Hawaii Enters Propaganda War

Fighting foreign psychological operations from our very own shores...

by J.P. Atwell, Island Intelligencer, Feb 12, 2026

The U.S. Army’s early November activation at Fort Shafter of a new detachment to counter disinformation and malign influence aimed at our nation and our allies officially placed our island state in the middle of an ongoing psychological war between world powers. The 1st Theater Information Advantage Detachment (1st TIAD)—consisting of of 65 soldiers divided into five teams that are focused on cyber intelligence, psychological operations, public affairs, electronic warfare, and civil affairs and information operations—is the first of three such units the Army plans to launch over the next twelve months, according to press reports.

Covert action practitioners, who uniquely understand the power and danger of influence ops, cheered the move, but cautiously, recalling the current administration’s recent dismantling of units with the same mission in the FBI, DHS, State Department, and academia, and its simultaneous undoing of our nation’s offensive capabilities in the same arena. Havana, Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing literally cheered those developments in press releases as foreign allies expressed disbelief. (See Information War: The U.S. Surrenders, 09 Apr ’25).

“Why the bait-and-switch?”

Great question. I can only provide some factual context and personal observations, informed by three decades of national security work and teaching about such things in college. Here goes…

The move puts our nation’s only defensive info ops under the thumb of “War” Secretary Hegseth, a self-proclaimed loyalist to the personality sitting behind the Resolute Desk. It also moves them directly under the control of the U.S. armed forces Commander in Chief, the president. Coupled with the administration’s unsupported allegations that previous foreign propaganda monitoring and countering programs unfairly treated conservatives’ messaging, the switch sketches the outline of a domestic political power play wrapped in the scare of a true international security threat.

“What’s it to me?”

Recall that foreign maligned influence ops directly affected us here in Paradise when Beijing and Moscow leveraged the Maui fire tragedy to manipulate U.S. voters to advance their policy objectives (see Operation Lahaina: Spies Descend on Maui, 24 Sep ’23). Such operations, including New Delhi’s, have also targeted our country more broadly (see Should Gabbard Beware India’s Spies, 23 Jun ’25). Iran’s efforts to manipulate our votes during the last three presidential elections are well documented.

Indeed, state-sponsored propaganda against people in the West, against folks like us, has in the past few years made a comeback to levels reminiscent of the Cold War, and in all shades (white, gray, and black…see definitions in Read the News Like a Spook, Part II, 23 Apr ’23). On the Russian front alone, new agitprop operations against NATO members have for the past two years surfaced nearly monthly, a shadow element of Moscow’s conflict with Kyiv that extends beyond Ukraine’s borders to lash out at supporters of the latter. X (formerly Twitter) in late November exposed numerous accounts known for spreading divisive domestic U.S. political content as foreign-based impersonators of pro-Trump Americans.

Some of this activity mirrors foreign propaganda seen in your tutu’s generation (communist narratives crafted to bend hearts and minds, for instance), but some is part of a more insidious development. It goes beyond simple military “psyops,” CIA “covert influence,” and Russian SVR and GRU “dezinformatsiya.”

Welcome to the world of “cognitive warfare,” where the battleground includes the public information space that you dwell in, especially online, and where adversaries are no longer content trying to persuade you about what to think, but focus on controlling how you think. It’s part of a broader manipulation of the information landscape, not just single-thread narratives, to sow confusion and undermine the cohesion of targeted societies. It aims to undermine your ability to discern truth, to blur the lines of rationality, to neutralize sound decision making…by leaders, voters, you.

“What to do?”

Push back. Support professional journalism (your local paper, to start), students aspiring to become formally trained reporters, editors, camera operators (at the high school and university level…check out Hilo High’s KVIKS), and your local press club (the Big Island has one…look it up). Also, inoculate yourself by improving your media literacy (see Read the News Like a Spook 101, 04 Aug ’22). We all have a dog in this fight. Sic ‘em!