When people think of war, they still tend to picture tanks, artillery, air superiority, and front lines. This reflex is understandable. For centuries, modern states have defined power largely through geography and territorial control. Yet contemporary conflicts can no longer be understood through maps alone. Capturing a city is one thing; creating conditions in which the people living there no longer know what is true, whom to trust, or how to respond to perceived threats is something entirely different. The concept of cognitive warfare, increasingly discussed within NATO circles and the broader academic literature, points precisely to this reality: a form of competition in which the human mind becomes both the target and the battleground and where military and non-military activities are synchronized to achieve cognitive advantage.

The central argument of this article is straightforward. Attempts to influence the human mind are not a new dimension of warfare; they are among its oldest dimensions. What is new is that the digital age has made this objective cheaper, faster, more persistent, and vastly more scalable than ever before.

For this reason, the story of cognitive warfare does not begin with social media. Rumors, propaganda, psychological operations, radio broadcasts, ideological pamphlets, and the systematic battles over perception that characterized the Cold War were all earlier manifestations of the same logic. Contemporary scholarship traces the roots of cognitive warfare back to ancient strategies of manipulation and influence. Studies produced within NATO-related research communities similarly describe a continuum running from Cold War psychological operations to information warfare and cyber warfare, eventually culminating in today's cognitive dimension.

Reducing cognitive warfare to “fake news on the internet” therefore understates the concept. The fundamental shift lies not in the objective, but in the tools available to pursue it. The transition has been from one-way mass communication to interactive networks that generate data and continuously measure user behavior; from limited broadcasting to real-time influence operations shaped by constant feedback; from slow-moving campaigns to information flows that can be replicated and amplified within seconds. Propaganda existed long before the digital age. What exists today is an information infrastructure capable of optimizing it on an industrial scale.

Continuity and transformation in cognitive warfare

At the same time, it is important not to inflate the concept. Not every manipulative piece of content or every instance of misinformation automatically constitutes cognitive warfare. The concept overlaps significantly with neighboring fields such as hybrid warfare, information warfare, and foreign information manipulation and interference. This overlap can make cognitive warfare appear excessively broad and, at times, difficult to measure. Yet the concept remains useful for one key reason: it shifts attention away from the message itself and toward its cognitive effects on the target audience.

In NATO ACT’s terminology, the issue is not simply controlling the flow of information. The objective is to influence the cognition of individuals and groups in ways that shape attitudes and behavior, weaken reasoning processes, and create strategic advantage. This distinction is crucial. In information warfare, the primary question is often “What information circulated?” In cognitive warfare, the more important question becomes, “What did people do with that information? How did they interpret it? And how did it influence their decisions?”

For this reason, the target extends far beyond opinions alone. Attention, memory, emotion, perception, learning, trust, cognitive shortcuts, and even an individual's capacity to monitor and evaluate their own thinking processes become part of the battlespace. Recent research conducted around Lund University suggests that influence operations frequently work through mechanisms such as attentional overload, perceptual saturation, emotional triggering, memory persistence, heuristics, and metacognition. Under conditions of information abundance, people are more susceptible to attention fatigue. Emotionally charged content can override analytical evaluation. Repeated claims may become more convincing simply because they feel familiar. Initial framing can anchor subsequent reasoning and narrow the range of interpretations considered plausible.

Cognitive warfare is therefore not merely a mechanism that tells people what to think. More fundamentally, it interferes with how they think. Whether the target audience consists of ordinary citizens, voters, journalists, bureaucrats, military personnel, or political leaders is ultimately secondary. Any domain shaped by human cognition becomes a potential target.

The role of social media must also be understood within this broader context. Platforms are undeniably important, but they are not the war itself. A comprehensive assessment prepared for the British Parliament emphasized that disinformation spreads not only through social media but also through a complex interaction involving online news outlets, traditional media, and offline environments. Research published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review similarly suggests that engagement signals such as likes and shares can increase user vulnerability to low-credibility content, meaning that platform design itself can influence judgment.

