This form of warfare is not simply about the spread of misinformation or the occasional propaganda campaign. It is a sustained effort to undermine societal cohesion, to destabilize political systems, and to erode the trust upon which democratic institutions rely.
Josh Luberisse
In Cognitive Warfare, the message is the munition, and the target is the mind of either specific individuals (e.g., elites, influencers, policymakers) or the collective population of a democratic state. Distorting what these individuals think is a precursor to how they think, and thus how they behave.
Frank Hoffman
Introduction
In July of this year, in a public address, US president Donald Trump accused China and others of interfering with US election processes, and mentioned a range of other concerns with the integrity of the US election system.
It is widely accepted that significant levels of information interference, by Russia, Cambridge Analytica and others have, to some degree or another, been present in the Brexit campaign, the US 2016 elections, the Covid-19 pandemic, the most recent wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran, and in South Africa, in for instance the 2021 violent unrests, and the 2026 migration conflict.
Most of us are, by now, quite aware of the basic operation and threat levels of a cluster of social media and information vectors as they exist in our everyday lives. We have a working understanding of fake news, bots and disinformation. These loose strands of technological dangers and potential are studied, warned against and have entered the public debate at a meaningful level. Other than that minimum level of awareness, these threats are not really dealt with at any effective level, and the full reach of that potential harm, and what it takes to combat it, are not understood and opposed at the levels that are required.
These various forms of technological weapons, their relatively unique way of operating, and the tremendous potential for harm they pose have given rise to the concept, study and practice of cognitive warfare. It is, in that form, a new and fast developing discipline that is equally at ease in the study and practice of conflict, military studies, neuropsychology and a range of other contributing fields. It contains the study and combating of disinformation, deep fakes, and all of the publicly known information distortions, risks and strategies, and so much more.
It aims to be, and is delivering quite well on that promise, a comprehensive body of work that includes all of these seemingly unconnected concepts, risks and solutions. It is, in many respects, the future of warfare, and the future of most forms of conflict. In this aim it enables a more unified body of work to be collected, reviewed and developed.
A definition, and necessary concepts
Defining the term “cognitive warfare” is not as universally accepted as could be expected. The differing approaches to the threats, risks and solutions from state and non-state actors, the relative newness of the field, as well as the constantly developing new technologies certainly make this a challenging exercise. Add to that the increasingly contentious ethical and moral questions involved, and the task is a formidable one.
As one example of both the uncertainty and the urgency of such definitional gaps, the US 2026 National Defence Authorization Act has directed military authorities to define the concept of cognitive warfare (https://www.congress.gov/119/plaws/publ60/PLAW-119publ60.pdf ).
A decade of published studies by Russia, China and NATO has still not brought much consensus in this regard. There are nevertheless quite a few robust definitions in conflict studies and practice that I would suggest very adequately do the work necessary under our present circumstances.
So we find, for example, the latest definition proposed by Frank Hoffman, an independent security studies scholar recently retired from the US Defense Department:
The application of information and cognitive sciences to enhance or degrade the decision-making process and resulting behavior of political and military leaders, and civilian society, in order to obtain a positional advantage in the information environment and designated political objectives.”
Australian researcher Adam Henschke provides, to my mind, the most dynamic and practical definition:
Cognitive warfare is a distinct form of information conflict, whereby civilians and noncombatants are deliberately and persistently targeted by political actors such as institutions and agents of the state in order to (negatively or positively) effect a target’s political and social institutions. Here, a political actor will use information to degrade and destroy an adversary’s political and social institutions or to support and defend the political and social institutions of one’s own community, or that of allies. (Henschke 15-16)
Maybe it is easier for some to focus on what cognitive warfare is not. Cognitive warfare, depending on one’s view of what it entails, is not new, but a number of new technologies have lifted the concept out of the earlier combined understanding of various concepts such as propaganda, PSYOP, brainwashing, war, genocide, and terrorism, with cognitive warfare being similar but certainly distinct from those concepts. Technically, there is a difference between cognitive warfare and information warfare, with the latter being a more military term. The sources and targets involved in the technology and the attacks and strategies under discussion can also serve as a helpful distinction.
