The cognitive domain of War: the role of science in approaching the enemy?

• Author: Blackwell, James

Why do terrorists and insurgents do the things they do? What will they try next? In the bad old days of the Cold War, we could anticipate what our opponents were thinking because we figured out the logic behind their strategy. We assumed the Russians were rational actors and constructed an elaborate theory-systems theory--to understand and explain their rationality. That theory allowed us to construct a strategy around the concepts of containment and deterrence. It even enabled complicated calculations of how many warheads we needed and what enemy targets we should aim to hit with them.

But today's bad guys don't think that way. They seem possessed of a very different logic, a rationality based more on faith than reason. So we have difficulty anticipating where the next Improvised Explosive Device will be planted or which oncoming car is driven by a homicide bomber. And soldiers die.

This new war in which we are engaged around the globe will not be won in the physical or information domains. In fact, we will lose if we fight primarily by killing people and breaking things. We can only win this Long War in the Cognitive Domain--the place where we perceive, feel, think, and decide. Yet we understand far too little of this place. We have no maps, little theory, few implements, and no doctrine. We should build on our experience and reputation for winning wars the classic way by deepening our expertise into the Cognitive Domain.

Science is revealing much about what happens in the cognitive domain of human behavior. Chess master Gary Kasparov once remarked that intuition enabled him to beat IBM computers in chess. Furthermore, Kasparov believed that intuition assisted and empowered the game's superior players to win competitions despite defying analysts' best post-match examinations. Some of this kind of work has been popularized by such literature as Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. There is much more to this in the empirical research--an emerging understanding of how intuition works and perhaps how it can be harnessed to think more effectively during military campaigns and make better wartime decisions.

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics went to a Princeton psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, who suggested that most human decisions are based on intuitive judgments, not rational thinking. He points out, however, that the biases that skew our thinking are nevertheless generally successful in leading us to behaviors...