Going after US soldiers to destroy their ability to think clearly or rationally is a fresh battlefield threat. New intelligence has revealed China is developing the capability to do just that. Interrupt your enemies' mental capacity to make timely, accurate decisions, and you can bring them into submission quickly. This is called cognitive warfare.
China Developing Mind Control Weaponry
We know that China is an enabler of the dangerous times in which we live. It's not farfetched that the People's Republic of China (PRC) would develop weapons that incapacitate soldiers in combat as well as civilians in the defense industry. According to Bill Gertz, longtime national security correspondent for The Washington Times:
"The People's Liberation Army is building sound weapons and other nonlethal arms that can incapacitate enemy forces by disrupting the neurological functions of human targets without causing visible injury, warns the report by the CCP BioThreats Initiative, a think tank of former intelligence and military experts … The weapons offer strategic advantages in waging asymmetric warfare with minimal physical evidence."
The report also described the Chinese using phased-array radar technology for precisely targeting the cognitive disruptor weapons. Though the recent report provided some new information on the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) use of sound waves to confuse and distract a ground force, the PLA has engaged in this research and development for a while.
The National Defense University (NDU) publication Prism, The Journal of Complex Operations, published back in February 2019 a scientific article titled "Minds at War, China's Pursuit of Military Advantage through Cognitive Science and Biotechnology." What makes this particular monograph significant is the breadth of concerns revealed in the analysis.
The PRC is investing extensively in weapons designed to incapacitate an adversary's capability to think and respond effectively. However, according to the NDU report, the PRC also is focused on biotechnical and neuro control research because it believes "success on the future battlefield will require achieving not only 'biological dominance' but also 'mental/cognitive dominance' and 'intelligence dominance'" by PLA military members. Five years ago, the NDU analysis concluded, "Although technological advantage has been a key pillar of US military power and national competitiveness, China is catching up, aspiring to take the lead in today's strategic technologies."
Deployment of Mind Control Weapons May Have Begun
The extent to which the PLA has already deployed its cognitive warfare weaponry is unknown. Nonetheless, former US United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, while a competitor for the Republican nomination for president, made a comment at a town hall in New Jersey that was surprising at the time. Haley asserted that the PRC was "the largest developer of neuro-strike weapons, weapons engineered to change the brain activity of military commanders and segments of the population," Politifact reported.
We do know that incidents of what has been labeled Havana Syndrome -- with symptoms of dizziness and migraine headaches similar to what might be expected with neuro-attack weapons -- have been in the news for years. Recently, The New York Times reported on Havana Syndrome experienced by members of US Embassy diplomats, spies, and other staff. The article attempted to dispel the notion that unfriendly nations used some kind of electronic ray against embassy personnel.
There was an alternative point of view. According to the NYT, Dr. David Relman, a leading scientist familiar with competing studies on Havana Syndrome explained the research that cast doubt on the existence of brain damage stemming from the purposefully applied weaponry by a "hostile foreign power" was "flawed." He opined that such findings "do not dispute that an external force, like a directed energy device, could have injured the current and former government workers."
For the past decade, the PRC has been deeply involved in working to control the minds of combatants on the battlefield. "In 2015, then-president of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences He Fuchu argued that biotechnology will become the new 'strategic commanding heights' of national defense, from biomaterials to 'brain control' weapons," the Center for a New American Security reported, again in 2019.
Congress has been working diligently in a bipartisan way to identify and publicize the PLA threat from without and from within. When China says it is working to achieve mind control weaponry, the United States would do well to believe. America is facing a threat that would be the stuff of science fiction if it weren't real and happening now.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