Understandably, there are those who are sceptical of the very concept, and why it is needed at this stage. Personally I think that the idea helpfully captures the difference in scale, intensity and reach that we are experiencing, and it focuses our attention on what needs to be done. While the work towards an ongoing and developing definition is to be welcomed, I do not believe that we need to, at this stage, suspend other work on the field simply because of that real or perceived lacuna. In case studies and even practical work, we do not need the precision that will soon become necessary in regulation, legislation and even litigation.
A brief assessment of cognitive warfare
Propaganda, information warfare and disinformation, in various forms, have been a part of human interaction and conflict since the beginning of time.
The 20th century saw a steady acceleration of means and ways of changing perceptions, with posters, radio bulletins and, as the Cold War played out, an increasingly sophisticated approach to persuading people of the truth of specific ideologies and worldviews. The 21st century saw unimaginable leaps in the reach and power of information and communication technologies (ICT), and with just about everyone having a smartphone in their pocket (or should we say “hand”), the stage has been set for the creation, manipulation and presentation of information without boundaries.
The new brand of persuasion attacks have made massive leaps not just in technological power and reach, but in strategies as well. The rather rational presentation of alternative facts to present a different point of view seems limited, quaintly outdated if used on its own. New strategies attack normative judgments and values, not just trying to change reality, but in actually creating it.
We see from Russian intelligence the use, and application, of the concept of “cognitive strikes”, where the goal is not the changing of views, but the creation of influence ecosystems that manufacture events, the manipulation of existing fears and resentments, and where society is turned on itself.
The radical change to the battlegrounds affected led to Mark Leonard’s wonderful term “The Age of Unpeace” strikingly capturing this time where societies experienced neither war nor peace, where interests and values were perpetually involved in a low-intensity conflict. These changes have come at such a rapid pace that an uncomfortable amount of current day information and advice on this reach and counter-measures are significantly outdated. Information in this age need not be true in order to persuade, it may not even be capable of easy or objective assessment.
The sources of information has changed from well-placed agents and informants to everyday information scraped off our phones, from Uber and Amazon databases, from our social media posts and from our Google map histories. No longer is it necessary to obtain the bulk of this information through subterfuge and devious means – we freely give it away with our next software or app installation.
From the simplest to the most sophisticated campaigns no longer need to be run by powerful countries or organizations, as an individual or a small group with bad intentions and good connectivity can run viral messages, with bot supporters by the thousand to strengthen and spread the message across the world in seconds. The message itself is created, distorted, and amplified by designed disinformation, deep fakes and other synthetic reality creation, tweaked algorithms and influencers. Some of the agents involved in this new reality may not even be human.
Subjective reality itself is created and dished up to millions of people. The crisis Information integrity has caused, by sheer design, a crisis of credibility. The attack is no longer against your version, it is against the truth itself. The main purpose, more often than not, is not the convincing of people of a version, but to confuse and tire them out to such an extent in their pursuit of what is true and what is fabricated that they give up on the exercise of truth-seeking altogether. When the truth becomes too difficult to discern, when everything is in doubt, a collapse of trust and even the desire to find the truth becomes a strong possibility, a desired strategy to combat the relentless onslaught of required discernment. The voice whispers softly “No need to go through all of that, just believe what I tell you, you can trust me”.
Many of these campaigns are built around the intricacies and nuances of identity conflicts, using our deep-seated emotions and the dynamics of this powerful persuasive battlefield to guide people to accept realities that often extend far beyond the rational. These identity, or value, conflicts place levers and pulleys in the hands of these authors that shape opinions and worldviews to the extent that it is playing a very real role in the integrity of democracy itself. If democracy is voting according to my informed opinion, what remains of that lofty idea if my opinion is shaped in a specific way without my knowledge and consent?
These campaigns are of course run by many countries, organizations, interest groups and individuals. One of the results, intended or otherwise, of these developments, is the collapse of many of the foundational ideas that were necessary for a healthy and functioning society. Societal consensus on various important aspects, in any meaningful sense, is already gone.
Not just the messages so conveyed, but the methods by which this war is conducted, serve to destabilize the thoughts, and the thought processes, of society. The war is waged not just against traditional military combatants but also, and primarily, against civilians. The paradox of technology, that the very tools that were going to set us free and elevate humanity to higher levels of conflict management, education and communication now also serves to enable this level of information warfare, is also an important part of managing these developments.
