Behavioral warfare is a non-lethal type of war that the world is trying to switch to. Its goal is behavior change, which can be achieved in many other ways, not just through weapons. It will not only be invisible, but even pleasant for the object of influence. Today demonstrates an active movement towards new territories in the field of information influence, which previously remained unused. Firstly, the goals of influence have expanded; we have a new chain of “fact - information - knowledge”, where knowledge as an object has become the center of interest. It is precisely because of their active sphere of knowledge formation that the ministries of education and culture in the post-Soviet space constantly come under “shellfire” of well-founded criticism. The Ministry of Education in general in the world has become an analogue of the Ministry of Propaganda, since it can put the necessary picture of the world into the pure heads of children. The Ministry of Culture generates the history of the past, creating its uncontested interpretations with the help of TV series. And it is this version that will then remain in the mass consciousness, since the television series, due to its emphasis on the emotionality of what is described, will defeat any book. Behaviorist War Poorly controlled streams of obtaining new knowledge have also emerged - for example, video games. One of my colleagues told me that when they visited Rome, it turned out that her son knew Rome best, who received this knowledge from a video game based on the book by Dan Brown. Secondly, there was an expansion of another chain of influence: “information operations - influence operations - behaviorist wars." As they wrote in the first works on information warfare, the weakest point on the battlefield is the soldier’s brain, since everything else can be covered with armor. And in peaceful life it’s the same: the brain remains the weakest, subjected to any possible influences. In Soviet times, we looked down on Western behaviorists, believing that they studied the world at the level of analyzing the elementary reactions of Pavlov’s dog. Today in this area there are already such peaks as behavioral economics or behavioral finance, and Pavlov’s dog can only be found in the form of an illustration, as, for example, in one of the presentations of the British military. Transformation of behavior in the form of promoting various kinds of social changes has long been actively used both Western and Soviet models (see, for example, about the Western experience of reprogramming behavior with the help of TV series). For example, one can consider Anton Makarenko a Soviet classic (albeit more of a practitioner than a theorist), who even noted that in the production of things there is quality control, but in the field of human production there is no. War is also a tool for forcing behavior change. But it relies on purely physical methods of coercion, and the world today is striving for softer options. It is not for nothing that Joseph Nye distinguished between hard power, which coerces, and soft power, which attracts. War is a quick tool when opponents are unequal, but the post-war period will “eat up” all the “saved” time, without leading to the desired results in changing behavior. This is clearly demonstrated by Afghanistan and Iraq, although people flew there holding in their hands studies of the more successful transformations of Germany and Japan after World War II. Interesting information came from Sholokhov’s son. Dmitry Bykov writes: “Sholokhov’s son recalled: in seventy, it seems, the second year, he and his father watched a program about the Civil War. The son asked his father: when do you think the Civil War really ended? Sholokhov puffed on his pipe and answered gloomily: it may not have ended...” From this we can draw the following conclusion: the same struggle is still unfolding before us in the post-Soviet space. An example is a video clip of an Islamic religious scholar explaining to potential recruits the statements from the Koran that prohibit killing. At the same time, it is emphasizedthat there cannot be a military victory here, since the influx of new recruits exceeds the capabilities of fighting them. Therefore, only information tools can generate the desired type of behavior change. Vladimir Ovchinsky and Elena Larina started talking about behavioral warfare coming into the arena in the next two to three years. Speaking about behavioral wars as a weapon of tomorrow, the authors emphasize that they are “based on technologies for manipulating behavioral algorithms, habits, and stereotypes of activity, embedded in us by society in the broadest sense of the word. Roughly speaking, the toolkit of behavioral warfare is to separate habit from the established activity that formed its situation, and use behavioral patterns to achieve other goals. Behavior transformation is already the cornerstone of the British approach to information operations. However, the American approach to influence operations defines them as influencing the perception and behavior of leaders and groups. The US also talked about the need not only for open information operations, but also for covert information operations. They say this in terms of countering the Islamic State. This is due to the fact that their own communications aimed at the Arab population are not supported. The purpose of this is to start a dialogue that will conflict with the existing monologue. Therefore, the only way to victory is through the use of influence tools. But, as we see, the ultimate goal here is a change in behavior: the flow of recruits must be stopped. Robert Jones distinguishes between artificial and natural stability. In the first case, the security forces protect the government from the people, in the second, they protect the people from the people and from an external threat. And these will be different behavioral models. The study of behavioral conflict undertaken by the British military begins with a statement of key points, among which the first two are: the conflict occurs in an information society, where perception can be stronger than reality, changes