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A Sketch of the Venezuelan Crisis | 13 comments (13 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: On being dismissive of soft power critiques (4.00 / 3)
I've seen calls for work from the Pentagon's DARPA research lab, cycled through Harvard and MIT, that sought to meld brain and cognitive science with literary theoretical analysis in an attempt to smooth and scientifically validate precisely these soft power entities.

I agree with you that there is no getting around it. There is a lot of work going on in these areas, a ton of money and expertise being thrown into "softer" attempts to control narratives.

I should mention that these calls for work and the research they produce are explicitly described as necessary for projects in foreign theaters.

by Upstate NY on Fri Feb 28th, 2014 at 10:49:12 AM EST
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Re: DARPA social science projects (none / 0)
Yes, and all I would have to say to DARPA (which is actually funneled much more through Johns Hopkins's APL than MIT or Harvard) is, "Good luck with that."

It's not like social scientists haven't been engaged in studying precisely these things, all around the world, for over a century with only questionable results to date, mostly employed in the advertising and marketing fields, with marginal success at best.  I'm not sure that more DARPA funds would ever be able to add a significantly more to the state-of-the-art of community organizing than Saul Alinsky's well-known and extremely effective classics have already provided, free of charge, a long time ago.  

by santiago on Fri Feb 28th, 2014 at 10:24:20 PM EST
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A Sketch of the Venezuelan Crisis | 13 comments (13 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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