Overview
- Write a memo to the U.S. National Security Advisor offering your top-level recommendations for U.S. government efforts to counter foreign disinformation.
- Point papers are memos written to influence a senior policymaker. In this case, you will be writing this paper to the senior national security advisor (NSA), the senior-most position in a White House staff charged with developing and coordinating national security policy for the President of the United States. Point papers aim to summarize a topic related to disinformation or propaganda and identify specific policy recommendations that you want that national security advisor to undertake or propose to the President of the United States. In this paper, you will pretend that you work on the NSA’s staff. There are no restrictions as to the type of national security issue you address other than it should be one directly addressed in this course. The structure of the paper should loosely be based on the following:
- Write the paper in the form of a memo, with the name of the recipient in the “TO” line and the subject of the paper in the “RE” line. Include your name in the FROM line;
- Approximately 3/4 of the paper should be devoted to the literature review/logical argument that sets the stage for your policy recommendations;
- In the remaining ¼ the paper, provide specific policy recommendations that you think are supported by the research. In each paper, cite a minimum of 4 substantive papers that were either assigned in the course or address a related topic.
Remember that the audience for this report is the NSA, not a social scientist or expert at propaganda. Because the NSA is extremely busy, such papers must be short and written in a very pithy manner. Avoid social science jargon. I also provide examples of such papers that I have written for senior commanders in Afghanistan (I used to be a deployed analyst). So look at these closely. - reading:
- James Pamment, Beyond Doppelganger: A Capability Assessment of the Social Design Agency, Psychological Defence Agency, p. 189-194; Online at https://www.psychologicaldefence.lu.se/sites/psychologicaldefence.lu.se/files/2025-05/Beyond%20Operation%20Doppelg%C3%A4nger.pdfLinks to an external site.
- Facts not Fakes, OECD, March, 2024, P 9-12 (Executive summary) ; Online at
https://espas.secure.europarl.europa.eu/orbis/system/files/generated/document/en/OCDE%20Fact%20no%20fake.pdfLinks to an external site.