AUTHOR:
Major Michael B. Prosser, United States Marine Corps
TITLE:
Memetics—A Growth Industry in US Military Operations
THESIS:
Tomorrow’s US military must approach warfighting with an alternate mindset that is prepared to leverage all elements of national power to influence the ideological spheres of future enemies by engaging them with alternate means—memes—to gain advantage.
• DISCUSSION:
• Defining memes. Memes are "units of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation," and as ideas become means to attack ideologies. Meme-warfare enters into the hotly contested
battlefields inside the minds of our enemies and particularly inside the minds of the undecided.
• Formations charged with Information Operations (IO) Psychological Operations
(PsyOps), and Strategic Communications (SC) provide an existing construct for memes and the study of memes, memetics, to grow and mature into an accepted doctrinal discipline.
• Epidemiology of insurgency ideology. Using the analogy that ideologies possess the
same theoretical characteristics as a disease (particularly as complex adaptive systems), then a similar method and routine can/should be applied to combating them. Memes can and should be used like medicine to inoculate the enemy and generate popular support.
• Private sector meme application. 3M Corporation employed an innovation meme
designed to cultivate an employee culture, which accepts and embraces innovation in product development. As a practical matter, 3M executives endorsed and employed the lead user process in new product development, which translated into a thirty percent profit increase. The innovation meme was key to 3M’s profit increase.
• The proposed Meme Warfare Center (MWC). The MWC as a staff organization has
the primary mission to advise the Commander on meme generation, transmission, coupled with a detailed analysis on enemy, friendly and noncombatant populations. The MWC aims for a full spectrum capability of meme generation, analysis, quality control/assurance and organic
transmission apparatus. The proposed MWC structure lays in stark contrast to the ad hoc nature of current IO and JPOTF formations.
CONCLUSION: Cognitive scientists, cultural anthropologists, behavior scientists, and game
theory experts must be included as professional meme-wielding-gunfighters on future battlefields. The US must recognize the growing need for emerging disciplines in ideological warfare by ‘weaponeering’ memes. The Meme Warfare Center offers sophisticated and intellectually rich capability absent in current IO, PsyOps and SC formations and is specifically designed to conduct combat inside the mind of the enemy. Memes are key emerging tools to win the ideological metaphysical fight.