Yet the same body of research also highlights that the most significant vulnerabilities often exist outside the platforms. Pre-existing beliefs, emotional responses, repeated exposure, and trusted sources all play a decisive role in making misleading information appear credible. Social media, therefore, should be understood less as the root cause of the problem and more as an infrastructure that amplifies and accelerates vulnerabilities already present within human psychology.

The ultimate objective of cognitive warfare must be understood in this context. At first glance, the goal often appears to be convincing people to believe a particular falsehood. In reality, the deeper aim is to disrupt decision-making itself. Studies produced by NATO’s Innovation Hub describe the objective as influencing choices, eroding decision-making autonomy, and weakening institutional sovereignty. NATO ACT similarly emphasizes attacks on rationality and broader forms of systemic degradation. A briefing by the European Parliament on artificial intelligence and information manipulation also notes that manipulative techniques can materially distort an individual’s capacity for conscious and independent decision-making.

From this perspective, persuasion, confusion, fatigue, distrust, and polarization should not be viewed as separate objectives. They are different pathways leading to the same outcome: the degradation of sound judgment. Convincing every member of a society to believe the same lie may be difficult. Undermining the shared foundations on which that society evaluates reality is considerably more achievable.

Recent events provide clear illustrations of this dynamic. NATO’s own assessments note a significant increase in hostile information activities following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The 2024 Washington Summit Declaration likewise highlights the need to strengthen capabilities against hostile disinformation and misinformation campaigns. Yet interpreting these examples simply as cases of “Russian propaganda” would be too narrow.

The information environment that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the same underlying logic. The challenge was not merely the circulation of false content. It was the combination of information overload, competing narratives, and constant repetition that weakened people's capacity for critical evaluation. One observation from a NATO Innovation Hub report is particularly revealing: during the pandemic, the overwhelming volume of information, combined with deliberately biased narratives, contributed to declining trust and a growing desire for cognitive closure. As a result, many individuals became more reliant on cognitive biases and mental shortcuts rather than on careful evaluation of evidence.

It is precisely within this space that cognitive warfare operates.

The democratic paradox and policy implications

This is where the democratic paradox begins. Open societies often appear more vulnerable in the short term because the very characteristics that make them democratic also expand their attack surface: freedom of expression, pluralism, decentralized media environments, the constraints imposed by the rule of law, and the reluctance of democratic governments to employ deception as a legitimate instrument of influence. Research conducted within NATO-related institutions has noted that Western democracies have historically placed less emphasis on psychological deception as a tool of competition and have often been slower to develop proactive countermeasures. NATO’s own assessments likewise argue that strategic competitors deliberately exploit the openness, digital connectivity, and interconnected nature of democratic societies.

This does not mean that closed systems are inherently stronger. It means that open systems can be more permeable in the short term because they make not only information visible but also disagreement, conflict, and uncertainty. Yet stopping the analysis there would be a greater mistake.

The second half of the paradox is that democracies may also be more resilient in the long run. Researchers associated with the V-Dem project describe democratic resilience not as a form of permanent immunity, but as the capacity to withstand shocks, absorb disruption, recover, and adapt over time. This distinction matters. The strength of a democracy does not lie in never being challenged; it lies in its ability to correct itself after being challenged. The same literature emphasizes that trust in political institutions and confidence in democratic governance strengthen a society’s ability to respond to periods of stress. Comparative studies across multiple countries similarly identify social trust as one of the strongest predictors of resilience.

Democratic vulnerability, therefore, is not an unavoidable fate. It is a manageable weakness that can be mitigated through effective public institutions, credible risk communication, and rules that enjoy broad legitimacy. Openness may make societies easier to target, but it also creates opportunities for learning, adaptation, and self-correction.