More traditional kinetic warfare is now either augmented by real-time cognitive warfare, or entirely replaced by it. The very idea of what power consists of, and how it is used, has changed in many respects.
When in 2013 Edward Snowden disclosed to the world the extent to which power is linked to information, and how it can be used and abused, these new ways of using power, these new battlegrounds, were forever removed from the realms of science fiction, and new conflict strategies had to be created. One of the fascinating realisations we come to when we work with this for long enough is that the increasing sophistication of technology is but one of the weapons so used.
The concept of 'neuro-hacking', or the manipulation of the brain's functions for exploitative ends, shows us that these technologies are used to make use of our minds as they are, in the manipulation of the very biological and psychological processes by which we form and maintain our views. Well-established drivers of persuasion such as social proof, the creation of echo chambers, our propensity for storytelling and the powerful dynamics of identity conflict are all weaponised against the target.
Cognitive warfare is most certainly not limited to cyberattacks and ransomware. And it is certainly not just about persuasion. There is a hard edge to pure cognitive manipulation possibilities that goes further in confirming the need for a manageable concept such as cognitive warfare. Surveillance cameras, facial recognition and drone monitoring lie in our collective future, whether we like it or not, and with advances in neurotech the emotional state of individuals can be detected and subtly affected. Our social media, purchasing and other habits allow the micro-targeting of identified groups and even individuals, delivering tailor-made messages of persuasion and opinion-forming. Voter suppression campaigns, neural interfaces and some of the possible uses of quantum computing all join in the potential arsenal from which the attacker can choose from.
How do we defend ourselves against cognitive warfare?
Much work lies ahead in finding effective countermeasures in these wars. This is one of the additional reasons why I am in favour of the formalizing of the concept of cognitive warfare, as it will doubtlessly focus and steer further research and progress in this crucial and urgent field. Much of what constitutes current advice and suggested solutions are impractical, wishful thinking, outdated or all of the above.
What is there then that a country, an organization or individuals can do to effectively enter into these conflicts? Much of the solutions will come from technology itself, I hope. The speed and sophistication with which these attacks can already be launched makes individual responses increasingly ineffective. An attack can be launched at virtually no cost, while the defending of systems, people and processes can be exorbitantly costly.
Some of the examples we have considered earlier will, in time, require neuro-security measures and solutions. But, in general, we can decrease our vulnerability by developing critical thinking and digital literacy skills in our schools, government agencies and, as far as possible, on the individual level. Education must be prioritized, well-funded and pervasive, with an increased focus on our awareness of cognitive biases, and the expansion of our critical thinking skills and media literacy. The very idea of what national defence constitutes must change. Borders and walls are no longer obstacles of any use. Accountability for harm, and the potential for harm, flowing from systems and their design, must approach a level of legal strict liability. International cooperation, in standardising legislation and guardrails, as well as monitoring and sanctions, must become an accepted norm.
We can also work on our personal knowledge, skills and responsibility. What information do we consume, what do we create, and how skilful are we in separating fact from created fiction? How gullible are we, and do we understand the mechanisms of identity conflicts that steer us like puppets, without us knowing the extent to which this is happening? It is here, in the personal domain, that I believe the most efficient preparation can, and should, happen, at least in the short term. Conflict competency in the personal domain should extend to vulnerabilities in the societal domain.
Regulation, legislation (and litigation) will need to be changed drastically and urgently, while understanding the extreme limitations placed on modern regulation and enforcement given the nature and motivations behind most of these attacks.
A fascinating aspect of these studies and practice considerations is the distinction between democratic, open societies and the more authoritarian ones. Questions of privacy, constitutional rights to dignity and data protection, surveillance and so on all muddy the apparently clear waters of a free society, while these internal measures are adopted without much trouble in the more authoritarian societies. Given these attacks, how do we prevent the apparent strengths of democracy and a free society from becoming vulnerabilities? The uncomfortable truth as far as defending against these attacks, at this stage, is that we are not really well-placed to be effective against such warfare, especially in instances of bigger groups being tested.
