How To Defend Against Cognitive Warfare
Two days ago, I did a deep dive into “nudging” and how the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) - the original infamous “Nudge Unit” - established by the UK government in 2010, has been nudging the populations of mainly Western countries. The whole story is here:
Digital Holocaust: Nudged To Commit Suicide
Nudge theory is a concept […] that proposes adaptive designs of the decision environment (choice architecture) as ways to influence the behavior and decision-making of groups or individuals. Nudging contrasts with other ways to achieve compliance, such as
The above investigation deals mainly with how our governments and the shadowy forces that control them, together with over-reaching all-powerful bureaucrats, manipulate our behaviour with psychological tricks as they please. They often act without knowledge, oversight or permission from the people they nudge - us.
I also briefly point out the dangers that hostile foreign actors could use these techniques to brainwash people into signing up for new belief systems and ideologies hostile to the democratic values of a country. The “woke movement” might be such an example. From above Substack:
Therefore, a nefarious, powerful, rich player, hostile country or organization could bypass any government if they can hire a “nudging” company and own enough media bandwidth to access their target group. An app like TikTok or X could deploy sophisticated “nudging”. It has already been done for years with commercial nudging.
It is not unthinkable that millions of people in a country could be “stolen” through sophisticated nudging and manipulated to support a different country or ideology.
Only hours after publishing, my concerns were confirmed when The Epoch Times published Infiltrating Our Minds: The Future of Cognitive Warfare.
It opens with a big bang:
“The brain is the battlefield of the future.”
And, as he tells me, no other world government is as determined to control the mind as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
This is a highly technical area, attested by the one-hour-long YouTube presentation of Professor Giordano, also the director of the Institute for Biodefense Research in Washington.
Mr. Giordano warned Americans to brace themselves for a combination of advanced psyops and further manipulation of TikTok, a wildly popular app used by 150 million Americans.
The Chinese war strategists have been considering “mind games” for a long time:
Sun Tzu, arguably the greatest military strategist of all time, spoke in great detail about the need to conquer enemies’ minds from afar, without ever drawing blood.
In a nutshell, this is their strategy:
More recently, in 2003, the People's Liberation Army, the CCP’s principal military force, identified “three battles” that must be won. The first battle involves the shaping of public opinion. Beijing wants to influence both domestic and international debates and dictate the flow of very specific narratives (Taiwan, India, U.S. relations, and so forth). The second involves psychological warfare: the need to apply the lessons of Sun Tzu—not just at home, but also abroad. The third aspect involves the use of legal warfare (lawfare): signing treaties with ally nations and influencing critical organizations such as the United Nations, World Health Organization, NATO, and so forth.
Some readers of my story “Digital Holocaust: Nudged to Commit Suicide” might think I was going too far, combining psychological nudging and Artificial Intelligence (doesn't nudge people into mass suicide based on only one known and published case so far. Fair enough. Just because it might be possible doesn’t mean it will happen. However, the Chinese worked on the nudging by AI combination for some time:
In 2020, obviously inspired by the work of Sun Tzu, a Chinese academic by the name of Guo Yunfei wrote a detailed piece describing the ways in which Beijing could conquer the enemy without ever having to fight. Targeting the brain, the scholar argued, should be considered the military’s prime objective. Coincidentally or not, Guo’s suggestion arrived at about the same time Beijing began focusing on “intelligentized” warfare, a rapidly evolving form of attack that blends more traditional forms of cognitive warfare with the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI). As I write this, China, not the United States, is leading the AI race.
The article ends with:
The wars of tomorrow won't be won by the countries with the biggest guns or the most expensive tanks; they'll be won by nations with the best tools to unlock, mold, and manipulate the human mind. The CCP plans on winning this war.
How To Defend Ourselves
With “Ourselves”, I mean each of us individually. I don’t mean us as countries (USA, UK, Australia, NZ, Canada etc.) defending ourselves against China.
Make no mistake. While I use this article and China to illustrate that “cognitive warfare is a real thing that is already happening”, I do not doubt that the good professor already advises several teams that do precisely the same as China. And so do other countries.
We also know from the COVID and Climate Change Agendas that many countries use cognitive warfare and nudging against their populations to push agendas they believe in. So do private companies and NGOs like the WEF, WHO and the UN, to name a few.
The clear, neat, nationalistic scripts of “us vs them” have been torn up, and we entered a new “wild west” where cats and dogs fight for the bones of global domination and control - politically, socially, or economically. It is a free-for-all for whoever has the money and connections to purchase the know-how (BIT nudging), the bandwidth (legacy media, alt-media, social media, etc.), the AI algorithms and start shooting at whatever cohort is deemed necessary to manipulate people to full-fill their agendas.
And we seem to be the helpless victims of it all.
So what can we do? This is just a spontaneous, brief list. Please add to it in the comments if you like.
Stop being naive. We have to stop to trust anyone by default and assume people have our best interests in mind. We have to be especially careful with suggestions and ideas from people we like, admire or put our hopes in. It doesn’t mean they are all scumbags trying to manipulate us - but no one can control us better than someone we trust. It doesn’t mean we should stop trusting people. Instead, trust has to be earned with actions (talk is cheap) - over and over again. (Elon Musk comes to mind.) Power corrupts very quickly. Someone that was trustworthy to start with can be corrupted very rapidly. We can’t let our guard down.
Accept that cognitive warfare is happening and won’t go away. We need to get knowledgeable and recognize nudging immediately when we see it. Scanning and evaluating our emotions in real time is a great skill set we can develop. Any narrative that overly evokes “negative” emotions - fear, guilt, shame, concern, angst, anxiety, anger, self-pity, self-righteousness and so forth or appeals to our sense of caring (for the planet, minorities, victims, war casualties etc.,) has to be carefully examined. Cognitive warfare might be a misnomer because it will always be the evoked emotions that will manipulate us.
We have to become more cynical and tough. We are in a war, after all. We have to get used to it. We constantly need to ask: Cui Bono? Who profits? What is the agenda here? What do they want from us and why?
Civil disobedience, whenever possible and necessary
We need to connect and communicate with like-minded people. Together, we are much stronger than alone.
We must balance our mistrust and constant suspicion with loving, nourishing relationships that deserve our trust. We must recharge our bodies, minds and souls frequently and periodically with whatever works for us. This will be a long war. Spirituality will be the most significant resource.
Your last two points 5 and 6 are more important than ever. This Israel thing pains me. Just as we were all waking up to the tyranny and working together to apply mass non-compliance, BOOM!
They divided us again. 'They' are soooo good at what they do. I sincerely hope that your message gets through to the masses mate. I for one am listening and acting, but I fear we are running out of time.
Amen. As I was reading this, I thought of someone I love who is being manipulated to destroy their life for the sake of the transgender movement. I kept thinking, "Cui Bono." Then you said it! Everything is happening for someone's benefit. Sean Hannity, wittingly or not, has become a neocon shill. Travis Kelce has become a pharma shill. Ben Shapiro has always been a Mossad shill.
The best way to deal with your own vulnerability is to periodically detach yourself from the narratives. Turn everything off. Meditate. Start observing yourself as though your higher self was hovering over your physical self and noting all the nudges, tugs, and outright pulls. Know thyself. For a good read, check out "The Untethered Soul" and open your mind to the narratives to which we all subscribe.