Strategic agility: how to make better decisions in hybrid warfare

Faced with rap­id tech­no­lo­gic­al advances and mul­tiply­ing crises, the French gov­ern­ment is quietly devel­op­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of stra­tegic tools. Between arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, neur­os­cience, bio­tech­no­logy, beha­vi­our­al sci­ence and foresight, a silent revolu­tion is trans­form­ing the way French seni­or civil ser­vants and mil­it­ary offi­cials pre­pare for the future.

On 14^th Octo­ber 2025, around 100 seni­or French civil ser­vants gathered at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Pub­lic Ser­vice for an unusu­al ses­sion. On the agenda: how cog­nit­ive sci­ence can trans­form stra­tegic decision-mak­ing. Far from tra­di­tion­al lec­ture halls, this meet­ing illus­trates a turn­ing point in the train­ing of France’s admin­is­trat­ive elite. In a world where Ukraine uses low-cost drones against Rus­si­an tanks, where arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence gen­er­ates dis­in­form­a­tion in seconds, and where cyber­at­tacks can para­lyse crit­ic­al infra­struc­ture in a mat­ter of hours, tech­no­lo­gic­al superi­or­ity alone is no longer enough.

The chal­lenge? Anti­cip­at­ing not only tech­nic­al innov­a­tions, but above all their effects on human decision-mak­ing and the con­duct of oper­a­tions. Tech­no­logy remains a means and not an end: what really mat­ters is under­stand­ing its influ­ence on our per­cep­tion of time, our decision-mak­ing pro­cesses under pres­sure and our abil­ity to adapt to chaos. 

For sev­er­al years now, the French Defence Pro­cure­ment Agency (DGA) has been devel­op­ing an ori­gin­al approach to anti­cip­a­tion. On the one hand, its “Red Team” — made up of sci­ence fic­tion authors, sci­ent­ists and officers — ima­gines future dis­rup­tions and stra­tegic sur­prise scen­ari­os. On the oth­er, the “Radar” pro­gramme cap­tures and ana­lyses weak sig­nals: emer­ging sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions, dis­rupt­ive pat­ents and cog­nit­ive innov­a­tions that could upset the stra­tegic balance.

This archi­tec­ture reflects a philo­sophy: no longer con­tent with fore­cast­ing but cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for true stra­tegic agil­ity. While the Red Team explores pos­sible futures — space war­fare, the col­lapse of major digit­al infra­struc­ture, the emer­gence of a new form of hybrid con­flict — Radar checks wheth­er blind spots already exist in labor­at­or­ies or theatres of operations.

Between 2020 and 2023, the Defence Innov­a­tion Agency (AID) launched sev­er­al exper­i­ment­al pro­grammes on innov­a­tion and com­plex risks in engin­eer­ing schools run by the Min­istry of the Armed Forces. One of these, con­duc­ted with Ecole Poly­tech­nique (IP Par­is), even led to an expert being sent to Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity to study anti­cip­a­tion in techno-human sys­tems; envir­on­ments where humans and machines inter­act so closely that they form a single system.

At the same time, more con­fid­en­tial mil­it­ary ini­ti­at­ives explored ‘cog­ni­tion under pres­sure’. The Cog­ni­tion and Vir­tu­al Worlds group, cre­ated in 2022 with­in the Com­mand Doc­trine and Train­ing Centre (CDEC), stud­ied how mil­it­ary per­son­nel make decisions in envir­on­ments sat­ur­ated with, some­times con­tra­dict­ory, inform­a­tion. Their con­clu­sions: in mod­ern con­flict, vic­tory often belongs to those who main­tain cog­nit­ive clar­ity while their oppon­ents sink into confusion.

This work, some of which remains clas­si­fied, has since been incor­por­ated into train­ing pro­grammes at the École de Guerre and the Centre for High­er Mil­it­ary Land Train­ing (CEMST). Selec­ted officers learn to nav­ig­ate what the CEMST reports for 2023–2024 refer to as ‘decision-mak­ing over­lap’. In oth­er words, this is a situ­ation where sev­er­al options seem sim­ul­tan­eously pos­sible until a decision forces the sys­tem to swing in one direction.

The Octo­ber 2025 inter­ven­tion sparked unex­pec­ted interest bey­ond the mil­it­ary world. Sev­er­al ministries—Economy, Cul­ture, Eco­logy, Interior—requested in-depth dis­cus­sions to integ­rate these approaches into their own decision-mak­ing pro­cesses. This was an impli­cit recog­ni­tion that, in the face of cli­mate crises, geo­pol­it­ic­al ten­sions and tech­no­lo­gic­al dis­rup­tions, civil­ian admin­is­tra­tions need the same foresight cap­ab­il­it­ies as the armed forces.

The French Min­istry of Fin­ance is there­fore con­sid­er­ing how to bet­ter anti­cip­ate eco­nom­ic and fin­an­cial shocks. The Min­istry of Cul­ture is look­ing at how to pre­serve her­it­age in the face of sys­tem­ic risks. The Min­istry of Eco­lo­gic­al Trans­ition wants to set up a “Green Team” based on the mod­el of the DGA’s Red Team. As for the Interi­or Min­istry, crisis and emer­gency man­age­ment requires a detailed under­stand­ing of col­lect­ive cog­nit­ive dynam­ics: how does a pop­u­la­tion react to a dis­aster? What cog­nit­ive biases amp­li­fy pan­ic or, con­versely, pro­mote resi­li­ence? What emerges from these ini­ti­at­ives is a stra­tegic con­tinuum that is rarely so integ­rated. From the DGA’s foresight to tac­tic­al com­mand rooms, from dual innov­a­tion to the mem­oirs of the École de Guerre, the same logic runs through the French eco­sys­tem: anti­cip­ate, exper­i­ment, train.

Each tech­no­lo­gic­al sig­nal alters the oper­at­or’s per­cep­tion and sense of time; each human decision recon­fig­ures the dynam­ics of the sys­tem. The chal­lenge is no longer to increase tech­nic­al cap­ab­il­it­ies — satel­lites, drones, weapons sys­tems — but to main­tain over­all con­sist­ency: the sta­bil­ity of com­mand loops, the fluid­ity of inform­a­tion flows, the clar­ity of human-machine interfaces.

In a tense inter­na­tion­al context—from the war in Ukraine to fric­tion in the China Sea, from the race for AI to the return of “block” logic—this capa­city for stra­tegic anti­cip­a­tion is becom­ing a major com­pet­it­ive advant­age. While some coun­tries rely exclus­ively on fire­power or numer­ic­al superi­or­ity, France is bet­ting on intel­li­gent decision-making.

The work is still evolving. Some aspects will remain delib­er­ately con­fid­en­tial, because anti­cip­a­tion only works if the adversary can­not pre­dict it. But the dir­ec­tion is clear: between foresight and action, between labor­at­ory and theatre, the French stra­tegic eco­sys­tem is con­firm­ing its abil­ity to think dif­fer­ently about the future. Not by pre­dict­ing it, but by pre­par­ing for it with cre­ativ­ity, real­ism and lucid­ity. In the cog­nit­ive war­fare that is tak­ing shape, this lucid­ity could make all the difference.