During the 2024 Cipher Brief Threat Conference, Dave Pitts joined Brad Christian, Mike Vickers, and Ralph Goff in a discussion about Gray Zone Operations; a term they recognized was lacking in strategic clarity. One topic discussed was the growing threat of “cognitive warfare.”
The authors are focusing here on cognitive warfare as an important strategic element in great power competition, particularly as superpowers increasingly engage in operations just below the level of war.
Their observation is that U.S. adversaries may have a clearer view of the role of cognitive warfare in great power competition than the U.S. does. They argue exclusively in The Cipher Brief that the U.S. is fully capable of successfully engaging in cognitive warfare against Russia, China, and other aspiring adversaries, but they think there is more essential work to be done in this space.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — We are in an era of renewed great power competition, and the global order for decades to come is hanging in the balance. Great powers, having learned costly lessons from history, are increasingly wary of direct military confrontation against each other. In this complex environment, operations in the “Gray Zone”—the space between peace and open conflict—have become increasingly prevalent.
Activities such as covert action, surrogate warfare, cyber-attacks, penetration of critical infrastructure, use of ambiguous forces (e.g. Russia’s ‘little green men’), and technology theft are examples of Gray Zone activities. These operations allow nations to pursue strategic objectives, at times aggressively, against their adversaries, overtly and covertly, while minimizing the risk of war.
An increasingly prominent Gray Zone activity to gain a strategic advantage over adversaries is cognitive warfare. These are activities conducted across a broad spectrum to achieve specific strategic objectives by influencing individuals, groups, and societies at the cognitive level—through information activities, but also through a wide range of actions and pressures that can influence cognition. Our perceptions and beliefs, what and how we think, how we make decisions, the decisions we make, and even our will and resolve are under unprecedented assault.
The Evolving State of Cognitive Warfare
Cognitive warfare, rooted in ancient strategies like Sun Tzu's emphasis on winning without fighting, has evolved significantly through history. It evolved through Cold War psychological operations, and further developed in the twentieth century with Russian concepts of Active Measures and Reflexive Control. The post-Cold War era saw the emergence of political warfare, while China contributed its Three Warfares strategy. Most recently, advancements in AI and neuroscience have revolutionized cognitive warfare, enabling more precise targeting of human cognition and decision-making processes. In contrast to traditional information operations, cognitive warfare focuses on people, not systems, and ultimately seeks to control cognition, not media. Today's cognitive warfare is a comprehensive assault on human cognition that extends well beyond just the spread of false information.
The Primary Actors
China is waging cognitive warfare to weaken U.S. global power and influence while advancing its own global leadership role. Beijing aims to subtly impose its will on the United States and its allies—without resorting to military conflict.
One of China’s primary goals is to reverse U.S. support for Taiwan, but it also seeks to expand its regional and global influence, assert itself as the global technology leader, and strengthen its economy—and it believes the U.S. is in the way. It is China’s belief that cognitive warfare will advance their objectives.
Russia is keeping pace. Moscow is working nonstop to persuade U.S. citizens and policy makers to make decisions on issues like the war in Ukraine that benefit Russia. On September 4, 2024, the U.S. Justice Department disrupted a covert Russian disinformation campaign to undermine international support for Ukraine, bolster Russia’s interests, and influence U.S voters.
These operations are part of Russia’s” Reflexive Control”, an element in Russia’s long-standing military strategy to make adversaries voluntarily make decisions that favor Russia.
Vladimir Putin is the face of Russia’s Reflexive Control strategy and a practitioner of cognitive warfare. It is our assessment that he personally advances false narratives, forceful denials, and conspiracies; issues threats; courts - as well as taunts - world leaders; engages in bad-faith negotiations and diplomatic deception; and seeks to create social and political division within the United States and NATO.
One challenging aspect of Putin’s Reflexive Control is that it is undeterred by discovery. Moscow tends to double down on a false narrative if that narrative is outed as an obvious lie. For months, Moscow denied that the troops it was amassing along Ukraine’s border, were staging for an unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has proven that pushing a false narrative will eventually persuade some people to believe it’s lies. Putin also knows that if he offers an obviously false narrative, some will willingly spread it. The Russian leader is likely more effective with internal audiences, but we should not underestimate his ability to use a wide array of cognitive tactics to sow chaos and uncertainty that then influences beliefs and actions.
Iran is working diligently to influence the 2024 elections, employing a multi-layered information warfare apparatus with branches across the globe. Iran’s goals are similar to Russia’s and China’s in that it wants to weaken the power and influence of the U.S., and punish the U.S. for past actions, manipulating U.S citizens in the process.
