The Art Of Phychological Warfare

Summary. Editor's Note Psychological warfare, the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups, was once an afterthought, but it is now the primary battleground in modern-day wars. While psychological operations have long formed part of military strategy, modern tools now allow adversaries to target human cognition at an unprecedented scale and level of precision. Today, our attention is being harvested, our biases are being weaponized, and our sense of reality is being systematically dismantled, not by armies, but by algorithms. That's why psyops are fast emerging as a strategic concept that frames human cognition as a “sixth domain” of competition, alongside land, sea, air, cyber and space. In the following piece, the writer discuses the threats being posed to the existing world order by psychological warfare.