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Historically, air drops in psychological warfare have been effective for these same reasons, and also because of a lack of information, and choice, available on the ground.
In World War II, which marked the beginning of this type of warfare, communication of agendas between sides via pamphlet was a direct affront to the strategy of the opposition. Propaganda leaflets, however manipulative or misconstrued, created an information alternative to what was already circulating within theaters. This, at the very least, could rouse confusion and fear, self-criticism, suspicion of the other. The effectiveness of the tactic may be immeasurable, but predictably, the fewer the alternatives, the more torque afforded to the existing messages.

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We might compare wartime pamphlets, the messages of which are often multi-stable and based in fear, to the Red Bull #airdrop that capitalized also upon biological compulsion . Both types of airdrops in themselves do not directly bring death or forcible manipulation, but leave the choice to either comply with the message or not.

We can go a step further and compare it to another recent event orchestrated by the United States military. At the end of March, 2015, 60,000 anti-ISIS propaganda pamphlets were dropped in the Syrian capital of Raqqa. The illustrated cartoon, which depicts members of ISIS throwing recruits into a meat grinder, is hardly a suspension of the imagination, given the extremity and complexity of the situation in Syria and of the permeability of screen-based distraction mechanisms.
While ISIS is using social media to interact directly with potential members, incentivizing their recruitment, the hyper-exaggerated pamphlets seem not only clumsy in terms of persuasion, but also revelatory of the United States inevitable detachment from this reality in ISIS-occupied Syria.


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