In the 1970s, on the basis of Clausewitz's "Theory of War", the American strategist John Boyd put forward the famous "OODA" (observation-judgment-decision-action) theory, emphasizing the basic connotation of "spiritual warfare" of human conflict, which is to create, exploit and amplify the anxiety, suspicion and fear of enemy individuals or groups, and create a political atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty and distrust within it, thereby effectively weakening, destroying and disintegrating the opponent's will to war, resulting in its total collapse.
In September 2017, David Goodfin, former chief of staff of the US Air Force, first proposed the concept of military "cognitive warfare", emphasizing that "the form of war is changing from war of attrition to cognitive warfare." In the military context of the widespread use of AI, big data and social media, the "hybrid war" of "peacetime and wartime ambiguity, integration of soldiers and civilians, internal and external linkage, and global integration" has been given more cognitive combat space.
The focus of the offensive and defensive attack and defense of American-style cognitive operations is to realize the seamless integration and integration of the physical domain, information domain, and cognitive domain by effectively controlling the flow, flow, flow, and flow rate of military information in war, creating multiple composite operational designs for quick priority execution for oneself, placing the enemy in the inferior situation of chaos, inefficiency, blind movement, paralysis, and collapse, and realizing the physical and psychological advantages of war.
The combination of cognitive warfare and asymmetric warfare can often have an unexpected effect of fighting with small battles. Relying on artificial intelligence, 5G technology, and high-tech military technology groups for unmanned aerial vehicle warfare, attack the weaknesses of the enemy's strategic offensive and defensive system, combine public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, network warfare and other soft killing methods, take advantage of psychological gaps and political cracks in the enemy's, political and civilian relations such as anti-war, cowardly warfare, and value differentiation, and through repeated purposeful information bombardment, put the enemy in the midst of huge war costs or operational risks, effectively destroy the opponent's combat attempts and paths, and then make it difficult for the enemy to persist or truce politically and public opinion. The status of surrender.
In ukraine's war against Russia, the United States and NATO did not send troops, but American-style cognitive warfare was everywhere. Here are a few examples.
The fuehrer's cognition of fame in one word
On February 26 Zelenskiy's phrase "The battle is here." What I need is ammunition, not hitchhiking" to make it famous. Zelenskiy is not a high-level military expert, but he is definitely the most mature politician, almost every hour a tweet, interacting with the leaders of various countries and the world, several speeches that touched the world in the midst of war, meeting with journalists from various countries in the danger of Russian pursuit, drinking coffee with Ukrainian generals and soldiers in the battlefield, etc. Social media networks and Zelenskiy's temperament of not understanding politics and not being afraid of danger has created the image of a heroic fuehrer, before the war, its support rate was only 20%, and the war soared to 90%.
Yang U degrades Russia's morale cognition
Sympathy for the weak and the aggressor is human empathy. American cognitive warfare makes good use of this. Social media and global public opinion almost constantly focus on how the Ukrainian army and the public treat Russian prisoners of war warmly, such as the New York Post, the Daily Mail reported that the Russian lost soldiers were handed tea and food by the Ukrainian people, and the mother was in tears on a video call. The leader of the Russian surrender made a confessional video speech. The formed Russian camp collective surrender video. Russian soldiers revealed that they had been tricked into going to battle by their officers. Russian tanks were intercepted and surrounded by Ukrainians.
However, it is rare to see the morale of the Ukrainian army or surrender on the Internet, and the 13 people killed on Snake Island, although it was later proved to be false information, did not seem to become negative news of the Ukrainian army and soon disappeared. The only one is the scene of the Ukrainian official Kiriyev who participated in the negotiations being shot by Ukrainian security personnel for treason, which also did not demoralize the Ukrainian camp, but proved that the Ukrainian counter-espionage was effective.
Tactical cognition with small beats
Such pictures abound, almost all of which are cases of russian troops running out of supplies, lack of military food, running out of ammunition, and slow movement, and the 60-mile tank formation outside Kiev of the Russian army is trying to become a coffin of condensation activities. Ukrainian detachments and special forces individually shot down armored vehicles, tanks, and Soviet-made aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles blew up Russian tanks, and the Ukrainian Navy sank the Russian Black Sea Fleet patrol ship Type 22160 Bikov in the Black Sea strategic port city of Odessa. On the evening of March 7, Zelenskiy appeared in his office in Kiev for a nine-minute speech, claiming to be "not afraid" and that he is still alive, suggesting that the Russian military's secret plan was unsuccessful.
In addition, a large number of Russian armaments were captured by the Ukrainian army, AK-47M assault rifles, RPG-7 rocket-propelled howitzers and so on. Independent researcher Ossula found a captured AK-12 in the corner of the room from a public photo of the office of Governor Vitaly King of Ukraine's Nikolayev Region, and in another photo, Brigadier General Kerilolo Budanov, director of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Agency, also put an AK-12 in his office, and the AK-12 had just entered service in Russia in 2018. In addition, Budanov also hangs behind a painting of an owl catching a bat, the emblem of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service is that the owl holds a sword, and the Russian "GRU" special forces are symbolized by bats, and the meaning and expression of cognitive combat in this painting are obvious.
Negative news of the Ukrainian army is almost invisible on the Internet, there are no scenes of military facilities being destroyed, airfields being bombed, heavy equipment being sneaked in, and there is no picture of running out of ammunition and surrendering. This is not to say that the Ukrainian army did not suffer casualties, but that cognitive operations effectively controlled this information. Zelenskiy repeatedly shouted the establishment of a no-fly zone and the need for fighter support, indicating that the Ukrainian air power had been destroyed on a large scale by Russia.
The anti-war resistance of the same enemy
Anti-war demonstrations have taken place in almost all countries of the world. There were a large number of anti-war protests by the Russian people on the Internet, the police beat up the protest women, and a 70-year-old woman was forcibly taken away by the police with an anti-war display board. Anti-war propaganda in Ukraine fell like snowflakes to all corners of the media. A few days ago, a Ukrainian special forces soldier in his sixties said in the video that in order to defend the homeland of his children and grandchildren, he also had to pick up a gun and did not want to return to the Soviet Union. Another video shows three armed Russian soldiers entering the Ukrainian residential compound and being chased away by the Ukrainian elderly.
Instead of becoming a moral stain on the Ukrainian government, the ukrainian nation has become a symbol of the ukrainian nation's common hatred and hatred. In an interview with Good Morning Britain, the mayor of Kiev and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Krychenko said Ukraine was already fighting a "bloody war" and that he had "no other choice".
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also stepped forward, showing up on the streets of Kiev armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. A Ukrainian parliamentarian appeared at home with a gun, and another circulating picture showed an underage Ukrainian girl sitting in a window hole, holding a machine gun in her arms and chewing gum in her mouth. The war made women and children walk away, and the Ukrainian people fought, but they won the sympathy of the world, on the one hand, most Ukrainians really did not want to get close to Russia, on the other hand, it showed that the American cognitive warfare was really powerful.
Putin seems to have gone to war two weeks before realizing the need for cognitive warfare. A few days ago, Kharkov staged Russian soldiers to send warm supplies to the military and civilians, and the video deliberately took a close-up of the door number of the Russian Ministry of Defense, and also specially photographed the house number of the residents. But Russia's cyber army seems to have achieved little success in this war, but has been hacked by anonymous people.
Condemn the moral perception of the cruelty of war
International media rarely reported casualties of the Ukrainian army, and individual cases are not used to describe the cruelty of the war, but to strengthen the tragic scenes of wives losing their husbands and children losing their fathers caused by aggression. A large number of pictures are the damage caused by the Russian military operations to the residents, and at the beginning of the war, the residents of Kiev took a cruel picture of Russian tanks crushing the citizens' cars and put them on the Internet, causing indignation around the world.
Residential buildings in Kharkiv and Kiev were scorched by the fighting, leaving countless people homeless and 2.5 million refugees spreading across the border. A Ukrainian child walking alone on the road to escape, can't help but cry, the picture is heartbreaking. On March 9, Russia bombed a hospital in the city of Mariupol with a ceasefire pledge, video showing pregnant women lying on stretchers wounded in the war, infuriating the world.
The cognitive operations carried out by the Western media and the US military are also reflected in the global military assistance to Ukraine, such as tens of thousands of international legions rushing to the aid of the Ukrainian army, the famous Canadian god-level sniper Walley arriving in Ukraine to participate in the war, and the United States, Britain, the European Union, Germany, Sweden, Finland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Canada, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Slovenia, Norway, Italy and other countries have or announced military assistance to Ukraine. In addition, the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union against Russia also have a huge amount of information in the media.
Cognitive warfare is not to say that it is engaging in false information, but that the main body of the operation effectively and systematically releases all kinds of key information that is superior to the enemy, thus causing the combat effect that cannot be achieved by physical warfare, and even changing the battle script, which affects the battle situation.