Appendix 328: Cognitive Warfare: The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone (2024)

Cognitive Warfare The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone

By Michael J. Cheatham, Angelique M. Geyer, Priscella A. Nohle, and Jonathan E. Vazquez (2024)

The sphere of operations will expand from the physical domain and the information domain to the domain of consciousness; the human brain will become a new combat space.

—He Fuchu, Vice President of THE Pla’s Academy of Military Sciences

Cognitive warfare degrades the capacity to know, produce, or thwart knowledge. Cognitive sciences cover all the sciences that concern knowledge and its processes (psychology, linguistics, neurobiology, logic, and more). Cognitive warfare is, therefore, the way of using knowledge for a conflicting purpose. In its broadest sense, cognitive warfare is not limited to the military or institutional world. Since the early 1990s, this capability has tended to be applied to the political, economic, cultural, and societal fields. Any user of modern information tech-nologies is a potential target. It targets the whole of a nation’s human capital.

Photos and Figures with captions

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jackson Wilkie, defensive cyberspace warfare operator with Delta Company, 3rd Radio Battalion, III Marine

Marines and civilians with Marine Corps Cyberspace Warfare Group and Marine Corps Cyberspace Operations Battalion participate in Cyber Flag 23-2 at undisclosed location, August 7, 2023, to enhance readiness and cyber warfare capabilities (U.S. Marine Corps/Oneg Plisner)

Expeditionary Force Information Group, monitors enterprise network for digital threats, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, April 8, 2024 (U.S. Marine Corps/Bridgette Rodriguez)

Source: Jeffrey Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Seeks to Wage

Airmen of 16th Air Force perform command and control of 16th Air Force Forces in 616th Operations Center, Joint Base San Antonio–Lackland, Texas, November 22, 2023 (U.S. Air Force/Sharon Singleton)

Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Cheatham, USAF, is Deputy Director of the Joint Staff Security Office. Commander Angelique M. Geyer, USCG, is Chief of the Operational Planning Section at the U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area. Lieutenant Colonel Priscella A. Nohle, USA, is a Future Warfare Strategist at NATO Allied Command Transformation. Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan E. Vazquez, USAF, is the Collection Management Branch Chief and Asia-Pacific Chief Collection Planner in the Joint Staff J26 Deputy Directorate.