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 Three Warfares is intended to be integrated across the entire spectrum of military
operations. Functions have also expanded and correspond to the PLA’s increasing range of
military missions. Core functions include, but are not limited to:
• Control of public opinion
• Blunting an adversary’s determination
• Transformation of emotion
• Psychological guidance
• Collapse of (an adversary’s) organization
• Psychological defense
The final case study is the Sino-Indian border standoff that remains tense and potentially escalatory following the armed hostilities that occurred in August 2020 in the Galwan Valley. Similar to the ground situation in Taiwan, the PLASSF is unlikely to obtain pro-Beijing partners within India’s leadership that would operate within India to forward Chinese objectives along the disputed border. In addition, Chinese threats to encircle and overwhelm India, such as those that Beijing makes towards Taiwan, are not credible given India’s 9 landmass, large population, and substantial conventional and unconventional military capabilities.11 India is also a resident power in the Indo-Pacific thereby restricting Chinese options to portray India (to both domestic and regional audiences) as a spent, extra-regional power that is on its way out on the region (as China often portrays the United States). Given the clear limitations on PLASSF psychological operations against India, it is possible that the PLASSF will focus more heavily on coercive NeuroStrike capabilities and precision targeting of India’s critical information technology systems, including the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite Systems (IRNSS). IRNSS provides real-time positioning capabilities within India as well as a 1,500-kilometer radius outside of India. IRNSS does not have the same user base and market centrality as America’s GPS or China’s BeiDou systems. However, its degradation or disablement by the PLASSF would likely cause substantial military and civilian disruption within India itself, although likely temporary given the ‘fallback option’ onto GPS. In addition to the psychological effects that such an action would achieve on its own, it would also potentially signal to India, as well as India’s partners, that the PLASSF has a substantial technological edge in this military domain and that resistance is a high-risk, low-return exercise.
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.
According to the report, neuro strike 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 leader. 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.”
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