Technology could be key asymmetric warfare tool for Taiwan military assault.
China‘s
People’s Liberation Army is developing high-technology weapons designed to
disrupt brain functions and influence government leaders or entire populations,
according to a report by three open-source intelligence analysts.
The
weapons can be used to directly attack or control brains using microwave or
other directed energy weapons in handheld guns or larger weapons firing
electromagnetic beams, adding that the danger of China‘s brain warfare weapons
prior to or during a conflict is no longer theoretical.
“Unknown
to many, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) have established themselves as world leaders in the development of
neurostrike weapons,” according to the 12-page report, “Enumerating, Targeting
and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party’s Neurostrike Program.” A copy of
the study was obtained by The Washington Times.
The U.S.
Commerce Department in December 2021 imposed sanctions on China‘s Academy of
Military Medical Sciences and 11 related entities the department said were
using “biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end-uses and
end-users, to include purported brain-control weaponry.”
Few
public studies or discussion, however, have been held regarding the new
advanced military capability.
Neurostrike
is a military term defined as the engineered targeting of the brains of
military personnel or civilians using non-kinetic technology. The goal is to
impair thinking, reduce situational awareness, inflict long-term neurological
damage and cloud normal cognitive functions.
The
study was written by Ryan Clarke, a senior fellow at the East Asian Institute
of the National University of Singapore; Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former Army
microbiologist now with Feitan College; and L.J. Eads, a former Air Force
intelligence officer and current specialist in artificial intelligence for the
U.S. intelligence community. The three authors write that China‘s leadership
“views neurostrike and psychological warfare as a core component of its
asymmetric warfare strategy against the United States and its allies in the
Indo-Pacific.”
According
to the report, neurostrike capabilities are part of the military standard
military capabilities and should not be viewed as an unconventional weapon
limited to use in extreme circumstances.
Likely
areas of use for the weapons included Taiwan, the South China Sea, East China
Sea and the disputed Sino-Indian border.
The
threat is not limited to the use of microwave weapons: “[China‘s] new landscape
of neurostrike development includes using massively distributed human-computer
interfaces to control entire populations as well as a range of weapons designed
to cause cognitive damage,” the report said.
Research
is focused on using brain warfare weapons in the near term, and possibly during
a Chinese military assault on Taiwan — a target for future Chinese military
operations that U.S. military leaders have said could be carried out in the next
four years.
“Any
breakthrough in this research would provide unprecedented tools for the CCP to
forcibly establish a new world order, which has been [Chinese President] Xi
Jinping’s lifelong goal,” the report said.
Militarily,
brain warfare can be used in what the Pentagon has called China‘s “anti-access,
area-denial” military strategy for the Indo-Pacific.
“Imagine
(at least partially) immunized PLA troops being inserted into a geography where
a specific weaponized bacterial strain has been released prior to their entry
to prepare the ground and eliminate points of resistance,” the report states.
“Any remaining sources of resistance on the ground are then dealt with through
[Chinese] neurostrike weaponry that instill intense fear and/or other forms of
cognitive incoherence resulting in inaction.”
That
scenario would allow the PLA to establish absolute control over a nation like
Taiwan, while at the same time blunting any American strategic options to
intervene and send troops in to support Taiwan. The PLA could thus negate U.S. conventional military superiority
with few near-term remedies for the United States, the report said.
“This
scenario is based on known existing CCP research programs and what the clear
strategic aims of those programs are,” the report said.
The
report said placing China‘s Academy of Military Medical Science the Commerce
Department’s blacklist of companies barred from access to U.S. goods was the
result of its leading role in developing brain warfare capabilities. A special
branch of the Chinese military known as the Strategic Support Force (SSF) is
likely the main unit charged with conducting brain warfare.
The
‘three warfares’ strategy
The SSF
is the leader in what the PLA calls a “three warfares” strategy of using
non-kinetic weapons in war. The three warfares were disclosed in 2014 by
China‘s National Defense University and call for employing psychological
warfare, media warfare and legal warfare.
Little
is known about the SSF but available information indicates the force would be
used to shape information environments on the ground and provide the PLA with
better battlefield information than its adversaries.
“With
additional neurostrike capabilities that can either damage, disorient or even
control perceived adversary cognition at the population level, the PLA SSF
would represent an exponential escalation in [China‘s] aggression in the Indo-
Pacific,” the report said.
“Three
warfares” operations are underway against Taiwan, Hong Kong, the South China
Sea and along the Indian-Chinese border, and the authors warn that the risk of
the new brain warfare capabilities being used is increasing.
The SSF
“now operates as a type of superstructure on top of a growing and increasingly
active platform of Chinese military assets (land, sea, air, cyber, and space)
across multiple theaters in the Indo-Pacific while simultaneously serving as
the primary deployment platform for new neurostrike weaponry,” the report said.
To
counter brain warfare capabilities, the report urges the U.S. military to first
expose the threat of neurostrike weapons and call for international talks and
policy remedies, such as ethics reviews for neuroscience and cognitive science
studies. Proactively, the United State should sabotage critical supply chains
of specific institutions or companies engaged in brain warfare research.
Cyber
capabilities also should be used to target and disrupt Chinese neurostrike
programs. Sanctions against all Chinese civilian and military programs linked
to brain warfare also should be increased.
The objective
of all counter-brain warfare efforts should be to dissuade China‘s leadership
from deploying the new technology, the report said.
“Like
all of the CCP’s asymmetric warfare programs, neurostrike depends entirely on
presenting a massively decentralized and fragmented network structure,” the
report said. “This renders it nearly impossible to map using traditional
investigative or intelligence approaches.”
China
currently does not have the defense-industrial base needed to produce the
technologies for a neurostrike program that can match Beijing’s military
ambitions, the report said, presenting a window of opportunity for the U.S. and
its allies.
“This
fundamental gap presents a massive vulnerability for decapitating strikes
against the neurostrike program provided that these gaps can be surfaced, and
precision-targeted,” the report said.
U.S. and
allied nations must locate key weaknesses in the networks involved in the brain
warfare program. Covert military action can “make involvement in this weapons
program a high-risk venture where technical failure and negative international
attention are the most likely outcomes,” the report said.
• Bill
Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/6/chinas-military-leading-world-brain-neurostrike-we/