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1st October 2025, 01:02
From Influence to Actuation: The Tacticalization of Targeting Technology
Retrofitting Targeting Tech To Switch From Citizen Oppression To Battlefield-Capable
Targeting technologies once seen primarily as surveillance and persuasion stacks are evolving into a hybrid pipeline that can resolve, follow, and act on individual bodies and minds in near-real time. Cheap sensors, persistent identity graphs, low-latency networks, and optimized neuromorphic edge processors now permit continuous, low-trace surveillance and identity confirmation at milliwatt-to-watt power levels. High-energy effectors that produce strong physiological or lethal effects remain constrained by kilowatt-scale power, cooling, and logistics — but those constraints create a dangerous operational mix: inexpensive, persistent stalking punctuated by episodic, higher-impact strikes when logistics allow.
https://kasspert.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dronefuture2.jpg
Crucially, drones often serve not as the delivery system but as distributed eyes and triangulators: low-power, hard-to-attribute sensor nodes that point toward less-mobile actuators with the power to disable or kill. This separation of sensing from actuation increases persistence, lowers immediate detectability, and multiplies plausible deniability. The tactical pattern thus becomes: continuous monitoring → identity confirmation (via cross-validated cues and biofeedback signals) → transient confusion or sensory disruption → selective escalation.
Policy must treat the whole pipeline — data + edge cognition + effectors — as a weapons problem, not merely a surveillance issue. Immediate steps include export controls for enabling hardware, forensic and clinical investments to detect and document events, auditability requirements for security neuromorphic systems, and legal/clinical support for suspected victims.
From Influence to Actuation: The Tacticalization of Targeting Technology
Introduction
For years we described modern targeting systems as tools of surveillance and persuasion: identity graphs, ad-tech, and social-media microtargeting framed as instruments of population control. That description is now insufficient. The same components — ubiquitous sensors, persistent identity resolution, ultra-low-latency networks, and adaptive neuromorphic processors at the edge — are converging with physical effectors. The result is a new class of capability: targeting pipelines that can resolve, follow, and act on individuals in near-real time. What began as mass persuasion is becoming individual-level actuation. In practice that transforms targeting tech from a social weapon into a battlefield weapon: fast, discreet, and scalable.
CLAWS as the military face. In defense discourse these convergences are increasingly gathered under the label Cognitive Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (CLAWS). CLAWS names the point where neuromorphic processing, edge autonomy, and directed-energy or non-kinetic effectors fuse into a coherent pipeline. What we have described as the migration from influence to actuation is essentially the civilian-to-military trajectory of CLAWS: adaptive cognition tied directly to actuators capable of individualized disruption or incapacitation.
The convergence that matters
Three technical trends collapse important distinctions between analytics and actuation:
Sensor ubiquity + identity graphs. Cheap cameras, microphones, RF sensors, and phone telemetry feed persistent identity graphs able to resolve a person’s location, behavior, and biometric signatures across time and space.
Low-latency networks + edge compute. 5G/6G backbones and efficient neuromorphic/TinyML processors push decision loops from remote clouds into the battlespace, enabling real-time inference at low power.
Adaptive models + separated effectors. Models that once scored voters or consumers can, when paired with actuators, cue non-kinetic or kinetic responses targeted at an identified individual.
These trends shorten the path from “who is influential” to “who is vulnerable” — and from “we might influence” to “we can intervene.”
Power, persistence, and practical limits
One reason the tacticalization thesis is credible is the asymmetric power profile across the stack. Sensing, telemetry, and on-device inference are now achievable at milliwatt-to-watt scales thanks to optimized MCUs, TinyML, and neuromorphic chips. Continuous, distributed resolution and low-trace monitoring are therefore operationally cheap and scalable. By contrast, effectors capable of strong thermal, mechanical, or deep physiological harm (high-energy lasers, kilowatt-class RF) require substantial power, cooling, and logistics — constraints that limit covert small-scale lethality.
Operational logic follows: low-power persistence lowers the cost of stalking; high-power effects raise the cost of outright killing. The practical result is hybridized threat behavior: inexpensive, stealthy monitoring and harassment with the option to apply episodic, higher-impact effects when politically or operationally expedient.
