20th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum – Neurocognitive Warfare – includes psychological and biological weapons (including Havana syndrome) / Dual use of AI/5G/cybersecurity security threats
The Second Panel discusses neurological warfare. Director of Global Public Sector at SAS, Dr. Steve Bennett, starts the conversion. He opens with famed Pokémon Pikachú. Upon displaying the
animated, little yellow creature, Dr. Bennett then delves into Pokémon GO, a popular, virtual reality mobile app from a few years ago. In his analysis, he draws to the “Don’t Shoot Us” movement within the app. Dr. Bennett explains how figures linked to the Kremlin hijacked the movement, promoting that players trek to controversial sites of police killings. On top of encouraging attendance to the sites (often filled with protests and riots), the Kremlin-backed “Don’t Shoot Us” group encouraged players to rename their Pokémon after the names of the victims of the sites. Dr. Bennett explains that the Kremlin is well-informed of race relations and conflict raging in the USA, especially at the time of the app’s release; therefore, Russia used and continues to use discreet neurological warfare with such topics in order to cause separation in the United States. Social media is their go-to in such situations.
After Dr. Bennett’s opening example, he enters the meat of his argument – Putin and the Kremlin try their best to infiltrate our democracy and culture at any cost. He insists, though, that though Russia tried to hack the USA’s voting systems in the 2016 elections, they failed to do so. Instead, they relied on methods such as the example of neurological warfare mentioned above.
To conclude his presentation, Dr. Bennett introduces some key policy actions. Democratic nations need to recognize the material threat that modern psychological operations present to freedom, and democratic nations need to commit to effective citizen engagement and information sharing. Also, such nations can use advanced tools (analytics and artificial intelligence) to mitigate advanced threats. Nations need to modernize the oversight of their media platforms that can serve as vectors for Psychological Operations.
