Practice has proved that cognitive domain operations have broken the traditional online and offline data barriers. Through the integrated use of telecommunication networks, the Internet, the Internet of Things and other channels, and with the help of advanced algorithms, the initiator can effectively switch between various spaces and optimize the combat style, and even focus on private spaces and public spaces to accurately release interference information, so as to achieve effects that cannot be achieved by traditional combat methods.

In future cognitive domain operations, the influence of rational factors such as science and logic on individual cognition is likely to be weakened, and cognitive confrontation may become a contest between emotions and emotions.

At present, the rapid development of intelligent technology is changing the logic of information dissemination in an all-round way, making the impact of information on thinking and consciousness more profound and comprehensive, and human brain cognition has truly risen to an important field of military confrontation. In the era of intelligence, the continuous evolution of the information dissemination mechanism will systematically reshape cognitive confrontation from many aspects, thereby promoting fundamental changes in cognitive domain operations.

Artificial intelligence becomes the main driver of cognitive domain operations

In the era of intelligence, information dissemination is based on data, and artificial intelligence technology runs through the entire process of information collection, production, and feedback. The extensive and in-depth application of artificial intelligence, a disruptive technology in the military field, will be the key support for the entire process of future cognitive domain combat planning and implementation.

Artificial intelligence technology will run through multiple scenarios of future cognitive domain operations. In the process of deployment and rhythm control of combat operations in the cognitive domain, all parties involved rely on advanced algorithms as the “regulators” and “gatekeepers” of actions, and a large amount of information about battlefield actions from various combat domains provides information for all parties to the war. Efficient decision-making and implementation of cognitive domain operations provide the driving force. Practice has proved that cognitive domain operations have broken the traditional online and offline data barriers. Through the integrated use of telecommunication networks, the Internet, the Internet of Things and other channels, with the help of advanced algorithms, the initiator can effectively switch between various spaces and optimize the combat style. It even focuses on private spaces and public spaces to accurately release interference information, so as to achieve effects that cannot be achieved by traditional combat methods.

In addition, artificial intelligence has evolved from empowering a single link to connecting all links of combat and the entire process. At present, artificial intelligence is limited to locating target audiences in information dissemination to improve the matching rate of information and destinations. In future cognitive domain operations, artificial intelligence will play a “one-stop” role in the planning and implementation of cognitive domain operations, and will continue to strengthen the coupling between various links. The foreign military believes that in future cognitive domain operations, differentiated delivery of data can be used to activate robots to instantly create public opinion trends and affect cognitive effects. At the level of strategic campaigns, based on long-term tracking data and continuously adjusted and optimized algorithm strategies, it can measure the cognitive situation of different regions and groups, and assist decision makers in planning core narratives and major issues, thereby regulating the implementation of actions and coordinated actions.

Autonomous confrontation has become a prominent feature of cognitive domain operations

With the continuous expansion of intelligent programs from collaborative communication, participatory communication to autonomous communication, and the connected ecology of smart terminals, officers and soldiers will increasingly be able to receive various types of information sent by smart programs and smart terminals on the battlefield in the future. In the virtual space, the interactive communication between digital twins and virtual people will transmit the cognition of people in the real world. From the perspective of the development trend of cognitive domain operations under intelligent conditions, the degree of human intervention will gradually decrease, the collection, synthesis, and transmission of information ammunition will be more autonomous and efficient, and the formulation and execution of discourse strategies and action strategies will become more autonomous. The pace of the whole process is unprecedentedly fast. But as far as the result is concerned, humans are still the ultimate goal of combat in the cognitive domain, and the process of empowerment and acceleration by autonomous weapons will continue to strengthen the control of human cognition.

With the help of autonomous confrontation tools such as intelligent programs, intelligent terminals, digital twins, and virtual humans, all parties participating in the war will have more flexibility in the deployment of cognitive domain combat situations, space-time use, and information content design, and the confrontation between information authenticity and falsehood will be more efficient. protrude. In future cognitive domain operations, autonomous weapons will likely break through the limitations of power and time and space, and their action patterns will become more complex. The practice of foreign militaries shows that the use of the Internet to carry out “spray irrigation” communication for the general public and “drip irrigation” communication for specific groups will become a common pattern of cognitive domain operations. Smart programs and smart terminals can support the development of more and more complex action patterns due to their characteristics of batch replication deployment and non-stop operation. For example, it is possible to quickly mobilize a large number of social robots around specific issues and target specific attack objects, take turns to concentrate and spread information, or use smart devices around specific individuals to collect relevant data, and use dialogue robots, virtual humans and individuals to interact with each other for a long time and continue to guide them achieve combat objectives.

In future cognitive domain operations, autonomous weapons covertly manipulate cognitive domain battlefields will become the norm. Social robots can create fake public opinion and hotspots as needed, thereby generating more fog of individual perception; intelligent synthesis technology will lower the threshold for false information production. As a result, the cost and difficulty of counterfeiting will be increased; robot accounts and virtual human sources will be more difficult to identify, and “one-to-one” cognitive fraud is becoming more and more common.

Emotional Conflict Becomes a Prominent Attribute of Cognitive Domain Operations

In the era of intelligence, new technologies will broaden the scope of human cognition and deepen people’s perception. Extended reality, metaverse and other technologies will more holographically and transparently present the battlefield environment, event scene, etc., and the scene can be touched, felt and interacted, and the audience will be more subject to the influence of perceptual logic when they perceive the truth of the event.

Thanks to the development of the mobile Internet, the rapidity of information dissemination has increased rapidly. Through the centralized release of large batches of information in a short period of time, the response time of individuals can be greatly compressed, making it difficult for individuals to think deeply. Before the full picture of the event is fully displayed, the audience often has formed a position tendency and even turned their attention to a new focus. The mode of outputting conclusions based on fragmented clues intensifies the irrational and emotional response to information. In future cognitive domain operations, the influence of rational factors such as science and logic on individual cognition is likely to be weakened, and cognitive confrontation may become a contest between emotion and emotion. In the choice between resorting to rationality and resorting to sensibility, all parties involved in the war pay more and more attention to moving people with emotion, agitating, occupying and even polarizing the target object’s mind through perceptual means, and leading the confrontation situation in the cognitive domain.

In the era of intelligence, cognitive leverage increasingly relies on emotional competition. On the one hand, cognitive resonance is enhanced with emotional arousal strategies. In future cognitive domain operations, the initiator of the action selectively presents the cruel and fierce battle scenes, post-war scenes, or the process and status quo of soldiers participating in the battle, so as to strongly stimulate the audience’s emotions and awaken the audience’s innermost feelings emotional identity. As a node of the communication network, people can collect various physical signs data through intelligent algorithms, so that the initiators of actions can more accurately study and judge the emotional effects of information, so as to dynamically adjust the content and strengthen emotional responses. Action initiators use data calculations to select groups with similar understanding contexts and the same emotional characteristics, or to select specific individuals who are susceptible and have a greater influence value, and stimulate them through targeted dissemination of homogeneous information flows. Group cognitive resonance.

On the other hand, use the moral coercion strategy to stimulate value recognition. In the face of accumulated and aggravated fragmentation and irrational cognitive response patterns, the initiators of combat operations can occupy the moral high ground through the discourse system of binary opposition, gather the torrent of self-interested value cognition, and then achieve the coercion effect. The rich forms of presentation in the intelligent communication environment and the direct access to the public’s social channels provide a convenient means for action initiators to use this strategy. In local wars in recent years, technological evolution has gradually demonstrated the promotion of moral coercion strategies. For example, social media has exposed the secret diplomacy of the past to the public. The details of communication between the upper echelons and elite groups, etc., and discourse strategies are increasingly emphasizing moral arbitration and criticism, thereby influencing and stimulating the international public to support their own value positions.

The Internet of Everything Expands the Battlefield of Cognitive Domain Operations

With the development of information communication technology, social media has gradually become the main battlefield for shaping cognition. Institutions, individuals and people of all warring parties can directly contact and interact with each other through social media, making all-weather cognitive competition possible.

In the era of intelligent communication, the Internet of Everything has become a new social connection model, and communication subjects and communication behaviors are ubiquitous. Under this influence, the combat space in the cognitive domain will expand to smart IoT terminals and scenarios, and to the two worlds of physical space and virtual space. The Internet of Everything leads to the ubiquity of the combat space in the cognitive domain, which will further promote the ubiquity of combat subjects. Natural persons, intelligent terminals with information sending and receiving capabilities, and even virtual characters in the network world may become combat subjects, and cognitive domain operations will participate in the war. The types of forces will be greatly expanded, and the organizational method of cognitive domain operations will change to distributed coordination.

In future cognitive domain operations, people and machines deep in the conflict will become an important force in combat. With the support of intelligent technology, they will collaborate to draw battlefield pictures and participate in the “writing” of the whole process of war. Soldiers on the frontline continuously share their personal battlefield experiences through social networks, and push them to the world in a timely manner after personalized packaging. Individual equipment and combat platforms will be responsible for battlefield image collection and transmission tasks, and trigger automatic processing and release mechanisms according to preset procedures, cooperate with physical space combat operations in various ways to compete for information control and brain control. With the continuous development of communication technology, frontline soldiers and intelligent equipment can also reprocess and reprocess the information they have in a targeted manner according to the instructions of their superiors, so as to present the battlefield scene they want to express more conveniently and panoramically, to achieve the ultimate goal of fighting in the cognitive domain.

