Robert “Jake” Bebber
Sophisticated non-kinetic threats, such as Chinese cognitive domain operations (CDO) and Russian active measures operations, define the contemporary global security landscape and pose significant challenges to national security policymakers in the United States. These adversarial capabilities transcend traditional military engagement, targeting the cognitive processes, beliefs, and unit cohesion of an opponent to achieve military objectives, often as a precursor to the onset of hostilities. By targeting the brain itself, adversaries can potentially alter US service members’ decision-making or behavior, having a detrimental impact on their will to fight. Current understanding of brain sciences, the ubiquity of surveillance technology and big data, and algorithm-based evolving business and marketing models that condition human behavior are converging to shape global power competition in ways that may undermine the efficacy of assumptions about American power. As a result, foreign adversaries could subject the American population to a persistent state of cognitive manipulation and control. To prepare service members for this rapidly evolving environment, the Department of War (DoW), needs to adopt strategies to build critical thinking and individual resistance to persuasive cognitive attacks. This paper proposes a military training program that begins in recruit training and continues as part of regular professional military education based on information inoculation theory, a critical-thinking strategy analogous to medical immunization.
Background
During the Korean War, American social psychologist William McGuire expressed concerns about reports that Communist forces were brainwashing American service members. He suggested that because Americans lacked mental defenses against sophisticated ideological attacks, they would be more susceptible to persuasion. To counter these psychological tactics, McGuire argued for a form of cognitive inoculation that would work much like a vaccine. Conceptually, one may trace information inoculation back to Aristotle’s refutational enthymemes, the idea of preempting an argument beforehand to make one’s case. Just as a body builds resistance to viruses through previous exposure, beliefs can be made resistant to persuasive threats through pre-exposure to weakened forms of persuasion. “Cognitive vaccines” expose individuals to weakened counterarguments or manipulation strategies, prompting them to generate their own supporting arguments. Psychological inoculation can offer broad protection, especially when supplemented with “booster shots” over time, to develop a form of herd immunity.
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