The human mind becomes the battlefield in cognitive warfare on the ground in the virtual world. The goal is to change not only what an audience thinks, but also how they think and act.

In this Blue Lava Community session, we will cover basic taxonomy to start with a common understanding touching upon hybrid warfare. The discussion covers the move to brain force, the exploitation of fallacies and bias, personality hacking, a brief look at Russia, Chinese, and Iranian cognitive warfare, how Ukraine counters disinformation, cartels use of cognitive warfare tactics, as well as cyber foreign legions and militias.

The talk includes real world examples of cognitive warfare and influence operations and how cyber security professionals are direct targets of adversary cognitive warfare.

About the Speaker:

Jeff Bardin is the Chief Intelligence Officer for Treadstone 71. As a CISO, Jeff received the RSA Conference award for Excellence in the Field of Security Practices. His team also won the 2007 SC Magazine Award – Best Security Team. Mr. Bardin has experience in teaching and building programs in Cyber Intelligence, Counterintelligence, Cognitive Warfare, Influence Operations, Clandestine Cyber HUMINT, OSINT, and Strategic Intelligence Analysis.

Jeff spoke at RSA, NATO CyCon (Estonia), the US Naval Academy, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the Johns Hopkins Research Labs, Hacker Halted, Malaysian Cyberjaya, Secureworld Expo, Hacktivity (Budapest), IS2 Prague, London (RSA), ISSA, as well as Security Camp (Cairo).

He has a BA in Special Studies – Middle East Studies, Arabic Language from Trinity College, and an MS in Information Assurance from Norwich University (Cum Laude 4.0). Jeff attended Middlebury College Language School for advanced language training. Mr. Bardin also spent years studying Russian history, literature, political systems, and language. Jeff served in the USAF/NSA as a cryptologic linguist and in the US Army and US Army National Guard as an Armor officer, Cavalry Scout platoon leader.