenge in trying to calibrate a message between asking people not to do something and losing their support because they do not see the point – the current generation do not always understand the threat from IRA days, and do not see why sharing a running route around the inside wire of a 60 year old naval base is a problem. Getting this right is essential to getting long term buy in and support for security.

A wider issue is the fact that people see social media as a secure means of communication, both with their colleagues and with outsiders. It has been extremely concerning to see the way that the news of the PRINCE OF WALES (PWLS) operational challenges have been leaked on almost a minute by minute basis to internet sites and wider journalists. It highlights the fact that social media is a hypersonic weapon, able to shift the information narrative in seconds and blow apart a carefully constructed media ‘line to take’.

The way that the PWLS story has developed shows how people use the internet to collate it for information and stories and fuse this into news. It quickly went from images of the ship anchored offshore, to imagery analysis of the ship leaving harbour (allegedly on only one shaft) to breathless commentary about what the divers were up to and then minute by minute updates as to her likely programme. You’d think it was the first time a ship had had an OPDEF…

The reality here is that ships of all nations can and do break down with alarming regularity and this is depressing but not particularly unusual. Every major navy has had a day when a key platform cannot do what they wanted it to do. If we use our ‘waybackwhenIwerealad’ machine to the land when ‘we had a Navy’ in some fantastical time usually 10-40 years ago depending on the individual, we see people imagine that no ships ever broke down. The reality was far different – Royal Navy ships had OPDEFS, things went wrong, they sometimes had to come into harbour unexpectedly and life went on as normal. There was no breathless commentary on a moment by moment basis about what could be happening, because no one had the means to share it.  The only difference between now and the 1960s is that sailors have the ability to talk to people and spread gossip electronically as well as in person.

Straight away this puts the RN on the information back foot because all sailors love spreading scurrilous rumours and gossip to anyone and everyone. If you really want to make sure that people know about something juicy going on in the Royal Navy, send an email with a particularly salacious piece of gossip marked ‘LIMDIS NAMED EYES ONLY DO NOT FORWARD’ to a tiny distribution list and it’ll be round the fleet in seconds – usually you’ll be rung up by a CPO in Singapore asking for an update on the issue before you’ve got the last of the automated ‘Out of Office’ replies back in your inbox.

Where the RN has to strike a balance is on two fronts. Firstly it needs to win the external engagement game, ensuring that its able to inform quickly about what is going on. It was telling that within a few hours of the incident occurring a slickly produced and very insightful video was hosted on the RN website with a Rear Admiral providing a quick update to camera. This was a great move away from the ‘silent service’ mentality of old, and provided a line that the media could use – in an age when silences can be filled by the loud braying noises of rent-a-quote former Admirals (“I used to be First Sea Lord don’t you know”), not saying anything isn’t always a good idea – getting an actual non pensioner Admiral on screen is a great way to handle this.

There is a debate about the right channels to use though – the MOD seems remarkably reluctant to stray beyond its safe space of Twitter, Facebook and a little bit of Instagram for arguably spurious security reasons (pro-tip, if you think the Chinese can hack our nuclear launch codes via MOD use of tiktok on a standalone laptop, then we may as well hand our passes in now). This is fine if you want to message like minded people, but if you want to reach a global audience, including potential recruits, then they won’t see it on Twitter or Facebook as they’re not there – they are on all manner of other social media sites that the MOD isn’t active on – potentially a missed opportunity.

Getting the balance right is essential here – a speedy response is always helpful, as is insightful powerful ‘as it happens’ tweeting, rather than something utterly bland that took 6 months to clear via the PJHQ chop chain is a great way to set the agenda rather than react to it. At the same time too much engagement can also backfire – OPDEFS are sadly a reality of life for all navies – if you front up an Admiral for this one, why won’t you do it next time? Have we accidentally seen a new bar set whereby the RN will be expected to roll out the grown ups for every future incident?

The other problem is the internal audience management and encouraging people not to ‘break rule 1 of the internet’ (don’t be a dick). One of the reasons this story gained so much traction is the way that so many people linked to it leaked more than your average Russian warship hit by Ukrainian missiles does. It was notable how several naval related sites were citing ‘multipleindependent sources’ very quickly and providing updates that in turn were fed to the media very quickly. Bluntly, this broke Rule 1.

If you are in the possession of knowledge about a ship and her situation, you should not be discussing it with people who don’t need to know it outside of HM Forces. It is one thing to share updates, gossip and ‘buzzes’ / 100% safeguard three clip gen dits with your friends who are in the system – they may well not only be involved, but they could also offer insight, help and advice. But to be clear, that group does not extend to the act of tipping off editors of newspapers or defence social media websites. This is not in any way a dig at those sites which ran the stories – they rely on news to generate traffic, and its entirely appropriate for them to run a good story (for example the reports of the PWLS going to Amsterdam). But they should never have been contacted in the first place.

If your first thought on being given privileged information that others do not know is to ring or email someone outside the system so that it becomes public, then you need to have a long hard think about your values and standards. That is not how you should act, and you should reflect carefully on the damage done for your quick message. The impact of stories like this sets how the public sees the Royal Navy and how the information environment can be exploited. Hostile powers will use this as a means of lambasting the RN as a force that breaks down, while others can use it to sow doubt about the value of the carrier at a time when they feel that more tanks / planes or even the dreaded M113 ‘Gavins’(!) are needed. Your actions hurt the service you profess to serve.

The real challenge facing the RN is how to handle the insider threat caused by people like this – the accidental leakers who share information with others, who in turn feel the need to pass it on outside the system. Trying to educate and inform a generation on risks and why sharing with outsiders is hard work – it requires a ‘loose lips sink ships’ mentality all over again, which is hard to grow and harder still to maintain. Its made even more difficult when junior personnel see seniors ‘briefing anonymously’ (e.g. leaking) to shape media articles about the armed forces without punishment or disgrace – they’re merely emulating behaviour of others.

The challenge of managing social media usage is only going to get more difficult – each generation will approach it via a new channel or app. Already Facebook is seen as ‘old hat’ and no doubt TikTok will be in the same space soon as well. Each generation of recruits will have their ‘thing’ and they won’t swap channels as they age – it is unlikely for example that the Tiktok generation will become Facebook users. Instead social media messaging needs to be spread out and segmented across multiple channels for decades to come, understanding how to influence audiences on many different areas, and ensuring that proper information security discipline is understood by all the service users.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that social media is a hugely effective weapon of war – just look at Ukraine where support for the Ukrainian cause in part comes from their hugely efficient use of memes and imagery to build support for their cause. Ensuring though that social media remains a weapon we use for effect on our side, and not something that causes us to conduct a battle damage assessment on our own forces is the challenge – it is perhaps too soon to tell how the MOD is doing in that regard.