Introduction: The Biopsychosocial Complementarity of Cognitive Warfare

To date, there continues to be some discussion, including essays that have appeared in this forum, as to whether and to what extent cognitive warfare represents anything other than psychological operations (PSYOPS) with more sophisticated tools and methods, or if it actually is a unique and evolving domain of combat. To be sure, given that (1) a formal definition of cognition describes mental processes of assimilating information, comprehending and gaining knowledge; (2) mental processing is defined as those operations that mediate sensory input and behavioral output; and (3) the psychologic realm is defined as the unconscious and conscious events and mechanisms that affect behavior; it is axiomatic that any engagement(s) in the cognitive domain will entail psychological factors. But cognitive warfare is not limited to the psychologic realm. Rather, we posit that it entails complementary, interdependent operations in and across the spectrum of biological, psychological and social dimensions (See figure 1), and in this way, (2) can influence operations in all other domains of warfare.

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