03/16/2023
John Sahhar [john@ok-john.us]
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Abstract
NATO has concluded that Cognitive Warfare (CW) is the sixth dimension of war. Current literature defines CW as “the weaponization of public opinion, by an external entity, for the purpose of (1) influencing public and governmental policy and (2) destabilizing public institutions” [Bernal et.at. 2020].
I find the current definition to be subjective, narrow and unsuitable given the broad scope and nuance of such a topic. This paper redefines Cognitive Warfare (CW) in a simple and elegant way which covers all the potential use cases of CW.
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Definition
At every moment in Time (t) all Matter (m) exists in some State (s) with a Number (n) of Edges (e) each pointing to a new State (s) and weighted by some Probability (p) that the Matter (b) will enter State (s). Event - Any shift of Probability (p) or State (s) for discrete Matter (m) at a discrete Time (t). Cognitive Warfare Operation - A weaponized Event (e) created and executed by a Controller (c). Controller - Any entity that coducts CWOs. Cognitive Warfare - One or more Controller(s) conducting CWOs.
Formal Definitions
Any Event e is defined as: e = (m, p, s, e[0..n], t) The Target State (ts) of any Cognitive Warfare Operation (CWO) is the State of some Matter (m) in which the CWO attempts to influence m into. The actual result of the CWO is a New State (ns). Therefore, we define a CWO as follows: CWO(e, ts) -> ns The success or failure of any CWO is defined as: CWO(e, ts) -> ns == ts
type (
Matter struct {
S []*State // A given state.
PS *ring.Ring // Potential States.
}
State struct {
V []byte // value.
P float64 // probability.
}
Event func(m *Matter) *Matter
)
Controllers, Stances & Posture
A Controller is anyone who conducts CWO's, they exist on a spectrum of
Harmful to Helpful. Harmful and Helpful are referred to as Stances and
the position on the spectrum of any Controller is referred to as Posture.
A Harmful Controllers seek to harm a target through CWO's.
A Helpful Controllers seek to help a target through CWO's.
While I define two Stances for a controller one could expand the notion
to consist of many Stances and the Posture of a controller could be
represented as some N-Dimensional value instead of a linear one.
Why matter?
Why did I choose matter as the target of CW instead of something like
living beings? Because all matter can have the probability of its potential
states influenced.
Imagine a person with anger issues and a few holes in their wall, now that
wall has potential states of 1) no holes 2) another hole(s). A Cognitive Warfare
Operation models both the person and the wall.
Let's say we are the Adversary and our goal is to add another hole into that wall.
We happen to know our Target is waiting for a large payment from the government which
is months overdue. We stalk our Targets mailbox, removing the check as soon as it's
dropped off. Our Target checks the mail, seeing the lack of a check, punches another
hole in their wall.
This was a succesful CWO.
Application
To make this more clear; let's model a real world scenario in which our target (Kelly) will have probabilities adjusted by an adversary (Kat). Let's model Kelly's day in the aforementioned graph wherein decisions are the vertices and edges are the probability of any given decision being selected.
Kelly
(b)
───────
p=0.666
┌────────┬┐
│ Snoozes││
│ Alarm ││
└────┬───┴┘
│
│ p=0.300
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────────┬┐
│ Event │ │ Gets out ││
├───────┼─────┤ of the ││
│ Alarm │ │ bed ││
└───┬───┘ └──────────┴┘
│
│
┌────┴───┬┐
│ Drinks ││
│ Water ││
└────────┴┘
p=0.144
──┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬──
│ │ │ │ │
00:00 06:00 06:15 06:30 06:45
time (t)
Now let's model the night before, where our evil adversary Kat used cognitive warfare to change the probabilites of Kelly's above morning decisions. Let's imagine that Kelly and Kat are a few drinks in when Kelly decides to go to the bathroom. Kat, with the goal of modifying Kelly's morning probabilities spikes Kelly's drink with a savage dosage of an illicit stimulant. She then leans over to the couple sitting next to them at the bar, asking them to dare her friend to chug her drink when she comes back. Upon Kelly's return to the bar the couple follows orders and Kelly ingests all the illicit stimulant as Kat decides to leave the bar. Now let's look at the new probabilities of Kelly's morning.
Kelly
(b)
───────
p=1.000
┌────────┬┐
│ Snoozes││
│ Alarm ││
└────┬───┴┘
│
│ p=0.000
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────────┬┐
│ Event │ │ Gets out ││
├───────┼─────┤ of the ││
│ Alarm │ │ bed ││
└───┬───┘ └──────────┴┘
│
│
┌────┴───┬┐
│ Drinks ││
│ Water ││
└────────┴┘
p=0.000
──┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬──
│ │ │ │ │
00:00 06:00 06:15 06:30 06:45
time (t)
We can see that Kat has succesfully altered Kelly's morning by shifting the probability of Kelly getting out of bed or drinking water down to zero. Let's model this programmatically. When an Adversary conducts a Cognitive Warfare Operation (CWO) that shifts the probability of their desired event for a target to zero it is called an Absolute Shift. Ultimately, the goal of all CWOs events to 1.000, guarenteeing the Now there are many aspects we could look at here that Kat did well; first she retained deniability by asking the couple to dare Kelly, secondly she used a