Words as Weapons: The 21st Century Information War

Abstract

Historians and scholars are already defining the twenty-first century as the century of post-truth and it is shaping up into an era where objective facts have lost merit and, instead, are replaced by appeals to personal beliefs and emotions. George Orwell forecasted this 72 years ago in his dystopian novel 1984. While propaganda has been utilized for centuries, cognitive hacking or the weaponization of information has subtle nuances that make it disturbingly different. Cognitive hacking includes the mass delivery of conspiracy theories and intentional lies with the desired effect that the receivers of the information take action, often through likes and shares on social media, sometimes with violence. Advances in computing and global hyper-connectivity through social media have empowered algorithms capable of profiling a user’s preferences and placing the user in information silos ultimately changing the thinking of the individual it targets. Global powers including Russia and China have worked to hone their capabilities to exploit individual and group cognitive processes to achiever their desired ends. The psychological domain is in need of cognitive security.