PLA researchers “argue that the cognitive domain is the new focus of warfare,” say RAND Corporation researcher.
The Chinese Communist Party’s military is studying “cognitive domain operations” to sow a mentality of defeat among the American people.
Researchers for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are engaging in “cyber-enabled influence operations” against the United States with the goal of influencing the U.S. population to psychologically accept surrender, according to Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.
“There is a group of PLA researchers, often focused on [influence operations], who argue that the cognitive domain is the new focus of warfare,” Beauchamp-Mustafaga said in prepared testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Thursday.
These cognitive domain operations (CDO) are meant to create “a psychological or cognitive decision to surrender,” he added.
Specifically, the tactics include the use of technologically enhanced propaganda such as AI-generated deepfakes, “synthetic information”, “information cocoons” and “precision cognitive attacks” to polarize the American people.
Beauchamp-Mustafaga said that by using these measures, the CCP hopes “to win a conflict with as little kinetic destruction as possible and force the adversary to accept defeat short of total destruction.”
The Pentagon in 2022 warned the CCP is working on “a more aggressive form of psychological warfare” intended to “affect a target’s cognition, decision making, and behavior.”
“The goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as ‘mind dominance,’ defined as the use of propaganda as a weapon to influence public opinion to effect change in a nation’s social system, likely to create an environment favorable to China and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions,” the report said.
Recent reports by Microsoft and Meta also found the CCP has been leveraging a combination of social media, paid influencers, proxy websites, and PR firms to manipulate public opinion about China.
While China is deploying 5th generation warfare against its adversaries, the Biden regime is busy keeping the southern border open and launching airstrikes in multiple Middle Eastern countries on behalf of Israel.