in individual and group behavior before, during and after conflict is a determining factor for success. The authors demand a shift of influence from the periphery of military affairs to its center. A verbatim quote from another statement: “Modern conflict requires that we be able to initiate behavioral changes in the combatants, in the population from which they receive support, and in those who in the future may seek to gain power.” Very important and interesting then is their transition to academic works on decision making under conditions of uncertainty. They freely refer to the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Then they include the theory of nudging by Thaler and Sunstein into their reasoning. What does all this have to do with British operations in Afghanistan and subsequent conflicts? They believe that this approach is absolutely breakthrough for conducting influence operations in the era of hybrid conflicts. They believe that influence is achieved through a combination of kinetic and non-kinetic activities. In an operational context, it is necessary to think about the consequences not only of the first, but also of the second and third levels. They also refer to the work of Ivan Arreguin-Toft, who believed that in the conflicts of the future, the one who makes the conceptual leap in thinking wins. Arreguin-Toft studied the victories of a weak player over a strong one, analyzing this as a variant of an asymmetric conflict. He wrote: “Understanding the conditions under which weak actors win wars is important for two reasons. First, if there are dynamics unique to asymmetric conflicts, or if analysis of them will provide fresh insight into asymmetric conflicts, then a general explanation of the consequences of asymmetric conflicts is not only desirable but necessary to reduce the similarity of unwinnable wars and increase the chances of US success when resorting to arms is necessary. Secondly, since asymmetric conflicts range from catastrophicterrorism to military intervention in interstate, ethnic, and civil wars is the most likely threat to U.S. security and interests, only a general theory of the consequences of asymmetric conflict can assist U.S. policymakers in their efforts to marshal the types of military and other forces needed to engender an effective U.S. strategic response." Here it should be recognized that in conditions of conflict asymmetry, it is natural to pay attention to other tools, since they are looking for an unconventional path to victory. The American military analyzes from the point of view of behavioral methodology a number of case studies of building legitimacy in rather complex conditions. This is communist Poland, this is Afghanistan and Hezbollah. At the same time, a lot of work is being done (and has been done) on analyzing and predicting the enemy’s behavior (for example, when it comes to modeling the enemy’s intentions). There are also works that trace the history of the development of behavioral analysis in the social sciences. The analysis of the building of legitimacy in the case of communist Poland is interesting because the Communist Party there could not use a reference to the Soviet Union, since the Poles perceived the USSR as the reason for the loss of their independence. Therefore, the campaign to demonstrate their successes could not be successful. The author concludes: “Because the Communists derived most of their power from the Soviet Union, they had to take on themes that contradicted anti-Soviet views and supported Soviet goals. This inevitable focus was probably the most important factor in the failure of their attempt to gain legitimacy, leading ultimately to protests and the end of communist rule. The example of Poland shows that influence operations that use “success stories” should not take place if the messages are unreliable for the target audience, since they contradict primary ideas.” It should not be forgotten that history has had a very serious experience of behavioral influence, which still requires further study. This is the Soviet experience (Anton Makarenko and others), this is the Chinese experience (the brainwashing system applied to American prisoners of war after the Korean War), this is the American experience in introducing new types of behavior (the work of the Center for Health Communications at Harvard University, headed by Jay Winstan) . At the same time, in the Soviet and Chinese projects, a large role was played by group pressure on the individual in order to change behavior, as, by the way, the influence in totalitarian texts, which is also of interest for study. Behaviorist warfare works with triggers, for example, in the case of the velvet or color revolutions Such triggers were the deaths of protesters that occurred during the process of suppressing protests, after which the authorities, as a rule, surrendered. Although later the presence of a third force in these murders or the absence of a murder at all was always discovered, as was the case in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Triggers can be both informational and material events and things. For example, the USSR falls when triggers such as jeans, Western cars, etc., practically take over the mass consciousness. In the same way, the first foreign toys appeared among the princes, who received them from the German settlement. These purely “technical objects” in certain contexts can become symbols. That is, we have the opportunity to build an “architecture of choice” within three types of contexts: physical context, informational context, virtual context. If we look at perestroika, then it will have to be recognized as a behavioral war, since the choice in it, as in the subsequent departure of all republics from the USSR, was made not on an ideological basis, but primarily on material factors, that is, we were talking about a conflict at the level of the physical context. Jeans and other things immediately became winners for the Soviet people, just like cars or music and films. This is especially true for the new generation. A more correct forecast for the collapse of the USSR was given not by the CIA, but.