“In the wars of tomorrow, the battlefield will not just be the land, oceans, or skies; it will be the human mind. Whoever shapes perception will shape the strategic victory.”
Abstract
The nature of war is enduring, and its character evolving. In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the most disruptive impact on the character of warfare has been autonomous systems that are now making faster and more complex decisions, once in the human domain. Battlefields are getting thronged with autonomous drones, sensor networks, and algorithms that react faster than a commander. The result is a fight where control, intent, and even the identity of the adversary gets harder to discern. India steps into this moment with its own vulnerabilities: an information space that is easily disrupted, a technology race where bigger powers are sprinting ahead, and democratic institutions that hostile actors keep probing.
This paper looks at the friction between human judgment and an automated machine. It aims to examine Cognitive Warfare (CW) as the frontline to target human perception; leaders, military designers, and society are prodded or disoriented by AI-enabled influence operations. As the OODA loop compresses the kill chain, the time and space for human oversight shrinks, and AI-generated outcomes often manifest. This raises the issue of accountability when algorithms generate outcomes without human intervention. In such an environment, the focus must be on ‘Human in the Loop’ and AI to provide operational advantage, not take over operational control. War remains a human endeavour, and its accountability is human. Technology is a force multiplier that multiplies force, not a replacement for human dimension. Autonomy without oversight has resulted in fratricide or targeting civilian assets, raising questions of ethics and responsibility. Thus, contemporary doctrines must manage this change and balance the man-machine cognition.
Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, Cognitive Warfare, Human Control, Disinformation, India, Doctrine, Accountability, Drone Swarms.
