Defense One
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Like the U.S. military, the PLA is working on wearable sensors and other ways to hone and maintain troops’ fighting spirit.
China’s military is increasingly at work on wearable technology and a dedicated psychological support system to win at what it views as the crucial space of cognitive warfare—manipulating enemy troops’ state of mind to shape their behavior and hardening its own forces against such efforts.
“In future cognitive domain operations, the influence of rational factors such as science and logic on individual cognition is likely to be weakened, and cognitive confrontation may become a contest of emotions,” says one recent article in PLA Daily. “The rapid development of intelligent technology is changing the logic of information dissemination in an all-round way, making the impact of information on thinking and consciousness more profound and comprehensive, and human brain cognition has truly risen to an important field of military confrontation.”
Cognitive domain operations seek to capture the mind of one’s foes, changing the thoughts and perceptions of an adversary to shape their decisions and actions. As another People’s Liberation Army outlet describes, a cognitive attack aims to “use an “invisible hand” to control the opponent’s will, making the opponent feel “I can’t” and “I dare not,” and then achieve the effect of “I don’t want to.”