Source: China Military Network – PLA Daily

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The idea of AI weapon-ization often begins with a one line statement that says- “What AI will do in the future, we don’t know!” OR what the future with AI holds for humanity, civilization, and the life on the planet – “we have no clue about it!”

This is something that is never seen before in any military or commercial product, even Robert Oppenheimer was quite sure about the fact that what he was creating is a weapon of mass destruction! So promoting such a level of ‘conscious irresponsibility,’ a culture of unaccountability, and an acceptance toward it – is a new kind of experiment in itself!

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said J. Robert Oppenheimer (1945), quoting from Bhagavad-Gita after the first nuclear detonation.

While discussing the Weaponization of AI, often too much emphasis is being given to the ‘machine intelligence’ aspects alone, and there is an ignorance toward the basic fact that there are the teams of psychologists, neurologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and social behaviors experts – the real ‘Human Intelligence’ that works behind these systems!

A few days back, former Google Chairman & CEO, Eric Schmidt, while speaking at a US Naval War College event, raised some interesting points about winning AI’s strategic competition, when he said: “think about the Chinese app TikTok, which is the number one app in America today, and they know where your teenager is, probably you don’t!” And then he asked the audience – “is it OK if a Chinese company knows where your teenager is? At the moment it seems to be OK but is it okay in the future?” And Eric often raises the questions like “how do you feel about your child having a best friend be non-human?”

Now the point is Eric Schmidt’s concern about his country and their kids and teenagers’ growing engagement on non-American AI platforms is okay, these are some valid concerns! But what about us, how India, which comes next after the US and China in the list of most online countries in the world, and where Gen Z (the generation born between 1997 and 2012) is the biggest target audience of these AI-enabled social platforms, should see this absolute and ever-growing control of American AI tools and platforms in our market and in our minds? How should we see their psychological experiments, going live 24/7 with our people?

In the case of India, things are now going to a different level. A few days back, Elon Musk tweeted some CIA spying kind of meme, and when the people reacted to that he responded: “I would be shocked if I’m *not* being spied on.” Many people reacted to that tweet with more interesting memes, a number of them were from India too, and it looks like a normal and frank conversation about the realities of the internet and CIA snooping! But this is something to think about. It’s about the normalization of ‘mass surveillance’ by a foreign product and their agency, something which they often criticize about China or Russia, back home.

The weaponization of AI is not going to be some one-time ‘doomsday’ type event where all of a sudden the AI and Robots will take over the human systems and we will be left with only two choices- either install Neuralink’s Brain Chip to better fight with AI or to migrate to some other nearby planet on SpaceX’s Starship, as Elon Musk often predicts. Rather, it’s a deliberate and psychologically designed process of preparing the human minds, to accept a certain future, that fulfills certain objectives, and it is more about voluntarily and happily giving up before the control! The need, therefore, is to have a mountaintop view of the situation.

And in this broader view, the ease with which 4.9 billion internet users turned hostages to tech platforms’ filtered worldview (on the click of a mouse) in the Russia-Ukraine War, the absolute absence of Russian narrative from the internet, targeted battalions of Influencers waging frequent attacks on every move of democratically elected governments, frequent acts of adventure/misadventure and stunts on ‘information superhighways’ under the name of ‘freedom of speech,’ the forced shutdown of former US president and his supporters on the social media, power in the hands of terrorist and separatists elements, capabilities in the hands of organizations like PFI and SFJ to rage riots and mass violence on streets within a few minutes of mobilization and a constant amplification of political/ social/ economic and democratic chaos, all comes under the broader definition of “Weaponization of AI.”

And when 98 years old Henry Kissinger suddenly teams up with former Google CEO and starts talking about AI and our “human future,” in his typical Kissingerian approach, and when Dr. Kai Fu Lee, ex-Google China Head and Founder of Sinovation Ventures, speaks about the division of AI’s strategic pie between two superpowers (in his book AI Superpowers – China-Silicon Valley and the New World Order) to save humanity, such trends also comes under the broader definition of weaponization of AI as well!

But there is an interesting history and background behind such an approach, which some mathematicians and scientists belonging to the early development of these technologies highlighted in their works. One such mathematician Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, writes in his book “Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” that “Those of us who have contributed to the new science of cybernetics thus stand in a moral position, which is, to say the least, not very comfortable. We have contributed to the initiation of a new science which embraces technical developments with great possibilities for good and for evil.” And “we can only hand it over to the world that exists about us…and this is the world of Hiroshima and Belsen.”

Some Background

A common feature in all popular discussions around AI is that they are always future-oriented, and somewhere there is a ‘smart ignorance’ about the past, about the background that led to the creation of this improvisation. For example, on AI, people often prefer to start from the Dartmouth Conference, 1956, where the idea of AI was first presented as: “any computer program that does something that we would normally think of as intelligent in humans.” By starting from there, they smartly ignore the background of such conferences, or the whole series of the conferences/seminars that were conducted from 1946 to 1953, which were popularly called the Macy Conferences (as they were hosted by the Macy Foundation) or those that were conducted in parallel to that – the Ratio Club meetings of the British.

It is worth noting that those meetings and seminars were not attended by mathematicians and engineers fraternities alone, they were attended by biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, physiologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists and produced several thought-provoking ideas on humans, their biological, psychological, social and behavioral aspects.

And it was during this time that Pentagon’s obsession with ‘Psychology’ was at its peak. Several historical documents validate that there was an increase of over 1000% in the hiring of Psychologists for the Pentagon’s tech-related projects!

So calling AI a product of only algorithmic advances and machine intelligence, ignoring its background and future trajectory, in many ways a hurdle in understanding its potential as a Weapon!

 Neocortical Warfare and Decision Making

The term “Neocortical Warfare” frequently appears in the US military literature on Information Warfare. The ‘Neocortex,’ region of the brain, the six-layered cortex where higher brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, and generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, and language functions originate from, is the new focus of AI-led future warfare too.

In his article “Neocortical Warfare: towards the acme of skill,” published in US journal, Military Review (Nov 1994), Col Richard Szafranski (USAF) used the term ‘Neocortex,’ as a metaphor to refer enemy’s collective decision-making structures, and mentioned that: “the aim [of neocortical warfare] is not merely to avoid battles. The aim is to influence, even to the point of regulating the consciousness, perception, and will of the enemy’s leadership: the enemy’s Neocortical System.”

The question is who would be an ‘adversary’ in such cognitive and neocortical warfare, where the target is the ‘Neocortex’ of Decision Making Structures and belief systems?

Case of Bharat

It is said that grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the battle and calculating ahead, and sometimes it is wise to lose some battles but win the final war! At this moment, we seem to be losing a few battles, at least on the narrative front!

Somewhere there are assumptions in our system that Bharat cannot provide a resolution or solution to technology related issues or human-tech dilemmas, we cannot recognize these challenges and their Headquarters as a ‘Threat,’ and cannot stretch our visuals beyond territorial challenges, which in simple words means that we will have to remain a follower of technology/trends and their routine improvisations, even if they continue to work on ‘thousand cuts’ principle, against our national security interests!

So if we could apply the ‘Neocortex’ analogy here, the presence of such assumptions in our country’s belief system can be seen as the early sign of a strategically planned ‘Neocortical warfare’ campaign launched against us, which has the potential to influence our choices, our decisions, and our overall ‘will’ to fight, without us being aware of it!

The time has come to reject such assumptions, even if it requires first, waging a guerrilla war on our minds, notions, and assumptions!

Conclusion

“You see things, and say ‘Why?’ But I dream of things that never were, and I say; ‘Why not?’”

This quote appears on the first page of the military document of the US Air Force 2025 study (published in 1996) where the rough craft of future information war-fighting capabilities was given. The ‘Why Not’ part of this quotation reflects a mindset! It’s about a way of thinking, which need not be as imaginative as it sounds in the first place, but it possesses a determination to stay ahead of a few cycles faster than the opponent’s OODA loop.

When we trace the phase of the accumulation of information and technology dominance, we found that all these war fighting capabilities have mounted up in the last 3-4 decades, and it was during this time when the pace of our system’s decision-making process was at its lowest mark too.

To some extent, it is by influencing the ‘Neocortex’ of our decision-making process, that ‘others’ have leveraged the time and space.

But the entire effort behind AI is an attempt to build a replica of Human Intelligence (HI) and in this domain, Bharat possesses a natural edge, for ages!

Human Intelligence and Edge of Bharat

An interesting thing about HI is that is not stocked up in the air-conditioned data centers, consuming resources of the planet earth. It is dispersed in the billions of minds around us and if we speak in the language of science, the research says that a single Human Brain can store information and command connections roughly as many as the entire ‘internet,’ has more switches than all computers on earth and measuring its true size, is beyond the capacity of existing metrics of computer science domain!

Cognitive Science is gradually reaching the conclusion that every mind is unique, full of diversity, and has the mechanism to reach a ‘Superhuman intelligence’ level! But which country on the planet has a thousand of years old thought system that supports this view? And where it is said that a self-conscious ‘Mind’ (Nar) can attain the status of ‘Divinity’ itself (Narayan), it is within the reach of all of us!