For this reason, trust should no longer be treated merely as a desirable social value. It has become a security issue in its own right. Humprecht’s comparative research across six democracies suggests that trust in institutions capable of producing reliable information can function as a shield against disinformation, while uncritical trust in social media news is associated with a greater willingness to spread false information.

In this sense, the target of cognitive warfare is not simply the external defenses of a state. It is the invisible contract between institutions and society. Once that contract begins to erode, citizens become more vulnerable not only to misleading information but also to the loss of their ability to make collective decisions and act collectively. For alliances, this challenge is even more significant. Alliances function not only through shared threat perceptions but also through shared trust.

NATO’s recent approach should therefore not be underestimated. The Alliance increasingly frames the challenge through the broader concept of information threats, focusing not merely on false content but on activities that are deliberate, harmful, manipulative, and coordinated. Its approach is built around understanding, prevention, containment, and the strengthening of societal memory. Proactive communication, early warning networks, information environment assessments, and societal resilience all play central roles in this framework. The 2024 Washington Summit Declaration and NATO’s more recent policy documents clearly reflect a commitment to strengthening these capabilities.

The challenge is that a gap still exists between diagnosis and implementation. A 2023 NATO STO technical report noted that NATO members and partners lack a dedicated and comprehensive education and training infrastructure for cognitive warfare. Existing initiatives remain limited, their effectiveness is often uncertain, and government efforts to counter misinformation frequently operate on a relatively small scale. Understanding of the threat has advanced considerably, but the practical toolkit for addressing it has not yet fully matured.

The policy implication is not that democracies should resort to broader censorship or begin treating every controversial statement as a security threat. Their priority should be strengthening the infrastructure of trust rather than expanding mechanisms of restriction.

This requires action on several levels. First, institutions that serve as the carriers of public trust must improve their transparency, consistency, and capacity for self-correction. Once trust collapses, rebuilding it through technical measures alone becomes extraordinarily difficult. Second, media literacy must evolve beyond simplistic lessons on identifying fake news. It should include education on attention, emotion, cognitive biases, repetition effects, and other mechanisms through which influence operates. Third, a healthy news ecosystem—particularly local and trusted journalism—should be viewed as a security investment in its own right. Fourth, greater transparency and accountability are needed regarding platform design, engagement metrics, and algorithmic amplification. The problem is not only whether information is accurate, but also which types of content are systematically rewarded by digital systems.

Artificial intelligence deserves separate attention within this discussion, but it should not replace the broader story. Deepfakes, synthetic audio, automated text generation, and networks of fabricated online personas can amplify the effects of cognitive warfare by reducing production costs, increasing speed, and shifting the burden of verification onto ordinary users. Research from Europol and the European Parliament highlights the psychological, social, and political harms associated with deepfakes and warns that manipulative AI-driven techniques can distort an individual’s capacity for informed decision-making.

At the same time, NATO StratCom’s Deepfakes – Primer and Forecast report offers an important caution. The deepfake threat is real, but its scope is often narrower than public debate suggests. The greater danger lies in the way synthetic content further weakens already fragile environments of trust and diverts attention away from deeper structural vulnerabilities. Artificial intelligence is therefore better understood as an accelerator rather than the central problem itself. Cognitive warfare is not created by algorithms alone. It emerges when algorithms enable the large-scale and systematic exploitation of human vulnerabilities.

Ultimately, cognitive warfare does not signal an era in which screens have completely replaced territory. Geography still matters. Military power remains decisive. Kinetic capabilities continue to be fundamental elements of state power. Yet surrounding these traditional dimensions is a more subtle struggle, one centered on what people choose to believe, which institutions they trust, what they perceive as threats, and how they make decisions during moments of crisis.

For democracies, the most important question is therefore not whether misinformation exists. The more important question is how much of a society’s shared capacity for reasoning remains intact. A society that has lost trust may still possess tanks, aircraft, and armies. Yet its defenses may already be fractured. Once trust between citizens and institutions begins to erode, destroying a country's military capabilities often becomes a far easier task than it would have been before.