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.