(Cass Sunstein and wife Samantha Powers).
The Refuge Farm Writer’s Section, contains a cadre of old militarist members of the Intelligence Community. They have been joined by former professors of Economics, and strong women who have been mothers, raised families and all the while successful in the world of commerce. They occasionally provide a burst of external insight to the bubbles of information floating by. Among the crowd are a couple former “information warriors.” It is a modern term for an old practice, which is attempting to mold public opinion to support policy and operations. In their case, it was a matter of influencing foreign public opinions to support military objectives.
One of the influential theorists they studied to support operations far overseas in the Global War on Terror was Cass Sunstein, husband of Samantha “Sam” Powers, a former US Ambassador to the UN. As a Harvard professor and prolific author, Cass had his own run of influence. He wasn’t a household name in most stories but was certainly known by his influence with the currency of the notion of the “Nudge.”
It was an innocent sounding term, one that would go well with an old friend helping you to work through some minor uncertainty with effective and useful counsel. Augmented by the pervasive and coordinated 24-hour news cycle, it has become something else. Something much more than a “nudge.”
It has been on display in the invasion of Ukraine, and it appears to be successful in portraying Ukraine as an indomitable but violated party invaded by a Russia whose army is plagued by material and morale problems. The story of note this morning is the claim that Russian Marines mutinied on their landing ships rather than land near Odesa, the Ukrainian coastal city necessary for resupply of Ukraine in the struggle.
Yesterday, it was the report of the death of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division and deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army. The news did not include much in the way of detail, and may actually have occurred in the initial Russian assault a week ago, rather than an effort to get the stalled “40 mile long” Russian convoy moving on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
As with all human affairs, this information campaign includes the traditional mixture of truth and imagination harnessed to entirely new means of personal communications. Cass Sunstein was one of the thinkers who joined the two traditions. In 2009, he became head of the US Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). As such, it was a component of the burgeoning regulatory State that constitutes The Swamp. OIRA was a part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Executive Branch entity that plays a pivotal role in approving or rejecting agency regulations. The position was Sunstein’s dream job, to be a pilot in what he then termed “the cockpit of the regulatory state.”
At the time, he was just one of the voices we looked to for information on how to nudge opponents in the Global War on Terror to impose American values on Islamic opponents. Dr. Montgomery McFate was a cultural anthropologist who joined the crew drawn together to fight the enemy on their own turf. She was part of the school who believes fundamental understanding of the target population was the key to crafting an effective information campaign.
She was one of the early senior social scientists who established the Army’s Human Terrain Mapping office to provide direct support to military operations by adding a crucial element to the targeting process. None considered what the consequences of effective campaigning might be. It turned out to be useful. But in the interest of prosecuting the War on Terror, Sunstein’s campaign strategy was used with the powers of the USA Patriot Act to create one targeted against ourselves.
Sunstein’s thinking is credited as the most cited legal source in the country. He was the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he founded the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. In that capacity he testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. His publications include “Simpler: The Future of Government” and “Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter.” They are worth a read.
Some objected to his cost-benefit history, since that posed problems to the desired Narrative, amplified in what we know now as the “news cycle” being demonstrated in the Ukraine narratives being promulgated by both sides. But in a low-profile manner, both Sunstein and Powers joined the current Administration.
Sam was to become head of USAID. If you have worked with them, it is an amazing organization with extensive contacts all over the world. Cass was tapped as a senior counselor in DHS to oversee rulemaking across all of the sprawling network of agencies jammed together in the still-new Department.
His portfolio in this regard was responsibility for the roll-back of nearly 1,000 immigration measures decreed by the Trump Administration. The issue is control (or deliberate uncontrol) of immigration. The larger goal was to provide a path to formal citizenship for those already here illegally. The number of people in question is subject to some question in the fun-with-numbers game. Some sources use “11 million” as the number of illegals who must be accommodated. Other totals have a much larger number, including over two million illegals who have come across the border since the Biden Administration opened it up to all comers. That very sentence is jarring, since the word “illegal” has been transformed to “migrant,” a much more inclusive and humane term compatible with the narrative.
Depending on who is doing the counting, which is an integral part of the messaging, the actual total could be over 30 million “migrants” without legal status.
If the ostensible reason for Sunstein’s return to government is the deregulation of the system imposed to minimize illegal immigration, there is much more. Behind it all are various iterations of regulations at different stages in their court challenges, further complicating an already daunting pile of regulatory issues. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has called Cass “the nation’s foremost regulatory expert, and we are privileged to have him on our team to help us address a wide range of complex challenges.”
Sunstein will not get the press his portfolio deserves, but no one is nudging the media to tell the story of his role in re-arranging the regulations that rule our society. He may, someday, if anyone ever tells the story. But they really should upgrade his influence. It is much more than a nudge. Some would consider it is more akin to what we knew as “pulling guards” on the football field who were able to hit opponents hard from unexpected angles.
His actual role is better described as a combination of the various elements of information and dissemination of the assorted narratives. It is much closer to a “shove” than a “nudge.”
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com