THE BATTLE FOR THE MIND: WINNING 21st CENTURY COGNITIVE WAR

According to Dr. Sean McFate, while the Pentagon prepares for a high-tech "super-war" fought with gold-plated weapons systems, our adversaries are already winning a different kind of conflict. They are fighting a mental shadow war where the target is not territory, but the six inches between your ears.

Cognitive warfare may be the most decisive and dangerous form of conflict today. From Dr. McFate’s perspective, it pulls a jiu-jitsu flip on democracies, using our open society and free press as weapons against us. The goal is not to win an argument, but to destroy our ability to think. It turns our own people into the primary battlefield.

Dr. McFate will be joining the Marshall Center for "The Cognitive Kill Chain," a discussion about how democracies can move from a defensive crouch to a powerful offense. He stresses that truth is kryptonite to autocracy, and by leveraging the truth and creative "oomph" of the private sector, we can dismantle the autocrat's matrix from the inside out.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. Sean McFate is a leading expert on national security strategy and the future of war. A former paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and private military contractor, his career has spanned from the jungles of Panama to leading missions traditionally performed by the CIA.

He is currently a professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Dr. McFate has authored the critically acclaimed The New Rules of War and The Modern Mercenary. Beyond his non-fiction work, he is a novelist whom James Patterson described as "the next Tom Clancy, only better." He holds a BA from Brown University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics.