Bill Gertz
A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared that subduing your enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. China is closer to realizing that goal through new weaponry and capabilities that Beijing calls cognitive warfare.
China’s most recent experience with large-scale war was more than 70 years ago in Korea. Waves of troops were sent into battle against better-armed U.S. and allied forces. The result was a slaughter. The People’s Liberation Army lost 400,000 to 1 million soldiers.
The PLA is no longer planning human wave military attacks. Instead, many of its researchers are working on advanced warfare capabilities that combine high-technology hardware with biotechnology research focused on the human brain.
The goal, driven by the ideology of Chinese-style Marxism-Leninism, is nothing less than world domination and a global populace under the control of China’s communist regime, said analysts and specialists who have studied Beijing’s leaders.
Cognitive warfare experts interviewed for this report cited evidence that China has embraced the development and eventual use of weapons designed to affect the mind. Potential targets range from troops and commanders of adversarial militaries to entire civilian populations.
Most details of the work on Chinese cognitive warfare are closely guarded U.S. government secrets, but clues first surfaced officially in December 2021, when the Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security announced sanctions against the PLA’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 related Chinese research institutes.
Commerce banned U.S. companies from doing business with the labs, which were working on biotechnology, including “purported brain-control weaponry,” on behalf of the Chinese military.
That unspecified effort triggered national security sanctions.
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