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HUMINT Collection During Social Entropy
Despite the advancements in surveillance technology and electronic devices for collecting intelligence on people, the time-tested human intelligence (HUMINT) approach remains relevant. No matter how advanced technology gets, there will always be people. And getting good intelligence on people means knowing how to effectively interact with people.
This is especially complicated in our time now. There is civil unrest on a collective scale. Social entropy is happening daily all around us (both virtually and in the real world). Fear generates anxiety which, left unresolved, becomes viral, infecting others through emotional contagion and shared psychosis. This inevitably generates mass hysteria which produces interpersonal suspicion (the trickle-down effect).
In general, society is experiencing a prolonged psychotic episode and the longer it goes on, the more psychotic it becomes. And the more psychotic it becomes the more dangerous it is, especially for a HUMINT agent (agent) who must interact with people regularly.
The collective psychology interacts with and influences individual mind states. Without active effort by an individual to resist this hysterical groupthink and the accompanying mind states, the individual will internalize this groupthink and reflect it outwardly. Thus, the agent should actively work to immunize theirself against this hysterical groupthink to avoid its destructive spell. This is especially critical to HUMINT work because the agent must interact with people to effectively collect intelligence from them despite this hysteria, and this requires a clear mind and situational awareness.
Immunizing Against Emotional Contagion
Resisting the powerful vortex of hysteria doesn’t come naturally to people. Instead we tend to subconsciously [automatically] mimic other people’s emotional states. Resisting these emotional states requires practiced self-regulation and constant self-awareness. This isn’t an easy feat nor is it popular. It takes great effort. Nevertheless, for effective HUMINT work, it’s necessary. Fortunately, there are ways to immunize against this emotional contagion.
First and foremost, don’t be emotionally reactive. You’re probably thinking, “No s—t, Sherlock.” This is self-evident. However, the natural impulse to act out our emotions impulsively without rationally examining them first is surprisingly difficult to change. Any impulsive reaction that comes naturally is always harder to train out of. There are of course people whose natural biological development and personality organization immunize them against emotional reactivity. The human species is diverse and not everyone is the same. But in general people are emotionally reactive by nature.
The agent should ensure that they aren’t emotionally reactive. If they’re fortunate enough to have the personality organization that naturally immunizes them against this, then they have a big advantage over others who don’t. If not, they’ll need to develop this immunity. Responding reactively to others not only places the agent at a personal disadvantage, it inhibits effective HUMINT collection.
Someone who is emotionally reactive feels emotions strongly and immediately, and they act out on these emotions impulsively and intensely without rational oversight or controlled expression. This is especially prevalent in our time now where, due (at least in part) to cultural and social forces and the elevation of emotionality over rationality, people are more easily “triggered.”
Being able to keep one’s head in a crisis or emotionally-charged situation could mean the difference between effective HUMINT collection and a compromised mission. Thus, it’s critical that the agent develops the ability to down-regulate their emotional response to people. This doesn’t mean the agent should be emotionless, as this can make people suspicious (which can be just as bad as being too emotionally reactive).
Rather, any “emotional” reaction by the agent should be controlled and situation-appropriate. Depending on the situation, the agent may have to fabricate—fake—an emotional reaction to blend in and avoid creating suspicion in others. But in HUMINT, fabricated emotional reactions that are controlled make for good intelligence collection; authentic emotional reactions that are impulsive and uncontrolled do not.
Exposure is an effective way to reduce emotional reactions. Like an immunization against a virus, frequent and intermittent exposure to emotionally-charged situations can help reduce emotional reactivity through desensitization. This can involve regular [and intentional] exposure to situations that will trigger internal emotional states (social media is a great learning tool for this).
By constantly exposing theirself to emotionally-charged situations, the agent can work toward gradually reducing their emotional reactions to these situations. Theoretically, the more the agent is exposed to these situations and the more they control their reaction during these exposures, the less reactive they will be in future emotionally-charged situations (there’s good empirical evidence supporting this theory).
The goal here shouldn’t be to not feel any reaction at all. Rather, the agent should work towards feeling the emotion without acting out impulsively or intensely. Controlled expression is the key. This requires the agent to remain self-aware of their internal reactions to external situations. Allow them to happen but don’t respond to these feelings strongly or immediately. They will eventually “burn out” because they are merely a response to a situation, not some permanent fixture.
Read the room. The HUMINT agent must be able to “read the room” in order to accurately assess (1) the overall mood/emotional state of the group, (2) the content of groupthink in that group, and (3) which emotions to fabricate to effectively collect the desired intelligence (and in the negative, which emotions and what content to actively avoid reacting to). Reading the room applies to outside situations as well as inside situations.
To effectively read the room, the agent must maintain hypervigilance and constant situational awareness. But the agent must do so without looking like it (to avoid making people suspicious). In any group, there is a groupthink that the individual members have assimilated or identified with to some degree. The agent must “blend in” enough to imitate or mimic the group, but not so much that they merge with that groupthink to the point of deindividuation. Deindividuating reduces control over one’s own mental faculties, and this loss of self-control can be disastrous for effective HUMINT collection (beware the Stockholm syndrome).
Keep Your Cool and Carry On!
In sum, to be effective at collecting intelligence the HUMINT agent must have control over their emotional reactions to situations around them. It may be human to have emotional reactions, but having these reactions isn’t necessarily appropriate or useful to the situation. This self-control allows the agent to fabricate emotional reactions that facilitate intelligence collection as well as inhibit emotional reactions that would interfere with or prevent effective intelligence collection.
This becomes all the more relevant in the present time of social entropy. Mass hysteria through emotional contagion is a very real concern, especially for the HUMINT agent who must get down into the trenches with people. Being able to manage emotional reactions to this hysteria protects the agent and enhances intelligence collection.