The Innovation System as a Disruptive Battlespace

Modern systems and processes associated with technological innovation represent a novel and disruptive domain or battlespace relevant to both military and civilian organizations.

This commentary discusses the ability for actors to maneuver within those systems to create specific cognitive, informational, and technological effects. Moreover, as they have become a typical feature of a nation's innovation landscape, similar ecologies are being developed by our enemies. And therein lies not only friction but opportunity. The systematized processes associated with technological innovation are ripe for manipulation through cognitive-style warfare and could be more effective in achieving asymmetric, and potentially strategic, advantage than the technologies themselves.

A recent NATO report defined cognitive warfare as the “manipulation of the enemy's cognition,” involving “the use of all knowledge, strategies, and available tools to impact human behavior…. with the end goal of manipulating and altering decision-making.” Under this definition, the systems associated with technological innovation offer ripe pickings for cognitive-style warfare. Now that humans have fashioned this highly vulnerable domain, defined by the ever-deepening and increasingly structured union of humans and machines, we can no longer ignore the opportunities and threats we have built into it. .

Authors: Marigold Black

Originally published: RAND