The Epoch Times – Chinese Military Studying ‘Cognitive Attacks’ Against US Population

03 Feb The Epoch Times – Chinese Military Studying ‘Cognitive Attacks’ Against US Population

Posted at 12:00h in A C W T Statements by

The Epoch Times is a welcome new voice in journalism.  It is decidedly not a legacy media parrot.  Its coverage of China and the CCP is always thought-provoking (see below).

History will someday show that the 2020’s were characterized by extraordinary efforts at mental manipulation through ‘government’ campaigns of propaganda (aka, lies).

From “Trump is ray-ciss!”; to the Russia collusion hoax; to a manufactured impeachment for attempting to expose US/Ukrainian corruption; to a manufactured pandemic to enable election theft by mail-in ballot and force mRNA injections into billions of innocent, fearful people; to a brazenly, electronically stolen 2020 election followed by a fed entrapment/false flag operation known as the J6 ‘insurrection’; to an armed invasion masked by compassionate open borders policy; to a climate change hoax designed as the preeminent tool to impose godless socialism and totalitarian control of all mankind…the list goes on and on.  They show a federal and would-be global government grounded in the belief that people are stupid animals and must be controlled by the superiors among us.

All of this is antithetical to the divinely inspired founding principles of the United States of America…principles which exalted man’s relationship to his Creator as supreme relative to his relationship to the institutions of human government.  The founders would fiercely revolt at the deliberate manipulation and deceit practiced by the Deep State.

The CCP is a foreign version of the same Deep State thinking and may be even more determined to wield manipulative control over humanity.  The Epoch Times is sounding the warning below.  Be alert; do not consent to being manipulated and controlled.  That is implicit in the God-given inalienable right to liberty.

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Chinese Military Studying ‘Cognitive Attacks’ Against US Population

Researchers in China’s military are studying how to use influence operations to sow discord abroad and encourage a mentality of defeat in the United States, according to one expert.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), are engaged in “cyber-enabled influence operations” against the United States and looking to further expand their capability for disruption, 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,” Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga said in prepared testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Feb. 1.

Such “cognitive domain operations,” or CDO, are ultimately aimed at encouraging “a psychological or cognitive decision to surrender,” he added.

Thus, by leveraging technologically enhanced propaganda, like AI-generated deepfakes, the regime hopes “to win a conflict with as little kinetic destruction as possible and force the adversary to accept defeat short of total destruction.”

China Preparing ‘Cognitive Attacks’ Against US

Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga outlined how researchers associated with the PLA have expressed interest in using “inauthentic content,” which they refer to as “synthetic information,” to coordinate “precision cognitive attacks” against adversaries.

These precision attacks are unique to other forms of CCP propaganda in that they are “specifically tailored or even personalized against small groups or individuals.”

As part of this effort, Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga said the PLA was researching how to reinforce “information cocoons,” or echo chambers, to deliberately polarize and divide American society to detract from “mainstream [Western] values” and isolate individuals psychologically.

Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga added that it was difficult to say how far the regime has yet gone to implement the researchers’ suggestions and that such ideas may be limited to certain scholarly circles associated with the PLA.

His findings, however, are consistent with reports documenting an increasing tempo and granularity in CCP influence operations.

One such report, published by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, found that the CCP pivoted into a new phase of influence operations in 2022, characterized by the creation of targeted messaging for well-defined audiences that were segmented based on granular demographic data.
Likewise, a declassified report from the director of national intelligence found widespread CCP-backed influence operations targeting the 2022 midterm elections.
Such operations included retaliation against U.S. lawmakers deemed a threat to the regime, the promotion of divisive content, and the impersonation of American voters online.

Throughout this effort, according to separate reports published by Meta and Microsoft, Chinese law enforcement covertly used social media, proxy websites, paid influencers, and public relations firms to manipulate U.S. public opinion about China.

To that end, the Pentagon has suggested that the CCP seeks to launch increasingly sophisticated cognitive attacks in an effort to achieve “mind dominance” over potential adversaries, including the United States.
The Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report (pdf), which distills the Defense Department’s most authoritative assessments of China’s strategy and capabilities, summarized the regime’s CDO efforts as “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.