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 project, led by INALCO in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ENSC and IRSEM, 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.
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• 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.
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