Bharat is the only continuing ancient civilization that has explored, experienced, and experimented with the peak of HI when a larger part of the world was busy experimenting with animal psychology, ‘Survival’ rules, and the ‘law of the jungle’ kind of narrow pursuits. There is a reason why to date, the conceptual assets stored in our Mahabharata, Gita, Vedas, Puranas, and Upanishads, influence and inspire modern weaponry, combat science, and strategic thought processes!

“Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege which this century may claim over all previous centuries,” said physicist and ‘father of the Atomic Bomb’ J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Who will take ownership of HI? Now we are entering into a phase, when there will not be just a battle of minds but the battle of intelligence, and largely it will be a battle between AI vs. HI. And in this battle of intelligence, every aspect of human intellect is a potent weapon and a lucrative target as well.

From Silicon Valley to the Vatican, AI has many guardians, preachers, and protectors but if there is one country that must protect and keep the edge of HI high, it is Bharat. It’s a domain that belongs to our ancestors and our true heritage!

AI-related warfighting capabilities deal with the ‘Perception,’ the sensory experience of the world, and they can be seen as the modern improvisations of a much larger offensive scheme called ‘Maya’ (illusion- a distortion of the senses itself).

Bharat has an identity of being the architect of ‘Maya’ and Mayavi Yudh and history tells us that we are not only the creator if the question of the survival of humanity comes; we are the destroyer of our creation too. We are a land, which can bless even a ‘Bhasmasur,’ (भस्मासुर) but when he misuses it, then we return in the form of ‘Mohini’ (मोहिनी) to cause him to turn himself into ashes!

Recommendations. What are the key hurdles?

It’s a war between AI vs. HI, and the more we will invest in our HI part, the more we will lead in the theoretical, conceptual, and imagination aspects of this domain, the better we will perform!

But the problem with the professionals of relevant security agencies is that there is a gigantic mountain of intellectual assets that exist in every aspect of AI and AI-related future warfare, from philosophy, psychology, and doctrines to tools, trends, technology, and digging such a vast mountain of knowledge asset, in parallel to dealing with routine and operational challenges of the profession, is not humanly possible!

Solution. A body of knowledge must exist whose primary job would be: observing every single pattern/ trend emerging in the domain of AI and AI-led information/ psychological and cognitive warfare, with an ‘Eagle Eye’ view, enhancing the capacity of ‘wetware’ of security agencies and weaponizing them with the latest knowledge on the domain, maintaining a separate information repository for future challenges, and promoting awareness among the common people (victim of such improvisations).

Formation of an independent working group, capable to weaponize our security agencies, theoretically and conceptually, in the domain of AI and Cognitive Warfare, is the need of the hour!  (Concluded).

READ ALSO: Weaponisation of Artificial Intelligence (Part 1)

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Developments in Brain Science and Neuroscience are going in parallel with an intensification of Artificial Intelligence and Synapses, Neurons, Connectome, Cognitive structure, and the Whole Brain Approach kind of jargons are the new vocabulary of the computer industry.

There are many theories that exist on how the brain works and one such theory in Markram’s view is that the brain “builds” a version of the universe and projects this version, like a bubble, all around us. And the “decisions” are the key things that support our perceptual bubbles “without decisions, you cannot see, you cannot think, you cannot feel.” He further explained that “you think that anesthetics work by sending you into some kind of deep sleep or by blocking your receptors so that you don’t feel pain! But in fact, most anesthetics don’t work that way, what they do is that they introduce some noise into the brain, so that the neurons cannot understand each other, they are confused, and you cannot make a decision.” 

In 2013, the European Commission awarded his initiative – the Human Brain Project (a project to create an exact replica of the human brain) one billion euro grant, which finally ended up creating a digital simulation of the ‘mouse brain,’ but what does Henry really contributed to is that he ‘unintentionally’ summarized the functional model behind the idea of AI-enabled social media platforms. It seems that by accelerating the meter of ‘noise’ on the internet and social platforms, common people’s ability to make independent and free from biased decisions, even on very trivial looking matters related to personal, professional, and national security interests, is being crushed!

Now how long can we afford to stay under this state of ‘information anesthesia,’ and let the digital hypnotists test their experiments on us, that’s a question of personal and national inquiry! 

“We’re being hypnotized little by little, by technicians that we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We’re all lab animals now,” Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL Research (established VR as a field), author ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.’

Interesting developments from ‘Sentient’ to ‘Cult’ AI

“Are we about to witness a dystopian science movie come to life?” Such headlines are storming the internet since Google engineer Blake Lemoine claimed that his AI Chatbot, based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) and LLM (Large Language Models) components, suddenly turned ‘Sentient’ during a conversation on matters related to religion, consciousness, and personhood. Within hours of this news surfacing online, Google dismissed his claims, put him on paid leave (sort of suspension from work), citing a breach of confidentiality, and fueled the suspicions/mysteries further.

On 11 June, the priest-cum-software engineer Blake Lemoine published one of the transcripts of the conversations between him and his LaMDA scripted bot on his blog titled “Is LaMDA Sentient? — An Interview,” where his programme’s sense of perception and ability to express “thoughts and feelings,” and having a “soul” that cares for the world (similar to a human being) were highlighted.

Lemoine, who is also an occultist and a priest, recently tweeted that “I’m a priest. When LaMDA claimed to have a soul and then was able to eloquently explain what it meant by that, I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Who am I to tell God where he can and can’t put souls?”

Starting with Joseph Weizenbaum’s ‘Eliza Effect’ to Lemoine’s ‘Sentient’ AI, there is an interesting background and track record behind such efforts! So while one can have sympathy with Google engineer’s claims on ‘Sentient AI’ (after all Bhartiya culture sees life and soul in every particle around) but the question still is what’s the mystical formula behind this shift in Google’s hiring patterns? 

From engineers coding programs to psychologists/social behavior experts hacking human minds to ‘priests’ preaching values/ethics to algorithms, where the trajectory is really going? And more than being ‘Sentient,’ is AI gradually becoming a ‘Cult’ in itself?

Back in 2015, another multi-millionaire Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, founder Google’s Self-Driving Car programme, suddenly made an interesting move. He decided to open the first AI church ‘Way of the Future,’ and said: “Humans are in charge of the planet because we are smarter than other animals and are able to build tools and apply rules,” in the same way if “in the future, something is much, much smarter, there’s going to be a transition as to who is actually in charge!”

So all he wanted is “a peaceful, serene transition of control of the planet” from humans to ‘whatever,’ and the idea was that in the future this ‘whatever’ (AI) will “hear everything, see everything, and be everywhere at all times,” so the only word to describe that ‘whatever’ is ‘God’ and the only way to influence a God is through “prayer and worship.” [As per the current status after donating the AI church’s entire fund to NAACP – a US civil rights group in 2020, Levandowski closed his AI church by 2021].

In parallel to all that, there is news that the Vatican is quite concerned about ethical/value aspects of AI too! For the last few years, Pope Francis is frequently meeting with the Silicon Valley Club, raising his concerns, urging the UN to take the lead, and some executives from IBM and Microsoft are signing the “Rome call for AI ethics” kind of pledge with the Vatican officials. 

“Let us pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind,” we could say, may it “be human,” Pope Francis, a message from Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network (November 2020).

The way things are moving, days are not far when we will see AI getting redefined as ‘Abrahamic Intelligence’.

So before that happens and missionaries of ‘AI God’ start their global voyage, the need for a country like us is to have a mountaintop view of the situation!

 The Idea of ‘Weaponization’ of AI

More than the weaponization of AI, it is our inability to see and track its emerging patterns, an unneeded hesitancy to recognize such threats, a lack of strategic timing, a slow-paced OODA loop of our decision-making process, and a lack of overall ‘Will’ to fight or retaliate, as a nation, that should be a matter of concern!

It is said that there is a time and space for the use of the weapon, but the case of Artificial Intelligence, the product of the ‘New Science’ of the World War phase, is a bit unique. On a broader level, it is going through its cycle of weaponization – commercialization and re-weaponization phase, something very similar to DARPA’s naming conventions (starting with ARPA, then becoming DAPRA, then ARPA, and then again DARPA kind of cycle) but at the level of conceptual and theoretical aspects of AI, a lot of creative improvisations that are going on in parallel.

In his Davos 2022 speech, George Soros said: “Today, China and Russia present the greatest threats to open society.” And the source of their growing abilities lies in his views “in the rapid development of digital technology, especially artificial intelligence.” And he further said: “AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies!”

It is amazing that in such kind of predictions about AI, a potential AI threat never emerges from Google’s Deep Mind lab or its Brain Team/Quantum AI kind of projects, nor Boston Dynamics’ weird experimentation labs, or Elon Musk’s Brain chip projects, and neither from DARPA’s $2 billion AI-Next Campaign and its unclassified projects. These are some of the places where the large-scale work on AI, robotics, and future war technologies, is going on for decades! So how should one look at all that?

Should that be seen as a part of some large-scale philanthropic mission to save the humanity? Of course not!

