This week we are discussing “Cognitive Warfare: Is there a battle for your mind?”

Neuroscientist James Giordano has described the human brain as the battlefield of the 21st century.

What does he mean by this?

Well, cognitive warfare has been described as the weaponization of brain sciences. It has been described as a new space of competition - beyond the land, maritime, air, cybernetic and spatial domains. Warfare in the cognitive domain mobilizes a variety of strategies, tools and techniques - all with the aim of changing not only how people think, but also how they act.

Cognitive warfare positions the mind as a battle space and contested domain. It’s objective is to sow dissonance, instigate conflicting narratives, polarize opinion, and radicalize groups. Cognitive warfare can motivate people to act in ways that can disrupt or fragment an otherwise cohesive society.

In this week’s episode we will unpack the tools, strategies and techniques that are used to achieve this. Of course reference will be made to academic research that has been conducted on this topic.

We will also seek to explore the following questions: how reliable is the information that we have been fed throughout our lives, be it through media, schooling/tertiary, books, television, government etc? Is it perhaps time to start questioning prevailing narratives? Perhaps things are not as they seem after all.

Femicide and Gendered Based Violence (GBV) knows no race.

However, statistics show that Femicide & GBV occurs at HIGHER rates within the black community.

Yet, the same statistics show that black women & girls tend to be the most likely to fear calling the police on their perpetrator, mainly because the perpetrator is usually a man they know personally (eg a father, husband, brother etc), as they fear being the catalyst for that man ending up in prison. Even though that man is their abuser.

So this means that as high as the statistics are regarding black femicide & GBV, those stats do not even begin to scratch the surface to accurately reveal the scale of the problem.

In this week’s episode we will unpack the scale of the problem (evidenced by statistics), and also explore the possibilities of why as black women we tend to choose to protect the men that hurt us.

Is it social conditioning?

Or is there something deeper?