What is clear today, is that things have changed. The current U.S. focus on disinformation needs to evolve. Cognitive warfare represents an evolution in conflict, targeting human cognition as its primary battlefield, potentially altering the geopolitical landscape without conventional military engagement. Disinformation is still an effective tool for our adversaries, but it is increasingly a part of a broader and more dangerous cognitive warfare approach.
AI has Changed Everything
Of course, we already know that AI is making all this more challenging, but we’re still only at the beginning of how AI will shape cognitive warfare. Deep fakes, voice cloning, and AI-enabled information is created and then disseminated quickly and widely; often well ahead of the facts.
AI can also be used to automate content creation that can outpace the truth, by making subtle changes in content, working quickly in multiple languages, subtly tailoring information for selected audiences, helping to weave powerful narratives, and persuasively misattributing information.
AI enhances the ability to influence the human cognition and decision-making processes, and the speed and scale of AI-driven operations can overwhelm human cognitive defenses. AI is becoming ubiquitous.
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There were close to 250 million users of AI tools globally in 2023. That number is expected to reach 700 million by the end of the decade, according to Statista. This makes it far easier for even more individuals to create and post persuasive disinformation and narratives online. AI is the perfect companion to Cognitive Warfare.
Impact of a Chaotic Information Environment
The chaotic state of the information environment makes it conducive to the creation and dissemination of false and deceptive information. According to the data company Statista, there are over 5 billion internet users today and over 200 million content providers who produce billions of articles and posts and who produce over 4 million podcasts. There are over 10,000 websites created every hour. Any individual or any group, with good or malicious intent, can now easily reach global audiences with minimal costs.
A stand-out example is COVID-related disinformation, whose 12 core originators generated thousands of postings that were then multiplied in repostings and comments, dominating online discussions. User-generated and AI-enabled content can rival established media in accessibility and influence, and fake news sites now outnumber legitimate new sites.
The information environment also provides camouflage, infrastructure, and resources for nefarious work by our adversaries. There are thousands of internet sites, fake users, bots, and willing surrogates managed by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea that disseminate disinformation in a calculated manner with the U.S as a primary target.
To make this worse, shadowy Disinformation as a Service (DaaS) providers (private firms that will spread disinformation online for a fee) are on the rise. It’s no wonder that the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short-term risk in its 2024 Global Risks Report.
What are our Adversaries Strategic Objectives?
Considering the evolving state of cognitive warfare, the enabling capabilities of AI, and the resources and infrastructure offered by the chaotic information environment, what are our adversaries’ interrelated strategic objectives when it comes to cognitive warfare?
The answer: to manipulate the perception of facts and reality. A key goal of cognitive warfare is to replace what we believe and know with new perceptions and realities. Persuasive disinformation, deep fakes, and other AI-manipulated information can shape those perceptions and realities over time.
Persuasive narratives that redefine how we perceive major issues or even one nation versus another can influence our beliefs and decisions. False realities that weave in enough truthful information to sound authentic and that are delivered repetitively can potentially reshape how we see the world. Those narratives can be emphasized in different ways based on the target audiences; internal, the near-abroad, the Global South, Europe, or the United States, for example.
In China's global messaging strategy, Beijing presents itself as a peaceful rising power, advocating for a "Community of Common Destiny" that emphasizes mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. It projects its ascent as legitimate and beneficial for the region and the world. China often uses educational, scientific, and cultural exchanges for individuals and groups along with the promise to countries of economic investments and infrastructure and security assistance to support this image.
China contrasts this with the narrative that the U.S. is a declining hegemon clinging to global power and attempting to contain China's rightful rise through aggression, coercion of other nations, and unfair trade practices.
Through this narrative, China seeks to undermine U.S. influence and shape a more China-centric international order while positioning itself as a responsible global actor. Simultaneously, China seeks to obscure criticisms of its own aggressive actions in regions like the South China Sea, its coercive economic practices, and its domestic human rights record.
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Russia portrays itself as seeking peace and as a defender against Western aggression and imperialism. It is important to Russia that it projects power and its global diplomatic expertise and influence. Russia frames the conflict in Ukraine as an ideological battle against Western hegemony. Putin maintains that Russia is the victim and Ukraine is the aggressor, falsely claiming that Ukraine harbors neo-Nazis and has secret weapons programs.