Weaponization of AI in the Russia-Ukraine War

Before the war, there was a lot of hype around Russia’s AI projects and there was a +threat to the future of civilization from that, now whether Russia used AI in the Ukraine operation or not, cannot be confirmed with any certainty, except for some hyped news headlines that are based on a 2019 press release on Kalashnikov Zala Aero’s AI visual identification capabilities for its unmanned aircraft and news around Zala KYB-UAV, but on the contrary, it is Ukraine which transformed this war into the first High Tech, Social Media and AI War of the Century!

In the middle of the Ukraine War, Clearview AI, an American face recognition company, entered the battlefield to help Ukrainian forces through its powerful AI tools, database and other capabilities, and their face recognition system proved a lethal weapon in the war against Russian forces. This Peter Thiel-backed startup, founded in 2017, is already quite controversial in its home country for the abuse of similar technology against common social media users. By mid-2021, there were headlines in the Western press on how this secretive company and its AI tools can end the idea of ‘privacy’ on the internet! But overnight it turned into a rock star and a game-changer, in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine War, where it helped Ukrainian forces with over 2 billion images, stolen from the Russian social media company – VKontakte, to wage attacks against Russian forces and now team Clearview AI is being celebrated for such heroic contributions in the War!

These days Clearview AI’s CEO Hoan Ton-That is giving interviews to the media that how “upsetting and devastating” it was to watch the images of women and children coming out from the battlefield and how that pushed him emotionally to do something as a company to help Ukrainians in the War. And Clearview AI is not the only US company that got emotionally or morally provoked to participate in the War, the whole Big Tech club got provoked, and the entire Silicon Valley got morally provoked too! And then there is news that how in the middle of the War, a conversation between two Russian soldiers got automatically captured, transcribed, translated, and analyzed using artificial intelligence algorithms, developed by another US company called Primer. Several unsecured Russian transmissions have been posted online, translated, and analyzed on the social media.

And this does not stop only here! Every single US tech platform and social networking site that not just Russians or Ukrainians but the entire globe is using to explore about the War, every single platform where people talk/share or present their views on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, have embedded advanced AI algorithms, that are recording these response/reactions and emotions in the real-time, so every single misuse, manipulation, influence and any sort of information operation using these capabilities, to influence the global perception in a War, also comes under the idea of ‘Weaponization’ of AI.

It’s not that Russia does not possess these capabilities, their military systems are also well equipped with advanced AI capabilities but it’s more about a tendency and entitlement to transform your War into some kind of a global moral crusade, as ‘Morality’ is contagious!

And this makes one more curious to explore what’s exactly is the philosophy behind the Weaponization of AI?

READ ALSO: Philosophy of Weaponization of AI and India’s Approach (Part 2)

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ALSO READ: Part 1: Psyche Behind the Internet, Information Superhighways

MaaS (Misinformation as a Service) Model

The era of SaaS (Software as a Service) has gone, no one needs software developers and service providers anymore. Those routine old jobs could soon be performed by OpenAI’s GPT-3. Common people’s potential in a democracy needs to leverage for something more interesting, passionate and creative, such as Misinformation or Disinformation campaigns and propaganda wars! Perhaps, that was the idea behind the rise of this new service model called MaaS (Misinformation as a Service), which is often called with better-sounding names like creators economy, curators economy, influencers economy/ marketing, social media activism/ journalism, creative entrepreneurship, etc.

Out of 5 billion Internet users in the world (63.5 percent of the global population), 4.65 billion are social media users, and China, India, and the U.S. top the list of the countries in the world in terms of Internet use. In March 2022, YouTube India flooded Indian/ international newspapers with some interesting advertising stats about its ‘contribution’ to India’s economy and GDP via ‘creator economy.’ A report by consulting firm Oxford Economics, which assessed YouTube’s economic, societal, and cultural impact in India, says that “YouTube’s creator ecosystem has contributed an estimated Rs 6,800 crore to the Indian economy and created some 6,83,900 full-time equivalent jobs in India” in 2020. The statistics say that there are 40,000 plus YouTube channels in India with over 1 lakh subscribers, marking a growth of over 45 percent, year-on-year. Remember, these are the claims of only one social media platform; others like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. have their own numbers, patterns, and claims about contribution to the Indian economy, society, and culture!

If such claims are real then we must be interested to know who delivers MaaS (Misinformation as a Service) to our people on these platforms or, in other words, who performs the stunts on public participation/opinion on Information Superhighways?

Influencers, Creative Entrepreneurs, and Skillful Artists – A brief psychoanalysis of the situation

“The power of false narratives can be very debilitating for the destiny of a nation,” said NSA Ajit Doval in the ‘Sardar Patel Memorial Speech 2018.’ Highlighting the role of technologies in serving contaminated content to our people, he further said that “Democracy requires people to be enlightened, educated and informed, but rightly informed and rightly educated! What happens if what is driving you and what is influencing your decision-making itself is contaminated?”

India, one of the most online countries in the world and home to over 750 million smartphone users, must know who is driving the public participation on these platforms, and what the overall process looks like, from a mountaintop view!

Technically there are different categories of influencers on the Internet, from mainstream celebrities (A-B-C listers) to reality TV stars to vloggers/ bloggers to micro and nano influencers to journalists/ activists/ photographers/ thought leaders, etc. But those who reach the potential to influence the ‘will’ of the nation, and channel public opinion as a weapon, generally fall under the two broad categories:

(a)  Creative Entrepreneurs

(b)  Skillful Artists.

Creative Entrepreneur is relatively a new term introduced by these very platforms, which is their definition for those creators who have a good number of subscribers/ viewership/ followers. They earn income directly from these platforms, and hire paid employees to work on their channel.

In the Skillful Artists category, we can put those people who got some form of skill or talent than average people and who like to pursue that skill as a profession too.

There is a common notion that just anyone can become an ‘Influencer’ or celebrity on these platforms but a careful observation of their selected individuals and their patterns reveals that this is nothing but an illusion. There is a systematic pattern of hunting for influencers on these platforms, designed by using psychology, sociology, anthropology (holism), and human behavior-related experiments.

The selected creative people usually go through a rigorous and psychological method of selection/ recruitment and development.

Process of Selection/ Recruitment and Development

There is an underlying three-stage process, designed to control and mobilize the creative and artistic people, for the purpose. It is not that this process is the invention of these platforms, it was there for ages in human societies and it applies to other industries/ domains of power and fame, too. The social media platforms are only using it more skillfully!

In the First Stage, which is a preliminary stage, everyone is allowed to enter and showcase their talent on these platforms, like an open and live audition. Here, the selected few start earning some money too, as the goal at this stage is to make people addicted to this extra and convenient source of income and to use them for word-of-mouth marketing.

After spending some time in this stage, these creators become addicted to this extra income, and easy publicity, and then they try hard to figure out what will promote them to the next stage – the stage of real fame and more income, unaware of the fact that they all are being monitored very delicately by Big Brothers of these platforms.

In the Second Stage, these platforms hunt for those people, who are fully dedicated and addicted to their skills, talent and platforms and ready to perform any kind of stunt/ adventure on just an order! They are very much like the biker gangs or outlaw motorcycle clubs of the 1990s and 2000s, which used to perform motorcycle stunts on the roads and were known for carrying the ideas of freedom, nonconformity to mainstream culture, and loyalty to the biker group, etc.

This stage is a bit tough. Those who reach here are a bit more famous than those in the first stage but at the same time, since they have talent and free spirit, they are tough to command too!

So here they go through a psychological experiment, where, first their morale is crushed, then their confidence is broken and finally, they are made to believe that their skill/ talent is of no worth! Whatever they have earned in life is due to the mercy of these platforms/ providers and gradually they start seeing these platforms in the image of a ‘God.’ This is a stage of absolute ‘devotion,’ but devotion to whom? Not to the talent or karma, but to the platforms and the forces behind them!

Those who belong to this stage usually have a typical story: ‘I was doing something like a normal person, and one day changed my life entirely!’ They are famous but not ultra-famous (sometimes they are called ‘in-betweeners’ of the Internet, too). They are making good money but they know that a step ahead, the sky is the limit! Those who sustained such a mental status for sometime are carefully monitored for the next stage.

The Third Stage is the final stage, and only a selected few can reach here, after crossing the rigorous psychological experiments in the first and second stages successfully. This is a stage, where we see influencers performing weird stuff, something unusual and alien to the society, culture, and norms/ structure of their targeted region. These people are in the process of becoming ‘cult’ celebrities and have started enjoying the hypnotic addiction of their status.

In one form or the other, the ‘cult’ celebrities were always there, even before the Internet, social media, and smartphones, and we have seen them in different professions/ domains, too, i.e., show business, politics, sports, journalism, activism, and socio-religious domains. But what has changed now is that AI-enabled social media platforms have expanded their impact multifold, and performing cognitive manoeuvres/ psychological warfare for political/ economic/ strategic goals through these mercenaries, at the click of a mouse!

One more thing that is common in these Influencers is that they are artists by character, and an artist is generally a rebel from the inside, and standing against the established norms of the society/system gives them artistic satisfaction!

Now imagine if a battalion of such influencers, Creative Entrepreneurs, Skillful Artists, and cult celebrities, is tasked to march with full force, to wage a battle of false narratives/ misinformation/ disinformation against a country’s interests, decisions, culture, ethos, and structure!

