Why Freedom Is Losing

 

Why Freedom Is Losing

 

Our nation is in a real war, it is a war that has been waged for a millennium prior to the founding of the United States of America, and it is a war that will continue for the next millennia and more.  It is a Cognitive War.  In simple terms the Cognitive War is a war between those who seek to advance tyranny, control, and subjugation versus those who seek to advance freedom, humanity, and democracy.  It is a war of ideas, ideology, and narratives –enabled by varied means, methods, and measures –to include at times violence, kinetics, and asymmetric warfare.  It is a war in which deception, deceit and dystopian views are crafted in a manner to be passed off as the truth and fact.  And it is a war that is occurring globally and domestically.

 

I define the Cognitive Domain as: The domain of the human mind -ideas, ideology, function, reason, etc.  The Cognitive Domain encompasses all other domains -the umbrella under which mankind operates, functions, learns, advances or regresses.  All other domains - Cyber, Air, Land, Sea, Subterranean, Space, Sub-surface -are all one operating domain, not separate.  We, as humans, have mentally segmented these domains to operate and function in them.  And as we learn, we add new operational and/or functional domains. Yet, the most important domain, the Cognitive Domain, remains an afterthought.  

 

I define the Cognitive War as: A primarily an ideological war, between tyranny and freedom, control and independence, subjugation, and democracy.  It is a war fought primarily in the cognitive domain, using various means to influence (e.g., academic, economic, to agriculture, social, etc.), but which can include irregular warfare and kinetics. It is a war that’s been ongoing for more than a millennium. It is timeless as mankind exists. The cognitive war is truly an existential threat that is global and domestic. In today’s U.S.A, few understand it, can defend against it, can compete in it, or win it. It can be won, but not if we are unwilling to change.

 

The ongoing Cognitive War is the primary war between the free countries of the world and dystopian societies of China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.  Yet the free countries remain unaware and unprepared to compete in the cognitive domain – which results in the primary alternative – kinetic wars. 

China, Russia, Iran, and the other dystopian societies have enormous vulnerabilities which we do not leverage to influence their direction.  We could easily disrupt these Orwellian societies and take actions that would require these despots and dictators to expend enormous resources to counter.  Yet we do not.

We have failed to define the problem (cognitive war) focusing instead on technology and personalities. We remain in a near solely reactive posture (defensive vice offensive and proactive), thus sitting until too late, which equals losing. We focus far too much on kinetic solutions, when the real war has been, and will remain, in the cognitive domain. Lastly, the free world remains stuck in the industrial age, refighting WWI (not WWII) using a culture (policy) and structure (organizations) that have changed little since then while our adversaries have advanced new and integrated policy and structure to take advantage of the democratization of technology to regularly outmaneuver us in the information age.  

We can change this paradigm – but to do so we must overhaul our inept and broken national security apparatus – that consists primarily of the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense and the Intelligence Community.  Yet our lawmakers ignore the complete and total failure of these organizations – including Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, Iranian nuclear program, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (not once but twice – indications and warning are USELESS – if we only wait to react), Chinese theft of US R&D and corruption of our academics and compromise of our politicians, and the nearly one million murders committed because of failure to alert of the ChinaFlu. 

We can no longer ignore the failure of these “titanium cylinders of sub-excellence.”  We must move toward a proactive, information age-based structure (organization) and policy (culture), with a fully integrated national security apparatus, to compete and challenge our adversaries in the cognitive domain. We can either define the future we desire and take purposeful actions to realize it. Or, as we do today, we can defer to our adversaries to define the future for us and react to it/them.    In closing, I repeat my warning of three years prior as I retired from over thirty-years serving our country in our Intelligence Community and Department of Defense.

Unless we adjust our future…Investments to account for the paradigm shifts that have occurred under our feet, our nation and its intelligence operations will once again awaken too late, to a different reality, which is likely to end badly with significant and long-term impacts to our nation’s security and place as world leader.

 

I project such a negative and reactive outcome to occur either because we lost the cognitive war totally, our adversaries succeed undermining our institutions and democratic foundation to such an extent they are no longer viable, or, because our efforts to counter in the cognitive domain came too late.

 

If we fail to act in the cognitive domain, we will likely end up in a major kinetic conflict resulting in devastating outcomes, in physical and human toll – recovery is questionable.

Edward L. Haugland, February 2019

 

© Edward L. Haugland, All Rights Reserved 2022.