Cocoon Effect on Intelligent Battlefield, 14th Five Year National Informatization Plan
Issue 14, 17 Jan 2022
你好 | Hello,
Welcome back to China Tech Dispatch!
In this revised edition, I have added two sections, "SinoSync" and "InfoBytes." "SinoSync" will cover non-military and non-warfare-related topics from Chinese sources, if any. "InfoBytes" section will have a short explainer of a concept referred to in other sections (like "Cocoon Effect" in today's issue). As always, the "Military and Warfare" section will cover important articles on informatized warfare, intelligent warfare, military technology, and related topics.
Cheers!
I. Military and Warfare
The real targets in war are the minds of the enemy decision-makers, not the bodies of the enemy army. --Liddell Hart, British military theorist, and strategist The biggest influence on resolve is usually the amount of time the commander spends making it. - -Sergei Ivanov
Cocoon Effect on Intelligent Battlefield
An article in People's Daily by Nie Xiaoli and Wang Zhe (affiliation not given) warns about the "cocoon effect" (茧房效应 Jiǎn fáng xiàoyìng) due to homogenous information and the algorithm bias. The cocoon effect can lead to unfavorable consequences leading to solidification and shaping thinking on combat based on incomplete information. With the informatization and intelligentization of the military, a lot of data will be generated and accumulated. Massive information in a short time along with the personalized recommendation algorithms wrap commanders in an information cocoon. The authors outline the following reasons for this effect:
Selection bias: During combat, commanders have limited time and energy and they tend to focus on the areas they want to know and are interested in. They look into the information that is consistent with their original attitudes, views, and positions, and try to avoid the ones that contradict their values. Over time, this selection bias leads to an information cocoon that
Abuse of intelligent recommendation algorithms: With the widespread application of intelligent information services and recommendation algorithms have become a core part of smart systems. These algorithms can create a cocoon effect by:
Creating a closed information system by pushing homogenous information. Since recommendation algorithms at the current stage are not very smart and can perform only basic operations on information based on quantity and popularity.
Personalizing information to narrow down information from the battlefield which caters to the interests and hobbies of the fighters, screen the information, and implement personalized content delivery. It creates a false sense of completeness of the information.
Present one-sided results as output and limit the commander's cognitive capability and decision-making capability.
Inherent weaknesses in combat systems: The intelligent combat system are complex and have inherent vulnerabilities in terms of structure and function. The theory of complex systems of war shows that a small number of nodes in a networked combat system have many connections, and the structure is so dense that once the same information is gathered creating homogeneous information and contributes to the "cocoon effect."
In intelligent warfare, the information cocoon can have distinctly negative effects. These are:
Information overload: It becomes more difficult for commanders to screen and extract high-value decision-making information from the flood of information, and the probability of mistakes increases.
Formation of cognitive silos: The "cocoon effect" acts as a barrier, which can seriously hinder the exchange of information between different combat domains and exacerbate the formation of cognitive silos. This effect creates a closed space through single and homogeneous data information and makes it difficult to access information in other fields. Thus depriving commanders of the right to know complete battlefield information.
Losing intelligent advantage: The information overload caused by the "cocoon effect" increases the mental activity of the commander and may lead to "thinking downtime." It slows down the decision-making speed and efficiency of the fighters. It might cause coordination failure and weakened interaction, which will lead to war-weariness of fighters and will greatly reduce combat willingness, action, and effectiveness.
The authors also suggest the following ways to reduce these negative effects of the cocoon effect.
Improving information literacy.
Optimizing intelligent algorithm.
Optimize the human-computer interaction.
Tap the potential of technological advantages to analyze the preferences of commanders and integrate with the art of war.
This article builds on an older article in PLA Daily which stated that the intelligent system which evolves the fastest will win. The key points were:
In future wars, the control of intellectual power will be elevated to the core control power. The key to seizing intellectual power is to maintain the freedom to evolve combat systems and hinder the evolution of the enemy's combat system.
The longer the war lasts, the better the side, faster will be the evolution of the combat system. As per the Matthew effect, the systems which evolve faster will win.
For an intelligent combat system, the initial capability is important, but the evolution capability is equally important. Whether it has self-learning and self-evolution capabilities should be taken as an important indicator to measure the pros and cons of an intelligent combat system.
While the article highlighted importance of faster evolution in intelligent combat systems, authors Nie Xiaoli and Wang Zhe are highlighting potential pitfalls in emphasizing the faster evolution of intelligent combat systems with an example of the "cocoon effect."
Additional Reading:
II. SinoSync
China's 14th Five Year National Informatization Plan
China's Central Network Security and Informatization Committee recently issued 14th Five-Year National Informatization Plan ("十四五” 国家信息化规划 "Shísìwǔ”guójiā xìnxī huà guīhuà). The Plan attempts to consolidate China's informatization efforts. It is based on documents like National Informatization Development Strategic Outline, the 10th National Economic and Social Development Plan, Outline of Vision 2035, the 14th Five-year Plan, etc.
Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the National Development Reforms Commission (NDRC) are responsible for the overall promotion and supervision of the Plan.
While acknowledging the developments towards informatization made during the previous planned period, the Plan acknowledges several shortcomings of the informatization attempts in China. These shortcomings are:
Unbalanced and insufficient informatization.
A significant gap in urban and rural informatization.
Obstacles in institutional mechanisms in enhancing digital productivity.
Shortcomings in key core technologies.
Insufficient competitiveness.
Insufficient integration of the digital economy and the real economy.
Weak links in social governance informatization - need to improve grassroots governance capacity.
Sluggish construction of the national data service system.