The Kremlin justifies its actions as protecting ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, while delegitimizing Ukraine's statehood and sovereignty; Russia has claimed that Ukraine is part of Russia. Moscow presents the conflict as a necessary response to NATO expansion and Western meddling, positioning itself as a necessary global counterbalance to U.S. dominance and a champion for a multipolar world order.
Undermining the credibility of leaders, institutions, and policies
Our adversaries are working to undermine the trust we have in our own leaders, institutions, and policies. Both China and Russia have conducted disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks to manipulate stock prices and currency exchange rates. China’s deception and disinformation on COVID is well established. Beijing has even accused the U.S. of using cognitive warfare against China.
Both China and Russia have used cyber-attacks to target a wide range of high-ranking U.S. government officials and their advisors across a spectrum that includes the White House; the Departments of Justice, Commerce, the Treasury, State Department; and members of Congress. Access to those personal networks allow a wide variety of operations to influence, discredit, or exploit in other ways.
Beyond domestic considerations, there is disagreement in the U.S. on future support for Ukraine and there have been previous delays in funding approvals; developments which ultimately favor Russia and which are consistent with Russia efforts to influence U.S citizens and policymakers. We know from the 2024 Annual U.S. Threat Assessment that China is intensifying efforts to mold U.S. public discourse on Taiwan and to advance its broader narrative. China rightly sees the role that both citizens and policymakers play in future policy decisions on Taiwan, and we should expect China to seek to manipulate this internal dialogue in its favor.
Sowing political and social discontent and creating fractures with our allies
Democratic societies discuss their agreements and disagreements in public. This strength of free societies allows Russia and China to find ways to interfere in public discourse. Moscow is particularly active on this. Undermining confidence in our democratic processes that results in contentious and contested election results— is a win for our adversaries.
Russia and China utilize online personas to pose as Americans and they use the statements of influential Americans to enflame already contentious issues.
Both Chinese and Russian-based accounts were involved in stoking tensions following the George Floyd tragedy. Russia has been particularly active in creating fake religious, political, white supremacist, and both left- and right-wing groups online to sow division and marginalize groups. China trails Russia in these approaches but it is gaining ground and combining its efforts with Russia in some cases.
The social fabric of America is clearly a cognitive warfare target of China and Russia.
Creating apprehension and fear that narrows decision options
Cognitive warfare is not just about information. Intimidation—threatening statements or actions— is a persuasive element of cognitive warfare that can create apprehension about possible outcomes of our decisions and potentially persuade us to make decisions we don’t want to make.
Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has drawn multiple red lines and has issued multiple threats related to the use of nuclear weapons and a state of war with the U.S. and NATO.
Russia threatened the UK that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with UK-supplied weapons could draw retaliatory strikes against British military facilities. In 2022, Russia severely reduced the flow of gas to Europe resulting in price spikes and supply concerns and Moscow cut off the flow of natural gas to Bulgaria and Poland when those countries refused to pay in rubles.
But intimidation can be challenged. Ukraine has publicly exposed Russia’s redlines as intimidation and has brought the West along to see it, even if slowly. Ukraine has used drones against military targets inside of Russia and has boldly called Russia’s bluff on red lines by invading and occupying the Russian territory of Kursk, all while the West exercises an abundance of caution over Russia’s red lines.
Moscow miscalculated that Bulgaria and Poland would cave to its intimidation and be an example for Europe. Both countries refused to accept Moscow’s demands and were aided by support from the U.S. and Europe, and Poland responded with sanctions against companies with connections to Russia. Moscow’s failed intimidation revealed that Putin was not the energy and economic expert some pundits thought him to be and that his actions were damaging the Russian economy.
But intimidation and threats do have cognitive impact. Putin’s threats and concerns shared by the U.S. and NATO over potential escalation—an element in Russia’s cognitive warfare strategy—likely led the U.S. placing limits on the use of weapons that Ukraine could to launch deep strikes into Russia against military targets; limitations that ultimately favor Putin.
Long range missiles for Ukraine are now on the table once again but concerns in the West over the possibility of escalation and Putin’s unpredictability linger. Is this a result of Russia’s cognitive warfare?
China’s Red Lines
China continues to use redlines, intimidation, and not-so-veiled threats of possible conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan as part of its broader cognitive warfare strategy. China has said that a declaration of independence of Taiwan means war, a clear redline. Beijing has increased military pressure through large-scale drills around Taiwan, while simultaneously conducting disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks aimed at both Taiwanese and American targets.
China is also using intimidation to attempt to establish a “new normal” in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing asserted "sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait," contesting the U.S. Navy's presence in the area. If China could enforce this bold claim, it would strengthen its position against Taiwan, but the U.S. Navy has continually denied Beijing and has sent U.S. ships through the Taiwan Strait. China has taken a similar approach in the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, while the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan disagree.
