Fewer Bullets and More Brains:

Though lacking a universal definition and a nuanced framework, CogWar is distinguishable by its main target: our brains! It focuses on producing cognitive effects in the adversary, their allies or even neutral parties’ populations and leadership. The most troubling aspect of CogWar is its civilian centrality. Unlike traditional warfare, CogWar directly targets civilians: their emotions, moral judgments, political affiliations and meta-cognitions. As Henschke notes, cognition in this context is not the representation formed from sensory input (i.e., information warfare) but a thought about that representation – a mental process reflecting on itself; thought about thought (2025: 17).

‘[CogWar] deploys disinformation, psychological manipulation, lawfare and neurophysiological techniques’

Cognitive effects are not by-products of action but their primary aim (ibid). CogWar manipulates environmental stimuli to shape how people think and act (Hung and Hung 2022). NATO defines it as ‘offensive actions employed to achieve effects on perceptions, beliefs, interests, aims, decisions, and behaviors by deliberately targeting the human mind’ (2023). Instead of bombs and bullets, it deploys disinformation, psychological manipulation, lawfare and neurophysiological techniques embedded in propaganda, public relations and diplomacy to destabilize identities, undermine agency and sow confusion and mistrust.

A close reading of China’s CogWar tactics reveals further methods – religious interference, staged diplomatic gaffes, bilateral influence and population-wide disinformation campaigns – aimed at reshaping perceptions and weakening the integrity of democratic political and military systems (Backes and Swab 2019; Miller 2023). Its tools span online and offline realms: social media, algorithmic disinformation, educational content manipulation and coercive diplomacy via economic pressure, political isolation and military intimidation. Its execution is sustained, systemic and multifaceted. CogWar is ambient and constant (Kamieński 2024), unfolding silently during war or peace, often without visibly aggressive acts. Its opacity and use of proxies – bots, users, corporations, legal entities – enable plausible deniability, making attribution difficult and accountability elusive.

CogWar impacts

The impacts of cognitive warfare are not immediately visible; indeed they are usually invisible, ambiguous and hard to determine. As Claverie and du Cluzel (2022) rightly note, ‘All you see is its impact, and by then, it is often too late.’ To date, only a handful of comprehensive studies have examined the deployment and impacts of CogWar.

One of the most detailed empirical analyses – Hung and Hung (2022) – investigates China’s CogWar campaign targeting Taiwan during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study reveals how coordinated disinformation efforts eroded public trust in the Taiwanese government, casting doubt on its pandemic response, the safety of locally produced vaccines and even official death statistics. China’s tactics included the extensive use of bot networks, content farms and fake accounts on platforms such as Facebook and LINE – the latter crafted to mimic domestic sources and evade detection.

Although the pandemic was a relatively short-lived context, it served as a strategic entry point to deepen and extend CogWar efforts. These tactics exploited existing ethnic, generational and ideological divisions, amplifying polarization and shifting public opinion subtly but significantly in Beijing’s favour. China’s use of emotional assertiveness by evoking public indignation and diplomatic outbursts to pressure adversaries and shape discourse in the South China Sea dispute provide further insights (Hall 2023). These emotional performances are orchestrated to extract concessions and deter behaviour against China’s core interests and steer adversaries’ foreign policy directions and decisions in favour of China’s interests.

Similar CogWar deployments are identified in the Indian ocean region (Xavier and Jacob 2025). In the case of Taiwan, cognitive operations have been effective in subduing open support for independence among some segments of the Taiwanese public. Similarly, with tactics of gradual encirclement of Sri Lanka’s port of Hambantota, China has been effective in planting psychological and symbolic pressure points in South Asian regional power dynamics (Indian-US alliance, in particular). As economically vulnerable, smaller states in South Asia are increasingly caught up in crosshairs of geopolitical rivalries between India, the US, Australia and Japan on one side, and China and Russia on the other. They are subject to offensive and defensive CogWar by the rivalling states via numerous diverse grey zone tactics aimed at eroding adversarial intent for tactical or strategic gains. In parallel, the use of existing social discontents and recent regime changes in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have enabled shifting public opinions in favour of China-friendly elites.

'Russia’s cognitive warfare approach was aimed at undermining the public’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood'

Russia’s deployment of CogWar during the 2016 US presidential election provides compelling evidence of how various state-sponsored or backed operatives used social media to spread divisive content, impersonate American citizens and organize real-world protests. These tactics exploited cognitive biases, reinforced identity-based grievances and polarized the electorate. Russia’s cognitive warfare approach was aimed at undermining the public’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood (Miller 2023). Through computational propaganda, deepfakes and disinformation, Russia eroded trust in democratic institutions and sowed discord, generating long term and profound impacts, as seen since then in declining public confidence in electoral integrity, intensified polarization and traction for adversarial narratives. The post-election investigations revealed how CogWar was expanded to include physical tactics, such as planting Russian agents in the USA, having them set up companies and identities and use their physical location and local knowledge to undermine the Democratic party’s election campaign and pave the way for Trump to win the elections.

Although not labelled in terms of cognitive warfare, the Brexit referendum is cited as another compelling example that fits the grey zone boundaries of CogWar. According to Miller (2023), the Brexit campaign was shaped by emotional manipulation, identity politics and cognitive biases. External actors, including Russia, are thought to have amplified the prevailing dynamics through social media manipulation, spreading misinformation and stoking nationalist sentiment. These interventions significantly influenced public perception and behaviour, contributing to the referendum’s outcome. Brexit underscores how cognitive warfare can be waged not only via disinformation but also through reinforcing existing societal tensions and emotional triggers. Similar cases have come to light in Africa with the recent controversies surrounding Cambridge Analytica’s role in interfering in elections across Africa, deliberately undermining political independence and self-determination of African polities (Mare et al., 2019, p. 9).

Cognitive operations have likewise been integral to Russia’s hybrid warfare in Ukraine. Narratives framing Ukraine as a failed state, NATO as an aggressor and Russia as a protector of Russian-speaking populations, propagated via state media, troll farms like the Internet Research Agency, and using local influencers enabled the creation of a layered information environment that confuses and divides, delays international responses and complicates international diplomacy.

Conclusion

CogWar is a whole-of-society issue. It is a form of warfare that can be deployed independently, often at lower cost, or used as a complement to traditional kinetic wars – with the dangerous potential of them becoming ‘forever wars’. It is mostly desirable when a belligerent actor seeks to bring about long-term, society-wide changes in how people think to achieve strategic objectives. CogWar requires sustained engagement and can be waged from anywhere – not only by state actors but also by non-state entities acting alone, in support of or supported by states. Countering the impact of CogWar demands investment in societies – not just as a strategic measure, but as essential to democratic survival. Failing to do so risks cultivating an ‘enemy within’.

1. Henschke (2025: 17) proposes three types of Cognitive Warfare – Defensive, Protective and Offensive and distinguishes war from warfare; to mean an activity taken by a political unit to weaken or destroy another.