New perspectives on cognitive warfare

Cognitive warfare is not new. Weaker parties in an asymmetric conflict have manipulated information and ideas to convince stronger opponents to not fight (e.g., the Trojan Horse). What is new is the extent to which technologies enable cognitive warfare – resulting in the delegitimization of governments by sowing discord and creating division in order to compel acceptance of political will Information sharing tools enable adversaries to interfere more directly than ever with national political processes as well as citizens minds3. Cognitive warfare is considered a new domain of warfare, along with land, maritime, air, space and cyber (technical). The goal of cognitive warfare attacks is to alter or mislead the thoughts of leaders and operators, of members of entire social or professional classes, of the men and women in an army, or on a larger scale, of an entire population in a given region, country or group of countries and impact territory, influence, service interruptions, transportation, etc. The means could be social cyber, cyber technical, electronic warfare, and broadcast, etc. Senior officers and strategists in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) claim that AI, neuroscience, and digital applications (e.g., social media) will be able to influence enemies by affecting human cognition directly, Russia’s Gerasimov doctrine talks of the “battlespace of the mind”, Pocheptsov provides examples including creation of fake events and objects and organizing protest actions in Ukraine. Dr Giordano stated, “the brain is the battlefield of the future”. This paper will highlight current examples of cognitive warfare, touch on enabling technologies and relevant social science principles of influence (cognitive and social), highlight existing analytics, introduce the “House model” which identifies pillars of relevant fields of knowledge as well as operationally relevant aspects related to the pillars as potentially helpful framework for thinking about cognitive warfare and identifying needed research.