The South China Sea is a Gray Zone
Intelligence analysts have assessed that China is responsible for multiple ramming incidents against Philippine vessels in disputed waters between the two countries. The Philippine Navy is clearly outgunned by the Chinese Navy, but it still continues to occupy its territorial waters in spite of Chinese aggression.
The United States and the European Union have criticized China’s aggressive actions against the Philippines to strengthen the Philippines’ position. But these actions by Beijing against the Philippines are just not random acts of aggression; they have a cognitive purpose. They are meant to create apprehension and a fear of escalation with a powerful adversary, as part of a broader cognitive warfare campaign to persuade the Philippines to submit to China’s demands.
Inducing a steady state of impaired judgment: uncertainty, fatigue, decision paralysis, passive responses, and acceptance of false choices
One aim of cognitive warfare is to influence specific strategic perceptions and decisions, and to impair the judgment and decision-making by the target over the longer term.
Russia, China, and Iran flood the U.S. with false and manipulated information that exploits cognitive biases and overwhelms information processing capabilities. If China and Russia can use an array of cognitive warfare approaches to induce a steady state of impaired judgment, then they gain a decided advantage.
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For all of us, but particularly for policy makers who have to make so many consequential decisions, the pressure from continuous attacks on leaders and institutions, political and social division, election threats, threats of critical infrastructure attacks, vilification around the world of U.S. positions and policies, recurring global confrontations, surrogate warfare, and recurring intimidation and veiled threats create a challenging cognitive environment.
The Threat to Corporate America
This is not just government-to-government cognitive warfare. U.S. companies are increasingly the intentional targets of malicious information and for cognitive warfare. In an era in which Big Tech and Big Business already have challenges with trust, creating false, fake, and nefarious information can have an outsized impact.
Attacks on the private sector have broader consequences. The private sector owns and operates an estimated 85% of infrastructure and resources that are critical to our nation's physical and economic security. U.S. economic strength and global competitiveness is based in great part on the success or failure of large and small U.S. corporations and the continuous churn of innovative start-ups.
With supply chain security for critical industries; data collection and storage; the financial system, critical research and development and leadership on critical technologies; such as AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology, just to name a few, all relying on a viable and secure U.S private sector, it’s easy to see why the private sector is a prime target for cognitive warfare.
Private citizens are also primary targets
We all increasingly rely on the internet and social media for news and information, which makes all of us more vulnerable. Private citizens are prime targets for cognitive warfare because we elect our leaders, we drive the economy, we support or oppose U.S. foreign and domestic policy and we can be drawn into contentious political and social issues that can undermine confidence in our government institutions and polarize society.
The issues we face are complicated, and most of us are in a constant search for accurate information. That search for accurate information keeps us informed on many complex issues, but it also makes us vulnerable.
What we buy, who we trust, how we vote, how we invest, which policies we support, and what and who we believe on important local, national, and global issues –are all targeted using cognitive warfare.
We Have Options
There are some things we can do to counter cognitive warfare as our knowledge and capabilities evolve. We won’t try to lay out a detailed plan that many excellent professionals are already working on (and that many others should join) but there are some key considerations.
Higher Priority
Cognitive Warfare should become a higher national priority. Of the many national security challenges in the Gray Zone between peace and actual war, this may be the most important.
We should also recognize that cognitive warfare today is broader than we may have thought in the past and is a suitable overarching concept for how we view offensive and defensive information and influence activities.
That overarching concept should also include those more coercive actions and pressures that affect cognition and work in concert with the full spectrum of cognitive warfare activities.
Collaboration
Cognitive warfare is an excellent area for government-private sector collaboration to expand on work that is already underway.
National security professionals and organizations within the private sector working in this space should begin shifting the conversation and to this more complex challenge. Cognitive warfare is evolving, and we should get ahead of that evolution; that requires partnership.
Play Offense and Defense
Advancing a strong U.S. narrative and exposing the deception, disinformation, and intimidation of our allies should be used in parallel to counter cognitive warfare directed at the U.S.
Advance the U.S. Narrative
In a perfect world, the U.S. would have a strong global narrative that fully confronts and counters global adversaries, one that resonates persuasively with diverse global audiences.
That narrative would offer a stark and persuasive difference between the U.S. and our authoritarian adversaries. Therein lies the challenge.
The U.S. does not have the broad global influence it once did and there is a decline in the trust that some nations have in us. The reasons for this probably deserve a separate review but there are a few things to consider.
