2024-09-22 09:00:25
The war in Ukraine has shown that even the modern battlefield, where the most modern “smart” weapons and innovative systems are at play, can still end up in the confusion of trench positional battles, which mankind already knows well. According to security analyst Kristina Soukupová, however, the development of modern weapons shows us that wars are not only fought with conventional weapons, but also with technologies capable of changing the enemy’s thinking.
Spotlight – More dangerous than tanks and planes. New weapons will control your mind, warns an expert | Video: Team Spotlight
According to a security analyst who also works with the NATO military headquarters in Norfolk, England, weapons in the future will quite possibly be similar to those we already know from today’s science fiction. “We see films that are 20 years old, where there are technologies that we already have at our disposal today, and back then it was just science fiction,” explains the expert.
Soukupová herself deals with the issue of so-called cognitive warfare or cognitive security, i.e. actually the way in which the enemy acts not only on soldiers, but also on civilians and tries to change their ways of thinking. “It’s disinformation, for example. Cyberspace, social networks, they can change how we perceive the world around us. Your whole world starts to fall apart, you fall for conspiracy theories and believe in the simplest explanations,” the security analyst in Spotlight lists the ways in which even at first view of harmless modern technology has become an effective tool for warfare.
As further evidence of the effect of modern “neuroweapons”, Kristina Soukupová describes the example of the so-called Hawaiian syndrome, which was documented between 2016-2018. At the time, workers at the American and Canadian embassies in Cuba both described severe health problems, including headaches and a strange unrelenting fatigue. However, no one knew the cause and even the doctors did not know what to do in the first moments.
“Only then did we realize that some new, unknown device could have done it. So these are the kind of targeted things that you use to sow fear and uncertainty in people,” Soukupová describes the incident, the investigation of which showed that it was most likely an unknown acoustic or a sonic weapon possessed by the Russian GRU intelligence service. However, the case has not yet been definitively clarified.
You can watch the entire interview in the video below or listen to it in your favorite podcast app. What were its main themes?
00:08-04:41 How serious is the security situation in Europe today and is there a threat of a third world war? Is it possible to empathize with the thinking of Vladimir Putin or Sergey Lavrov? And could NATO have stopped Putin or armed Ukraine earlier?
04:41-10:28 Can Kristina Soukupová imagine the involvement of NATO soldiers in the war in Ukraine? What kind of warfare are used by both sides of the conflict and how important are drones in the fighting? How would the dynamics of the war change if Ukraine could use everything at its disposal?
10:28-15:02 What can be imagined under Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats and what would be the biggest challenge in the event of an open confrontation between NATO and Russia? What would be the most difficult task for the Czech army and is it sufficiently combat-ready?
15:02-21:06 What should the Czech army focus on now? Can Soukupová imagine what the battlefield of the future will look like and how someone can change our thinking? And does the West manage to keep up with countries like China or Iran in the development of technology?
21:06-26:32 What change in nuclear doctrine is being considered and are we as a society prepared for a possible nuclear threat? Does the state administration take the potential threat seriously enough, and why should American missiles end up in Germany? And who is better in terms of the number of weapons?
Spotlight Aktuálně.cz – Kristina Soukupová | Video: Team Spotlight