It’s been an age since I looked at the US military’s attempt to ‘weaponise culture’ in its counterinsurgency programs (see ‘The rush to the intimate’: DOWNLOADS tab), but Roberto Gonzalez has kept his eyes on the ground – or the ‘human terrain’ (I’ve borrowed the image above from Anthropologists for Justice and Peace here).

In a special report for Counterpunch a month ago, Roberto noted the demise of the Human Terrain System:

The most expensive social science program in history – the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS)–has quietly come to an end. During its eight years of existence, the controversial program cost tax payers more than $725 million…

HTS supporters frequently claimed that the program would increase cultural understanding between US forces and Iraqis and Afghans–and therefore reduce American and civilian casualties. The program’s leaders insisted that embedded social scientists were delivering sociocultural knowledge to commanders, but the…