Cognition is the process in which people acquire, process and apply information and knowledge. At present, cognitive domain has gradually become a new battlefield for competition, and cognitive wars have gradually received attention from all countries. With the development of the scientific and technological revolution and the expansion of war practice, cognitive warfare is showing an accelerated evolution trend.
Cognitive technology is becoming the basic driving force for the evolution of war. Technology changes the form of war and also changes the way cognitive warfare. If the large-scale popularization of information networks has promoted the information domain to become a combat domain and the exponential growth of data and network scale is a sign of the maturity of information domains, then the large-scale application of cognitive technology and the continuous iterative development of cognitive technology will become a symbol of promoting the maturity of cognitive wars. Future technologies such as cognitive environment, cognitive perception, cognitive control, artificial intelligence , will reflect the possible transformational impact of cognitive technology on social cognitive confrontation and military cognitive confrontation. Human beings are entering the era of national communication, and global cyberspace is being incorporated into a high degree of linkage. The Internet has become a combat space for comprehensive game between state actors and non-state actors. The disputes of communication and the war of communication have become part of the highly intense military action level. At present, major countries in the world are laying out the forefront of cognitive technology and carrying out cognitive technology competitions. Through modeling and analysis, they seek to penetrate and control the human brain network, information network and social network; through deep computing, actuarial computing, and wonderful computing, they aim to maximize the control of people's cognitive world and cognitive domain.
cognitive field is becoming an important battlefield for hybrid warfare. In the intelligent era, human communication methods are undergoing complex and profound changes. Offline communication gives way to online communication, various new media platforms have become the main channels for the public to understand the battlefield, and large social platforms have become the main battlefield for cognitive game struggle. Therefore, the combat domain of war in the future will continue to expand, the space domain will expand from land, sea, space network to deep space, deep sea, and deep ground, while the logical domain will expand from physical domain to information domain and cognitive domain. War is no longer limited to the substantive threat of traditional wars, but is turning to the social awareness threat brought by mass media and technological progress. Blockade and anti-blockade, dominance and anti-dominated around communication platforms will become the focus of cognitive warfare, and using information as ammunition to compete for international discourse control has become the main way of cognitive confrontation today. From the perspective of mixed warfare, ideological propaganda and indoctrination, infiltration of values and culture, traditional public opinion psychology, legal offensive and defense, and information network warfare have all become important aspects of cognitive warfare. Hybrid wars can achieve the goal of small battles or even victory without fighting through comprehensive game means such as cognitive warfare. Offense and defense in the cognitive field will be an uninterrupted and normalized struggle, and combat effectiveness will continue to accumulate and be gradually released.
cognitive advantages are becoming the winning advantage of high-end wars. Freedom of movement in war is the lifeblood of the army. From a cognitive perspective, the deeper the understanding of the battlefield environment and combat opponents, the more free the action and the greater the relative advantage. However, with the exponential growth of combat data in the war, commanders began to face the cognitive dilemma of data swamp, data fog, and data overload. Having an information advantage does not mean having a cognitive advantage. An important military application direction of artificial intelligence technology is to process massive data in real time to help commanders get rid of cognitive overload and quickly form cognitive advantages. In intelligent war, cognitive advantages will lead decision-making advantages, and decision-making advantages will lead action advantages. Cognitive advantages have 4 key indicators: stronger information acquisition ability, faster artificial intelligence machine learning speed, more effective emergencies processing ability, and higher ability to develop and apply new technologies and new knowledge. For example, public opinion warfare, which is characterized by data-driven intelligent communication, has been highly coordinated and integrated with traditional military operations. This kind of combat style of virtual and real has stronger combat effectiveness than simple military operations, which has fundamentally changed the traditional combat mode. The linkage and superposition of cognitive advantages will accelerate the transformation of combat effectiveness and become the fundamental advantage of winning the war.
cognitive theory is becoming the forefront of winning wars. Cognitive warfare is a combination of soft power and hard power, and is an important factor affecting national security in today's era.At present, the competition for cognitive space is fiercely for infiltration and reverse osmosis, attack and counterattack, control and counterattack, and cognitive scientific theories are entering the military field. Concepts such as cognitive load, cognitive enhancement, cognitive immunity, and cognitive subversion have appeared at high frequency in the field of cognitive war research abroad. Foreign military believes that the cognitive domain is the "sixth combat domain" of human war, the core of the "interleaved conflict area" in the era of competition between great powers, and an important direction for future military theory innovation. Obviously, cognitive warfare has become a strategic commanding height for winning future wars, cognitive theory has become a frontier field of theoretical innovation, and cognitive technology will accelerate the promotion of cognitive warfare and become an important "detonation point" of the intelligent military revolution. Since new technologies, new theories and new styles of cognitive warfare are being incubated at an accelerated pace, wars may present a surprising new situation in the future.
Original title: Perspective cognitive war evolution trend
Source: PLA Daily
Author: Li Minghai