A strong global narrative which lays out America’s vision for its global leadership requires a foundation of domestic support. Many Americans are uncertain about U.S. global engagement broadly and about issues such as Ukraine and support for Taiwan, specifically. Our domestic politics do influence our global credibility.
Some U.S. foreign policy decisions, perceived as inconsistent or contradictory, have strained relationships with allies and have eroded trust among developing nations. Further, Russia and China are clearly working nonstop to undermine U.S. influence and standing around the world using broad cognitive approaches. Some global audiences are listening.
We have advantages, but we have work to do to coordinate and project a global U.S narrative that confronts and counters Russia and China and that resonates persuasively with diverse global audiences.
Expose our Adversaries’ activities
The U.S. should continue to regularly expose and unmask the cognitive warfare activities of our adversaries, particular those that are hidden; employ fake institutions, websites, and personas; and those that we ordinarily don’t see as a threat—even if they are not illegal or particularly effective.
We should specifically continue to expose and dismantle Beijing and Moscow’s global narrative, and in a manner that resonates with global audiences.
“Pre-bunking” requires timely action but can be effective in undermining new disinformation narratives before they become entrenched. This is not just during election seasons. Cognitive warfare and threats to our national security will continue. This is a great area for expanded public-private sector collaboration.
Artificial Intelligence
Many in the public and private sectors are developing AI tools to counter disinformation and to identify deep fakes. If we are to fully counter increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled cognitive warfare capabilities, we will need to expand our own AI capabilities across the broad spectrum of cognitive warfare.
The Need for Consequences
Cognitive warfare directed at the United States is an intentional violation of our sovereignty with the intent to do harm, and there should be consequences.
The work to date by the Justice Department and the FBI using legal actions, cyber counter-operations, public awareness campaigns, and partnerships with both private-sector entities and international allies, has been impressive.
Despite this diligent work though, the legal system in the U.S. is struggling to keep pace with the evolving nature of cognitive warfare, particularly when it comes to disinformation.
Outdated frameworks, essential First Amendment protections, inadequate regulation of social media, and gaps in cyber law create critical vulnerabilities.
Foreign adversaries are exploiting these legal loopholes to conduct sophisticated and harmful influence campaigns. Addressing these gaps will require a careful balancing of free speech protections with the need to protect national security in an increasingly digital and information-driven age.
Our terminology should evolve and mature. The cognitive warfare space is awash with a myriad of terms that reflect our efforts over the years to characterize the complexity of what we are facing. That’s both good and bad.
For example, influence operations, psychological operations, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, malign foreign influence, covert influence, information dominance, active measures, information warfare, cognitive warfare, hybrid warfare, narrative warfare, memetic warfare, irregular warfare, cultural warfare, narrative shaping, astroturfing, strategic communications, information disorder, soft power, reflexive control, computational propaganda, discourse power, discourse dominance, coordinated inauthentic behavior, digital authoritarianism, techno-authoritarianism, information environment shaping, perception management, social engineering, cognitive hacking, cognitive defense, cognitive security, cognitive resilience, and other terms are all used frequently and often interchangeably. It’s time to change that.
It is very easy to have a conversation on this complex issue while talking past the very people the U.S. needs to reach based on the many terms and definitions in play. Our approach to terminology should be to enable consistency and clarity but also to allow our conversations evolve as we learn more.
The Department of Defense is smart to integrate influence operations into its evolving concept of irregular warfare, which broadens the conceptual framework - away from stove-piped counter-disinformation activities and toward integrated influence activities that take advantage of the whole spectrum of concepts. This is a broad government-private sector conversation, and we have more work to do when it comes to using the same language.
The quest for cognitive resilience must continue
Related to cognitive warfare, in simple terms, cognitive resilience could be described as the capability of individuals, groups, and societies to recognize and resist deliberate attempts at manipulation, disinformation, and psychological operations. Society writ large must understand critical thinking and decision-making. But it certainly isn’t simple.
It requires a well-coordinated effort which includes education and awareness, government-private sector collaboration, utilizing evolving technologies that assist in mapping out cognitive warfare activities against the U.S., and an ability to persuade Americans that an effort at cognitive resilience is not itself an effort to undermine and control what we think.
Of course, our adversaries will attack efforts that look to expose and undermine their activities. There’s also the risk that even a well-intentioned effort at cognitive resilience can simply be a small voice in a very loud storm. But the reality is that we are in the midst of a perfect storm when it comes to cognitive warfare and we need to face it head on.
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