What can be the approach to deal with such a situation?

Sever the Roots – Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy

It is said that a grand strategy to deal with a problem must include a way to think hard, dig deep, reach out to roots, and severing them, to end the problem with finality. And there should always exist the 10th man in the room too!

To visualize a solution in this scenario we will need to go back to the origin, the roots of internet again!

The idea of “Information Superhighways” was proposed with an analogy to physical highways, and its propagator former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said: “The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children and allow us to exchange ideas within a community and among nations. It will be a means by which families and friends will transcend the barriers of time and distance. It will make possible a global information marketplace, where consumers can buy or sell products.”

We build physical highways for the similar kind of purpose, that is ‘smooth travel’ for everyone – from people on foot to horses to bicycles to motor cars to commercial and heavy transport vehicles. Sometimes these highways are exploited by bad elements too, i.e., biker gangs, rioters, protesters, terrorists, anti-national elements, etc., but at the same time ensuring a smooth and safe journey for all is the responsibility of the government.

We have a time-tested road safety framework to deal with the challenges of traffic collisions, deaths, injuries, property damage, and other harms on the highway system. Some inputs/ experiences to managing physical highways can be applied to frame a roadmap for the safety and security of Information Superhighways, too.

Time for ‘Traffic Rules’

“Don’t mistake the democracy for the ballot box! The ballot box is a mechanism to find out who will make the laws for you, and what will be the laws of this country. It is not democracy by itself. The democracy is that the laws which are made by the representatives of the people, will be adhered by all the people, and will be enforced with the total strength of the might of the state,” said NSA Ajit Doval.

If the Internet is the global ‘Information Superhighway,’ then Misinformation/ Disinformation can be called the adventure/ misadventure and stunts on these highways. To control such chaos on physical highways we have the concept of Traffic Rules, Traffic Inspectors, and a well-crafted Traffic Management System, too. If anyone violates the traffic rules, then there are different provisions to deal with that like issuing the ‘challan’ to traffic rule violators, and suspension/ cancellation of their driving licence.

Some traffic rules for I-ways can be prepared by deriving inputs from this conventional approach!

A broader outline for ‘Traffic Rules’

Apart from the categories of influencers mentioned above and sponsored accounts, some common people like urban/ semi-urban and rural youth, housewives, professionals, and teenagers, also indulge in contributing to Misinformation/ Disinformation, for different reasons, i.e., entertainment/ fun, source of easy and extra income, ideological alignment, unemployment/ poverty and human behavior related aspects. And our response to deal with such cases generally falls under three broad categories: Suspension/ ban of social media accounts, enforcement of criminal charges and arrest (if a case is registered), or temporary Internet shutdown (in case of riots, mass level violence or terrorist act). But in each of these possible responses, there is always a scope for escape and special privilege, under the banner of ‘Freedom of Speech.’

Every social media post/ short/ tweet that spreads misinformation/ disinformation is paid! So, there is the need is to keep the freedom of expression intact but restrain the freedoms of earning from that expression.

How? Today every social media account is connected to a mobile, every mobile is connected to Aadhaar card, and Aadhaar card is connected to the bank account. With the help of technology and connected structure, a system can be developed, where on reporting a misinformation/ disinformation case, the bank account/ financial transactions of the originator of misinformation can be ‘frozen,’ on the click of a mouse, with immediate effect!

Now, this ‘freezing’ process can be very much similar to the process of revoking the driving licence and issuing ‘challan’ on highways, where once caught the violators are forced to go through an exhaustive legal or bureaucratic process. And that lesson becomes the lesson for a lifetime! Those whose bank accounts are frozen/ suspended will be needed to prove their cause and justify the act. If they are able to do so, their bank accounts/ financial transactions can be resumed, if not, then the long, legal and official process follows.

Only by testing such a framework in a handful of sample cases, we can minimize the violations of traffic rules on Information Superhighway to a great extent!

Conclusion

“There is always a possibility of false narratives derailing the democracy. Today it has expanded manifold because of the technology. And it becomes the responsibility of everyone, every citizen, everyone in the media, everyone who speaks, every institution, every gathering that you go to, that erode the strength of the false narrative” – National Security Advisor Shri Ajit Doval (Sardar Patel Memorial Speech, 2018).

Everything that we count as a strength of our society, culture and civilization, is our key vulnerability, too! In the coming days, attacks on the trust and will of the common people through false narratives, are only going to accelerate. So, accelerating the creative improvisations to fight them is our collective responsibility, too!

A technology that was born in the middle of a war, by the people involved in the war, to shape the outcomes of the war, and to attack the mind of enemies in the war, discussing its weaponization, is a bit naïve, and late. What best we can do now is to prepare the mind to deal with its challenges, with the same war-like spirit!

ALSO READ: Part 1: Psyche Behind the Internet, Information Superhighways

The post Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy for India appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Part 2: Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy,

“War is not an act of the will aimed at the inanimate matter, as it is in the mechanical arts…. Rather, it is an act of the will aimed at a living entity that reacts,” Prussian general and military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831).

A US tech tycoon bids ($44 billion) for a social networking platform, with a claim to protect ‘free speech’ and the function of ‘democracy’ and millions became his followers overnight, including many countries like India, ignorant of the fact that his idea of ‘democracy’ was more aligned with the ‘Referendum’ mindset of separatist and pro-Khalistani elements.

Musk has some other interesting concerns and creative solutions for the future of humanity, too (which rarely make headlines in India), such as helping humans to become ‘multi-planet species’ and implanting a ‘fit bit’ in their skulls to prepare them to fight against their ‘extinction’ from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

In April 2021, Musk’s Neuralink Corporation released a video in which a monkey was playing the video game MindPong via the Bluetooth-enabled chips inserted into his brain. The video was shared widely and propagated as a landmark step toward merging human consciousness with AI. By December 2021, Musk announced his plans to start testing his chip with the humans too. As of Feb 2022, there were reports that those tests killed 15 out of 23 monkeys, including the one that played the video game, due to ‘extreme suffering.’

Musk, the savior of humanity, also used his Starlink Internet as a weapon against Russian forces in the Ukraine War, and when told to be held accountable for his actions as an “adult” by the Russian Space chief, he immediately started playing “If I die under mysterious circumstances,” kind of tweets, which stormed the social platforms.

Such is the character of 21st-Century Cognitive Warfare! It is no more some covert or indirect operation, where Maskirovka has any role to play. It is a live stream stunt of 280 characters or 60 seconds shorts that hit directly and precisely to its targets and trigger their dopamine release, in other words, makes them ‘feel good about being targeted!

Background to psyche behind the ‘Internet’

Roscosmos (Space Corporation of Russia) chief Dmitry Rogozin stated that Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals “were delivered to the militants of the Nazi Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian Marines in Mariupol by military helicopters,” and Musk is, thus, involved in “supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment.” The use of Starlink’s Internet terminals as a weapon in the Ukraine War and a recent verbal exchange between Musk and Rogozin refreshed the memories of the Internet’s background in people’s minds.

On 4 October 1957, Soviet Union inaugurated the ‘Space Age’ with the launch of Sputnik 1 – the first artificial satellite of the world. There are enough documents that suggest that the launch of Sputnik created a big political and moral chaos in the USA and the American society’s reaction (military, government, and public combined) to the Sputnik launch is considered an important juncture in America’s history.

Circling the globe every one hour and 35 minutes, Sputnik was traveling on the north to the south orbital path that brought it over the USA, seven times every twenty-four hours, and its steady “beep beep” sound thrilled and terrified the listeners. The popular term ‘Sputnik Moment’ signifies exactly that. It is said that in many senses, Sputnik hysteria sparked the creation of the Internet.

On 7 February 1958, five months after the Sputnik crisis, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA was established to catch up with the Soviets in the space race and to lead in three key areas of research: Space technology, ballistic missile defence (BMD), and solid propellants, but very soon (by the early 1960s) it started venturing into the new research areas, including command and control.

There is no doubt that it was the urgency of war (both limited and nuclear) that led ARPA to develop a technology that Rogozin aptly referred to as ‘military communication systems,’ but when we trace the history of the Internet and its different stages of development, from Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider’s “Intergalactic Network” memo in 1963 to Al Gore’s “Information Superhighways” speech in 1994, the first question that comes to mind is what motivated the Pentagon to hire experimental psychologists like Licklider to develop the technology?

There are several historical documents like Charles Bray’s paper “Toward a Technology of Human Behavior for Defence Use” published in 1962 and Ellen Herman’s book “The Romance of American Psychology” (1995) that suggest that throughout the Cold War phase, exploring the ‘Psychology’ and human behavior aspects, was one of the key interest areas of the US military experts. Highlighting some numbers in her book, Ellen writes that “Between 1940 and 1970, the number of psychologists and psychiatrists climbed astronomically,” and “membership in American Psychological Association grew by more than 1,100 per cent, from 2,739 in 1940 to 30,839 in 1970.” She noted that “psychological experts’ rise to power was due initially to the benefits of war, World War at first and then Cold War” and “military imperatives during World War II, provided psychological experts with their first encounter with the policymakers.”

