Cognitive warfare: the new battlefield exploiting our brains

“Cog­nit­ive war­fare,” an expres­sion that appeared in 2017 in the pub­lic speeches of Amer­ic­an gen­er­als and was quickly taken up by sci­ent­ists and polit­ic­al sci­ent­ists, is as wor­ry­ing as it is fas­cin­at­ing. What does it mean exactly? We take a look at this new concept with Bern­ard Clav­er­ie, pro­fess­or of cog­nit­ive sci­ence at the Bor­deaux Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute and founder of the École nationale supérieure de cognitique.

Bern­ard Clav­er­ie: The concept is dual – civil and mil­it­ary – and is also known as “cog­nit­ive dom­in­ance” or “cog­nit­ive superi­or­ity”. It came to the fore around fif­teen years ago in the United States. Ini­tially, it denounced the poten­tial opened up in the field of manip­u­la­tion by the con­sid­er­able advances in cog­nit­ive sci­ence, and expressed sus­pi­cion that they might be put into prac­tice by hos­tile states or organ­isa­tions. Until recently, psy-ops (psy­cho­lo­gic­al oper­a­tions), includ­ing pro­pa­ganda and dis­in­form­a­tion, as well as offens­ive mar­ket­ing in the civil­ian sec­tor, were based on fairly sketchy con­cepts of cog­nit­ive pro­cesses, which were still poorly under­stood. These oper­a­tions there­fore attemp­ted to con­trol what they could con­trol, i.e. the inform­a­tion dis­sem­in­ated to enemies, com­pet­it­ors or con­sumers, in the hope of influ­en­cing their decisions and behaviour.

But the devel­op­ment of the so-called “hard” cog­nit­ive sci­ences – i.e. non-inter­pret­at­ive, veri­fi­able and quan­ti­fi­able – has changed all that. These dis­cip­lines study thought as a mater­i­al object, from the con­ver­ging points of view of vari­ous fields of know­ledge: neur­os­cience, lin­guist­ics, psy­cho­logy, ana­lyt­ic­al philo­sophy and the digit­al sci­ences, includ­ing AI. Their res­ults show that it is pos­sible to pre­cisely tar­get the cog­nit­ive pro­cesses them­selves, and thus dir­ectly modi­fy the oppon­ent’s thought processes.

We are faced with a new threat, the bound­ar­ies and cap­ab­il­it­ies of which we are still try­ing to under­stand. If we must define it, we can say that cog­nit­ive war­fare is at the very least a field of research – and prob­ably a way of con­trib­ut­ing to the pre­par­a­tion and con­duct of war or hos­tile action – imple­men­ted by state or non-state act­ors. It cov­ers oper­a­tions aimed at dis­tort­ing, pre­vent­ing or anni­hil­at­ing the adversary’s thought pro­cesses, situ­ation­al aware­ness and decision-mak­ing capa­city, using a sci­entif­ic approach and tech­no­lo­gic­al, and in par­tic­u­lar digit­al, means.

Cog­nit­ive war­fare uses tech­no­logy as a weapon. It can use invas­ive tech­no­lo­gies to alter the medi­um of thought, the brain, and more broadly the nervous sys­tem that under­pins its func­tion­ing. In autumn 2016, for example, some forty employ­ees of the Depart­ment of Defence at the US embassy in Cuba sud­denly developed strange inca­pa­cit­at­ing symp­toms, which have since been dubbed “Havana syn­drome”. It was sus­pec­ted that a tar­geted man­oeuvre by an enemy power had exposed these people to neuro­bi­o­lo­gic­al alter­a­tions through tar­geted radiation.

Cog­nit­ive war­fare can above all take advant­age of digit­al tech­no­lo­gies to dis­rupt spe­cif­ic cog­nit­ive func­tions (memory, atten­tion, com­mu­nic­a­tion, emo­tions, etc.) in tar­geted indi­vidu­als. Examples include send­ing per­son­al­ised text mes­sages to mem­bers of par­lia­ment caught up in a vot­ing ses­sion about their rel­at­ives, or send­ing pho­tos of dead chil­dren to mil­it­ary decision-makers involved in an oper­a­tion. The aim is to dis­rupt short-term think­ing by influ­en­cing atten­tion, decision-mak­ing and reaction.

How­ever, and this is the most wor­ry­ing aspect, there is a sus­pi­cion that these oper­a­tions are tak­ing place quietly over a long peri­od of time. Using cog­nit­ive biases, they modi­fy the think­ing habits of the vic­tims and have last­ing, even irre­vers­ible effects on the cog­nit­ive per­son­al­ity, i.e. the way in which an indi­vidu­al pro­cesses inform­a­tion. For example, a pilot may be con­di­tioned to react in the wrong way in a spe­cif­ic situ­ation, a tech­ni­cian in charge of main­tain­ing a machine may have their motiv­a­tion gradu­ally sub­ver­ted by “digito-social” influ­ences, or indi­vidu­als may be rad­ic­al­ised with­in iden­tity-based groups via social plat­forms, in order to con­vince them, appar­ently of their own free will, of the mor­al right­ness of leth­al oper­a­tions. The actions are wide­spread, involving both the digit­al and real worlds. Proof of a delib­er­ate attack can then be much harder to estab­lish, espe­cially as the detec­tion of a cog­nit­ive effect is often too late and the tar­geted per­son nat­ur­ally tends to min­im­ise the effect, or even to con­ceal the fact that they have been targeted.