Tactical modes: stalking vs seek-and-destroy
The hybrid model splits into two complementary modes:
Persistent attrition (stalking): Cheap sensors + identity graphs + edge inference deliver continuous, low-trace pressure — disinformation, financial denial-of-service, sensory nuisance — designed to erode capacity and will over time. This is cheap, hard to attribute, and politically deniable.
Episodic strikes (seek-and-destroy): When decisive outcomes are required, actors seek positive identification through persistent tracking and confirmatory biofeedback cues. They may then introduce transient confusion or sensory disruption to degrade situational awareness and time a follow-on higher-impact effect. Because strong effectors need substantial power and produce detectable signatures, episodic strikes are costlier and leave more forensic traces — but the layering of stalking then strike increases operational success while complicating attribution.
This duality — long, cheap stalking punctuated by selective, higher-cost strikes — is what makes the threat both credible and dangerous.
Drones as witnesses: sensing, triangulation, and separation of function
Drones need not carry the whole toolkit. A more likely architecture separates sensing and actuation: small drones operate as distributed eyes and pointing fingers — persistent recon and triangulation nodes that feed location, behavioral, and biometric cues back to less-mobile, higher-capability actuators (parked vehicles, fixed emitter platforms, or concealed power sources). In this role drones are witnesses and triangulators: they resolve identity, validate signatures, and cue the actuator that delivers the disabling or lethal effect.
That separation matters:
It lowers cost and increases persistence (many cheap drones can build robust identity graphs).
It increases deniability (sensor sightings are less incriminating than discharging a kilowatt emitter nearby).
It enhances confirmation (multiple drone witnesses reduce false positives via cross-validation).
It creates clear choke points for regulation and detection (the actuator side — not the drone — demands power and logistics and is the most traceable element).
Why confirmation + induced confusion is tactically attractive (non-operational analysis)
Confirmation reduces misidentification risk; brief confusion or sensory disruption increases the probability a follow-on action will succeed; and the layered approach muddles attribution. The technique is tactically attractive because it combines persistence with selectable escalation, producing effects that are operationally useful while remaining politically and legally hard to attribute.
Forensics, detection, and mitigation priorities
Because the pipeline mixes stealthy low-power layers with episodic high-power events, countermeasures must be layered:
Attribution research & independent forensics. Fund non-military labs to detect power/RF/thermal signatures and publish forensic baselines.
Networked provenance. Correlate drone sightings, network logs, and procurement records so sensor events leave auditable trails that are hard to treat as noise.
Power/logistics choke-point monitoring. Strengthen oversight on sustained high-density power supplies, thermal-management procurement, and odd procurement patterns.
Clinical & legal supports. Establish registries, clinical protocols, and pro-bono legal toolkits to help suspected victims document and escalate incidents.
Auditability for edge systems. Mandate immutable logs, model cards, and external audits for neuromorphic systems used in security contexts so decisions leave a trace even when taken at the edge.
Policy implications
Treat the pipeline — data fusion, edge neuromorphic hardware, and effectors — as strategic infrastructure that can become a weapon. Specific short-term policy actions:
Export & end-use controls on neuromorphic edge chips and high-energy emitter components.
Classify cognitive effectors (systems intentionally designed to manipulate neural function) under precautionary governance analogous to chemical/biological rules.
Fund detection & clinical infrastructure to document, investigate, and treat suspected exposures.
Mandate auditability & purpose limitation for security neuromorphic systems.
Support victims with legal/clinical pathways that make documentation and attribution feasible.
Arms-control discussions should not treat CLAWS as speculative. The pipeline is already present in civilian form — identity graphs, low-latency networks, neuromorphic edge hardware — with only the actuator side lagging behind. To govern CLAWS effectively, regulators must address the rails that make them possible, not just the platforms that eventually carry the label.
Conclusion
The shift from influence to actuation, from passive/aggressive to pure aggressive is not teleological, but the trajectory is short and visible. The rails that enable battlefield-grade, identity-driven effectors are being assembled out of civilian and defense pieces alike. If policymakers wait until actuation is standardized and commodified the options for governance will be far weaker. Perhaps battlefield tech advancements are honed on the public more often than we know. Look to wars and global skirmishes to now include this technology- after all whatever is in front of global powers is a target. Treating targeting as a weapons problem — and acting now to regulate enabling hardware, shore up forensics, and support victims — is the strategic imperative.
