Cognitive Warfare as Part of Society

Curator note

The West has been a target of Russian influence campaigns for over a decade. It is easy to get a false impression that the extensive use of propaganda and psychological warfare is an exception to the rule. However, that would be a fallacy, as information has been a key warfare component throughout History.1 It is vital to realize that “the long peace”2 after Second World War was not, in fact, peace, let alone a new norm in international relations. Various tools of information warfare, including psychological operations and propaganda, have never stopped being used. Jacques Ellul argued that propaganda is a social phenomenon that grows within society and is intrinsically intertwined with it.3 His notion that any technological society will always have to coexist with propaganda is alarming. In recent years, a new concept has emerged and is even described as the sixth operational domain – Cognitive Warfare (CW).
Advancements in technology and sciences, such as neuroscience and psychology, lead to new possibilities for influencing the human brain.5 Ellul’s thesis of propaganda being an inseparable part of any technological society6 paints a bleak future when combined with the new tools utilized by CW unless it is acknowledged and treated as such