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On 03/26/2026, the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) quietly announced BIOW, basic information awareness operations, a cognitive warfare program that changes the rules of the battlefield through belief rather than bullets or bombs. The SCO sits inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with a mandate to deliver breakthrough capabilities to war fighters typically within three to five years. Sam Gray, SCO's chief technology officer and lead for autonomy and artificial intelligence, leads BIOW. Speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association's Pacific Operational Science and Technology Conference in Honolulu, Gray stated: the goal of cognitive warfare is to disrupt the cognition and the thinking ability of an adversary or person and influence how they perceive, sense make, and act. This is not propaganda in the old sense. This is something fundamentally different. For most of military history, influence operations required a physical observable. In World War Two, the Allies inflated fake tanks to fool German reconnaissance. You needed something the enemy could see. Gray said that era is over. Quote, I don't actually need the physical observable because I can generate both the physical observable and the associated narrative that comes along with it, and I can promulgate it across the digital environment that allows it to go everywhere. BIOW. BIOW is built on three technological pillars. Pillar one, detection: systems designed to identify adversary generated materials to see what the enemy is pushing into the information space before it takes hold. Pillar two, multimodal effects: AI models capable of generating text, video, and audio, synthetic content designed to shape how target populations perceive events in real time. Pillar three, population modeling: a large scale simulation environment that can model entire populations and produce quantitative metrics. Answering the question Sam Gray himself asked, how good am I doing with this narrative? Did it resonate like we thought it was going to? The technology architecture Gray described is deliberately lean and distributed. Quote, give me 100 Mac minis with 100 different agents on them that are out running and operating, that are lightweight, small, do not require gigawatts of power. This is not a massive fragile supercomputer. This is a swarm. But there's a problem Gray openly acknowledged: the off the shelf AI systems we all use, ChatGPT, Gemini, do not think like Russia. They do not think like China. They were trained on American data shaped by American assumptions. Gray said directly, we have to get to a point where we can understand what it is that they think about and what we can create from a model perspective to emulate and behave like our adversary does. BIOW's goal is to build bespoke AI models specifically tuned to adversary cognitive frameworks. Why is this urgent? Gray pointed to two ongoing adversary campaigns as evidence: The United States is already behind. First, Iran's information operations during Operation Epic Fury. Second, China's large scale efforts to, in Gray's words, change the way that certain populations are thinking. And then Gray stated plainly, The United States is not currently positioned to counter these operations at machine speed. Quote, we need to start to get into that space. Congress didn't wait. The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Secretary of Defense to formally define cognitive warfare for the department, assign organizational responsibility, and assess the value of narrative intelligence with a deadline of 03/31/2026. BIOW does not operate in isolation. In 2025, the US Army created Detachment 201, the Executive Innovation Corps, commissioning four Senior Silicon Valley technology executives directly into the Army Reserve at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel: Andrew Bosworth, Kevin Weil, Shyam Sankar, and Bob McGrew. They wear the uniform and serve within the chain of command. Together, BIOW's technology stack and Detachment 201's Silicon Valley expertise represent a deliberate convergence of artificial intelligence, influence operations, and military command structure. NATO's chief scientist framed the stakes: cognitive warfare targets trust networks, identity narratives, and institutional legitimacy. The battle space is continuous, operates below the threshold of armed conflict, and the measure of success is not a message received, but a durable change in how a population thinks, decides, and acts. The human mind is now a contested domain. As of April 2026, BIOW is active: performers are being on-ramped, models are being built, simulations are running. And Gray made one thing clear about the vendors chosen to build this system: those who don't keep up will be cut. Quote, I will offramp you. The battle for cognition has begun. Whether you believe this program is an essential shield against adversary manipulation or a capability that raises profound questions about who defines the adversary and where those tools can be aimed, one fact is not in dispute. This is real. It is funded. It is operational. And you are now aware.

We all need to be aware and informed. Strive to be more aware rather than less. Stay woke.

We're all in a position of waiting and observing, but I refuse to just sit back. This individual isn't going to change, and I won't mislead others about his nature. I've spent time warning people about the potential dangers he poses, and I stand by that. Reacting to every situation with anger diminishes credibility. It's crucial to approach this carefully; if we make unfounded accusations, it can backfire. We need to be clear about what we’re dealing with before taking action.