We can no longer live without digit­al tech­no­logy: it shapes our way of think­ing from a very early age, so it has a power­ful influ­ence on our intel­li­gence and emo­tions, our minds and our pleas­ure, our ways of think­ing and planning.

What’s more, the hege­mony of pred­at­ory com­pan­ies in the organ­isa­tion of the cyber world, com­bined with the fra­gil­ity of the leg­al sys­tems over­see­ing new prac­tices, has very quickly attrac­ted the interest of lead­ers and ideo­logues, who have taken advant­age of this to find the means to carry out their pro­jects. Attack­ers rely on the skills and resources of these private com­pan­ies or on the prox­ies of unscru­pu­lous states, often with the help of ideo­lo­gic­al accom­plices, i.e. people sub­jec­ted to dis­tor­ted think­ing who become relays for alter­ing the think­ing of others.

The tools of digit­al hyper­con­nectiv­ity are thus turn­ing the cyber world into a gigant­ic theatre of oper­a­tions, unfor­tu­nately with the com­pla­cency, even depend­ence, of users who, for the most part, prefer risk to reason.

We need to try and act pro­act­ively. Bey­ond the phys­ic­al pro­tec­tion of indi­vidu­als in stra­tegic situ­ations, part of the solu­tion would be to free ourselves from our addic­tion to digit­al tech­no­logy or to learn to use it sens­ibly and object­ively. How­ever, this goal seems unat­tain­able today… The devel­op­ment of crit­ic­al think­ing, the veri­fic­a­tion of inform­a­tion, mis­trust of con­tent shared on the Inter­net, and dis­con­nec­tion as often as pos­sible offer anoth­er pro­tec­tion, fal­lible but already use­ful… how­ever, can it be imposed?

For mil­it­ary per­son­nel, polit­ic­al fig­ures and stra­tegic indus­tri­al play­ers, who are the first tar­gets of short-term cog­nit­ive actions, it is pos­sible to resort to spe­cif­ic and adap­ted aware­ness-rais­ing cam­paigns. The Gecko pro­ject¹ aims to devel­op sys­tems for explor­ing cog­nit­ive war­fare in fic­ti­tious crisis situ­ations, to pre­pare civil­ian and mil­it­ary decision-makers and oper­a­tion­al staff involved in nation­al secur­ity oper­a­tions in France and over­seas for the risks involved. In some cases, the use of digit­al decision sup­port or decision mon­it­or­ing tools could also prove effect­ive. We are still in the early stages of identi­fy­ing weapons, and there­fore of com­bat­ing this new form of warfare.

We need to dis­cuss the eth­ic­al dimen­sions of this type of cog­nit­ive action. A demo­cracy is vul­ner­able to this kind of attack… but can it simply carry one out itself?

Interview by Anne Orliac

Find out more:

• D.S. Hartley and K.O. Job­son, “Cog­nit­ive Superi­or­ity”, Spring­er Nature Switzer­land, 2021.
• N. Cowles and N. Ver­rall, “The Cog­nit­ive War­fare concept: A short intro­duc­tion,” Defence Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy Labor­at­ory, Salis­bury, UK, DSTL/TR146721 v1, 2023.
• G. Pocheptsov, “Cog­nit­ive Attacks in Rus­si­an Hybrid War­fare,” Inform­a­tion & Secur­ity, An Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al, vol. 41, pp. 37–43, 2018
• A. Bernal, C. Carter, I. Singh, K. Cao, and O. Mad­reperla, “Cog­nit­ive War­fare – An Attac on Thought and Truth,” Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, Bal­timore MD, USA, 2020.
• H. M. Eshrat-abadi and S. S. Mogh­ani, “Mod­ern Cog­nit­ive War­fare: From the Applic­a­tion of Cog­nit­ive Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy in the Bat­tle­field to the Arena of Cog­nit­ive War­fare,” Journ­al of Human Resource Stud­ies, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 156–180, 2022, doi: 10.22034/JHRS.2022.158895.
• B. Tashev, M. Pur­cell, and B. McLaugh­lin, “Russia’s Inform­a­tion War­fare: Explor­ing the Cog­nit­ive Dimen­sion,” (U.S.) Mar­ine Corps Uni­ver­sity Journ­al, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 129–147, 2019.
• B. Clav­er­ie, “Cog­nit­ive War­fare” – Une guerre invis­ible qui s’attaque à notre pensée. in Jean-François Trin­que­coste (ed.). Faut-il s’inquiéter ?, Édi­tions IAPTSEM, pp. 89–115, 2024.
• B.Claverie, F. Du Cluzel. “Cog­nit­ive War­fare”: The Advent of the Concept of “Cog­nit­ics” in the Field of War­fare. Bern­ard Clav­er­ie, Bap­tiste Prébot, Nor­bou Buchler & François du Cluzel (ed.). Cog­nit­ive War­fare: The Future of Cog­nit­ive Dom­in­ance, NATO Col­lab­or­a­tion Sup­port Office, pp.2, 1–7, 2022.
• J. Giord­ano. Neur­o­tech­no­logy in Nation­al Secur­ity and Defense. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 2014.