“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.

How can we protect ourselves from these attacks?

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 project1 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.
• B. Tashev, M. Pur­cell, and B. McLaugh­lin, “Russia’s Infor­ma­tion War­fare: Explor­ing the Cog­ni­tive Dimen­sion,” (U.S.) Marine Corps Uni­ver­si­ty Jour­nal, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 129–147, 2019.
• 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.
• B.Claverie, F. Du Cluzel. “Cog­ni­tive War­fare”: The Advent of the Con­cept of “Cog­nitics” in the Field of War­fare. Bernard Claver­ie, Bap­tiste Prébot, Nor­bou Buch­ler & François du Cluzel (ed.). Cog­ni­tive War­fare: The Future of Cog­ni­tive Dom­i­nance, NATO Col­lab­o­ra­tion Sup­port Office, pp.2, 1–7, 2022.
• J. Gior­dano. Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy in Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 2014.

1The Gecko project is car­ried out by Inal­co, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ENSC and IRSEM, and con­duct­ed as part of the ASTRID pro­gramme fund­ed by AID and host­ed by ANR↑