Mind Space: Cognition in Space Operations

July 2018 No Comments

Mind Space: Cognition in Space Operations

Author(s): Dr. Nick Wright (Intelligent Biology)

Executive Summary

To conduct deterrence operations, or manage escalation, requires anticipating how others will decide to respond to our actions. Anticipating your adversary is imperative for offense or defense. Thus, it is crucial to understand audiences’ decision-making. But how can you put yourself in the others’ shoes in space operations?

• Firstly, operations such as deterrence have a crucial cognitive dimension— acknowledged in U.S., Chinese and Russian thinking—and thus here I apply the latest neuroscience and cognitive work to understand how humans really make decisions.

• Second, I identify key features of space operations that require distinctive emphases compared to other domains, and I examine their cognitive foundations to describes implications for space policy.

I apply this understanding of cognitive foundations of space operations to three areas:

• Deterrence and escalation management are examined in Part I. See table below.

• Grey Zone conflict is examined in Part II. The current space epoch is the “Grey Zone Entangled Space Age”, and space is an ideal forum for Grey Zone activities in which the U.S. must have the tools to compete.

• West Pacific security is examined in Part III with a focus on the PRC and Near-term Sino-U.S. scenarios.

FIVE KEY TAKEAWAYS

(1) Influence—not just control—is a principal means by which U.S. policymakers cause intended effects on key adversaries in space, across the spectrum of conflict from Grey Zone to limited war upto and including the nuclear level. Focusing only control denies U.S. decision-makers key tools. Influence is affecting the adversary’s decision-making and U.S policymakers must have the doctrine, policies and capabilities to achieve influence in space as well as control.

(2) Space is ideal for Grey Zone conflict—more than normal competition and less than war—and Grey Zone strategies require different emphases from peace or war. Grey Zone conflict is characterised by the ‘Five multiples’, which can be applied to space operations: multiple interpretations (ambiguity is a key feature in space, see below); multiple levels (e.g. state and population levels may view space activities differently as legitimate reasons for war); multiple audiences (allies and significant third parties are key, see extended deterrence below); multiple instruments of power (e.g. systems such as GPS or Beidou can be sources of economic influence); and multiple timescales (e.g. persistent adversary subthreshold actions can over time cumulatively present a serious threat; norms have a fundamental cognitive dimension that U.S. policymakers can manage). Grey Zone conflict in space is necessarily limited conflict, and thus the central aim is to
influence the decision-making of adversaries and other key audiences – success requires policymakers understand and wield influence in space.

(3) Ambiguity and difficult risk assessment pervade the space environment, due to challenges of attribution, damage assessment, dual use, high classification and reversible actions. Ambiguity makes communicating deterrence much harder, and increases the risk of escalation for instance by muddying mutually understood red lines. U.S. signals will likely have to be much clearer than U.S. policymakers anticipate, and some communication must be performed ahead of crises.

(4) Humans pay large costs to reject perceived unfairness, and this complicates the perceived legitimacy of potential U.S. responses to adversary actions in space. An adversary’s space actions may have large strategic impacts, but because “satellites have no mothers” in comparison to potential U.S. conventional responses they may rouse little moral impact in key audiences (e.g. allies). Such mixed perceptions may cause inadvertent escalation, which may only be ameliorated by clear communication ahead of time before crises.

(5) Extended deterrence and ally perceptions are central to U.S. success in near-term escalation scenarios involving space with Russia or China. Allies’ trust and confidence in the U.S. are the central pillar of extended deterrence – and are inherently psychological. Increase trust and confidence by: increasing allies’ comprehension of space operations during escalation; increase the bandwidth of trust between elites, security apparatuses and populations; and consider how unpredictable behaviour decreases confidence and trust.

This publication was released as part of SMA’s Contested Space Operations: Space Defense, Deterrence, and Warfighting project. For more information regarding this project, please click here.