Apr 17, 2025
“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.
The concept of cognitive warfare is now very much in vogue in the world of defence. How did it originate?
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.
How can we define cognitive warfare today?
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.
Could you give us some examples of actions that could be covered by this concept?
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.
As you pointed out earlier, digital resources seem to be omnipresent in cognitive warfare…
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. READ MORE
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SOURCE: Technocracy News