Why didn't Evil Scottish Guy just threaten the guy's family? That's obviously his weak point. If he'll sell out humanity to save his daughter, he'll turn right around and sell out the V's for the same reason. Evil Scottish Guy isn't even a good torturer.
But back to the io9 story...the person with the poor strategy is Anna, not Erica.
Erica and the Fifth Column can never beat the V's in the PR battle because everyone will have more self-interest in believing the V's. So Erica is right: violence is the best approach. Probably won't work, but it has a better chance of working than PR would.
But Anna is an idiot! Why hunt down the Fifth Column in secret when she can go on TV and expose them as drooling bigots who want to spoil things for everyone - all the V's great tech and health care will go bye-bye. Anna should be overjoyed that the Fifth Column is providing an instant foe for her to exploit in the popular imagination - nativist redneck jackasses who hate the V's because they're aliens.
Anna should be creating her own version of the Fifth Column to publicly commit atrocities, go on TV and YouTube to present an obviously fear- and bigotry-based anti-V argument, and just wreak havoc and piss everyone off with how ugly and vile they are. How could the public be expected to distinguish between the fake Fifth Column and the real ones? It would be extraordinarily easy to jumble the two hopelessly in the popular imagination so that the real Fifth Column's forlorn hope in the PR arena becomes nonexistent.
The hybrid baby could also be a good tool to use - but a dangerous one. Anna should announce the baby's existence and enlist everyone's help in finding the poor parents and baby (whose father arrived with the ships but went awol, tsk tsk, but these things happen) who are being threatened by the Fifth Column who want to kill the poor tyke simply for being "different." This announcement will genuinely freak out lots of humans and ignite their genuine bigotry, thus casting the V's even more as victims, but possibly creating a groundswell of hatred that they can't contain. So it's a risky strategm that could backfire. The upside is that the furor would completely de-legitimize the genuine Fifth Column which would be swamped by the fake, V-created Fifth Column and the far larger genuine human bigotry-fueled backlash.
Give people an excuse to trade their freedom for magic tech and health care, and they'll flock to it. Just make sure you give them an "out" so they don't have to admit to themselves what they are doing. The way to do that is by casting the V's as well-meaning but naive aliens who are victims of ignorant and bigoted humanity, who are disgustingly ingrateful for all the V's gifts, but of course the V's are far too saintly to mind. Anna needs a tutorial from the Dominion on how to conquer a planet.