Ethical considerations
Should countries wage cognitive wars? To what purpose? Should organizations, communities or individuals do so? Can, or should, cognitive warfare be allowed as running concurrently with traditional kinetic war (as it is currently being done)? What about as strategic add-ons for litigation, or for political campaigns? Where are the boundaries between persuasion and opinion creation, the sheer abuse of technology to manufacture consents and narratives where previously there was none, in marketing, for example?
As we see with the artificial intelligence experience in general, the blurred speed of technological advances outstrip the slow, methodical pace of regulatory and legislative bodies and practices. Regulation aims for places that tech has left behind months ago. The sheer potential of these building blocks of chaos and destruction is often clearly not understood fully by policymakers and legislators. The cure cannot be more harmful than the poison, and we will have to keep a firm ethical clarity of mind and purpose before us as we develop appropriate responses in this process. In doing so, I anticipate that we will be forced, in time, to make some hard decisions and concessions on how we currently view foundational values such as privacy and democracy.
How serious are the threats involved?
How serious is the potential threats of cognitive warfare? The question deserves to be improved by asking it relative to different categories of harm that we can create. As far as the very visible interference with public opinion (say for elections) is concerned, we have a few optimists that argue that the real harm of these attacks are minimal, at that level.
Thomas Rid has done some good work on the practical reach and effect of such attacks, and his work shows rather convincingly that the Internet Research Agency (IRA), one of the main Russian groups behind the 2016 US election interference achieved “It is indeed unlikely that the IRA had any discernible effect on the voting behavior of American citizens.” Our categorization of harm benefits from a further distinction in the targets of these attacks, and their effects. We need to distinguish between ‘issue polarisation’ (eg disputes about political issues) and ‘affective polarisation’ (eg meaningful dislike of other political groups).
Dr. Merten Reglitz, a conflict researcher, shows through his work that there has not been a significant change in issue polarisation, in fact there is no evidence (at least with US voters) that there is any meaningful increase in disagreement about political questions between people than there was in the pre-internet age. He cites authority for the argument that even the Left/Right polarisation in high-income democracies has slightly decreased in the past decades. In this category, and in the limitations of that study, there seems to be little to worry about as far as polarization effects from cognitive warfare is concerned.
Reglitz however shows that affective polarisation has in fact increased meaningfully as a result of these strategies and attacks. Evidence supports conclusively that “the strength of dislike of political opponents . . . has indeed increased among citizens in democracies like the US and the UK in recent decades”. These cautious explorations of the boundaries of real and potential harm are necessary, and should continue. I am however not in much need of any further evidence that the tampering of opinions and worldviews can have disastrous consequences for humanity, in our elections, our free choices, our privacy and in how we live our lives. These tools and strategies are attacks, not suggestions. It, by design, creates internal chaos and doubt, it interferes with normal thought and decision making processes.
And there are clearly other extremely corrosive effects and consequences flowing from these methods. Steve Bannon’s “flooding the zone” strategy leads to scepticism and the erosion of respect for expertise and authority.
How cautious should we still be when we realize, together with Hannah Arendt, that
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. . . . Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such . . . for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who fabricates it.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
I have no doubt that these systems and their potential, to an ever-increasing degree, have all the markers of an existential threat, against particular countries and other targets, and also at a societal level.
South Africa’s position and our readiness
If it is, at this time, generally conceded that even a country such as the US is not adequately prepared for the higher end of cognitive attacks on it and its citizens and interests, where does that leave South Africa, a country still struggling with reliable electricity supply, and the effects of unemployment, inequality and a bewildering range of unresolved conflicts.
The threat potential comes into focus when we accept that, as of late 2025, nearly 80% of South Africans have access to the internet at some level, with approximately 70% having smartphones. Our government’s positioning and messaging are, at times bordering on the inspirational, but in practice we fail to convince that we fully grasp the questions involved, much less the required answers.
The leaked Russian intelligence reports of a few months ago, clearly marking South Africa as a priority target for social media influence ops (eg anti-DA efforts, BRICS alignment), and the June – July anti-migration protests amplified by social media and bots all show how vulnerable the country is to serious destabilization and narrative- creation.
