China’s ‘cognitive warfare’ program – American Thinker

A reader who must remain anonymous calls our attention to an article in the Times of India, written by S.D. Pradhan, whose biographical information lends credibility to his analysis of what he calls China’s “neuro-strike” warfare:

S D Pradhan has served as chairman of India’s Joint Intelligence Committee. He has also been the country’s deputy national security adviser. He was chairman of the Task Force on Intelligence Mechanism (2008-2010), which was constituted to review the functioning of the intelligence agencies. He has taught at the departments of defence studies and history at the Punjabi University, Patiala. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, US, in the department of arms control and disarmament studies.

Our reader comments:

I’m a cognitive psychologist by PhD training, and I find this report from the Times of India to be quite credible. I think our current national political crisis was plausibly shaped by such cognitive warfare.  Tiktok content for non-Chinese children is one example, but there are many.

The article quotes of CCP doctrine seems likely enough. The US does similar things, I believe, but the radicalization and subversion of US politics seems consistent with CCP asymmetric war aims.

Here are some key excerpts, but the entire article is available without a paywall here.

A worrisome dimension of the Chinese weapon programme relating to the weaponisation of public opinion in target countries has been confirmed by a twelve-page report of US researchers. The report entitled “Enumerating, Targeting and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party’s NeuroStrike Program” indicates that China has developed a new type of neuro-strike weapons that are not only capable of disabling the cognitive capabilities of targets but can also control their brains. These weapons can cause neurological problems in a human, reduce his awareness, and tamper with the brains of soldiers in battle. NeuroStrike, as defined by McCreight- a well-known expert on cognitive warfare, refers to the engineered targeting of soldiers’ and civilians’ brains using distinct non-kinetic technology to impair cognition, reduce situational awareness, inflict long term neurological degradation, and fog normal cognitive functions.

My amateur translation of this is that they are messing with our brains, on a large scale, with a well organized long-term plan intended to impair our mental abilities.

The report points out that China’s weaponisation of neuroscience extends well beyond the scope and understanding of classical microwave weapons; it now includes using massively distributed human-computer interfaces to control entire populations as well as a range of weapons designed to cause cognitive damage. Sources of resistance against China can be eliminated through these weapons by instilling intense fear or other forms of cognitive incoherence resulting in inaction. 

The Academy of Military Medical Sciences has a division called the PLA Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, where such weapons are manufactured. This institute was placed on the United States export control blacklist in December 2021 with its leading role in CCP NeuroStrike research serving as a key justification. 

China has been working for a long time to evolve a strategy to win wars without fighting adversaries, in accordance with Sun Tzu’s dictum. In late 1990s, China came up with its “No Contact Warfare” strategy, which was based on creating confusion in the adversary’s command and control system. In 2014, it came up with its ‘Three Warfares Strategy’ comprising psychological warfare, media warfare, and legal warfare to achieve its objectives. Broadly, the objectives of this strategy are to seize the “decisive opportunity” for controlling public opinion, organise psychological offence and defence, engage in legal struggle, and fight for popular will and public opinion. 

As an amateur observer, this all strikes me as consistent with what we have observed.

The US National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, in its July 2022 report, reveals the extensive PRC activities to manipulate the US state and local leaders to support the policies that are favourable to the PRC and CCP in accordance with the strategy of “using the local to surround the central”. Exploiting the independence enjoyed by the local leaders from Washington, the PRC tries to exploit this to turn them into “its proxies to advocate the policies that Beijing desires.”

I recommend that you read the whole thing.  It is not dauntingly long, and it resonates with my own observations of the current situation.