It was during this period and in this background, that the idea of the Internet was developed and Licklider and other experimental psychologist professionals contributed to its design, not to promote the ideas of liberty, democracy, equality, one world, innovation, and freedom of speech kind of fancy ideas but for the objectives of the ‘War’ and to win the ‘battles of the mind.’ Their focus was to provide solutions to loosely defined military problems from the broadest possible perspective. That generation was tasked with waging the psychological warfare, ‘man-machine’ engineering problems, experimenting with the ‘sensation and perception’ aspects and exploring the mysteries of human motivation, attitudes, and behavior.

So, this idea that wars could be won by advancing weapon technologies and killing one’s opponents was repeatedly identified as naïve and incorrect!

While on one hand, these sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and psychologists of the Pentagon tried harder to be seen as ‘scientific,’ as possible, on the other hand, they reached the conclusion that there could be no higher military priority than the “control of human subjectivity.”

It is a bit hard to imagine that if these experts from the Pentagon would have pitched their products/ ideas directly to the third countries, with a promise to help in their economic progress, children’s education, knowledge/ information sharing, and to make their democracies strong, given the track record of such claims, which country on earth would have accepted that deal!

So for Licklider’s “intergalactic network” vision to be fulfilled, the private sector’s financial support, a pinch of humanitarian approach, some democratic jargon, and the narration industry’s backing were needed, and from here the idea of “Information Superhighways” was born.

Information Superhighways

In his famous (March 21, 1994) “Information Superhighways” speech, Al Gore, the 45th Vice President of the USA said: “This GII (Global Information Infrastructure) will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel. These highways or, more accurately, networks of distributed intelligence will allow us to share information, to connect, and to communicate as a global community.” It was Al Gore who promoted the legislation that funded an expansion of ARPANET and lobbied aggressively in favor of privatization and globalization of the Internet. Gore is currently a member of Apple’s board of directors and a senior partner at venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins (the firm which has been an early investor in more than 900 high tech/social media companies in the US, including Amazon, Google, and Twitter).

In April 1994, Netscape Communications Corporation was born, and Microsoft created a web browser for Windows 95. In the same year, Amazon.com was launched as an online marketplace for books. In 1995, Yahoo was incorporated and a search engine function Yahoo search was introduced. Then came the era of Netflix (1997), Google (1998), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006).

Internet witnessed a phenomenal expansion in its new avatar, from only 16 million users in 1995 to 5 billion users (63% of the world population) in 2022. It is interesting that in their earlier pitch for Information Superhighways, Al Gore and Clinton both projected the idea as an educational tool, virtual library of the future, knowledge/ information exchange utility and virtual research facility, etc., designed to harvest local and global knowledge economy and innovation culture. But we have seen in a very short period of time, that things shifted to dating, entertainment, shopping, live streaming, social experiments, activism, psychological, and political campaigns!

“The fate of information in the typically American world is to become something which can be bought or sold.” mathematician Norbert Wiener, ‘The Human Use of Human Beings (1950).

Convenience of driving “Mass Surveillance”

In 2013, an American intelligence contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the secret wide-ranging information-gathering programmes conducted by National Security Agency (U.S. intelligence agency), and the stories of those leaks were published in The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. In the article “NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others,” published in The Guardian, (7 June 2013), it was highlighted how the NSA has obtained “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, and other US internet giants.” It revealed that “some of the world’s largest Internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing programme (code name PRISM) since its introduction in 2007.” The article says that Microsoft was the first, with a collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook, and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and, finally, Apple, which joined the programme in 2012. And “collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.”

In 2014, while interacting with Edward Snowden virtually on a Russian TV show, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is not carrying out mass surveillance programmes of the kind Snowden exposed in the USA, and “we don’t have as much money as they do in the US,” he added sarcastically. A few days later, while speaking at a media forum in St. Petersburg Putin said that the Internet was originally created as a ‘CIA project’ and “it is still developing as such.”

LifeLog Project – DARPA

In 1972, ARPA gained the ‘Defense’ prefix and was renamed DARPA, but in 1993 it reverted to its original name ARPA (as this acronym suits more to commercial applications), and finally three years later, in 1996, again renamed as ‘DARPA,’ to re-emphasize agency’s original focus. In 2002, DARPA launched the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) programme, a cognitive system to “make military decision-making more efficient and more effective at multiple levels of command.” (This research led to the launch of Siri Inc in 2007, which, three years later, was acquired by the Apple).

In mid-2003 something more interesting happened. DARPA launched an ambitious project called LifeLog, which officially was aimed at recording essentially all of a person’s movements and conversations and everything that they listened to, watched, read and bought. The idea was to create a permanent, searchable, electronic diary of the entire lives, of the entire population of the planet. LifeLog was a bit ahead of its time, it was tasked to perform everything that smartphones, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, and other apps do these days! The idea was to trace the ‘threads’ of an individual’s life in terms of events/ states/ relationships, deducing behavioral patterns from monitoring people’s daily activities, and to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees, or does.

It cannot be a mere coincidence but it is said that the exact date (3 February 2004) on which Facebook was launched, Pentagon revoked its LifeLog project!

The real log of DARPA’s fascinating research is a bit long! But the question is – after developing dozens of interesting commercial tools, where does DARPA is focusing its energy these days?

‘AI-Next’ Campaign

In September 2018, DARPA launched a multi-year investment of more than $2 billion (in new and existing programmes) called the “AI Next” campaign. According to its official statement: “AI Next builds on DARPA’s five decades of AI technology creation to define and to shape the future, always with the Department’s hardest problems in mind.” DARPA is investing in the third wave of AI to develop machines that “understand and reason in context.” In Feb-March 2019, the agency started exploring ways to improve how AI systems like Siri/ Alexa teach themselves language and the Competency-Aware Machine Learning programme too. In a nutshell, the approach is quite simple, as they often say – “the best way to avoid surprises is to create surprises.”

Stunts on ‘Information Superhighways’

“War is never merely about victory on the battlefield or the simple conquest of land; it is about the pursuit of a policy that cannot be realized in any other way than through force.” Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

There are three important elements of the idea of “Information Superhighways”: Investment, Infrastructure, and Public Participation. While the first two are in absolute control of their makers, it is the third one, which belongs to us, the rest of the world that is traveling on these highways. Without ‘Public Participation,’ a highway is of no use, be it physical or virtual and it is this third and most crucial element of Information Superhighways, which is a matter of concern for democracies around the world, too.

Misinformation/Disinformation

Misinformation/ Disinformation is one of the most popular global concerns of our time. From Musk to Obama to Kissinger to white-haired architects of Information Superhighways, a flood of ‘free speech absolutists’ and guardians of ‘democracy’ is emerging in the Western world and it seems that almost every important person on earth is nowadays issuing a ‘wake-up call’ for democracy/ humanity and fighting the battle for a ‘safer’ Internet!

“People are dying because of misinformation,” said former US president Barack Obama in a recent speech. While the EU has passed Digital Services/ Digital Market Acts, the USA is forming the “Disinformation Governance Board,” too, but despite such enormous human efforts/ concerns the information superhighway, on the contrary, is becoming more and more chaotic, unsafe, and disordered with time.

With a similar kind of urgency the world was debating terrorism and counter-terrorism, until a few years ago, it is now discussing the issues of Misinformation and Disinformation. It is important to note that global forums like the UN are yet to develop a common consensus on the definition of ‘Terrorism,’ so devising an effective strategy is a far cry.

“You cannot defeat the enemy you can’t define,” often says national security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval. Similar to the issue of terrorism, what is missing in all these global deliberations/ campaigns against Misinformation/ Disinformation is the affirmation of the basic fact that on the matters related to social, economical, religious, regional, and national consequences, spreading misinformation/ disinformation is a crime, cause of crime or a motive of the crime, and it needs to be tackled that way.

Misinformation is not a simple ‘spam,’ content that can be laughed at or ignored. In the case of India, we have seen how under the broader flag of ‘Misinformation/ Disinformation’ there are dedicated channels/ actors who promote anti-national/ anti-system and anti-establishment sentiments, and create social divide in the name of caste, community, regionalism, language identities, etc. We have seen how from abrogation of Article 370 Act to Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to Farms Laws, and even for those future bills/ moves that are yet to be drafted by the government like National Register of Citizens (NRC), a mass level damage to people and property was done, across the country, within a matter of few minutes of misinformation spread.

Last year, the number of imposed Internet shutdowns crossed over 106 in India. A few days back in May 2022, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) banned some 16 YouTube channels (under the IT Rules) for spreading misinformation on India’s national security and foreign relations matters, stirring communal discord and disturbing the law and order situation in the country. In April, MIB banned over 22 YouTube channels, and a number of similar actions were taken in the past. These channels/social media accounts usually hold millions of subscriptions/ followers and, by the time the ban is initiated, the damage is already done. A ban cannot automatically trigger a ‘delete all’ command on millions of devices where such content is already copied/downloaded. Misinformation/ disinformation spread on social media sometimes transitions to much larger audiences when picked up by traditional media – print or electronic too!

A new study by MIT scholars on Misinformation, published in 2018, found that on social media “falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude.” Many such types of research are being conducted on the issues of Misinformation and Disinformation, and they often talk about things like novelty hypothesis, transmission chain, Machiavellian intelligence/ Social Brain, laws of human nature, etc., but interestingly, none of these researches ever attempt to reach the root of the problem!

