Interesting to see this on the front page of HN. I'm a career Army officer. I've only skimmed it, but this is indeed a very thorough history of Army IO. A couple other comments:
1. While Army doctrine and organizational structure for "Information" keeps changing, and remains far from settled, we can say the same about Army doctrine and organizational structure in general. The Army has overhauled the way it thinks about itself every decade, going from "AirLand Battle" doctrine (as mentioned in the article) to "Full Spectrum Operations" to "Unified Land Operations" to "Multi-Domain Operations," while also continuously restructuring its corps, divisions, and brigades.
2. The most important points are the ones about "Information" lacking "a level of institutional prestige that is commensurate with the Army’s favored functions of fire and maneuver," and the communities of information specialists (of all types: IO, PSYOPS, PAO, IT, EW, ORSA, etc.) lacking "a position of relative advantage with respect to the Army’s central culture or organizational priorities," "without a significant champion among senior leadership." Most HN people would understand this to be like the role of IT in a non-"tech" industry company; it's seen as a cost center instead of a profit center, and the CEO isn't going to be a former IT guy.
The article tangentially refers to careerism inside IO as a contributing factor, but doesn't give it the attention it deserves.
If you want to see how destructive careerism can be to an organization, simply spend some time inside the U.S. military – an institution specifically designed to address risk to the United States – but that actually can't handle risk of any sort.
I.O/PSYOPS is a fascinating, critical part of our national defense apparatus, especially Information Age – and we're losing the war.
systamantics book explains most large organizations pretty convincingly by explaining that systems live to propagate themselves, not to serve the purpose for which they were created.
There are a ton of other good insights in that book, but that one is essential (in works so nicely with Parkinson's law)
1. While Army doctrine and organizational structure for "Information" keeps changing, and remains far from settled, we can say the same about Army doctrine and organizational structure in general. The Army has overhauled the way it thinks about itself every decade, going from "AirLand Battle" doctrine (as mentioned in the article) to "Full Spectrum Operations" to "Unified Land Operations" to "Multi-Domain Operations," while also continuously restructuring its corps, divisions, and brigades.
2. The most important points are the ones about "Information" lacking "a level of institutional prestige that is commensurate with the Army’s favored functions of fire and maneuver," and the communities of information specialists (of all types: IO, PSYOPS, PAO, IT, EW, ORSA, etc.) lacking "a position of relative advantage with respect to the Army’s central culture or organizational priorities," "without a significant champion among senior leadership." Most HN people would understand this to be like the role of IT in a non-"tech" industry company; it's seen as a cost center instead of a profit center, and the CEO isn't going to be a former IT guy.