Inspired by a post from Francesco Roberti
https://kasspert.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/from-influence-to-actuation-the-tacticalization-of-targeting-technology/
Retrofitting Targeting Tech To Switch From Citizen Oppression To Battlefield-Capable
Targeting technologies once seen primarily as surveillance and persuasion stacks are evolving into a hybrid pipeline that can resolve, follow, and act on individual bodies and minds in near-real time. Cheap sensors, persistent identity graphs, low-latency networks, and optimized neuromorphic edge processors now permit continuous, low-trace surveillance and identity confirmation at milliwatt-to-watt power levels. High-energy effectors that produce strong physiological or lethal effects remain constrained by kilowatt-scale power, cooling, and logistics — but those constraints create a dangerous operational mix: inexpensive, persistent stalking punctuated by episodic, higher-impact strikes when logistics allow.
https://kasspert.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dronefuture2.jpg
Crucially, drones often serve not as the delivery system but as distributed eyes and triangulators: low-power, hard-to-attribute sensor nodes that point toward less-mobile actuators with the power to disable or kill. This separation of sensing from actuation increases persistence, lowers immediate detectability, and multiplies plausible deniability. The tactical pattern thus becomes: continuous monitoring → identity confirmation (via cross-validated cues and biofeedback signals) → transient confusion or sensory disruption → selective escalation.
Policy must treat the whole pipeline — data + edge cognition + effectors — as a weapons problem, not merely a surveillance issue. Immediate steps include export controls for enabling hardware, forensic and clinical investments to detect and document events, auditability requirements for security neuromorphic systems, and legal/clinical support for suspected victims.
From Influence to Actuation: The Tacticalization of Targeting Technology
Introduction
For years we described modern targeting systems as tools of surveillance and persuasion: identity graphs, ad-tech, and social-media microtargeting framed as instruments of population control. That description is now insufficient. The same components — ubiquitous sensors, persistent identity resolution, ultra-low-latency networks, and adaptive neuromorphic processors at the edge — are converging with physical effectors. The result is a new class of capability: targeting pipelines that can resolve, follow, and act on individuals in near-real time. What began as mass persuasion is becoming individual-level actuation. In practice that transforms targeting tech from a social weapon into a battlefield weapon: fast, discreet, and scalable.
CLAWS as the military face. In defense discourse these convergences are increasingly gathered under the label Cognitive Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (CLAWS). CLAWS names the point where neuromorphic processing, edge autonomy, and directed-energy or non-kinetic effectors fuse into a coherent pipeline. What we have described as the migration from influence to actuation is essentially the civilian-to-military trajectory of CLAWS: adaptive cognition tied directly to actuators capable of individualized disruption or incapacitation.
The convergence that matters
Three technical trends collapse important distinctions between analytics and actuation:
Sensor ubiquity + identity graphs. Cheap cameras, microphones, RF sensors, and phone telemetry feed persistent identity graphs able to resolve a person’s location, behavior, and biometric signatures across time and space.
Low-latency networks + edge compute. 5G/6G backbones and efficient neuromorphic/TinyML processors push decision loops from remote clouds into the battlespace, enabling real-time inference at low power.
Adaptive models + separated effectors. Models that once scored voters or consumers can, when paired with actuators, cue non-kinetic or kinetic responses targeted at an identified individual.
These trends shorten the path from “who is influential” to “who is vulnerable” — and from “we might influence” to “we can intervene.”
Power, persistence, and practical limits
One reason the tacticalization thesis is credible is the asymmetric power profile across the stack. Sensing, telemetry, and on-device inference are now achievable at milliwatt-to-watt scales thanks to optimized MCUs, TinyML, and neuromorphic chips. Continuous, distributed resolution and low-trace monitoring are therefore operationally cheap and scalable. By contrast, effectors capable of strong thermal, mechanical, or deep physiological harm (high-energy lasers, kilowatt-class RF) require substantial power, cooling, and logistics — constraints that limit covert small-scale lethality.
Operational logic follows: low-power persistence lowers the cost of stalking; high-power effects raise the cost of outright killing. The practical result is hybridized threat behavior: inexpensive, stealthy monitoring and harassment with the option to apply episodic, higher-impact effects when politically or operationally expedient.
Tactical modes: stalking vs seek-and-destroy
The hybrid model splits into two complementary modes:
Persistent attrition (stalking): Cheap sensors + identity graphs + edge inference deliver continuous, low-trace pressure — disinformation, financial denial-of-service, sensory nuisance — designed to erode capacity and will over time. This is cheap, hard to attribute, and politically deniable.