“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

If Al Gore’s ‘Information Superhighways’ analogy was right then social media platforms/ apps can be seen as the vehicles on those highways and misinformation/ disinformation as the fuel that runs those vehicles (after all, these companies make enormous profit out of misinformation/ disinformation). But then the question comes – who is sitting on the driver’s seat and who is performing stunts on the information highways?

ALSO READ: Part 2: Counter Cognitive Warfare Strategy

The post Psyche Behind the Internet,Information Superhighways appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 1)

How did that approach work in Russia-Ukraine War?

“When people speak in vague generalities, for example, and use a lot of abstract terms like justice, morality, liberty, and so on, without really ever explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something. This is often their own nasty but necessary actions, which they prefer to cover up under a screen of righteous verbiage. When you hear such talk, be suspicious,” Writes Robert Greene in “The 33 Strategies of War.”

From the beginning, the Ukraine war is a crusade for liberty/ free will and some kind of global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism for media. Global media is flooded with stories that Ukraine is such a model for democracy in the region that its mere existence makes Putin uncomfortable, and that is why he launched a brutal attack on civilian centers. In his remark on 26th March, US President Joe Biden said: “we emerged anew in the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Such narratives needed a great narrator too. Zelenskyy’s entertainment and media background combined with live-streamed propaganda (streaming 24/7 to every corner of the globe), and Russia’s complete isolation from the internet, provided NATO a cognitive weapon for which Putin had no counter. From press to social media to parliaments to diplomatic enclaves to Grammy to Oscar, the one-sided celebration of Ukraine’s heroic resistance and Zelenskyy’s Netflix-like leadership approach virtually declared Ukraine a winner in this war, no matter what may be the outcomes.

In the early hours of 24 February, shortly before the start of the war, Zelenskyy recorded an address to the citizens of both Ukraine and Russia, in which he said: “Who can prevent this (war)? People – are these people present among you? I am sure there are – public figures, journalists, musicians, actors, athletes, scientists, doctors, bloggers, stand-up comedians, Tik-Tokers, and many more – regular people.”

The overall western narrative on Ukraine and Zelensky’s position can be summed up in the lines from a recent article “Glory to You, President Zelenskyy,” published in Harvard Political Review (March 3, 2022): “Tens of millions of people worldwide have seen President Zelenskyy’s videos shared online and on television. He has harnessed the power of social media to become history’s first truly online wartime leader, bypassing traditional gatekeepers as he uses the internet to reach out to the people. His uncensored, unadulterated spirit shines through in each broadcast” and Zelenskyy, “through his tactful use of social media, has rallied the world to the cause of Ukraine.”

In the information war, the winner is unquestionably Zelenskyy but it is important to note that information is not the only front in this War!

Now the big question among the Western strategist is – how long can we keep the short-attention-span internet audience (particularly the Americans) interested and engaged in Ukraine’s real-time war series?

Weaponization of AI – A Trailer

It is not that Russia was not aware of the growing Western might on the technology front. In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement on AI made the headlines, when he said: “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind, it comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict.” And “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” Russia’s military systems are also well equipped with advanced AI capabilities including AI-enabled robotic weapons, autonomous tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), long-range strikes involving high-precision missiles, and the Russian military already use AI for intelligence gathering, C4ISR, logistics, and development of autonomous weapons.

But backed by U.S. and NATO support, Ukraine has a clear edge over AI and digital technology, particularly in the psychological and cognitive warfare domains.

Last month, in the middle of the war, a conversation between two Russian soldiers got automatically captured, transcribed, translated, and analyzed using artificial intelligence algorithms (developed by a US company called Primer). There is news that several unsecured Russian transmissions have been posted online, translated, and analyzed on social media. It is also important to note that every single tech platform and social networking site that, not just Russians or Ukrainians, but the entire globe is using to explore the War, every single platform where people talk/ share or present their views on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, have embedded advanced AI algorithms, that are recording our response/ reactions and emotions in real-time in this big laboratory of psychological experiments called the Internet.

So in a way technology has made everyone a participant (with or without our consent) in this war and from that point of view, it is indeed a kind of virtual WW III. But given the possibilities of AI weaponization in the future, it can still be called only a trailer or snapshot of the future!

From an outer view, the latest developments in Cognitive Warfare and associated psychological manoeuvres appear as matters of the Big Power game, where countries like India have some scope to remain ‘untouched’ and ‘neutral’ but the question is – Can we afford to ignore the fact that in this battle of public perception, every single user, irrespective of his/ her national/ cultural identity, knowingly or unknowingly is a potential team member of some regional/ national or global battalion, recruited to serve the interests of forces, outside our borders?

India’s National Security Concerns

Recently, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval remarked about these new trends/ shifts in approach to warfare and their possible impact on India, when he said, “The civil society is the new frontier of warfare,” and it is “the common people, their thinking, their perceptions, their sense of well being, and their perception of their own governments,” and everything that can impact the “will of the nation,” is under attack, in this new age of information revolution.

These tech platforms which made their way into the Indian market in the name of some educational activities (Amazon as an online book store), some aid in research (Google search), and occasional entertainment activities (YouTube), now become not only the source of radicalization of a large section of youth but also a significant facilitator in illicit trade and anti-national activities. Today, we have reached a situation where, whether it is some engineering graduate living in a metro city or some rural youth indulging in farming in his village, the cognitive weapons of the information revolution are capable of affecting everyone’s “wetware” irrespective of their personal/ educational/ social or professional background.

When we trace the root of the problem, we find that it all began not with computer technology and the Internet but with “Reality TV” culture, the initial platforms of psychological experiments, and what we are observing now is largely a scaling up of that culture through a more precise and targeted information weapon in our hands – the smartphone and its 24/7 streaming apps.

From Reality TV to Live Streaming

Similar to computers, Reality TV made its debut in India in the name of some singing, dancing and adventure sports/ activities, and through their auditions among the youth, they developed a mass appeal. The craft was fairly simple – putting some people under complex psychological situations and collecting the reaction of the different groups and societies, via voting lines (dial-in mobile phones or SMS). That was the beginning of an active mass engagement and an implementation of the “Persuade, Influence and Change,” frame of traditional PsyOps.

Now, these experiments are entering a new phase. The technological developments in the last few decades have accelerated the pace and reach of such entertainment products to a different level. This phase marked the full exploitation of advancement not only in the digital technology domain alone, the other complementary fields such as Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology have undergone significant progress too. It is important to note that due to absolute presence and unhindered access for over two decades, now makers of these platforms have a rich experience in analyzing the message and communication exchanged between different groups of our society too, across all regions/ cultures and age groups. Our actions, reactions, emotions, behavior, choices, likes/ dislikes, and overall psychology is nothing but bit-sized information stored in their massive data servers! As a result, their tone, flavor and craft of experiment are consistently improving and getting more precise with each passing day.

Alignment with the Youth ‘Psych’

These days YouTube is circulating and advertisement that their growing creator ecosystem contributed Rs 6,800 crore to the Indian GDP and supported 683,900 full-time equivalent jobs in India in 2020. What does that mean in simple terms?

Entertainment, gaming, dancing, music, cooking, travel, comedy, pet care, home care, self-care, talking or any other hobby or routine, is no more some leisure activity. These are the new employment opportunities for the youth and a highly rewarding career too.

Indian society is inherently outcome-oriented. When a child spends more than usual hours on something, the parent usually asks  – what’s the return? By keeping this psyche of youth and society in mind, these platforms have revamped their strategy too. Today, the more a youth spends time on social media, the more he/ she is capable to earn followers/ likes/ shares/ impressions, higher the chance of his success in life (this is what they highlighted). And when they see around, what do they find? There are several success stories, that originated from a common source! There are several influencers-cum-celebrities out there who not only have a highly rewarding career/ income on social networks but a post-retirement plan too. Several such faces can now even be seen in our regional/ national politics. And if these local examples are not sufficient then search globally – these platforms have created several success cases, for each region/ race/ color/ culture on the planet (at this moment, Zelenskyy is one such face too). On a broader level, all that makes traditional career/ education/ innovation/ discovery/ research/ engineering kind of path appear as a less attractive and less rewarding option for the young minds!

This is the psyche of our Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which are born and nurtured in this environment!

Conclusion

“Elevate yourself through the power of your mind, and not degrade yourself, for the mind can be the friend and also the enemy of the self.” (The Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, Verse 5).

From perception to change to influence to command, computer technologies’ improvisations are now entering a state for which we have a reference in our ancient texts. In Ram-Ravan Yuddh, it is said that there came a moment when Ravan invoked “Maya” (the weapon of illusion), the weapon created an illusion of reviving all the armies and their leaders already killed in the war. Then Ram was reminded by his charioteer Matali that: “In your original identity, you are the creator of illusions in this universe. Ravan has created the illusion of phantoms to confuse you. If you make up your mind, you can dispel them immediately.” It is said that then Ram invoked the weapon called “Gyaana” (wisdom) and soon the entire illusion of terrifying armies created by Ravan evaporated into the thin air.

