TAMPA --- At the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, some young civilians are pushing back at extremist messages that permeate Internet forums. This Digital Engagement Team’s members, who are fluent in Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, comb through online postings in their respective languages looking for incendiary or inaccurate commentary about U.S. military operations or related activity. When these messages are found, the team prepares “engagements” that challenge the writer’s logic or facts.

At the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, some young civilians are pushing back at extremist messages that permeate Internet forums. This Digital Engagement Team’s members, who are fluent in Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, comb through online postings in their respective languages looking for incendiary or inaccurate commentary about U.S. military operations or related activity.

This month, the Obama Administration's much-evangelized '21st century statecraft' approach has returned to the headlines...

So what if Hillary Clinton's "21st Century Statecraft" isn’t exactly reinventing international relations for the information age? It's still a worthy endeavor.

As the history of past U.S. efforts to use technology to bring progress to other nations reveals, the United States should focus its current digital diplomacy efforts on small wins, not transformative victories.