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.