Information Inoculation: Preparing US Warfighters for Cognitive War

 

“Sophisticated non-kinetic threats, such as Chinese cognitive domain operations (CDO) and Russian active measures operations, define the contemporary global security landscape and pose significant challenges to national security policymakers in the United States. These adversarial capabilities transcend traditional military engagement, targeting the cognitive processes, beliefs, and unit cohesion of an opponent to achieve military objectives, often as a precursor to the onset of hostilities. By targeting the brain itself, adversaries can potentially alter US service members’ decision-makin or behavior, having a detrimental impact on their will to fight. Current understanding of brain sciences, the ubiquity of surveillance technology and big data, and algorithm-based evolving business and marketing models that condition human behavior are converging to shape global power competition in ways that may undermine the efficacy of assumptions about American power. As a result, foreign adversaries could subject the American population to a persistent state of cognitive manipulation and control. To prepare service members for this rapidly evolving environment, the Department of Defense (DoD) needs to adopt strategies to build critical thinking and individual resistance to persuasive cognitive attacks. This paper proposes a military training program that begins in recruit training and continues as part of regular professional military education based on information inoculation theory, a critical-thinking strategy analogous to medical immunization.”

Cognitive Competition, Conflict, and War: An Ontological Approach

May 2024

Hudson Institute

“The character of war has evolved from the precision strike and stealth regime developed in the late Cold War–era to operations and technologies that target an opponent’s decision-making. This shift has taken many forms, such as gray zone operations, hybrid warfare, little green men, and salami-slicing operations and tactics. Cognitive warfare represents the culmination of this evolution in how countries conduct military operations and calls into question whether traditional kinetic operations alone are necessary to achieve an aggressor’s objectives.”

Cyber Power is a Key Element of Sea Power

December 2022

Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, Vol. 148/12/1,438

“China has embarked on a program to replace the liberal world order with a techno-authoritarian model dominated from Beijing. Central to this program is a desire to control the maritime commons. China is now a (in some measures perhaps the) leading sea power. It boasts the world’s largest navy, coast guard, and maritime paramilitary forces; a top-five merchant fleet; significant shipbuilding capacity; and growing control over a global network of maritime ports.”

 

Cyber Power is Essential to Sea Power

December 21, 2022

Proceedings Podcast, U.S. Naval Institute

Commander Robert “Jake” Bebber, U.S. Navy, and Andrew W. Marshall Scholar at the Hudson Institute, and Lieutenant Commander Tyson B. Meadors, U.S. Navy, discuss cyber defense as an essential part of competition.