The battle for the human minds a new dimension

NATO is trying out entirely new, increasingly sophisticated strategies to inculcate desired perceptions into people’s minds

by Wolfgang Kaufmann

(19 July 2023) Classic psychological warfare serves the purpose of manipulating and weakening the military or civilian population of the enemy. Such “cognitive warfare” is also practised by NATO, although it is now no longer aimed solely at the enemy, because the battle for people’s minds is now to take place equally on their own territory. This emerges from various NATO documents – starting with the thesis paper “NATO’s Sixth Domain of Operations” from September 2020.*

The paper was commissioned by the think tank NATO Innovation Hub (IH) in Norfolk, Virginia. Among other things, the text speaks of a “steady erosion of public morale” in NATO countries, which leads to the public in NATO countries increasingly “behaving according to the plans ... of our adversaries”. NATO must therefore act quickly to regain the initiative.

A little later, in January 2021, IH published another paper called “Cognitive Warfare”, which states: “Cognitive warfare may be the missing element that enables the transition from military victory on the battlefield to lasting political success. The human domain may well be the decisive one [...] The first five domains of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace can deliver tactical and operational victories, but only the human domain can deliver final and complete victory”.

Following this, NATO held a scientific symposium on psychological warfare in June 2021. In the foreword to the later published proceedings, “Cognitive Warfare: The Future of Cognitive Dominance”, French Air Force General André Lanata stresses the importance of “exploiting the weaknesses of human nature” and, in this context, also weaponising neuroscience.

“Reading” the mind of the enemy

There should be a two-pronged approach, according to French Deputy Defence Minister Eric Autellet in his following contribution: “As far as our enemy is concerned, we must be able to ‘read’ the minds of our adversaries to anticipate their reactions. If necessary, we must be able to ‘penetrate’ the brains of our adversaries to influence them and get them to act in our interests. As for our friends (and ourselves), we need to be able to protect our brains and enhance our cognitive abilities of understanding and decision-making.”

This was followed in October 2021 by the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command and IH launching an innovation competition on “Neutralising Cognitive Warfare”, with the think tank’s innovation manager François du Cluzel calling the brief “one of the hottest topics for NATO right now”. The winner was US-based Veriphix in December 2021, which had developed a “behavioural dynamics platform” whose purpose is to “measure and empower subconscious motivations to drive people to ideas, products and beliefs”. Second place went to a team called Recognite with its method for detecting “harmful cognitive influence in order to initiate effective intervention”.

Fear of abuse

What such psychological interventions can look like was demonstrated, for example, after the start of the Ukraine war. The Parliament of the EU, which together with NATO maintains the “European Centre of Excellence for Defence against Hybrid Threats” in Helsinki, adopted a draft decision of its “Special Committee on Foreign Influence on all Democratic Processes in the European Union” on 9 March 2022.

This created an “expert group on combating disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training” to “focus, inter alia, on critical thinking, teacher training, prebunking [pre-emptive defence against “misinformation”], debunking as well as fact-checking, and

student engagement”. This was done “considering that prevention and proactive measures, including prebunking, are far more effective than subsequent fact-checking and rebuttal of claims that have less reach than the original disinformation”.

Prebunking, mentioned twice, is the opposite of debunking, the classic fact-check to flag misinformation. Here, it is about mentally preparing people in such a way that they already believe certain news to be false before they are even confronted with it. Debunking experts like Sander van der Linden from the University of Cambridge draw parallels to vaccinations: People receive “an attenuated (micro) dose of misinformation that contains a pre-emptive refutation or pre-judgment of the expected misleading arguments or persuasive techniques”.

Such an “inoculation” can also be given to German pupils through the educational game “Fake it to Make it” recommended by the East StratCom Task Force of the European External Action Service and NATO. This was translated by the Federal Agency for Civic Education and prepared for use in the classroom.

However, the above-mentioned decisions of the EU also met with criticism. The Irish MEP Clare Daly, for example, said that the danger of Russia and China influencing their own population was exaggerated to “stigmatise dissent [...] and create grounds for restrictions on freedom of expression and other fundamental rights”.

Source: Allgemeine Preussische Zeitung, https://paz.de/artikel/der-kampf-um-die-koepfe-tritt-in-eine-neue-dimension-a8207.html, 17 June 2023
(Reprinted with kind permission of the editors)

(Translation Swiss Standpoint)

* – https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/NATO%27s%206th%20domain%20of%20operations.pdf
– https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/NATO-CSO-CW%202021-10-26.pdf