https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog daily 0.75 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/4cfc7a02-5c44-4223-9e02-79ca615aeb5a/Screenshot+2026-04-06+at+9.34.50%E2%80%AFpm.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/70bd0d2d-2ba2-44d2-8c49-4aa8f619b3f3/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+9.34.11%E2%80%AFam.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ecc6918c-488a-4058-bb50-a9341eeccf0d/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.14.12%E2%80%AFam.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/cdb66310-a9b0-4121-a81a-6f22c331d218/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.11.49%E2%80%AFam.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/9c975091-6bcf-413b-8ebe-42ecb0d2fa6d/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.08.07%E2%80%AFam.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/4aeebb12-e5fe-4e5d-83a0-a50c733a6cab/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.09.27%E2%80%AFam.png https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2 daily 0.75 2026-05-13 https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/2024-us-election-trust-and-technology monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ffce1533-ac62-45af-83a2-6524363a26a2/th3+2024+us+election%2C+trust+and+tech.png Full Publications - The 2024 U.S. Election, Trust, and Technology: Preparing for a Perfect Storm of Threats to Democracy Authors of this RAND report identified key risks and potential threats, focusing on vulnerabilities associated with three types of assets required for fair, democratic elections: physical (e.g., voting machines), human (e.g., election officials), and reputational (e.g., public confidence in elections). The authors suggest that a perfect storm could arise in which seemingly unrelated threats target these assets simultaneously, explore how recent advances in generative artificial intelligence could accelerate the storm's effects, and discuss next steps in preparing for these threats to the 2024 presidential election. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/ukrainian-resisistance-to-russian-disinformation monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/6371fc75-a5a9-41ec-9a12-010ea3f66180/ukrainian+resistance+to+disinformation.png Full Publications - Ukrainian Resistance to Russian Disinformation: Lessons for Future Conflict Russia has disseminated large volumes of false content targeted at Ukrainians, those living in Russia, and global audiences, including those in the United States and Europe. Both Russia's attempts to sow false narratives and the Ukrainian response during the war provide a unique laboratory for considering how nations can counter disinformation and propaganda during conflict. In this report, the authors seek to distill some of those lessons. They offer a broad case study of Ukraine's information and counterdisinformation war and highlight key lessons that can help the U.S. national security establishment prepare for and counter disinformation during U.S. contingency operations. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/understanding-and-countering-chinas-maritime-gray-zone-operations monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/008c7038-b51b-4829-a587-6063baf8a1c9/understanding+and+countering+china%27s+maritime+gray+zone+ops.png Full Publications - Understanding and Countering China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations This RAND report examines how U.S. Indo-Pacific Command can counter China's maritime gray zone operations in the South China Sea—maritime aggression, cyber, economic coercion, and propaganda that Beijing treats as politics rather than warfare and keeps below the threshold of armed conflict. Drawing on a literature review, an expert forum, and 45+ interviews, the authors identify four counter pathways: presence operations, transparency initiatives publicizing malign Chinese behavior, capacity-building for Southeast Asian partners, and non-lethal weapons for situations where presence isn't enough but lethal force is unwarranted. The central warning is that while the U.S. focuses on a potential kinetic war, it risks losing a gray zone conflict in which China secures effective sovereignty without firing a shot—pointing to the need for a White House–issued counter–gray zone strategy and an intelligence community effort to surface releasable information to fuel transparency operations. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/an-exploratory-examination-of-agent-based-modeling-for-the-study-of-social-movements monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ea3a84cd-ec02-42f4-8ca5-83e62c2e1160/an+exploratory+examination+of+agent+ased+modeling.png Full Publications - An Exploratory Examination of Agent-Based Modeling for the Study of Social Movements This RAND report explores how information and communications technologies are reshaping the formation, mobilization, and disruption of social movements. Using case studies of the Egyptian Arab Spring, the Syrian civil uprising, and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the authors developed an agent-based model that simulates how technology influences social movement dynamics over time. The key finding: technology accelerates the conditions for collective action by amplifying preexisting grievances and enabling faster organization. The report demonstrates that combining case-based research with computational modeling yields insights that neither method can produce alone — offering a new analytical framework for understanding how digital communications shape protest movements. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/advising-the-command-best-practices-from-the-special-operations-advisory-experience-in-afghanistan monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/618f76ee-13d2-4544-b98d-661aeb18f99a/advising+the+command+2.png Full Publications - Advising the Command: Best Practices from the Special Operations Advisory Experience in Afghanistan This RAND report identifies best practices for U.S. and coalition special operations advisors partnered with Afghan Special Security Forces at the operational level. Drawing from the NATO Special Operations advisory mission in Afghanistan, the research addresses the full advisory lifecycle — from pre-deployment training through continuity of operations across rotations. Key findings emphasize that effective advising depends on sustained rapport-building with counterparts, culturally calibrated engagement techniques that avoid imposing Western frameworks, proper integration across both coalition and host-nation force structures, and deliberate efforts to build local ownership and sustainability rather than dependency on coalition enablers. The report offers practical recommendations for commanders and advisors engaged in operational-level partnering missions. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/development-and-pilot-test monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/b40b9765-2934-40fe-ad99-2bdd71fab3bf/Development+and+Pilot+Test.png Full Publications - Development and Pilot Test of the RAND Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism This RAND report introduces the Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism, designed to help community-based CVE programs overcome the practical barriers that have left the field with little rigorous evidence about what actually works. The toolkit was built from a literature review, a taxonomy of CVE program types, activities, and target audiences, and interviews with program managers about real-world data collection practices and evaluation challenges, then refined through a pilot test with a subset of those managers. The goal is to give program staff and funders user-friendly checklists, worksheets, and templates that let them choose the most rigorous evaluation approach their program can actually sustain—producing the accurate picture of program impact needed to make informed decisions about whether to improve, scale, or discontinue activities, and ultimately to reduce the risk of violent extremism in the communities these programs serve. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/veteran-narratives-of-support-for-extremist-groups-and-beliefs monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ee990d6d-65ba-4252-a6a2-0009514fd0d0/veteran+narratives+of+support+for+extremisg+groups+and+beliefs.png Full Publications - Veteran Narratives of Support for Extremist Groups and Beliefs: Results from Interviews with Members of a Nationally Representative Survey of the U.S. Veteran Community This RAND report follows up with U.S. military veterans who had indicated support for extremist groups or beliefs on a 2022 survey, conducting 2023 interviews to understand how they describe their service, their transition to civilian life, and the path to their current political and ideological views. The narratives surface a considerable presence of negative and traumatic experiences both during service and during the adjustment to civilian life, intertwined with stories of how veterans came to engage with extremist ideas and groups. The authors point to several possible implications for policy and practice, while emphasizing that further research will be needed to design, test, and calibrate any intervention. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/a-house-reunited-prospects-for-bipartisanship-in-a-divided-country monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/6a8f37f9-3f7c-488a-bd26-ff28007422f5/A+house+reunited.png Full Publications - A House Reunited: Prospects for Bipartisanship in a Divided Country This RAND Perspective examines how political polarization is undermining policy discourse by displacing data-driven analysis with ideology. Rather than treating events like the pandemic, the Capitol attack, or widespread protests as threats in themselves, the authors argue that the real danger lies in the absence of evidence-based solutions to the problems driving these events. The research team convened workshops bringing together participants with divergent political views to identify areas of consensus across four critical policy domains: mis- and disinformation, election security, extremism, and immigration reform. The report presents actionable solutions and identifies data sources for evaluating their effectiveness — demonstrating that common ground remains achievable even on the most polarized issues. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/artificial-intelligence-deepfakes-and-disinformation-a-primer-x83ma monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/4cfc7a02-5c44-4223-9e02-79ca615aeb5a/Screenshot+2026-04-06+at+9.34.50%E2%80%AFpm.png Full Publications - Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation</span> Washington Post front page. Introduced private-sector branding and audience segmentation to military strategic communications. Foundational reference for a generation of military IO professionals. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/do-national-security-communication-campaigns-work monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/3572a94a-ac01-4060-bc35-638808702363/do+national+security+campaigns+work%3F.png Full Publications - Do National Security Communication Campaigns Work? Taking a Lesson from the Public Health Sector This RAND report draws on a systematic review of 41 meta-analytic and systematic reviews of public health communication campaigns to extract lessons applicable to U.S. national security communications—including the Army psychological operations forces' inform, influence, and persuade campaigns in support of overseas contingency operations. The authors note that national security campaigns are rarely subjected to rigorous evaluation because of unstable operating environments and political sensitivities, leaving the public health literature as the closest available evidence base for understanding what makes a communication campaign actually work. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/violent-extremism-in-america monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/e39ba376-37de-4003-9ea6-844fc21ea7fd/violent+extremism+in+ameria.png Full Publications - Violent Extremism in America: Interviews with Former Extremists and Their Families on Radicalization and Deradicalization This RAND report draws on semistructured interviews with 32 former extremists and family members—24 white supremacists and eight Islamic extremists—to understand how people enter, participate in, and exit ideological extremist organizations. Exposure to propaganda through the internet, music, and literature appeared in over two-thirds of the sample, but the entry path differed by movement: most white supremacists actively sought out participation, while three of the Islamic extremists were formally recruited top-down. Of the 26 who exited, 22 cited the role of someone intervening with cultural exposure, emotional support, or financial and domestic stability, alongside systemic factors like unemployment and the need for affordable mental health care. The authors recommend embedding the voices of people with lived extremist experience into future research and prevention and deradicalization practice. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/artificial-intelligence-deepfakes-and-disinformation-a-primer monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/b6884eac-2e80-4377-9f95-56f2a89cabc3/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+9.34.11%E2%80%AFam.png Full Publications - Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes, and Disinformation: A Primer Foundational resource used across the national security and technology communities to understand AI-generated threats to information integrity. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/in-the-wreckage-of-isis monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/107057bb-8add-4dba-ab8f-8524801b7b0d/in+the+wreckage+of+isis.png Full Publications - In the Wreckage of ISIS: An Examination of Challenges Confronting Detained and Displaced Populations in Northeastern Syria This RAND report examines al-Hol and Roj, the two northeastern Syria camps where families of ISIS fighters live intermingled with displaced Syrian and Iraqi civilians. Ideological disposition varies widely—ardent ISIS supporters continue trying to enforce the group's rule, but most Syrian and Iraqi residents don't openly support ISIS. Radicalization risk is driven by familiar displacement-camp dynamics: thin sanitation and health care, inadequate education, scarce employment, weak security, smuggling networks tied to external ISIS members, and restricted freedom of movement that recruiters exploit. The authors argue political will is the binding constraint, and recommend a layered response: develop a legal-status process for foreign residents, resource judicial systems in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to try suspected ISIS affiliates, and build safe repatriation pathways for adolescent boys—the most vulnerable to recruitment. Pair that with more funding for housing, health, and security services, an international fund with mandatory contributions from donor nations, and greater integration with local communities, isolating only the most radicalized residents. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/what-prevention-and-treatment-of-substance-use-disorders-tell-us-about-addressing-violent-extremism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/4e4ac70d-a82c-4f36-8047-5f0be1a37ad2/What+Prevention+and+Treatment+of+Substance+Abuse....png Full Publications - What Prevention and Treatment of Substance Use Disorder Can Tell Us About Addressing Violent Extremism This RAND Perspective draws a structured parallel between violent extremism and substance addiction, building on observations from the authors' 2021 study of former extremists—many of whom described being pulled back toward radical thoughts and former movements despite knowing the harm, echoing earlier work by Simi and colleagues on "lingering" white supremacist identity that persists long after disengagement. Drawing on their backgrounds in addiction research, the authors review evidence from psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and public health suggesting that extremism shares meaningful features with substance addiction: persistent unwanted thoughts and urges, situationally triggered reactions, and the possibility of relapse. The aim isn't to claim the two are identical or that one causes the other, but to use the parallels to surface new prevention strategies and improve interventions that support disengagement and deradicalization, complementing the growing interest in public health frameworks for understanding violent extremism. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/promoting-online-voices-for-countering-violent-extremism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/04038647-d856-465a-8d77-5e4799748580/Promoting+Online+Voices+for+Countering+Violent+Extremism.png Full Publications - Promoting Online Voices for Countering Violent Extremism This influential RAND report examines how American Muslim activists are using the internet and social media to counter violent extremism, drawing on a literature review and interviews with Muslim leaders active in those spaces. The core argument is that outside actors—government and private funders alike—will have more reach if they act as facilitators rather than orchestrators, allowing credible Muslim voices to control their own messages even when those messages include criticism of U.S. policy, because that authenticity is what makes the core message of peace and tolerance land. The recommendations follow: reduce the national security framing of CVE where possible, address sources of mistrust within the Muslim community, concentrate engagement and education on those with real social media influence, build leadership and social media capacity in the community, and expand both private-sector and government funding pathways. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/generative-ai-threats monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ecc6918c-488a-4058-bb50-a9341eeccf0d/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.14.12%E2%80%AFam.png Full Publications - Generative AI Threats to Democracy and Potential Policy Responses</span> Guided U.S. Senate deliberations on regulatory initiatives to address generative AI risks to democratic institutions and information ecosystems. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/a-compendium-of-recommendations monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/fcf0c527-8a7e-4f61-852e-a19a79eae711/compendium+of+recommendations.png Full Publications - A Compendium of Recommendations for Countering Russian and Other State-Sponsored Propaganda This RAND review tackles a meta-problem in the counter-influence space: there are now so many reports recommending ways to counter Russian and other state-sponsored propaganda that the recommendations themselves have become hard to navigate. The authors coded recommendations across 64 prior reports, sorting them into five buckets—social media platform policies, U.S. and allied government policies, coordination mechanisms, awareness and education, and support for various media and content. Government policy changes dominated the recommendations, with platform reforms, coordination, and education clustering in the middle, and direct support for broadcast and content media drawing the least attention. The single most common asks across the literature: expand media literacy initiatives, and push platforms to do better on detecting and removing foreign propaganda and tightening advertising practices. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/modern-political-warfare monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/d298d705-777c-4483-8545-250fa4f23be7/modern+political+warfare.png Full Publications - Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses This RAND report explores how information and communications technologies are reshaping the formation, mobilization, and disruption of social movements. Using case studies of the Egyptian Arab Spring, the Syrian civil uprising, and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the authors developed an agent-based model that simulates how technology influences social movement dynamics over time. The key finding: technology accelerates the conditions for collective action by amplifying preexisting grievances and enabling faster organization. The report demonstrates that combining case-based research with computational modeling yields insights that neither method can produce alone — offering a new analytical framework for understanding how digital communications shape protest movements. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/russian-social-media-influence monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/cdb66310-a9b0-4121-a81a-6f22c331d218/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.11.49%E2%80%AFam.png Full Publications - Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern Europe</span> Established new methodology for measuring the impact of social media influence operations. Research contributed to personal sanctions by the Russian Federation in 2022. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/affirmative-engagement monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/7880f81b-c6ab-459f-b561-cb5a57a945d8/how+the+us+can+support+allied+partner+efforts+in+gz.png Full Publications - How the United States Can Support Allied and Partner Efforts to Counter China in the Gray Zone This RAND report examines how Southeast and East Asian states—particularly Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—are responding to China's gray-zone coercion in the South and East China Seas, where Beijing uses tactics like island-building, ship ramming, and water cannons to advance political objectives below the threshold of open conflict. Regional responses are uneven and span use-of-force, multilateral, legal, economic, media, diplomatic, and civil initiatives, with the Philippines pursuing an "assertive transparency" approach that deliberately exposes Chinese coercion and Indonesia oscillating between sinking illegal fishing vessels and conciliation driven by economic exposure to Beijing. The authors argue that China's economic leverage and escalation dominance constrain how forceful regional partners are willing to be, and recommend that the U.S. shore up regional will through reaffirmed security commitments and transparency support, build resilience through alternative economic investment and resolution of territorial disputes, and expand capacity through continued military and coast guard development—while reconsidering long-standing assumptions that more direct confrontation in the South China Sea necessarily leads to escalation. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/empowering-isis-opponents-on-twitter monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/c822400c-f0c6-4a4d-9066-cc6810307f42/empowering+isis+opponents.png Full Publications - Empowering ISIS Opponents on Twitter This RAND Perspective operationalizes earlier findings that ISIS opponents on Twitter outnumber supporters six to one, laying out a two-track countermessaging approach: bottom-up work with influential Arab-world Twitter users to generate authentic counter-ISIS content (since the U.S. government itself lacks credibility with at-risk populations), and top-down messaging by U.S. and partner governments and NGOs that uses data-driven market segmentation to tailor distinct themes to distinct communities. The authors argue that despite social media's novelty, the best practices are familiar commercial marketing logic—identify and empower influencers with training and content, tie the social media effort into a broader campaign to undermine extremism, and continuously measure impact to refine the approach. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/detecting-conspiracy-theories-on-social-media monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/17a89cc7-6688-4932-9035-b5a2560848fd/Detecting+conspiracy+theories+on+social+media.png Full Publications - Detecting Conspiracy Theories on Social Media: Improving Machine Learning to Detect and Understand Online Conspiracy Theories This RAND report, conducted for Google Jigsaw, develops a hybrid machine-learning model combining linguistic and rhetorical theory to detect online conspiracy theory language, and substantially outperforms either approach used alone—an architecture the authors argue likely generalizes to other forms of harmful speech. The synthesis around the modeling work surfaces a more uncomfortable finding: conspiracy theories often hook into rhetorically legitimate concerns like health and safety, and many operate by constructing hate-based "us versus them" oppositions, which is precisely why direct contradiction or mockery tends to entrench rather than dislodge belief. The authors recommend engaging transparently and empathetically with conspiracists, correcting false news directly, working with moderate members of conspiracy communities rather than the hardcore, and addressing the underlying fears and existential threats that make the narratives sticky in the first place. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-foreign-interference-in-us-elections monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/09977d7c-028f-449b-aaa5-e86896ef00e8/countering+foreign+interference+in+us+elections.png Full Publications - Countering Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections This RAND report, the fourth in a four-part series for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, examines how U.S. voters respond to Russian-sourced memes designed to inflame domestic divisions and to a public service announcement warning them about that kind of manipulation. The core finding from focus groups and interviews is that adversary IO is not inventing new conflicts—it's recycling existing U.S. partisanship at scale, and most participants mistook clearly Russian content for organic American discourse until they were told otherwise. A nonpartisan PSA jointly attributed to FBI and CISA landed well with participants and felt especially relevant once they learned the content they had just viewed was foreign-sourced. The authors recommend that Cal OES collect open-source intelligence on social media ahead of election cycles to spot interference trends early, that federal and state officials release simple, authoritative PSAs during campaign seasons, and that Cal OES coordinate with platforms to flag the foreign provenance of political content. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/prevalence-of-veteran-support-for-extremist-beliefs-and-extremist-beliefs monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/f6c0ad35-25df-4885-ad9b-9b5d615a20d3/prevalence+of+veteran+support.png Full Publications - Prevalence of Veteran Support for Extremist Groups and Extremist Beliefs: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey of the U.S. Veteran Community This RAND report tackles the question of whether U.S. veterans are disproportionately susceptible to violent extremism—a concern amplified after early (later revised) reports that as many as one in five January 6 attackers had military ties. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of nearly 1,000 veterans, the authors find no evidence that the veteran community as a whole supports extremist groups or beliefs at higher rates than the general public: support for specific groups ranged from 1 percent (white supremacists) to 5.5 percent (Antifa), generally below comparable general-population figures, and QAnon support was relatively modest at 13.5 percent. The more uncomfortable findings are that support for political violence (17.7 percent) and the Great Replacement theory (28.8 percent) tracked the general population, that most veterans who endorsed political violence did notsimultaneously support a named group—meaning they may be especially exposed to recruitment by new or emerging movements—and that Marine Corps veterans showed the highest support for extremist groups and beliefs across the services. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/rand-program-evaluation-toolkit monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/9c975091-6bcf-413b-8ebe-42ecb0d2fa6d/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.08.07%E2%80%AFam.png Full Publications - RAND Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism</span> Created the national standard for measuring CVE program effectiveness. Mandated by the Department of Homeland Security for all terrorism prevention grant recipients. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/stories-of-service monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/9f0b53cd-b7a6-4e74-85fd-3053b7932e53/life+as+a+private+2.png Full Publications - Life as a Private: Stories of Service from the Junior Ranks of Today’s Army This RAND Arroyo Center study, conducted for U.S. This RAND Arroyo Center report is the qualitative companion to a broader study of junior enlisted soldiers, going beyond aggregate findings to present the stories of six soldiers in their own words. The narratives surface consistent themes: soldiers can tell which leaders genuinely care, and the best ones lead from the front and respect their soldiers' time; most expected Army life to be a continuation of boot camp and were surprised to find it less rigid and built around strong unit relationships; the Army provides a ready-made social circle that most participants found satisfying, though financial pressure rises sharply for those with dependents; and the Army is a transformative institution that visibly changes the people who pass through it. The authors argue that policymakers, recruiters, and prospective recruits all benefit from understanding what actually motivates and frustrates soldiers day-to-day, and that good recruiters can use this kind of texture to set more accurate expectations. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/life-as-a-private monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/467e3a78-83c7-434e-a736-1855ae07697a/life+as+a+private.png Full Publications - Life as a Private: A Study of the Motivations and Experiences of Junior Enlisted Personnel in the U.S. Army This RAND Arroyo Center study, conducted for U.S. Army Recruiting Command, examines who joins the Army, why, and how well Army life lines up with what recruits expected. Drawing on interviews with 81 junior enlisted soldiers (E-1 to E-4) in their first unit assignments—a sample too small to generalize but rich in texture—the research finds that soldiers enlist for family, institutional, and occupational reasons, often citing a sense of service and honor alongside more practical draws like adventure, benefits, and pay. Most value the chance to become a military professional, are largely satisfied with Army life, and point to camaraderie and small-unit leadership as the most important sources of motivation and support, even as bureaucratic friction grates on them. The recommendations follow from those findings. Update the Army Value Proposition to emphasize occupational benefits and social bonds, foreground those bonds in reenlistment campaigns, and consider incentives for first-term soldiers who recruit from their own networks. Improve the accuracy of pre-enlistment information so new recruits aren't calibrating expectations against action movies, give clearer information about installations and units after initial training, sustain programs that build parental support for enlistment, and help leaders use soldiers' time more meaningfully day-to-day. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-russian-social-media-influence monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/cd1a725a-028c-433d-bd3b-50688f8013ac/Countering+Russian+social+media+influence.png Full Publications - Countering Russian Social Media Influence This RAND report frames Russian social media disinformation as a "disinformation chain"—running from Russian leadership through state organs and proxies, into amplification channels like Twitter and Facebook, and finally to American consumers. The strategic intent is not to push a single narrative but to flood the environment with conflicting ones, deepening divisions and eroding trust. Current U.S. countermeasures are fragmented: government, platforms, NGOs, and academics work the problem in parallel with no overarching strategy. The recommendations: establish norms for state and media behavior on platforms, coordinate executive and legislative branch activity, and stand up a formal information-sharing mechanism between government and the major platforms. Push platforms toward greater transparency on detection and moderation, fund academic work on attribution, prioritize defensive measures over punitive ones, and continuously reassess whether any given response is actually moving the needle against Russian activity. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-violent-extremism-in-nigeria monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/d1753a4a-c9d9-4973-80a7-15fe67c50bc0/Counter+violent+extremism+in+nigeria.png Full Publications - Countering Violent Extremism in Nigeria: Using a Test-Message Survey to Assess Radio Programs This RAND evaluation tested Ina Mafita, a CVE-themed radio talk show broadcast in northern Nigeria in 2018–2019 to address underlying drivers of instability and Boko Haram sympathy. Researchers recruited more than 2,000 northern Nigerians via SMS through a mobile panel and randomly assigned them to listen to either Ina Mafita or a control program, then measured shifts in beliefs about role models, the value of local committees in reintegrating at-risk youth, and attitudes toward kidnap victims. The show had a clear positive effect on listeners' belief in the importance of being a role model and a smaller, non-significant positive effect on confidence in local reintegration committees, but no effect on views of kidnap victims and zero or possibly negative effects on valuing diversity—a theme the show did not actually address. Listeners enjoyed the program, though awareness could be expanded. The authors recommend supplementing SMS-based surveys, which are cheap and reach remote areas but limit question depth, with face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and computer-assisted telephone surveys to get richer signal on what's actually moving. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/tweeting-out-surveys-to-pro-ukraine-influencers monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/980acccc-493d-4162-b9c3-64f358ec73a6/tweeting+out+surveys.png Full Publications - Tweeting Out Surveys to Pro-Ukraine Influencers: Exploring the Potential for Enlisting Support in the Information Fight Against Russia This RAND report builds on 2018 network analysis that mapped two large, influential Russian-language Twitter communities in Eastern Europe—pro-Ukraine activists opposing Russian influence and pro-Russia activists disseminating Kremlin-aligned content—by surveying 146 pro-Ukraine activists, 66 pro-Russia activists, and 1,103 general Russian-language Twitter users from Ukraine recruited through targeted ads. Pro-Ukraine activists broadly support the U.S. and EU and oppose Russian influence, and large shares report already using Twitter, other platforms, and offline channels (conversations with family and friends, and to a lesser extent advocacy groups) to push back. At least half said they were open to additional social media training and to support from the U.S., EU, or Ukraine, though stated willingness doesn't guarantee participation. The authors recommend a brand ambassador model—building trust with influential activists, connecting them with training and content, and helping them coordinate around unified democratic Ukraine messaging, awareness of specific Russian influence campaigns, media literacy material, and bot and troll identification. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/social-science-for-counter-terrorism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/ba89f13e-ae91-4a1b-a5b2-72f16f45f005/Social+Science+for+CT.png Full Publications - Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together The authors report on an aggressively interdisciplinary project to survey and integrate the scholarly social-science literature relevant to counterterrorism. They draw on literature from numerous disciplines, both qualitative and quantitative, and then use high-level conceptual models to pull the pieces together. In their monograph, they identify points of agreement and disagreement and point out instances in which disagreements merely reflect difference of research context or perspective. Priorities for further research are suggested and improved ways to frame questions for research and analysis are identified. The questions addressed relate to how terrorism arises, why some individuals become terrorists, how terrorists generate public support, how terrorist organizations make decisions, how terrorism declines, why individuals disengage, and how strategic communications can be more or less effective. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/russia-propaganda-hits-its-mark monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/c67b9d1f-c732-458c-92be-026b4f38cbac/Russian+propagandfa+hits+its+mark.png Full Publications - Russian Propaganda Hits Its MarkExperimentally Testing the Impact of Russian Propaganda and Counter-Interventions This RAND report, the third in a four-part series on foreign election interference, uses a randomized controlled trial with actual Russian propaganda memes to test how Americans react to the content and whether brief interventions can blunt its impact. The findings confirm what was previously assumed but rarely demonstrated experimentally: Russian content works as designed, generating strong partisan reactions and proving likeable and shareable for audiences whose politics align with the meme. Two interventions reduced that engagement—revealing the Russian source of the content, and showing a short media literacy video—with the strongest effects concentrated among Partisan Left (New York Times–reading, left-leaning) and Partisan Right (Fox News and far-right outlet–consuming) audiences. The authors recommend exploring a third-party plug-in to unmask state-sponsored content, testing generalized warnings and inoculation approaches that pair warnings with weakened example memes, and treating low-cost social media literacy efforts as scalable supplements to traditional media literacy programming. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/examining-isis-support-twitter monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/4aeebb12-e5fe-4e5d-83a0-a50c733a6cab/Screenshot+2026-04-09+at+11.09.27%E2%80%AFam.png Full Publications - Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter</span> Pioneered the integration of community detection algorithms with lexical fingerprinting for scaled adversary network identification on social media platforms. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/from-consensus-to-conflict monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/e229212a-1de5-45a9-9fa0-e4c659769e6c/from+consensus+to+conflict.png Full Publications - From Consensus to Conflict: Understanding Foreign Measures Targeting U.S. Elections This RAND report situates Russian information efforts in the longer history of foreign interference in U.S. politics—a concern dating back to the founding—while noting that modern technology makes today's campaigns easier to execute than Soviet-era propaganda, with the strategic aim of pushing Americans to extreme positions to prevent the consensus that democracy depends on. Existing research has fragmented across different units of analysis: the content itself, how it propagates through networks, and how to protect consumers downstream. The authors argue for a more holistic approach that anticipates which groups of Americans are likely to be targeted in the first place, then builds evidence-based preventive practices around those communities before the targeting begins. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/foreign-interference-in-the-2020-election monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/50ba39ea-9113-423b-a360-ca766207b8ee/foreign+interference+in+the+2020+election.png Full Publications - Foreign Interference in the 2020 Election: Tools for Detecting Online Election Interference This RAND report, the second in a series on foreign information efforts targeting U.S. elections, maps the advocacy communities arguing about the 2020 election on Twitter and identifies what appears to be active interference within them—trolls pushing hyperpartisan themes through fake personas, and superconnector accounts engineered to amplify content across networks. While the origin of the accounts could not be definitively attributed, the activity serves Russian interests and tracks closely with Russia's known interference playbook of sowing division and eroding confidence in American democracy. The authors recommend continuing to innovate detection methods and publicly surfacing the threats, targets, and tactics so that defenders—and voters—can recognize what they're looking at. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-violent-extremism-in-the-philippines monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/b07443bf-8ccc-4387-a21f-17fc7dca22be/countering+violent+extremism+in+the+philippines.png Full Publications - Countering Violent Extremism in the Philippines: A Snapshot of Current Challenges and Responses This RAND report provides a current threat picture and a survey of CVE programming in the Philippines, drawing on open-source literature. The conditions driving radicalization remain severe and persistent: entrenched poverty in parts of the country, Catholic-Muslim communal divisions, grievances with the government, and recurring armed conflict combine to create an environment where violent ideologies take root, and current CVE programming is not sufficient to push back. The government response has erred in both directions. Heavy-handed kinetic measures under President Duterte risk further radicalizing frustrated populations, while non-kinetic government programming suffers from credibility deficits, limited judicial capacity, and poor coordination. Nongovernmental CVE work has produced some successes but tends to operate as microcampaigns without scale, and almost none of it is subjected to rigorous evaluation. The authors argue that future programming needs systematic monitoring and evaluation built in from the start if the field is going to learn what actually works. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-violent-extremism-in-indonesia monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/b53464c5-d5e8-47e4-91d3-4555175f3d24/counter+violent+extremism+in+indonesia.png Full Publications - Countering Violent Extremism in Indonesia: using an Online Panel Survey to Assess a Social Media Counter-Messaging Campaign This RAND evaluation tested whether a CVE social media campaign in Indonesia—built by Search for Common Ground around the hashtags #AkuTemanmu ("I am your friend") and #CapekGakSih ("Aren't you tired?")—actually shifted attitudes among the youth audiences it reached. Researchers recruited 1,570 Indonesian participants via Facebook ads and randomly assigned them to view either the CVE content or placebo ads. Audiences recognized the content and liked it at levels comparable to mainstream advertising, though #CapekGakSih left some viewers unsure of its meaning. The attitudinal results were murkier. A significant positive effect on "promoting inclusivity online" came from an unexplained drop in the control group rather than any gain in the treatment group, and there was a strong, unexpected negative effect on attitudes toward living in separated communities. The authors recommend tighter sample controls, randomized delivery directly into Facebook feeds, and pre/post surveys paired with linguistic analysis to get cleaner signal on whether CVE content actually moves audiences. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/promoting-peace-as-the-antidote-to-violent-extremism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/c576014f-712d-4eab-a02e-1140c9a644c3/promoting+peace+as+the+antidote+to+violent+extremism.png Full Publications - Promoting Peace as the Antidote to Violent Extremism: Evaluation of a Philippines-Based Tech Camp and Peace Promotion Fellowship This RAND report evaluates Equal Access International's countering violent extremism work on Mindanao, where militant violence persists across the southern Philippines and neighboring Sulu archipelago. EAI ran two five-day tech camps to train local civil society members in designing CVE campaigns, then selected 11 activists for a six-month Peace Promotion Fellowship that provided mentorship and funding to implement their own community-based micro-campaigns. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the fellows and EAI staff, the authors find that participants were highly satisfied with the tech camps, came away with stronger social media and public speaking skills, and went on to build a mix of Facebook-driven and face-to-face projects focused on community conflict education and local peace promotion. The recommendations cluster around tighter program design—lighter daily content with more practical breakouts, stronger project management training, earlier introduction of the PPF concept, more dedicated coaching staff for fellows working in hard-to-reach areas, contingency planning for disruptions, attention to fellow credibility in selection, and more rigorous evaluation built into future iterations. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/locals-rule monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/2fd164da-812c-4e6b-9a1b-e401ad3cce88/Locals+Rule.png Full Publications - Locals Rule: Historical lessons for Creating Local Defense Forces for Afghanistan and Beyond This RAND study draws lessons from eight historical cases of local defense forces in counterinsurgency—Indochina, Algeria, South Vietnam, Oman, El Salvador, Southern Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq—and applies them to the Afghan Local Police (ALP). The strongest finding is that the real value of local defense forces lies in intelligence, not manpower or combat power; the productive combination is local situational awareness paired with U.S. combat capability, which requires tight security force coordination to actually exploit. Effectiveness is limited when populations distrust government-affiliated paramilitaries based on past abuses, when friction develops between the U.S., the host government, and the local forces, or when these units are misused as semi-conventional offensive elements. Politics is paramount: building local defense requires more than military support (USAID and civilian agencies often need a role), the U.S.–host nation–local force triangle has to be carefully managed, and the eventual transition into formal security institutions or demobilization must be slow and deliberate—concerns now visible in worries that rapid ALP expansion could fray the current alignment between U.S. SOF, local actors, and the Afghan government. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/role-of-communication-and-network-technologies-in-social-movements monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/22e209db-d453-4e6d-9229-45f4cf1d0798/role+of+communication+and+network.png Full Publications - The Role of Communication and Network Technologies in the Dynamics of Social Movements We investigate the multi-faceted role of information technologies in the spread and dynamics of social movements. Specifically, we ask two main questions: 1) how do communication and network technologies impact the number and connectivity of movement participants, and 2) how does more efficient and more accurate surveillance technology impact an authority's ability to learn about the movement. Importantly, our simulation model includes both homophily and social influence, two established tenants of social movements and social relationships more broadly. Our results show that communication technology that increases spontaneous interaction helps to ignite social movements, while improvements in networking technology are more effective at accelerating the growth of social movements in their intermediate stages. However, when agents are allowed to join the movement, outreach is more effective at accelerating the growth of the number of participants. Our results also show that authority can gain highly accurate beliefs simply by observing network links (instead of individual actors) in all but the smallest social movements. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/counter-radicalization-bot-research monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/becdcd1d-454a-42f1-899a-680eacb08667/Counter+radicalizatio+bot+resear+ch.png Full Publications - Counter-Radicalization Bot Research: Using Social Bots to Fight Violent Extremism ISIL and similar groups have proven adept at spotting susceptible individuals on open social media before pulling them into private channels where intervention becomes nearly impossible. This RAND report asks whether social bots—automated accounts capable of detecting targets and delivering counter-messaging at scale—could help close that narrow window. The answer: technically feasible, but the harder questions are legal, ethical, and geopolitical. A U.S. government bot program risks normalizing the same invasive behaviors adversary states already engage in, and runs into Establishment Clause, free speech, privacy, and Smith-Mundt concerns. The authors recommend narrow targeting of foreign audiences, firewalls between bot programs and law enforcement or intelligence, transparency wherever operationally possible, platform permission where practicable, full interagency legal review, and gradual testing through NGOs or partner nations—alongside continued investment in bot-detection technology to limit what adversaries can do with the same tools. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/invisible-wounds-of-war monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/f01b5962-a208-4aff-a50b-4c6f866e7958/Invisible+wounds+of+war.png Full Publications - Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery This RAND monograph reports the results of a comprehensive 2007–2008 study of post-deployment health needs among the roughly 1.64 million U.S. troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, focused on three "invisible wounds"—PTSD, major depression, and traumatic brain injury—that often go unrecognized despite their effects on mood, thought, and behavior. Drawing on a literature review, a population-based survey of service members and veterans, a review of existing treatment programs, focus groups with troops and spouses, and a microsimulation model of long-term costs, the study finds that evidence-based treatments exist for PTSD and major depression and that delivering them to all affected veterans would pay for itself within two years through gains in productivity and reductions in medical and mortality costs—but only if DoD, the VA, and the broader U.S. health care system make system-level changes to actually deliver that care. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/the-long-shadow-of-9-11 monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/90a43426-c5d3-4e8e-ae1c-8ecc3497b11c/The+long+shadow+of+911.png Full Publications - The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s Response to Terrorism This book provides a multifaceted array of answers to the question, In the ten years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, how has America responded? In a series of essays, RAND authors lend a farsighted perspective to the national dialogue on 9/11's legacy. The essays assess the military, political, fiscal, social, cultural, psychological, and even moral implications of U.S. policymaking since 9/11. Part One of the book addresses the lessons learned from America's accomplishments and mistakes in its responses to the 9/11 attacks and the ongoing terrorist threat. Part Two explores reactions to the extreme ideologies of the terrorists and to the fears they have generated. Part Three presents the dilemmas of asymmetrical warfare and suggests ways to resolve them. Part Four cautions against sacrificing a long-term strategy by imposing short-term solutions, particularly with respect to air passenger security and counterterrorism intelligence. Finally, Part Five looks at the effects of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. public health system, at the potential role of compensation policy for losses incurred by terrorism, and at the possible long-term effects of terrorism and counterterrorism on American values, laws, and society. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/programs-addressing-psychological-health-and-traumatic-brain-injury-among-military-service-members monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/29875bc8-a6aa-4821-9f67-20f4e458e69c/Programs+addressing.png Full Publications - Programs Addressing Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Among U.S. Military Servicemembers and Their Families This RAND report catalogs 211 Department of Defense programs addressing psychological health and traumatic brain injury across the resilience, prevention, and treatment continuum, in response to the deployment stress, PTSD, depression, and TBI consequences that have accompanied a decade of high-tempo operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The central diagnosis is significant duplication of effort within and across services, with programs developing methods independently and little basis for judging what actually works. Implementation is further constrained by inadequate funding and resources, stigma around seeking psychological care, and the difficulty of getting service members enough time inside programs. The authors recommend strategic planning, centralized coordination, and information-sharing across services, paired with rigorous evaluation, a tracking database, and consistent use of evidence-based interventions. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/people-make-the-city-joint-urban-lesson-learned monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/bd4d29a4-23ba-44af-84d6-a33b2f169a4a/People+Make+the+City.png Full Publications - ''People Make the City,'' Executive Summary: Joint Urban Operations Observations and Insights from Afghanistan and Iraq Today’s strategic environment implies an obligation to preserve innocent life when possible and to rebuild that which war destroys. Urban areas are the keys to nations; people make nations just as, as Thucydides wrote, men make cities. This study aimed to reveal tools that will better enable military and civilian alike to meet national policy objectives by more effectively conducting urban combat and restoration. To do so, the study draws heavily on written material and interviews pertaining to Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. Written information used includes thousands of pages of hard-copy and electronic material, much of it from military personnel still serving in theater at the time of its writing. Interviews include those with members of the American, British, and Australian armed forces and civilians working to reconstruct Iraq. The military personnel represent all of the services and both regular and special operations organizations. The time frame for the study corresponds to two collection phases. Phase I was conducted from October 2003 to April 2004, while Phase II was conducted during three months, from July 2004 to September 2004. The results of a third phase of the study are published separately. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/mapping-white-identity-terrorism-and-racially-or-ethnically-motivated-violent-extremism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/2a04ac43-c7ac-42f0-aa81-d52a35c0db69/mapping+white+identity+terrorism.png Full Publications - Mapping White Identity Terrorism and Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism: A Social Network Analysis of Online Activity This RAND report analyzes the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE) landscape—also known as the White identity terrorist movement—through a literature review, a global digital network map built from six social platforms (Twitter, Reddit, Gab, Ruqqus, Telegram, Stormfront), and case studies of ten countries. The central finding is that the global REMVE network online is largely created and fueled by U.S. users, driven by domestic factors, which means the primary need is a robust national counter-REMVE strategy here at home. Because REMVE is post-organizational—most adherents radicalize outside any formal group, and the groups that exist are loosely structured—an organization- or actor-focused approach will not work, and the scale and ideological depth of the movement makes targeting or ostracizing sympathizers similarly unproductive. Europe's parliamentary systems give far-right adherents a nonviolent political outlet and many European states have active intervention programs in place, structural differences that the U.S. approach cannot simply copy. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/barriers-to-the-broad-dissemination-of-creative-works monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/3c653cdf-d7a2-4532-8258-b8f870828233/Barriers.png Full Publications - Barriers to the Broad Dissemination of Creative Works in the Arab World Many analysts have examined the media that violent extremists use to communicate their core messages. Far less research, however, has been devoted to the growing body of creative works produced by Arab authors and artists that counter the intellectual and ideological underpinnings of violent extremism. Unfortunately, many of these works are not widely disseminated, marginalizing the influence of these alternative voices. This monograph examines the barriers to the broad dissemination of such works, with a focus on Arabic literature, and suggests ways in which nongovernmental organizations, international allies, and the U.S. government can assist Arab writers and artists in overcoming these barriers. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/steeling-the-mind-combat-stress-reactions-in-urban-operations monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/e8a677ed-2bf5-4f30-b270-795e238c514d/Steeling+the+Mind.png Full Publications - Steeling the Mind: Combat Stress Reactions and Their Implications for Urban Warfare Combat stress casualties are not necessarily higher in city operations than operations on other types of terrain. Commanders and NCOs in the U.S. military should develop the necessary skills to treat and prevent stress casualties and understand their implications for urban operations. Consequently, the authors provide an overview of combat stress reaction (CSR) in the form of a review of its known precipitants, its battlefield treatment, and the preventive steps commanders can take to limit its extent and severity. In addition, to enhance the understanding of the risks that urban operations pose to the development of CSR, the authors interviewed participants in former urban operations and reviewed historical and contemporary documents. Many of those interviewed suggest that urban operations are inordinately stressful and that the risk of CSR may be high. But historical data from the battles of Brest, Manila, and Hue, as well as others, show no evidence of increased rates of stress casualties. The authors also review treatment and prevention steps from the perspective of military operations on urbanized terrain. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/chinas-role-in-the-global-development-of-critical-resources monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/bf8c7e21-cd6f-45f6-aa3c-76742cc617fa/china%27s+role+in+the+global+development+of+critical.png Full Publications - China’s Role in the Global Development of Critical Resources This RAND study examined Chinese foreign investment in critical resources and energy infrastructure—coal power in Indonesia, Pakistan, and South Africa; transmission and distribution in several Latin American countries; and global seabed mining—looking for evidence of the behaviors most often alleged: predatory contracting, strategic positioning, disregard for environmental and labor standards, and market-influencing disinformation. The clear-cut cases were fewer than the discourse suggests. China has visibly pulled back from overseas coal financing since Xi's 2021 announcement, and concerns in the Latin American grid cases centered less on bad behavior than on the competitive advantages Chinese state-owned enterprises enjoy through nonmarket access to capital. Seabed mining is the sharper concern. China's rapid build-out of deep-sea capabilities blurs the line between research, commercial, and military activity, and it has encroached on other contract holders' areas while working to lock in its dominance of minerals processing. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/assessment-of-the-state-and-local-antiterrorism-training-program monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/a160ebb3-2ee5-4929-beb0-38c3659760d0/SLATT.png Full Publications - Assessment of the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) created the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program in 1996 to provide counterterrorism training to state, local, and tribal law enforcement personnel. The authors of this report assess the nature and value of the SLATT Program. The authors reviewed the current terrorism threat, both foreign and domestic, to gauge the need for the type of training that SLATT provides; examined how SLATT training is planned and operates; conducted a survey of participants of five SLATT investigative/intelligence workshops and train-the-trainer workshops; and conducted an analysis of the costs and benefits of SLATT to training participants based on results of a choice experiment that was part of the survey to identify what program features participants valued most. The authors conclude with suggestions for improving BJA's SLATT Program. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/investing-in-the-fight monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/8bb0a88e-ea60-4ab4-8cc7-cb17ef2af5e6/Investing+in+the+Fight.png Full Publications - Investing in the Fight: Assessing the Use of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program in Afghanistan This RAND report assesses the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) in Afghanistan during the 2010–2013 counterinsurgency period, combining interviews with nearly 200 military officers and NCOs who actually designed and ran CERP projects with a geospatial quantitative analysis linking CERP spending to population outcomes (movement, economic and agricultural activity) and coalition outcomes (intelligence, attacks, freedom of movement). CERP was effective when nested inside broader operations, with long-term gains in local security and economic activity and reductions in attacks on coalition forces. Quantitative spending measures appear to function less as a clean signal of CERP impact than as a proxy for overall coalition activity—kinetic for compensation, local security, and humanitarian spending; developmental for agriculture, services, transportation, and water. The on-the-ground view was that "softer" outcomes—rapport, freedom of movement, local governance, and security—mattered more than infrastructure and succeeded 75–80 percent of the time, even as nearly all operators flagged serious implementation problems. The authors recommend restricting CERP to small-dollar projects (easier to implement, monitor, and perceived as more effective), building real transition processes between rotating units to avoid stranded projects, ensuring all relevant units have trained personnel rather than relying on scarce civil affairs teams, and creating a more formal USAID and civilian role in implementation. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/countering-violent-extremism-in-the-us-military monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/5552cedf-e3f5-4bde-b70e-fd749c199942/countering+violent+extremism+in+the+military.png Full Publications - Countering Violent Extremism in the U.S. Military This RAND report asks how civilian terrorism prevention and CVE frameworks might be adapted for the Department of Defense. The authors organize interventions by phase: early-phase efforts like online messaging and community resilience for vulnerable populations; middle-phase efforts like referral promotion and law enforcement training for those already radicalizing; and late-phase efforts like prison-based mental health care for those planning or carrying out violence. Several translate reasonably well to a military context—inoculation warnings, media literacy, online ad outreach, attitude monitoring on DoD extremism policies, off-ramping interventions, and military law enforcement training. The authors recommend DoD adopt these programs, measure the prevalence of extremism in the force, build a clearer picture of how it manifests inside units, and sustain a research stream to design and evaluate military-tailored interventions. Read now on Rand.org → https://www.meridianinfluence.com/blog-2/assessing-outcomes-of-online-campaigns-countering-violent-extremism monthly 0.5 2026-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/69c7227e1a42a642e6330696/29942cae-e27f-42dd-89a3-911aa5a8ddbd/Assessing+outcomes+of+online+cve.png Full Publications - Assessing Outcomes of Online Campaigns Countering Violent Extremism: A Case Study of the Redirect Method Online counter-extremism campaigns have proliferated, but evaluators still struggle to measure whether they work. This RAND report reviews the field and applies it to the Redirect Method, which uses targeted ads to divert users searching for violent jihadist or far-right content toward counter-narrative videos. Click-through rates met industry benchmarks, and the far-right arm drew far more impressions than the jihadist arm—a telling signal about the relative size of those sympathizer pools in the U.S. But like nearly every CVE evaluation to date, the analysis stops at reach and engagement, leaving the harder question untouched: did anyone's attitudes actually shift? Closing that gap, the report argues, will require closed evaluation designs, A-B testing, comment analysis, and bringing former extremists in to judge whether the content lands with its intended audience. 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