MindWar

A 1980 internal Army position paper co-authored by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino and Colonel Paul E. Vallely, titled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. The paper argued that the US military’s existing tactical psychological-operations doctrine was inadequate to strategic competition with the Soviet Union, and proposed a continuous strategic information capability treating the information environment as a primary domain of contest. The paper made no reference to Setian doctrine but prefigures what is now discussed as cognitive-domain operations and strategic information warfare.