an adversary’s cognition can enable “winning
without fighting.”50 The increased integration of
human cognition with technology influences mil-
itary perception confrontation (军事感知对抗),
which involves attempts to hinder and distort the
adversary’s cognition, whether through technical,
physiological, or psychological techniques.51 In an
era of informatized warfare, conflict in the cognitive
domain attempts to undermine the adversary’s will
and resolve, undermine perception and command
capabilities to weaken fighting spirit, and manip-
ulate decisionmaking.52 The study of operations
undertaken by the U.S. and Russian militaries has
also influenced Chinese military thinking on the
importance of psychological operations, but PLA
thinkers are seeking to innovate their own tactics
and concepts of operations,53 including exploring
the potential employment of intelligent agents to
enable “guidance” of public opinion.54 In particu-
lar, the prominence of social media and advances in
artificial intelligence, including such techniques as
deep fakes, have created new options for subversion
and manipulation. The PLA is actively pursuing
research and the development of capabilities, which
could range from the use of the drug Modafinil for
performance enhancement, to leveraging insights
from brain science and psychology to target and
exploit inherent vulnerabilities in human cognition.
While apparently enthusiastic about the offensive
potential of such options, the PLA is concerned
about the potential for subversion of its own forces,
including persistent anxieties about the prospects of
color revolution.55
Consequently, the pursuit of advances in military
brain science is recognized as important to advancing
future battlefield effectiveness.56 In particular, this
new domain in military competition is seen as vari-
ously involving attempts to “imitate the brain”
(仿脑), leverage “brain control” (脑控), “enhance the
brain” (超脑), or “control the brain” (“控脑”).57 On
the battlefield, attempts to undermine an adversary
could include interfering with the adversary’s capacity
for cognition, whether through manipulation or out-
right destruction, from disrupting the flow of data to
exploiting ideology or emotion.58 Increasingly, “men-
tal confrontation” (脑对抗) could become a major
feature of future conflicts, involving attack, defense,
and enhancement of the brain.59 Maj. Gen. He Fuchu
has anticipated the development of “a new brain-con-
trol weaponry” that interferes with and controls
people’s consciousness, thereby subverting combat
styles.60 Concretely, Zhou Jin (周瑾), a researcher with
the Institute of Military Cognition and Brain Science
at AMMS, has concentrated on brain science and
neural engineering, and his research has also contrib-
uted to an expert group on psychological warfare and
cognitive technology through the CMC Science and
Technology Commission.61
The PLA’s intended integration of human and
machine intelligence could be eventually facili-
tated by advances in brain-machine interfaces. For
instance, at the PLA’s National University of Defense
Technology (NUDT), the Cognitive Science Basic
Research Team (认知科学基础研究团队) has been
engaged in research on brain-machine interfaces
(脑机接口) for more than 20 years, such that this
technology can now be used to operate a robot, drive
a vehicle, or even to operate a computer, enabled
by the processing of EEG signals.62 “Combining
the high functioning of the machine with the high
intelligence of human beings to achieve high perfor-
mance of equipment systems, this is an important
domain of application in intelligent science,”
according to Hu Dewen (胡德文), who has led this
program.63 In the PLA’s Information Engineering
University’s Information Systems Engineering
College, Tong Li (通李) has been engaged in
research on intelligent information processing and
brain-computer interaction (脑机交互), which has
been reportedly leveraged to enable brain con-
trol of a drone or robot.64 Meanwhile, at AMMS,
Wang Changyong (王常勇), Deputy Director of the