Frag Out! Magazine

ever more illusory. Equally fictitious, unfortunately, is Poland's ability to control social media platforms, virtually all of which are either US-based big tech companies or platforms of states hostile to the West, created as part of cognitive warfare (e.g., TikTok). 11. Russian actions with a cognitive dimension have been underway since at least 2008, and they reached full intensity after 2010. The original objective was the polarization of Polish society (largely achieved thanks to changes in the Polish political scene), while secondary and long-term objectives include undermining trust in NATO and promoting Polexit. In the meantime, short-term objectives emerged, tied to additional polarization around the pandemic and elections in Poland. Since the middle of the last decade, one can also observe an intensification of cognitive operations designed to demobilize the potential personnel pool available to the Armed Forces. Fortunately, Russian and Belarusian efforts often suffer from failures or blunders (the creation of poor opinion leaders, overly obvious political centers, discredited pseudo-academic centers, sudden shifts in information campaigns from pandemic-related themes to anti- Ukrainian ones, etc.); nevertheless, this does not change the fact that they are dangerous because they strike at the foundations of the Polish Armed Forces' strength - the will to fight of society, and especially the personnel pool available to the military. 12. Russian cognitive warfare is conducted on a fairly broad scale, but several main targets of attack can be identified: • elites and counter-elites; • state services; • the Armed Forves mobilization pool; • society, with emphasis on groups that identify themselves as excluded or as having been "harmed/ignored/ excluded" by Poland. Elites and counter-elites are the target of cognitive operations aimed at fostering distrust in state institutions and in the hierarchical nature of the executive services. Worse still, elites and counter-elites are the field of influence of various think tanks, foundations, institutes, or social advisers. The objective is usually lobbying, but if influence is gained over a given decision-maker or decision-makers, potentially highly destructive actions in the area of the military structures may follow. For example, this could lead to the de facto liquidation of military intelligence or the implementation of a complete redesign of the Armed Forces in a direction that appears revolutionary, but in reality is desired by the power seeking to shape such reforms. State services are the field of operations aimed at undermining the ethos of service and intensifying the sense of alienation from society, while creating the impression that society does not support a given service or even actively acts against it. This leads to erosion of morale and easier decisions to desert or to perform duties improperly. T he Armed Forces' mobilization pool is the target of operations aimed at undermining trust in the military and portraying support for it as pointless, due to the alleged lack of support from NATO and allies, and the alleged senselessness of sacrificing one's comfort, and perhaps even life and health, for an organization portrayed as "foreign," fighting a lost cause, and ineffective. The alternative being pushed is leaving the country or passive resistance. Society is the field of constant operations intended to polarize it, create confusion, and undermine trust in state structures and institutions. Particular emphasis is placed on groups that already feel "wronged" by state structures. 1. Cognitive operations, on the one hand, rely on created and carefully planned long-term operational scenarios, and on the other, they make excellent use of occurring natural, industrial, or transport disasters, genuine problems affecting executive services, or political struggle conducted in the context of successive elections - in other words, current issues that are further amplified and steered in www.fragoutmag.com

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