Book Review: Deception

"Deception: Counterdeception and Counterintelligence" by Robert M Clark and William L Mitchell is an essential piece for anyone studying conflict or deception operations. This was a fantastic book, taking a scientific and academic approach to deception operations in both intelligence and modern conflict. Clark accurately depicts how deception relies on surprise and how to shape both perception and manage intelligence collection to avoid deception. I read the 280+ page book via Amazon for ~$60, roughly the cost of Clark's other textbooks. Overall, I highly recommend this book, giving it 8 stars out of 10, for being through, focused, and practical in its approach to teaching deception operations planning. I recommend this book to those interested in game theory, intelligence analysts, red teamers, and history buffs, or anyone looking to up their adversarial strategy with some sharp new (arguably super old) techniques. This book is not only extremely well researched, it's written by master analysts and intelligence practitioners, giving future analysts real skills to tackle the wide problem set they will face. The second half of the book is centered around exercises, or activities and tabletops regarding deception planning, something I didn't expect going into the book. Ultimately, this book dives into strategy and tactics for managing ongoing deception, and how or when to capitalize on these events to strike at an enemy. The following are the high-level chapters of the book, in my typical review style, to help give you a better idea of the book's contents:

Chapters
Part I: Fundamentals of Deception and Counterdeception
Chapter 1: Deception: The Basics
Chapter 2: The Methodology
Chapter 3: The Outcome Scenario
Chapter 4: The Target
Chapter 5: The Story
Chapter 6: The Channels
Chapter 7: The Traditional Intelligence Channels
Chapter 8: The Cyberspace Channel
Chapter 9: Planning and Executing Deception
Chapter 10: Preparing to Counter Deception
Chapter 11: Identifying Deception
Part II: Exercises
Chapter 12: Sensor Mapping and Channel Tracking Exercises
Chapter 13: General Deception Planning Exercises
Chapter 14: Military Deception Planning Exercises
Chapter 15: Deception Detection Exercises

Some of my favorite features of the book are the vivid stories of how deception planning was used in real conflicts throughout the decades, such as how desert storm hinged on a great deception, or the very real impact of deception in the Egyptian / Israeli war of 1967. The book includes over 100 diagrams, boxes, and charts of these anecdotes. The boxes are the amazing short stories or real life examples which show the exact points being made in the theory presented throughout the chapter. I also really appreciate how there is an entire chapter dedicated to the cyber channel, as this new medium can provide unprecedented insight into a targets communications and operations, as well as a very direct channel of influence. I really like how this book looks at the traditional PEMSII model when evaluating a target for deception, as well as understanding all of the channels the target uses for collection. Speaking of the channels, the book looks at OSINT, HUMINT, IMINT, COMINT, SIGINT, ELINT, FISINT, MASINT, and others. Understanding the channels a target uses can greatly enable or hinder an operation, as influence of the deception operation needs to travel through one of the sensors the target is monitoring. The later half of the book focuses on deception exercises, mostly being MILDEC exercises. I do wish the book had more commercial or game based applications in the practical example section. Obviously you will want to practice such techniques, however establishing an environment to practice these advanced techniques is not always straight forward, and people may not consider all the appropriate steps, like public perception of such operation and/or deconfliction plans in the event the operation is mistaken as real. Ultimately, this was a great book and I really enjoyed reading it.