The insufficient supply capacity of digital public services - has not been able to meet the needs of the masses.
The Plan outlines the following development goals.
Make decisive progress in the development of digital China by 2025.
Complete digital infrastructure.
Form a digital technology innovation system with a focus on building core innovation ability in integrated circuits, basic software, equipment materials, core components, etc.
Achieve major breakthroughs in technology innovation capabilities.
Achieve world-class quality and efficiency in digital economic development.
Construct and maintain the progress of building a digital society.
Ten priority actions have been identified to achieve these development goals. All have phased deadlines of 2023 and 2025. These priority actions are:
National Digital Literacy and Skills Improvement (全民数字素养与技能提升行动)
Improve digital capabilities of enterprises (large and medium-sized enterprises) (企业数字能力提升行动)
Achieve a breakthrough in cutting-edge digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, blockchain, quantum technologies. (前沿数字技术突破行动)
Open cooperation in digital trade (数字贸易开放合作行动)
Improve grassroots smart governance capabilities (基层智慧治理能力提升行动)
Construction of green, intelligent, and ecological civilization (绿色智慧生态文明建设行动)
Digital village development (数字乡村发展行动)
Inclusive digital financial services (数字普惠金融服务行动)
Construct digital emergency public health system (公共卫生应急数字化建设行动)
Expansion of smart elderly care services (智慧养老服务拓展行动)
Main indicators of the 14th Five-Year Informatization Development Plan
Informatization broadly refers to a process where information and communication technologies (ICT) dominate either some or all aspects of an organization, society, governance, or economy. Think of it as a process that uses ICT and related technologies to improve the speed and quality of information being produced, distributed, and analyzed. Informatization and digitization are closely interrelated processes.
Why National Informatization Plan is important from a security perspective?
This plan, if implemented as envisioned, will aid the modernization goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the concept of "Informatized Warfare" (信息化作战 Xìnxī huà zuòzhàn). Although the National Informatization Plan does not explicitly mention military applications, attempts to informatize the military cannot happen in isolation. The civilian sectors which support the military also need to reach a certain level for the military modernization process to be practically successful. Hence, this National Informatization Plan can have long-term implications for PLA's informatization and intelligentization goals.
PLA's definition of Informatized Warfare is "the use of information technology to create an operational system-of-systems, which would enable the PLA to acquire, transmit, process, and use information during a conflict to conduct joint military operations across the ground, maritime, air, space, cyberspace, and electromagnetic spectrum domains." China's 2015 Defence White Paper gave centrality to the concept of Informatized Warfare (信息化作战 Xìnxī huà zuòzhàn). The focus of such warfare is on winning wars via information dominance.
Informatization is also an important step towards "Intelligentized Warfare" (智能化作战 Zhìnéng huà zuòzhàn). "Intelligentized Warfare" (智能化作战 Zhìnéng huà zuòzhàn) refers to the future warfare concept where the mode of confrontation evolves from “system confrontation” to “algorithm confrontation”. Use of digital technologies like AI, big data, blockchain is central to this stage in warfare. This could be in the form of either intelligent weapons or software.
Attempts to carry out informatization have been outlined since the 1990s and informatization of the military is one of the milestones of PLA modernization which China aims to achieve by 2027. The importance of informatization is evident in the communique of the 5th Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) which emphasized speeding up the integrated development of the “mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization” process of the military.
Moreover, an interesting quote in the Plan grabbed my attention. It says,
"In the period of deepening and consolidation of modernization and governance capabilities, it is necessary to speed up the construction of a digital society, greatly improve the modernization level of data-based national governance capabilities and integrate social media with Chinese characteristics." (和治理能力现代化的深化巩固期，要加快构建数字社会，极大提升基于数据的国家治理能力现代化水平，把中国特色社)
China's government has been trying to build "social media with Chinese characteristics" for a while. Over the years, the government and CPC have issued several guidelines, laws, and regulations in this direction. The most recent example is a guideline jointly issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in September 2021 which aims to build a "civilized cyberspace." Interestingly, this vision of civilized cyberspace aims to consolidate the "guiding status of Marxism in the ideological cyberspace."
Additional Reading:
John Doston and Howard Wang, ‘The “Algorithm Game” and Its Implications for Chinese War Control’, Jamestown China Brief 19, no. 7 (9 April 2019), https://jamestown.org/program/the-algorithm-game-and-its-implications-for-chinese-war-control/.
III. InfoBytes
Cocoon Effect
The cocoon effect is a concept from in Cass Sunstein's book "Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge." Sunstein states that people tend to pay attention to the selective information on topics that makes them happy rather than all information available on a topic. With time, people surround themselves with selective information, as a silkworm surrounds itself into a cocoon. This effect is more prevalent in the age of the internet and social media.
Matthew Effect
Coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton, this effect explains that people/entities accumulate something in the proportion of what they already have. Hence, the rich will get richer or a faster entity will become fastest. Merton named this effect based on a parable in the Gospel of Matthew.
IV. Before You Go
My colleague Arjun Gargeyas and I co-authored the latest issue paper “China’s Technical Standardisation Framework“ published by The Takshashila Institution. In this paper, we analyze China’s National Standardisation Development (NSD) Outline released in October 2021. The NSD outline consolidates the goals of the “China Standards 2035” (中国标准 2035) project and is one of many documents which supplement existing national-level strategies. It highlights the importance of standards for domestic economic development for fuelling technological innovation and improving domestic industry standards. Read the full paper here.
We also wrote an article for The Diplomat. Check it out here:
Megha Pardhi is a Research Analyst at The Takshashila Institution. She tweets at @pardhimegha21.