Modelling and Simulation support to Concept Development and Experimentation: Cognitive Warfare concept validation use case

Cognitive warfare is an emerging, novel domain of war, specifically targeting the human mind rather than physical assets or infrastructure. It denotes a sophisticated strategy in influencing, disrupting, or manipulating cognition, which in turn changes perception and belief and finally alters the decision-making process of individuals, military personnel, and whole populations. This shift from traditional to cognitive domains has drawn considerable attention from NATO itself, which realizes the dimension of understanding such threats and finding their countermeasures to keep the operational integrity and social cohesion of its member states intact. NATO's interest in cognitive warfare is a factor of growing inspiration from the rising prevalence of tactics involving psychological manipulation, misinformation, and social engineering. The threats are often invisible, highly destructive, and can undermine societies, break confidence in institutions, and deplete military forces of morale. Cognitive warfare employs advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and social media, to take advantage of cognitive and psychological vulnerabilities, constructing a less visible form of conflict that is potentially more pervasive and insidious than traditional war. The following thesis addresses the challenges of cognitive warfare by describing how Modeling and Simulation (M&S) should be used as a strategic tool within the NATO Concept Development and Experimentation framework for meeting those challenges. M&S provides a controlled, reproducible environment in which complex human interactions and responses to cognitive threats can be studied and assessed. M&S allows military strategists and planners to understand how the different variations in cognitive warfare strategies will affect readiness, resilience, and decisionmaking across the NATO forces, taking into account the countermeasures which might fortify the defenses against such non-kinetic attacks. This research discusses the case study of building and validating an Human Behavior Model (HBM) for simulated individual and group human behavior under operational cognitive threats. The HBM in the study is based on Agent-Based Reference Model (ABRM), which is a powerful, flexible architecture for simulating human behavior. The resulting HBM will therefore contain multiple cognitive and emotional factors such as morale, stress, fear, fatigue, and social influence. Such elements allow the close simulation of human behavior, considering that reactions may be dynamic and nonlinear when working under pressure. The M&S application for this study provides an artificial world in which the NATO forces undergo both kinetic and cognitive attacks. This includes agents representing NATO personnel that may be affected by such tactics as misinformation campaigns, psychological operations, and social media manipulations. This artificial attack could mislead, confuse, or disrupt morale and operational effectiveness, which emulates more general cognitive threats associated with a modern conflict zone. In this virtual place, agent responses are analyzed to estimate the potential impacts of cognitive warfare on military readiness and civilian morale and thus develop counter-cognitive strategies for NATO. The second critical part is the validation of the model or, in other words, ensuring that the HBM correctly simulates human responses to various cognitive threats. The reliability and predictive accuracy of HBM are tested by rigorous experimentation, including the application of statistical techniques such as ANOVA and MSPE. This is a necessary validation because it gives NATO a scientific basis upon which this tool can be reliably used to inform strategy and decisions. The application of the DOE methodology in simulation allows this research to systemically investigate variables that affect cognitive resilience, such as leadership effectiveness, media literacy, and morale, under different intensities of the tactics that come with cognitive warfare. Results from this study prove the efficiency of using M&S in developing NATO's understanding of cognitive warfare and at the same time providing strategies to reduce its effects. The validated HBM is a simulation tool with versatile applications across a wide variety of operational settings. It provides insight into the variances that cognitive attacks might take across cultures and socio-political ecosystems. The study also shows the importance of interdisciplinary research in cognitive defense by combining neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, and social sciences to develop a comprehensive model of human behavior. In short, this thesis underlines the strategic importance of M&S in cognitive warfare. It also argues that proactive cognitive defense using scrupulous modeling, simulation, and validation will help to enhance NATO's capability for timely threat anticipation and countering at the cognitive level. This developed HBM serves as a steppingstone for further studies, further modifications, and improvements, which will underpin the mission of NATO for protection of the cognitive domain in a world where information and perception are forming an increasingly crucial part of global security dynamics. All these will be enabled by M&S, and it will permit NATO not only to answer the challenge of cognitive warfare but also to be prepared in advance against the intricately developing challenges by developing resilience and readiness against the new kind of conflict.