To deal with the Cognitive Warfare’s new improvisations, India’s ancient wisdom and thousands of years of experiences of experimenting with human intelligence can show a path! If name/ fame/ greed is the focus of the approach of Western model, then ‘Tyag and Tapasya’ is a time-tested approach of Bharat. It is this approach of our great rishi munis (who were the world’s leading inventors/ explorers and scientists) which made us thrive in several human endeavours in the past!

Bharat can develop a unique counter-Cognitive Warfare doctrine of its own and a time to work in that direction has come!

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 1)

The post Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2) appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2)

Misinformation, Propaganda, Narratives, Info War, Psy Ops and other non-kinetic tactics of World War II and Cold War phase, are rapidly getting replaced by tools of the 21st Century, that are more concise, precise, targeted, and at the same time largely ‘extremist’ in their approach. These are designed keeping the continuously reducing attention span of targeted viewers and the needs of hyper-empowered ‘homo digitalis’ in mind.

In the classic war strategies, it is often said that the best deceptions are based on ambiguity, mixing fact and fiction so that one cannot be disentangled from the other. In all the previous forms of psychological operations, whether leaflets, loudspeakers, radio, print and electronic propaganda, the truth remained an important ingredient of use and the key idea was that for manipulation to be effective, it had to be based (to a maximum extent) on some Truth and Credibility, otherwise it would not work in the long run. But all that is now a thing of the past. Those strategies belong to a phase when deceptions or manipulation operations used to be some irregular events, not a 24/7 live-streamed reality! In the world of bite-sized content and streaming communications, the philosophical concepts of ‘Art of War’ have mostly been replaced by psychologically fascinating ‘Art of Lying’ and the ideas of fact, logic, truth and credibility are gradually becoming obsolete and ineffectual.

So how the future recipe of psychological experiments will taste with these new ingredients? Russia-Ukraine War offers a perfect snapshot of that future!

After over 40 days of stunning speeches and standing ovations, massive cheerleading campaigns, TikTok manoeuvres, Instagram/ Twitter/ YouTube revolutions and all-out internet invasion, some horrific images of Ukrainian civilian causalities started coming out to the surface, and the world heard the “silence of ruined cities and killed people,” as Zelenskyy rightly quoted in his Grammy award message. These images do not go well with the much celebrated “heroic victory” of the Ukrainian President, yet he shared them with the global audience with some kind of ‘guarantee’ that neither the blame nor the accountability for this whole episode would ever come to his shoulders!

After all, it is Russia, the aggressor who committed these “war crimes.” NATO partners who betrayed the Ukrainians and the rest of the world, which is unable to decide whom to side with, is further making it worse! So where is the fault of Zelenskyy in all this? He is only doing the job that best suits him, carrying the image of “servant leader” (that elected him to chair) managing public opinion/ perceptions, and giving perfect shots for this live-streamed war series, in real-time! But how do those millions of Ukrainians who turned ‘refugees’ overnight and those who lost their families and dear ones in this nonsensical campaign for “NATO membership” see all this? How they perceive the role of their social media hero President whom they elected to end the war not to accelerate it, perhaps, will never come to the light!

“Ukraine has gone from bread basket to bread line,” said UN World Food Programme Head, citing the serious humanitarian crisis in the country. According to UN reports, Ukrainians are trapped in besieged Ukrainian cities, lacking access to food, water and essential services. Interestingly, from day one of the war, providing ‘uninterrupted internet’ connectivity to civilians tops the list of priorities for the Ukrainian government. As of now, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with Elon Musk has provided over 5,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine, which are largely up and running despite missiles and cyber attacks.

From absolute internet control to weaponization of public opinion, in many ways, the Ukraine war is a classic case of 21st-century Cognitive Warfare, pilot-tested successfully!

‘Persuade, Change, Influence and Command’

“Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle is the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds,” writes Robert Greene in his book “The 33 Strategies of War” (2006).

In the middle of the Ukraine War, the White House invited selected social media influencers on a zoom call to guide them on how to educate their millions of followers spread across the world, about U.S. policy on Ukraine. The White House digital strategy director tweeted: “An astonishing amount of people are learning about the invasion of Ukraine through digital creators who have begun to cover it,” and “we take that really seriously, and are working to make sure those creators have the ability to have their questions answered.”

That in simple words was an open invitation for social media influencers to join NATO Psy Ops and Cognitive Warfare against Russia.

What is Cognitive Warfare?

“Cognitive Warfare is the weaponization of public opinion by an external entity,” for “influencing public and governmental policy” and “destabilizing public institutions,” defines NATO’s report: ‘FALL 2020 – Cognitive Warfare – An Attack on Truth and Thought.’ The study says that Cognitive Warfare is different from earlier forms in the sense that it is not limited to controlling the “flow of information” rather it is a fight “to control or alter the way people react to information.” It highlights the “power of words/ ideas and non-kinetic war,” citing how “the Soviet Union watched the collapse of the Iron Curtain,” and the impact of the power of “blue jeans and rock and roll.”

The document mentions Russia 54 times, China 20 times, and Iran 6 times, citing how these three had waged cognitive attacks against the Western bloc through misinformation/ false narratives campaigns about the Corona outbreak and what the three could do in the near future. It highlights how the combination of social media, news networks, automation algorithms, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology is paving the way for a dangerous future and talks about adopting the “defense forward” doctrine of the USA, which means “preemptively preventing and proactively searching for attacks.”

A careful look at the Ukrainian leadership approach in this war reveals that it is largely inspired by findings of such NATO reports on psychological and cognitive warfare.

Cognition refers to “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses,” and Cognitive Warfare attempts to influence this process and its internal mechanism. A recent definition comes from Oliver Backes and Andrew Swab of Harvard’s Belfer Center, in their published work in Dec 2019 that says: “Cognitive Warfare is a strategy that focuses on altering how a target population thinks – and through that how it acts.”

If we look around, from a teenager to adults to senior citizens, what are the sources for acquiring knowledge and understanding through “thought, experience, and senses,” in this Google’s system of the world?

According to a recent report “Digital 2022 – Global Overview,” there are approx 4.95 billion internet users in the world (62.5% of the global population) and 4.62 billion active social media users, who spend on an average 6 to 7 hours daily online. India comes in the list of countries where people spend more time than the average on the Web and now Gen Z (the generation born between 1997 and 2012) is the biggest target audience of these platforms. Major activities, which information prosumers (one who both consume and produce) perform online, include keeping up-to-date with news/events, watching/producing videos, TV shows/ movies/ gaming, live streaming content and chatting with family/ friends and social networks. And most importantly, all these activities they perform not with a routine mindset, there are inbuilt elements of ‘addiction’ in these algorithms that are the product of ongoing research on psychology, neurology, sociology and science of influence, designed to affect the ‘wetware’ of the human brain, which is also called the “grey matter” of the brain in which opinions/ perceptions are formed and decisions are made.

If Media is psychological and cognitive warfare’s most useful weapon then Content is its ammunition. Advanced research in the domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI), psychology and neuroscience has the potential to impact the cognitive functioning of human brains and when this potential gets leveraged for the psychological operations in real-time through a device that people carry 24/7 in their hands, the results are simply remarkable!

Zelenskyy’s Leadership Approach – a Brief Case Study on ‘Persuasion’

In the middle of the Russia-Ukraine War, Netflix decided to stream Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s political series “Servant of the People” again! It is a political TV series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stars a 30-year-old history teacher, who got unexpectedly elected as the President of Ukraine (after a video of him ranting about the corrupt system goes viral). The series, which is the product of Kvartal 95 studio (a studio founded by Zelenskyy in 2003) ran for three seasons from 2015 to 2019. It is interesting that, while the series was still on the air, in 2018, Kvartal 95 studio registered a political party similar to the title of the series “Servant of the People,” and the whole election campaign of Zelenskyy was orchestrated to establish this narration that Zelenskyy in reel life and real life was the same.

Zelenskyy ran the entire presidential campaign on a virtual mode, avoiding human contact with his electorate, and addressed his voters through YouTube shorts, TikTok and Instagram posts and garnered millions of views. There was news that he also spent a good amount of time of his campaign producing the next three episodes of the TV series. An article “The World Just Witnessed the First Entirely Virtual Presidential Campaign,” published in Politico magazine on April 24, 2019, mentions that: “He not only traded on the image of a complete outsider, he also did no face-to-face campaigning, made no speeches, held no rallies, eschewed travel across the country, gave no press conferences, avoided in-depth interviews with independent journalists and, until the last day of campaigning, did not debate.”

The article further notes that Zelenskyy’s “virtual-first strategy” allowed him to run his campaign “on general themes and vague promises and to avoid issuing detailed positions on policy issues,” and the entire campaign was focused on the “discontent with the way things are—and lambasting Ukraine’s business and political elites for making them that way.” And finally, it concludes thus, “the U.S. and the West can help ensure that the choice Ukrainian voters have taken in electing an ambitious but untested political newcomer pays off and does not plunge Europe into an accelerating conflict with Russia.”

In a nutshell, from the 2019 election to the 2022 War, the internet and Western help were always on the back of Zelenskyy, and if one keeps the virtual propaganda aside, it seems like a classic case of installing a puppet leadership!

ALSO READ: Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 2)

The post Cognitive Warfare in the Ukraine War (Part 1) appeared first on IMR.