The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has “established themselves as world leaders in the development of NeuroStrike weapons.”
QUICK FACTS:
- A new report details China’s endeavors to develop military technology that disrupts brain functions.
- The report, titled “Enumerating, Targeting and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party’s Neurostrike Program,” was written by senior fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore Ryan Clarke, former Army microbiologist now with Feitan College Ziaoxu Sean Lin, and former Air Force intelligence officer L.J. Eads.
- “NeuroStrike,” according to the report, refers to the “engineered targeting of warfighter and civilian brains using distinct non-kinetic technology” to inhibit one’s brain processes.
- The report argues that the CCP “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.”
- Although NeuroStrike capabilities are considered to be a “standard” part of military function, the report explains that the CCP’s “weaponization of neuroscience extends well beyond the scope and understanding of classical microwave weapons.”
- Such research programs are “core strategic focus areas that are designed to be utilized over the near-term and within current state strategic circumstances, such as in Taiwan,” the report states. “Any breakthrough in this research would provide unprecedented tools for the CCP to forcibly establish a new world order, which has been Xi Jinping’s lifelong goal.”
- The report authors provide an example scenario of the technology in action, writing: “Imagine (at least partially) immunized [People’s Liberation Army (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. Any remaining sources of resistance on the ground are then dealt with through CCP NeuroStrike weaponry that instill intense fear and/or other forms of cognitive incoherence resulting in inaction.”
- In such an event, the PLA would blunt “American strategic options to intervene and physically insert personnel into the theater,” eliminating “America’s overwhelming conventional superiority.”
“THREE WARFARES” STRATEGY:
- “Three Warfares is specifically designed to enable China to achieve end goals that have traditionally been accomplished by conventional military force through the effective use of psychological warfare, media warfare, and legal warfare,” the report says.
- The “Three Warfares” strategy was first announced in 2014.
- Several components of the strategy include “control of public opinion,” “transformation of opinion,” “psychological guidance,” “psychological defense,” and other tactics.
- Because China “does not yet possess the defense and industrial base to produce the types of technologies required to operate a NeuroStrike program that has technical capabilities that match the strategic ambitions of the CCP and PLA,” the United States and allies hope to find “key network weaknesses” and move in such a way where “technical failure and negative international attention are the most likely outcomes” for NeuroStrike.
BACKGROUND:
- The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
- The advisory tells Americans to “reconsider travel to Mainland China due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.”
- In Macau, the U.S. government has a “limited ability to provide emergency consular services,” meaning that the government could offer little assistance to American citizens in distress in the area.