Speaker 0 notes that AI has progressed rapidly, moving from a smart high school level two years ago to a smart college level and beyond. He believes AI could help cure diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's and provide cheaper energy, but he worries that entry-level white-collar work—such as in finance, consulting, and tech—will be first augmented and then replaced by AI systems, potentially causing a serious employment crisis as the pipeline for early-stage white-collar work contracts. When asked for a timeline, Speaker 0 says it is very hard to predict, but he would not be surprised if big effects emerge somewhere between one and five years, with private discussions among AI CEOs and other company leaders supportively pointing to this possibility. He feels this message hasn’t reached ordinary people or legislators, and he believes action is needed now. He asserts that the AI “bus” cannot be stopped, and that even if his company ceased operations today, six or seven US-based companies would continue, and China would likely beat the US if action is not taken. He emphasizes the need to steer the momentum and to get Congress, legislators, and the public to consider the issue. He mentions Anthropic’s economic index as a way to measure the effects and notes that the next step would be to move beyond measurement to actions that augment rather than replace, while acknowledging that this augmentation approach is not a long-term solution. He also notes that the government could take a wide range of actions and that deciding which is correct is not his place, but stresses the necessity to think seriously about it. Regarding mitigation, Speaker 1 asks for more detail on how to mitigate the worst-case scenario of AI wiping out all entry-level white-collar jobs and spiking unemployment to 10%–20%. Speaker 0 replies that exact numbers are uncertain, but emphasizes that AI is different in breadth, depth, and speed compared to past technological shifts. He suggests mitigations including educating people to use AI so workers can adapt faster, and potentially government measures to level the economic playing field, such as taxing AI companies. He frames these as important moves to mitigate potential disruption. Speaker 1 concludes by acknowledging that Speaker 0 provides messages from someone who runs an AI company but is also offering a public service announcement about future concerns.

We need to address the need for a fundamental change in our world. This process will take time, but once we have gone through it, the world will be different.

We must all stay aware and informed. Strive to be more awake than not, whether you consider yourself the most awake or just more awake.

We are all impacted by the current situation, so let's do at least three simple things: wear a mask, wash your hands.

There are tools available if things go in the right direction. Governments have to be accountable and play an important role.

My definition is this.

We are working on a situation today, aiming for the perfect call to action.

I was involved in policy determination, but it's hard to say if I became too involved. While I'm associated with a specific policy, the reality was more complex. I never explicitly said we should take action immediately. Instead, I sometimes went beyond my scientific advisory role to make people aware of the potential consequences of current trends.

The speaker discusses the importance of taking strong action when there is real danger to citizens. It is crucial to act quickly in such situations.

We need to actively work to prevent the predicted outcome of this virus. It's important for each individual to get involved and determine the truth for themselves. We shouldn't blindly accept everything we're told by so-called experts. We should engage with our community, representatives, and leaders to find a solution. I believe there is a solution, and it requires a comprehensive and urgent approach from the entire world.

Speaker 0: I had a guy who worked, very, very, very high up at Citibank. And he told me around 2008, he said, Glenn, you know, don't worry about the financial system. And I'm like, uh-huh. And he said, you know, we're never gonna go broke. I mean, do you know how much just the national parks are worth? And I looked at him and said, are you seriously telling me that we should commoditize the national parks? And he said, it's gonna happen. And I wonder now if this is what he was talking about. If it was just a digital not actually selling them, it's just a digital commoditization of our parks. Speaker 1: Yeah. So apply this now to the the phrase that we all heard during the COVID era, you'll own nothing and be happy. Well Yes. There's certain people that want to own everything, and that includes things that have never been able to be owned before that were considered things like the public commons, like rivers, lakes, the ocean itself, natural forests, all sorts of it. These people want to put all of that into the financial system, fractionalize it, tokenize it, and sell pieces of it around, use it to speculate on. Mean, it's It's very insane. Yeah. And so, this is just one aspect of digital currency play. Obviously, there's a lot more than that just going on as well. I would argue that a lot of this push, particularly in The US for dollar stablecoins supposedly being better than a central bank digital currency, also falls into this paradigm we talked about earlier of, you know, moving from the public to the private of the public private partnership because a lot of these stablecoin issuers, you know, if the the big concerns about CBDCs was that they're seasable, they're surveillable and they're programmable, Well, all of those three things also can apply to stablecoins. The only difference is that you would have a private company issue it and control it. But we've seen time and again how a lot of these private entities are willing to do that. When contacted, just look at how Bank of America behaved with January 6, people accused of wrongdoing on that day, for You know, they have no qualms in doing that and engaging in those type of activities. And the biggest dollar stablecoin issuer, Tether, which just hired Bo Hynes from the White House, they have openly said that they are a close partner of the US government for dollar hegemony globally and have uploaded the FBI, the Secret Service and other aspects of the US government onto its platform directly and have seized tethers from people just because government told them to, and this was during the Biden administration. So they obviously are willing to do that under any administration, and it's essentially functioning as a de facto public private partnership, even though we're being told it's a it's much better than a CBDC, but in terms of its impacts on civil liberties, you know, that's not necessarily true. So, again, vigilance is is important here.

We might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready or street ready. And part of that is understanding our own strength. And as we develop that strength, being able to assess our risk tolerance. Because we know that risk tolerance increases as the severity of the situation increases and as our own understanding of what's happening increases. So overall, the more we understand what's effective, what the risks are, and who's ready to participate, the more impact we can have.

We are in a planetary emergency and must act to prevent people from becoming climate refugees and losing their lives and livelihoods.

We are advised to sit tight and assess the situation. The speaker emphasizes the need to remain calm and evaluate the circumstances.

I believe it's time to decide if breaking the law is necessary. Many people are concerned about the danger we face and the future of our planet. The government and political parties have not addressed this issue adequately. There are lawful ways to get involved, like raising your voice, posting posters, or lobbying your MP. However, I feel that we are in significant danger and must raise our voices louder. If activists choose to break the law without causing harm or lasting environmental damage, I support them. Personally, I now consider it ethically responsible to do so.