Re: PsyWar: Enforcing the New World Order Agenda Perfectly Explained! It's About "The Battlefield Of Public Opinion". Since 2020, NATO has been pushing ahead with plans for a psychological war, which should be on an equal footing with the military alliance's five previous areas of operation (land, sea, air, space, cyberspace). NATO documents speak of “cognitive warfare”. How specific is the project, what steps have been taken so far and who is it aimed at? A point of view from Jonas Tögel. To be victorious in war, the battle for public opinion must also be won. This has been carried out for over 100 years using increasingly modern tools, so-called soft power techniques. These refer to all those psychological influence tools with which people can be controlled in such a way that they themselves do not notice this control. The American political scientist Joseph Nye defines soft power as “the ability to persuade others to do what you want without using force or coercion.” (1) Mistrust in governments and militaries is increasing, and at the same time NATO is intensifying its efforts to wage increasingly sophisticated psychological warfare in the battle for people's minds and hearts. The overarching program for this is “Cognitive Warfare” . With the psychological weapons from this program, humans themselves are to be declared the new theater of war, the so-called “human domain”. One of the first NATO documents on these plans is the essay “NATO's Sixth Domain of Operations” from September 2020, written on behalf of the NATO Innovation Hub ( IHub for short ). The authors are the American August Cole, a former journalist for the Wall Street Journal specializing in the defense industry, who has been working for the transatlantic think tank Atlantic Council for several years , and the Frenchman Hervé le Guyader . The IHub, founded in 2012, says it is a think tank where “experts and innovators from everywhere work together to address NATO’s challenges” and is based in Norfolk, Virginia, in the USA. It is not officially part of NATO, but is funded by NATO Allied Transformation Command , one of NATO's two strategic headquarters. The essay tells several fictional stories and ends with a fictional speech by the US President, who explains to his listeners how cognitive warfare works and why anyone can be involved in it: “Today's advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science, driven by the seemingly inexorable advance of the troika of artificial intelligence, big data and our civilization's 'digital dependency', have created a much more ominous prospect: an embedded fifth pillar, where everyone, without his or her knowledge, is behaving according to the plans of one of our adversaries.” The thoughts and feelings of every single person are increasingly at the center of this new warfare: “You are the contested territory, wherever you are, whoever you are.” In addition, there is a “constant erosion of the morale of the population” to complain about. Cole and le Guyader therefore argue that the human domain represents the greatest vulnerability. This operational area (“domain”) would therefore be the basis for all other battlefields (land, water, air, space, cyberspace) that need to be controlled. Therefore, the two authors call on NATO to act quickly and consider the human spirit as NATO's “sixth domain of operations”. Participatory Propaganda Former French officer and innovation manager of the IHub François du Cluzel was working on the extensive strategy paper “Cognitive Warfare” , which was published by the IHub in January 2021 has been published. Du Cluzel did not use fictional scenarios, but rather wrote a detailed analysis of the war for the minds. Like the authors of “NATO’s Sixth Domain of Operations” he emphasizes that “trust (…) is the goal.” This can be won or destroyed in information warfare or through PsyOps, i.e. psychological warfare. However, the conventional soft power techniques are no longer sufficient; what is needed is cognitive – i.e. mental – warfare, “participatory propaganda” in which “everyone takes part”. Who exactly the target of this propaganda should be remains unclear, but du Cluzel emphasizes that everyone is involved in this new form of manipulation and that it is about protecting “NATO's human capital”. The area of ​​operation refers to “the entire human environment, whether friend or enemy”. Although the enemy's cognitive warfare capabilities and threat are "still low," du Cluzel calls for NATO to act quickly and advance cognitive warfare : “Cognitive warfare may be the missing element that enables the transition from military victory on the battlefield to enduring political success. The human domain could well be the deciding factor (…). The first five theaters of operations [land, sea, air, space, cyberspace] can bring about tactical and operational victories, but only the human theater of operations can bring about the final and complete victory.” ( p. 36 ) Neuroscience as a weapon A few months later, NATO complied with the strategists' demands. In June 2021, it held its first scientific meeting on cognitive warfare in Bordeaux, France. In an anthology for the symposium, high-ranking NATO officials as well as the Innovation Hub 's strategists had their say. In the foreword, French General André Lanata thanked “our Innovation Hub” and emphasized how important it is to “exploit the weaknesses of human nature” and to wage this “battle” in “all areas of society”. It is also about involving neuroscience in the arms race (“Weaponization of Neurosciences”). It was highlighted that cognitive warfare NATO is a defense against similar warfare by China and Russia. Their “disinformation activities” led to “growing concern” among NATO allies. The symposium discussed intensively how neuroscience could be used to carry out digital attacks on human thinking, feeling and acting: “From the attacker’s perspective, the most efficient – ​​albeit most difficult – action is to encourage the use of digital devices that can disrupt or influence all levels of an adversary’s cognitive processes.” (p. 29) NATO wants to confuse potential opponents