Reality pentesting

Via Bruce Schneier, security researcher K. Melton thinks about how to apply computer security concepts to human brains:

Originally, my intention for exploring the concept of “Reality Pentesting” was to create a framework for how we might run adversarial-minded security tests against human perception. At the time of this write-up, I have mapped the topological attack surface, correlated security testing domains with cognitive analogs, and identified several issues we must resolve before deploying such a framework. I am continuing my research, conceptualization, and collaboration in earnest. What follows here is a summary of the field topology of human cognition: a five-layer model of the human cognitive field, its attack surfaces, and a proposal for what proactive defense might look like.

Before we map the attack surface, it’s worth understanding the strategic context.

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB propagandist who defected to North America in the 1970s. His warning was stark: the United States was already fighting a war it didn’t know it was in. While Americans obsessed over Soviet-flavored spy thrillers, the KGB was in fact allocating 85% of its resources to long-term psychological warfare called “ideological subversion” and “demoralization.”

The goal was to erode democratic society’s ability to agree on what is real. The plan required decades of patient effort: just slowly, systematically degrading the population’s capacity to process information and reach sensible conclusions. The scale came from the length of time estimated to compromise the thinking of at least one generation.

A demoralized population, Bezmenov explained, can be shown true information and still reject it. Facts stop mattering once the epistemology is broken.

I found Menton's essay fascinating.