SMSGT BONNIE RUSHING
The CogWar Trailblazer
Critical Cognitive Infrastructure
SMSgt, United States Air Force. First enlisted member ever assigned to a doctoral program
PhD Candidate, Cybersecurity, Laboratory for Cybersecurity Dynamics, University of Colorado Colorado Springs (via the Air Force Institute of Technology)
Senior Faculty Member, Department of Military and Strategic Studies, US Air Force Academy
Special Operations airborne linguist and signals intelligence team lead. 700+ flight hours aboard four C-130 variants
Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
Named to the "40 Under 40" list in STEM
Friday
10:45 AM
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Quantifying Cognitive Warfare and Security
When Bonnie Rushing began researching cognitive attacks, she found more than 100 competing definitions of what a "cognitive attack" actually is, and almost no agreement on how to measure one. So she built her own. Drawing on her doctoral research in cybersecurity and years teaching wargaming and strategy at the US Air Force Academy, Rushing introduces a working framework for defining, measuring, and defending against cognitive warfare, including her Cognitive Influence Calculator, a tool that estimates a population's susceptibility to cognitive attacks using press freedom and media trust data. She'll also share findings from a live wargame exercise in which the majority of participants admitted disinformation shaped their real decisions, sometimes dangerously so. For a field still arguing about definitions, Rushing offers something rarer: a way to actually measure the problem.
Bonnie Rushing is a doctoral researcher specializing in cognitive warfare, information influence, and human decision-making. She is a Cybersecurity Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her experience as a U.S. Air Force intelligence professional, special operations aviator, and Air Force Academy senior instructor informs her research on understanding how information environments shape perception, behavior, and operational decisions.
Her work examines susceptibility to information influence, media influence on decision-making, the effectiveness of cognitive attacks, online engagement patterns, and the relationship between media sentiment and financial markets. She is also developing cognitive wargames and the Cognitive Superiority Index, a framework for measuring which actor is gaining decision advantage during a contested cognitive campaign.
Rushing’s research has been accepted into Joint Force Quarterly, the International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, RUSI, and other cybersecurity and social science outlets. She was named in WOC Magazine's 40 under 40 STEM leaders in 2024 and has received multiple international research awards. More information at www.thebonnierusing.com.