How to Measure Strategic Influence: A New Science for National Security.

The United States' national security strategy is an influence strategy--the effectiveness of which cannot be measured. The strategy's effectiveness is unmeasurable because influence operations still have not solved the assessment problem. The Department of Defense influence doctrine relies on unreliable practices from advertising and has never taken up a program of research to apply the very advanced psychological science of influence to the national security domain. Robust methods of operational design, variable control, and measurement are absent from national security influence, and there is no organization or mechanism to coordinate and deconflict operations across the whole of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]