Episodic strikes (seek-and-destroy): When decisive outcomes are required, actors seek positive identification through persistent tracking and confirmatory biofeedback cues. They may then introduce transient confusion or sensory disruption to degrade situational awareness and time a follow-on higher-impact effect. Because strong effectors need substantial power and produce detectable signatures, episodic strikes are costlier and leave more forensic traces — but the layering of stalking then strike increases operational success while complicating attribution.
This duality — long, cheap stalking punctuated by selective, higher-cost strikes — is what makes the threat both credible and dangerous.
Drones as witnesses: sensing, triangulation, and separation of function
Drones need not carry the whole toolkit. A more likely architecture separates sensing and actuation: small drones operate as distributed eyes and pointing fingers — persistent recon and triangulation nodes that feed location, behavioral, and biometric cues back to less-mobile, higher-capability actuators (parked vehicles, fixed emitter platforms, or concealed power sources). In this role drones are witnesses and triangulators: they resolve identity, validate signatures, and cue the actuator that delivers the disabling or lethal effect.
That separation matters:
It lowers cost and increases persistence (many cheap drones can build robust identity graphs).
It increases deniability (sensor sightings are less incriminating than discharging a kilowatt emitter nearby).
It enhances confirmation (multiple drone witnesses reduce false positives via cross-validation).
It creates clear choke points for regulation and detection (the actuator side — not the drone — demands power and logistics and is the most traceable element).
Why confirmation + induced confusion is tactically attractive (non-operational analysis)
Confirmation reduces misidentification risk; brief confusion or sensory disruption increases the probability a follow-on action will succeed; and the layered approach muddles attribution. The technique is tactically attractive because it combines persistence with selectable escalation, producing effects that are operationally useful while remaining politically and legally hard to attribute.
Forensics, detection, and mitigation priorities
Because the pipeline mixes stealthy low-power layers with episodic high-power events, countermeasures must be layered:
Attribution research & independent forensics. Fund non-military labs to detect power/RF/thermal signatures and publish forensic baselines.
Networked provenance. Correlate drone sightings, network logs, and procurement records so sensor events leave auditable trails that are hard to treat as noise.
Power/logistics choke-point monitoring. Strengthen oversight on sustained high-density power supplies, thermal-management procurement, and odd procurement patterns.
Clinical & legal supports. Establish registries, clinical protocols, and pro-bono legal toolkits to help suspected victims document and escalate incidents.
Auditability for edge systems. Mandate immutable logs, model cards, and external audits for neuromorphic systems used in security contexts so decisions leave a trace even when taken at the edge.
Policy implications
Treat the pipeline — data fusion, edge neuromorphic hardware, and effectors — as strategic infrastructure that can become a weapon. Specific short-term policy actions:
Export & end-use controls on neuromorphic edge chips and high-energy emitter components.
Classify cognitive effectors (systems intentionally designed to manipulate neural function) under precautionary governance analogous to chemical/biological rules.
Fund detection & clinical infrastructure to document, investigate, and treat suspected exposures.
Mandate auditability & purpose limitation for security neuromorphic systems.
Support victims with legal/clinical pathways that make documentation and attribution feasible.
Arms-control discussions should not treat CLAWS as speculative. The pipeline is already present in civilian form — identity graphs, low-latency networks, neuromorphic edge hardware — with only the actuator side lagging behind. To govern CLAWS effectively, regulators must address the rails that make them possible, not just the platforms that eventually carry the label.
Conclusion
The shift from influence to actuation, from passive/aggressive to pure aggressive is not teleological, but the trajectory is short and visible. The rails that enable battlefield-grade, identity-driven effectors are being assembled out of civilian and defense pieces alike. If policymakers wait until actuation is standardized and commodified the options for governance will be far weaker. Perhaps battlefield tech advancements are honed on the public more often than we know. Look to wars and global skirmishes to now include this technology- after all whatever is in front of global powers is a target. Treating targeting as a weapons problem — and acting now to regulate enabling hardware, shore up forensics, and support victims — is the strategic imperative.
Inspired by a post from Francesco Roberti
https://kasspert.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/from-influence-to-actuation-the-tacticalization-of-targeting-technology/