Eurasia Press & News
Our brain, or, as E. Poirot said, “little gray cells,” meaning the gray matter of the brain, is today in a state of uncertainty and confusion, characteristic of a state of cognitive dissonance, i.e. places of internal psychological conflicts. If we consider this statement from the point of view. modern military conflict terminology, a similar state of confusion is also characteristic of the “gray zones”, areas of active combat operations using hybrid / mental / cognitive warfare methods in which we are involved.
What to do when you feel an irresistible desire to harm someone due to extensive historical resentment, but it’s scary to do it openly? Especially if you are a small country deprived of sovereignty. To do this, one should look for ways to explicitly and implicitly influence the cause of one’s internal complexes below or above the so-called threshold for the use of armed means. Previously, such means included diplomacy, this is an example of open influence on an opponent’s policy, and espionage, a conventional way of hidden influence. The modern era offers a number of innovations that were not previously taken into account due to their immanent development in the information technology universe. Even the popular term hybrid warfare, widely used to refer to all kinds of conflicts that combine the principles of conventional and irregular warfare, with an implicit number of participants who cannot be clearly identified, has lost its former relevance. Now we have moved on to more highly specialized terms: information, psychological and cyber operations, cognitive and mental wars:
Information warfare – control what the selected audience sees ;
Psychological warfare – control what the chosen audience feels ;
Cyberwar – the ability to disrupt the technological capabilities of selected countries;
Cognitive warfare is to control how a selected audience thinks and reacts [1] .
In this hierarchy, only one step is clearly missing, summing up the accumulated effect or consequences of such influences; today we define it as mental war – control of the values and meanings of entire peoples, ethnic groups, groups.
It is also natural that such technologies, like nuclear technologies, cannot be developed and used by just anyone. Sovereignty issues play an important role here. Countries deprived of political and economic independence are deprived of it in all other spheres, including socio-cultural and informational, therefore their hidden actions are led by those who project their power and influence at the expense and beyond the borders of these countries. For example, if we are talking about Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic or the Baltic states, behind which are the USA and Great Britain [2] . Thus, the formation of “gray zones” occurs, where the entire arsenal of methods of struggle listed above is used, including the use of armed forces, but at the same time, both military operations and peaceful life with shopping centers, restaurants and discos, like today in Ukraine. However, one should not have any illusions about the reality of such a “peaceful life.” In order to live in such conditions and avoid dissonance, which provokes serious mental disorders, people, i.e. the local population independently and systematically carried out the work of self-justification and self-deception regarding the surrounding reality. And they continue to do this hourly and daily: the stream of lies that rushes from TV and Internet screens is needed so that the introduced “viral colony of Ukrainianness” that has taken root in the mentality of these people does not disintegrate, but continues to develop in subsequent generations. This is where the results of the mental war won by our opponents in part of the territory of Ukraine are manifested. Arestovich said that one of the central national ideas of Ukraine is to lie to yourself and others as much as possible, otherwise everything will collapse [3] .
Therefore, we have to study and understand what we are dealing with. Adviser to the Minister of Defense A. Ilnitsky gives the following definition of mental warfare (WW): WW is a coordinated set of multi-scale actions and operations aimed at “occupying” the consciousness of the enemy in order to paralyze his will, change the individual and mass consciousness of the population [4 ] . In turn, A. Shkolnikov, explaining the attack strategy of MV, speaks of introducing concise and laconic meanings, ideas and myths into someone else’s ethnic system: “During an invasion, these meanings are clothed in the most understandable, attractive, tempting and poisonous form, which does not attract special attention “victim”, but weakens its moral and volitional component” [5] . A. Losev adds that this is a civilizational war [6] , since someone’s future as a subject of history is at stake. Many of us became victims of this war during the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of a new liberal-democratic economic cycle in Russia. When the younger generation, who dreamed of becoming test pilots, intelligence officers and scientists, decided, not on their own, of course, that in order to become successful, they needed to earn money, and for this, all means were good. Today we are faced with the consequences of MV in Ukraine and in other countries of the former CIS, primarily in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus. Thus, we see that one of the central features of CF is time, since large-scale changes in the worldviews of a large part of the community require decades.
How then does cognitive warfare (WW) differ from CF? In short, cognitive warfare is an unconventional form of warfare that uses cyber (information technology) tools to change the enemy’s cognitive processes. At the same time, cognitive aggression is limitless [7] and its goal is to turn everyone into a weapon, undermining their trust [8] . First of all, trust in yourself as an adequately thinking and reasonable person, since the main idea of CT is, using modern information technologies, to manipulate the vulnerabilities of the human brain [9] . For example, the brain:
- unable to determine whether specific information is correct or incorrect;
- in case of information overload, reduces the time to determine the reliability of messages;
- tends to believe statements or messages that he has already heard as true, even if they may be false (for example, a fake and its refutation);
- accepts statements as true if they are supported by evidence, regardless of the authenticity of this evidence and other tricks.
These and other cognitive distortions and prejudices form systematic deviations in the rational judgments of a person who lives on the “wave” of the information flow and devotes himself to numerous disputes and gossip on social networks. This feature of our modern day-to-day behavior, namely spending huge amounts of useful time online, is also deliberately exploited by experts and cognitive warfare professionals: “Social networks are particularly well suited for increasing political and social polarization due to their ability to spread violent images very quickly and intensely.” and rumors” [10] . Such work is included in a separate circuit of HF – psychological operations , their goal is our emotions:
- emotions allow you to highlight people in the crowd, improve personalization and behavioral analysis;
- While limiting cognitive abilities, emotions also play a role in decision making, work productivity and overall mental well-being.
Using cognitive distortions, emotions and modern channels of information dissemination, attackers skillfully change our beliefs and cognitive processes. As a result, as mentioned above, everyone becomes a “weapon”, i.e. a staunch opponent of the social organization in which he lives. The consequences of cognitive wars were: “Arab Spring 2010-2012”, “Swamp protests in Russia 2012”, all Ukrainian Maidans, an attempted coup in Belarus in 2020. And the consequence of the mental war was the final episode of the Cold War – the collapse of the USSR.
To summarize, we can say that mental war is a war for the socio-cultural space in which the mind and thinking are formed, hence the exceptional importance of history and education, which our experts constantly talk about. Cognitive warfare examines the psychophysical aspects of human perception and cognitive activity, applying to them the full power of scientific, technical and information equipment of the West. And of course, the main goal of the Covenant is not to change the leadership of a particular country, as one might deceptively think. The scale is much, much larger. The goal is: “…to encourage the development of tools and to adapt or improve people using an anthropotechnical approach to develop a hybrid human-system” (There are already great advances in this area. Scientists, for example, have learned to combine the brain of a rat with a neural network, i.e. e. natural and artificial intelligence [11] ). Thus, on the one hand, we have an invasion of natural social evolution, and on the other, the unfolding of an artificial technical and bio-revolution in the form of parasitism on the human brain (gray) substrate [12] .
To make sure that our enemy’s plans to destroy our subjectivity are relevant, especially after the start of the North American Military District, and are long-lasting, let us turn, for example, to North American experts. Recently, Politico magazine published an article by a former IO of the US Department of Defense Intelligence Agency, who proposed a number of steps for launching a psychological (read cognitive) war against Russia [13] :
1) Exploit the nationalist sentiments of the population – to show that the Russian Federation from a country enjoying international respect has turned into a rogue country due to the war in Ukraine;
2) Undermine the authority of the leader – a campaign directed against V. Putin personally, Patriarch Kirill and other high-ranking officials through corruption revelations;
3) Inciting discontent among ethnic minorities. To do this, it is proposed to use misinformation about large losses among the soldiers of these groups and convince that the increase in recruitment from “backward” regions is happening deliberately. For this purpose, it is proposed to launch a large-scale information campaign using existing channels and means. Also, establish work and support dissidents (“fugitive patriots”) and public opinion leaders in internal social networks.
If we consider the first point – “Russia is a rogue country” from the point of view. mental war, then this can become a long-term strategy for the enemy to change meanings and values in relation to Russia both inside and outside its borders. In this case, you cannot rely on situational alliances. Yes, for now we are together with China, India, Iran and other numerous countries of the non-Western world, but everything can change.
Another “gray” or, in psychological terms, a blind spot, is located directly in the heads of our “partners”. In numerous reports and strategies of Western experts, it is clear that the authors often use the terms hybrid, information, cognitive warfare to justify their own complexes, woven from arrogance, incompetence and aggressive projection – “the white man’s burden.” These complexes do not allow them to see the whole picture, because the real picture does not matter to them, since it does not fit into the discourse and does not coincide with those narratives accepted at the “highest level”, therefore the mass dissatisfaction of the population with their own country is perceived as attempts by third parties to exert influence and destabilize the situation. For political experts, their own citizens are the object of pre-prepared manipulation, be it elections or Covid; Billions are invested in mass manipulation media such as broadcast television, social networks or public opinion institutions, so it is difficult to believe that they do not have the desired effect on the community under their care. On the other hand, any actions of Russia, not only to protect and promote its own interests, but even to formulate them, cause in the West a persistent desire to designate these actions as hostile towards Great Britain, the United States and allies. That’s why concepts of hybrid, cognitive, information wars are invented to “define the Russian threat” and integrate it into anti-Russian discourse, multiplying their own paranoid tendencies.
[1] Cognition Workshop Innovative Solutions to Improve Cognition (June 1-3, 2021) https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/210601%20Cognition%20Workshop%20Report-%20v3 .pdf (verified on 11/12/2022) [2] What does England have to do with it? https://russiancouncil.ru/blogs/e-makarov/a-prichem-tut-angliya/ (verified 11/12/2022) [3] “Lie to yourself and others” – Ukrainian national idea from Arestovich https://www.vesti.ru/article/2712430 (verified 11/10/2022) [4] Ilnitsky. A. “Russia’s mental security strategy” https://amicable.ru/news/2022/04/15/19809/strategy-mental-security-russia/ (verified 11/10/2022) [5] Essay on psychohistorical / mental wars https://shkolnikov.info/articles/11-analitika-i-prognozy/106073-ocherk-o-psikhoistoricheskikh-mental-nykh-voynakh (checked 11/10/2022) [6] Losev A., Ilnitsky A. “Why Russians don’t give up” https://www.pnp.ru/politics/pochemu-russkie-ne-sdayutsya.html (verified 11/10/2022) [7] The concept of cognitive warfare https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/CW%20article%20Claverie%20du%20Cluzel%20final_0.pdf (accessed 11/10/2022) [8] Cognitive Warfare https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/20210122_CW%20Final.pdf (verified 10.11.2022) [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid. [11] Bridging the gap between man and machine—a step backward or forward? https://habr.com/ru/post/517222/ (verified 11/13/2022) [12] Mental and cognitive wars: issues of definition, goals and means https://dzen.ru/media/id/5f54f367fdbd8b69779a4b6d/mentalnaia-i-kognitivnaia-voiny-voprosy-opredeleniia-celi-i-sredstva-635818ed5cdf754045543dd1 (checked 10. 11 .2022) [13] Opinion | Waging Psychological War Against Russia https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/07/waging-psychological-war-against-russia-00054995 (checked 09/27/2022)