While the government regularly emphasizes our digital sovereignty, and we build systems such as the SANDF information warfare directorate and AI policies, and while fact-checking platforms and election safeguards are announced, these all remain on the drawing board, with little to inspire confidence as to our state of readiness. As a country we are also not doing too well with general digital literacy, even as connectivity improves.
We are also a highly polarized society, and the way in which information is shared, together with identity conflict mechanisms around face saving, in-group reward and punishment systems and distrust between certain groups manifest, all make us a fertile ground for the smoke and mirrors of cognitive warfare. In true populist tradition, existing vulnerabilities, prejudices and fears can be used to craft powerful narratives, mobilize vast groups of people, and affect the very fibre of democratic processes. As in much of the rest of the world, our legislation and regulatory frameworks also leave much to be desired insofar as required nuance and sophistication, as well as practical sanction of breaches are concerned.
South Africa is very vulnerable in this battle, and with the importance of a few crucially important elections and political events just ahead, the danger and attendant leadership responsibility cannot be overstated.
Conclusion
Frank Bruni says that we curate our own realities, and it is hard to argue with that conclusion. As the study and praxis of identity conflicts show, our realities are shaped and maintained by our identities, by that emotional inner self that looks out for number one, in a world where truth and fact are less objective than what we would want to accept.
Once you understand how those processes work, and how depressingly predictable they are, and you then match that knowledge with the power, speed and reach of today’s technology, the weapons raised against us become clear.
This is not a war just about privacy, but about autonomy. One of the subtle dangers of cognitive warfare lies in the fact that so much of our considered worldviews and opinions do feel rationally arrived at, as our own work, our own values. But are they really, and to what extent have we been manipulated in shaping those views over the years? To what extent are we going to be manipulated in the coming years? It is difficult to fight an attack on your opinion if you are not even aware that it is happening.
In this article we have taken a brief look at the massive topic of cognitive warfare. I see this as the main future battlefield of conflict itself. I do not believe that the defensive side of the equation comes close to matching the attackers in knowledge, experience or urgency.
Just as we see with certain developments around artificial intelligence there seems to be a deer-in-the-headlights type of inertia in many of the places and people that should be moving into position on this. Such developments as there are, seem to be reactive, nearly reluctant to be having the discussion in the first place. I hope that research and debate in the near future would also not just focus on the input / output vectors of these conflicts, but also how these attacks manufacture, change and harm our ability to reason, to remember, our attention spans and abilities, the very ways in which we perceive and take in various items of information, our reasoning abilities and, maybe most important of all, our decision-making processes.
Cognitive warfare is more insidious than tanks and guns, but its potential for harm outstrips our previous debates about atomic bombs and military onslaught. Good work is being done, as far as technological and other conflict strategies are concerned, but we need a wider debate, a sharper focus, ranging from the individual to communities, from countries to global responses.
The societal nuclear mushroom cloud that we have guarded against for so many decades may reach us yet, in the form of a cloud of information, a place that denies that it means us any harm.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. Cognitive Warfare: Grey Matters in Contemporary Political Conflict (Studies in Intelligence), Adam Henschke, Taylor & Francis (2025)
2. Frank Hoffman’s exploration of a practical definition of the term “Cognitive Warfare” at Assessing "Cognitive Warfare" | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University is a helpful read.
3. My book Hamlet’s Mirror: conflict and artificial intelligence (Paradigm Media, 2023) explores various conflict strategies to counter various technological conflicts and threats. 4. For more on the idea of cognitive strikes, see Cognitive Strikes as part of Russian Active Measures
5. Luis Vaz has a comprehensive article on strategic considerations for societies to prepare sufficient mechanism to defend against these attacks, see 1782903219582
6. For articles dealing with conflict in general, see our blog index at Conflict Conversations
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok July 2026
* Author’s note on the use of artificial intelligence in writing this article I learned to draft, argue and write in the hard school of litigation. I enjoy and value the very human process of creating ideas, of testing my own knowledge and thoughts. It is a process that I need, for answering some of my professional and even personal questions, it is cathartic and inspiring. Other than the most basic research assistance I do not use any AI in the creation of my written work, this article included. It is a matter of pride, of preference, and of mental health. Whether that is a wise choice or not, I will leave to the reader to decide.