as completely as possible in order to “dictate their behavior”. (p. 29) As part of the symposium, Du Cluzel wrote an essay together with the French cognitive researcher Bernard Claverie, in which it is explained that - contrary to the claim that one only reacts to threats from Russia or China - it is also about “well to carry out well-thought-out attack processes as well as counter and preventative measures” (p. 26): “The stated goal is to attack, and to exploit, devalue or even destroy how someone builds their own reality, their spiritual self-confidence, their trust in functioning groups, societies or even nations.” (p. 27) Strategists rarely openly admit that these techniques can be used not only on enemy populations, but also within NATO countries. The statements about this often remain vague. Nevertheless, there are indications that NATO's own population is also being targeted. The French general Eric Autellet writes in an article in the aforementioned anthology (p . 24): “Since Vietnam, our wars have been lost despite military successes, largely because of the weakness of our narrative (that is, 'winning the hearts and minds'), both in relation to the local populations in the theaters of operation and in relation to our own own populations. There are two things at stake in our actions toward enemies and friends, and we can choose passive or active courses of action—or both—when we consider the limits and limitations of our model of freedom and democracy. When it comes to our enemy, we must be able to 'read' our opponents' minds in order to anticipate their reactions. If necessary, we must be able to 'penetrate' the minds of our opponents in order to influence them and get them to act in our favor. The NATO innovation competition from autumn 2021 The next step was taken by the IHub , which officially announced the NATO innovation competition Countering Cognitive Warfare in October 2021 . The Innovation Challenge has existed since 2017 and the competition has been held twice a year since then. In order to collect as many ideas as possible, NATO always emphasizes the open nature of the competition: “The challenge is open to everyone (individuals, entrepreneurs, start-ups, industry, science, etc.) who are in a NATO member country Whoever wins can look forward to prize money of $8,500. The topics are selected in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University. It is always about topics that are “particularly influential for the development of future military capabilities”, according to the motto “the best way to anticipate the future is to invent it”. The areas are: artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, space, hypersonics, quantum technology and biotechnology. The key questions of the previous competitions are therefore mixed and have very different focuses. In autumn 2018, the focus was on systems that can be used to intercept unmanned drones. The Dutch drone manufacturer Delft won here. In fall 2019, the focus was on helping soldiers with psychological stress or fatigue in order to improve performance in combat. Spring 2021 was about space surveillance. The French start-up Share My Space won here. Despite the different focuses, one topic keeps coming up: the handling of information and data on the Internet. In spring 2018, the innovation competition was dedicated to this topic under the motto “Complexity and Information Management”, in spring 2020 the topic was “Fake News in Pandemics” and in autumn 2021 “The Invisible Threat – Neutralizing Cognitive Warfare”. “Most Advanced Form of Manipulation” Shortly before this competition was advertised on the IHub website, NATO broadcast a livestream in October 2021 discussing cognitive warfare and calling for participation in the innovation competition. The task is “one of the hottest topics for NATO at the moment,” emphasized du Cluzel in his opening speech. The French defense expert Marie-Pierre Raymond took this opportunity to explain what cognitive warfare actually is, namely “the most advanced form of manipulation that exists today”. There were ten participants in the final of the competition, which was broadcast almost two months later . Eight of them had developed computer programs that use artificial intelligence to scan and analyze large amounts of data on the Internet in order to better monitor and, it is believed, predict people's opinions, thoughts and information exchange. The most popular destination for computer programs is social media: Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, Telegram. Change beliefs and behavior The winner was the US company Veriphix (motto: “We measure beliefs to predict and change behavior”), which has developed a platform that can be used to identify so-called nudges, i.e. unconscious psychological “nudges” on the Internet. The Veriphix platform has been in use for years and works with several governments and large companies, according to its boss, John Fuisz, who has close family ties to the US security apparatus. For him, cognitive warfare is the changing of beliefs (“belief change”). His software can analyze these changes "within your military, within your population and within a foreign population," as he explained to the competition's judges. Considering that Cognitive Warfare is already taking place and the most modern manipulation techniques are currently being used in the Ukraine War to direct the thoughts and feelings of the populations of all nations involved in the war, an education about the soft power techniques of Cognitive Warfare would be necessary more urgent than ever. About the author: Dr. Jonas Tögel, born in 1985, is an American scholar and propaganda researcher. He received his doctorate on the subject of soft power and motivation and is currently working as a research assistant at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Regensburg. His research interests include propaganda, motivation and the use of soft power techniques. source „Cognitive Warfare“: Die NATO plant den Krieg um die Köpfe | Von Jonas Tögel Behind Nato’s Cognitive Warfare. Battle For Your Brain Waged By Western Militaries