Reflexive control is a “uniquely Russian” concept based on maskirovka, an old Soviet notion in which one “conveys to an opponent specifically prepared information to incline him/her to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action”.
In the science-fiction film Inception (2010), the protagonist, Dominick Cobb, attempts to implant an idea into his target Maurice Fisher’s subconscious mind. That implanted idea was designed to eventually lead Fisher to break up his father’s empire, which he had inherited. That someone could do such a thing in real life seems far-fetched until we stumble upon the theory of Reflexive Control (RC), a well-developed military information-warfare theory. RC attempts to interfere with a target’s decision-making process through specially crafted information which will make the target voluntarily make a decision that is in the best interests of the initiator, even though it is detrimental to the target’s own interests.
The Brahmin and the Three Crooks
To understand RC, we need not turn to science fiction but can instead focus on an ancient Panchatantra tale, ‘The Brahmin, The Goat and the Three Crooks’. The story unfolds thus:
There was once a Brahmin who desired to offer a goat to the gods. He went to a devotee and requested him to donate a goat. The devotee readily agreed and gave the Brahmin one of his best goats. Pleased, the Brahmin put the goat on his shoulder and walked back to his village. When he was on his way, three crooks were watching him and said to themselves, ‘We are all hungry and starving and the Brahmin is alone. Maybe we should just rob him, but if he identifies us and then complains to the headman, we will be in trouble. So we should somehow trick him to give the goat to us on his own.’ Thus, they came up with a plan.
All of them took a shortcut, ran ahead of the Brahmin and placed themselves in the path their target was walking on. The first crook walked past his target and said, ‘Oh Brahmin, why are you carrying a dog on your shoulder?’ On hearing this, the Brahmin got angry and said, ‘What are you talking about? Can’t you see that I am carrying a sacrificial goat? Go away, you blind fool.’ The first crook then apologized and said to the Brahmin, ‘Please don’t get angry with me. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me. But it is a dog that I see. You can go ahead, I will not trouble you anymore.’
As the Brahmin walked further, he met the second crook, who said, ‘Oh Brahmin, why are you carrying a dead calf on your shoulder?’ This made the Brahmin even angrier and he shouted, ‘Are you really blind? Can’t you see this is a goat?’ The second crook also apologized and said, ‘Sorry, but my eyes are probably fooling me. But it is a dead calf I see. You can go ahead, I won’t speak of this again.’
After some time, the third crook met the Brahmin and said, ‘Oh Brahmin, why are you carrying a donkey on your shoulder? This is highly improper. Don’t do this; people may laugh at you.’ Now the Brahmin was perplexed. He wondered, ‘How is it that three people can see a different animal, but I can see only a goat? Maybe it is not a goat after all; maybe it is a shape-shifting goblin that will eat me at the right time.’ This made the Brahmin very afraid. He threw the goat down on the street, thanked the crook for showing him the true form of the goblin and then ran away. The crooks were happy that they were able to trick the Brahmin to give them his goat without having to resort to violence. They caught the goat, took it home, killed and ate it to satiate their hunger.
Let us examine this story at a deeper level, from the point of view of the crooks, to understand how they had succeeded. Their goals were to:
1. Avoid violence, as it would attract more trouble.
2. Persuade their target to give up the goat voluntarily and even thank them.
To achieve this, they had to understand their target’s biases and beliefs at a subconscious level. Put differently, they had to understand the target better than the target himself. They had to then think about the information that must be presented to the target, keeping the target’s biases and beliefs in consideration, which would bring about the desired result. They would also need to somehow make the target believe that the information presented to him was not a lie and was credible.
So what are the biases and beliefs of the Brahmin in this tale, as seen from the point of view of the crooks?
- He is fearful of gods and demons and, in general, of heaven and hell.
- He is obsessed with the idea of purity and does not like to touch dead things.
- He has clear ideas on which animals are better and which are inferior.
- More importantly, he thinks too highly of himself, of his own knowledge, and has never questioned his own beliefs.
- And finally, while he is proud of his knowledge, he has never understood knowledge deeply and has not understood how knowledge itself is made. He is not a philosopher.
Such analysis is called ‘understanding the filter’ in RC terminology. The crooks in this tale have fully examined and understood the Brahmin, even better than the Brahmin himself. All that is required is to prepare an ‘information packet’, which is custom-crafted information that the target will process and react to, so that the required effect is achieved.
The first crook delivered a message that played on the impurity bias by calling the goat a dog. The message triggered an ‘I know it all’ response from the Brahmin, who disregarded the crook’s opinion and continued on his path. The second crook then delivered a message that triggered another, stronger, impurity bias by calling the goat a dead calf. This also activated the ‘I know it all’ response. The third crook then delivered the message that played on the Brahmin’s feelings of superiority. By telling him that it was improper and that people would make fun of him for carrying a donkey, the crook forced the Brahmin to think about what all the three crooks had said to him individually. Since the Brahmin believed in gods and demons, his subconscious mind led him to that category of explanation for this phenomenon of different people seeing different animals on his shoulder.
Fear then overrode the Brahmin’s pride in his own knowledge and led him to accept the crook’s information sequence. He finally threw the goat down from his shoulder and walked away, even thanking the crooks for their help. Viewed from the perspective of RC, it is clear who is the more knowledgeable one and who is ignorant in this story. Yet, the story is not written in this manner in the Panchatantra. The ancient story is in fact written from the point of view of the Brahmin, presenting the three men as crooks, thus getting the story’s moral wrong. The only moral that is drawn from the story is that ‘untruths spoken repeatedly appear to be the truth’. It fails to delve into why the Brahmin fell for the crooks’ messages, even though he was the more learned of them.
The tale makes it clear that neither the writer, nor the story’s subsequent tellers, understood the weakness of the Brahmin and the mastery of the crooks that allowed their method to work so successfully. They failed to acknowledge the character traits of the Brahmin, which included ignorance, arrogance and a lack of self-awareness, and were instrumental in shaping his response to the information sent to him by the crooks. Retellings of the story also failed to acknowledge the mastery of the crooks, who were self-aware, had the capability to understand the Brahmin’s worldview and biases and could also craft messages that led to the exact outcome that they wanted without their objectives or even involvement being revealed. The story demonstrates just how hard it is for a target of reflexive control techniques to even understand how they were manipulated because it plays on the target’s inherent character flaws.
The goal of reflexive control is to ‘control’ the ‘reflex’ of the opponent by creating a certain model of behavior in the system it seeks to control. The most fundamental way to do this is to locate the weak link in the system and exploit it through moral arguments, psychological tactics, or appeals to specific leaders’ character.
This concept has a long history in Russian military strategy, with the Soviet and Russian Armed Forces studying reflexive control at both the tactical and operational levels. Reflexive control has also long been taught at various Russian military schools and training programs, and is codified as Russian national security strategy in the Gerasimov Doctrine. Today, reflexive control is a key component in Russia’s idea of hybrid warfare.
To dive deeper into how reflexive control works in the real world, read The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World by Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan.
