Cognitive Warfare Design Lab – GECKO

The concept of cognitive warfare stems from the convergence of work on the characteristics, limits and fragilities of individuals, on the one hand, and on social and cultural influences and their manipulation for war purposes, on the other.

It is anchored both in a historical reflection on the evolution of the doctrines of disinformation and manipulation stemming from the Cold War and those born from the last two decades of counter-insurgency and hybrid confrontations, as well as in the work on the militarisation of neurosciences.

Cognitive warfare, as currently conceived, is based on a number of assumptions related to the cognitive science approach to human cognition. Most research looks at cognition on an individual basis, studying how the subject processes information, listing the cognitive biases involved in errors of judgement in intelligence activities. Even when research looks at collective analysis and decision making, it does so within a narrow framework without taking into account social, cultural and organisational factors.
Although cognitive sciences have extended individual cognition to the non-human with the concept of HAT (human-autonomy teaming), they still lack the integration of contextual factors, which the collaboration between the skills of the ENSC (IMS), Inalco (ERTIM and PLIDAM) and the IRSEM aims to explore.

Thus, the GECKO project offers a new perspective by exploring cognitive warfare through the prism of collective action and inter-individual collaboration, by considering it as a socio-technical organisation and cognition as an individual but also cultural process that is very largely determined today by information and mass communication technologies. The project proposes the constitution of a tool for exploring cognitive warfare in fictitious crisis situations, involving decision-making or operational actors, both civilian and military, and aimed at operations related to national security.

Taking as a hypothesis the creation of a new field of operation centred on the human being, it will be a question of creating a device allowing experts to be placed in a controlled scenario, implementing a tool for detection and situational awareness. It will be intended for awareness-raising, training and practice, allowing both the study for the characterisation, treatment and preparation of different compliant and non-compliant cases. It will also be a place for civilian and military researchers, including engineers in training and doctoral students, working on the subject of cognitive warfare.