Foreign Area Officer

Leveraging Regional Expertise to Counter Influence Operations

Leveraging Regional Expertise to Counter Influence Operations

All branches of the armed forces have recognized the need for language and culture awareness training as important for military operations, and each service now has a language and cultural awareness training center designed to teach these critical skills. While these language and cultural initiatives are a step in the right direction, they are simply not aggressive enough to counter the rise of influence operations, or actions designed to produce a desired outcome on a target audience, which are becoming more prevalent as information and technology continue to reach more of the world’s people.