The Cognitive Domain: State of Play, Technological Frontiers, and Strategic Imperatives in 21st-Century Warfare
Executive Summary
The character of global conflict has undergone a fundamental transformation. Beyond the traditional domains of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, a new and decisive battlefield has emerged: the human mind. Cognitive Warfare (CW), as it has come to be defined in 2025, represents a paradigm shift from previous forms of influence and information operations. It is a strategic, continuous, and scientifically-grounded effort by state and non-state actors to manipulate the very thought processes of adversaries, thereby shaping their perceptions, eroding their decision-making capacity, and undermining their societal cohesion. The objective is no longer merely to control the flow of information, but to achieve "cognitive dominance" by directly targeting and altering how individuals and populations think, feel, and act.
This report provides a comprehensive strategic assessment of the global cognitive warfare landscape as of late 2025. It establishes that revisionist powers, notably the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation, have developed and operationalized mature, offensive CW doctrines that are integrated across their entire state apparatus. China's strategy of "Cognitive Dominion" and Russia's concept of "Reflexive Control" are continuously employed to achieve strategic objectives below the threshold of armed conflict, exploiting the legal and ethical seams of democratic societies. In stark contrast, the United States and its NATO allies are in a reactive posture, struggling to achieve strategic clarity and develop a coherent, proactive doctrine. This doctrinal asymmetry represents a critical national security vulnerability.
The engine of modern cognitive warfare is technology, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) serving as its "great magnifier." AI enables the creation and dissemination of hyper-personalized, manipulative content at a scale and speed that overwhelm human defenses. While generative AI tools like deepfakes have not yet proven to be a decisive factor in manipulating election outcomes, their primary strategic impact is more insidious: the erosion of epistemology itself, creating a "liar's dividend" where all information becomes suspect and shared truth dissolves. The next frontier of this technological arms race lies in immersive Virtual Reality Environments (VREs) combined with real-time biometric monitoring, which promises a shift from mass influence to bespoke, subconscious manipulation of individuals.
Effective countermeasures cannot be purely technological. The speed of AI-driven content generation will consistently outpace detection. The strategic center of gravity for defense, therefore, is not the algorithm but the human. This report details a multi-layered framework for building cognitive resilience, which combines technological defenses with robust governmental and military strategies and, most critically, a whole-of-society approach. National security is now inextricably linked to domestic policy; long-term investments in media and digital literacy, civic education, and the rebuilding of institutional trust are no longer discretionary but are fundamental pillars of national defense.
This report concludes with a series of strategic imperatives for democratic nations. To navigate the future of cognitive conflict, the United States and its allies must urgently achieve strategic coherence, prioritize societal resilience as a national security imperative, lead in establishing international norms for cognitive operations, foster a cognitive-ready military and government workforce, and accelerate research and development into human-centric AI systems that augment, rather than replace, human decision-making. Failure to address the challenge of cognitive warfare risks leaving democratic societies vulnerable to strategies that bypass traditional defenses and strike at the very heart of their social, political, and psychological foundations.
I. The Cognitive Domain: Defining the New Battlefield
The concept of influencing an adversary's mind is as old as conflict itself. However, the contemporary security environment, shaped by ubiquitous digital technology and rapid advances in cognitive science, has elevated this practice from a tactical element to a distinct and decisive domain of warfare. By 2025, Cognitive Warfare (CW) is understood not as a mere evolution of Information Warfare (IW) or Psychological Operations (PsyOps), but as a revolutionary shift in the nature of conflict, targeting the human mind as the primary battlespace.
1.1. From Information to Cognitive Warfare: A Paradigm Shift
A consolidated understanding of Cognitive Warfare in 2025 defines it as a strategy that aims to disrupt, manipulate, or annihilate an adversary's thought processes and decision-making capacity, rather than simply controlling the flow of information.2 It is a form of conflict that disrupts how people think, not just what they think.6 This distinction is critical. Whereas IW centers on controlling the dissemination of information, CW strategically aims to shape and manage the reactions of individuals and groups to that information.4 It seeks to corrupt rationality itself, attacking the cognitive faculties that allow for reasoned judgment.6
This conceptual evolution is reflected in the formal definitions adopted by key strategic actors. NATO defines CW as "activities conducted in synchronization with other Instruments of Power, to affect attitudes and behaviors, by influencing, protecting, and/or disrupting individual and group cognitions to gain an advantage".9 This definition underscores the integration of CW with all levers of national power—diplomatic, economic, and military—and its application across a continuum of conflict, from peacetime competition to open hostilities.1 It moves beyond the traditional focus on media control to encompass the potential for "brain control," incorporating weaponized neuroscience and behavioral science to achieve its effects.6
For analytical and strategic purposes, a working definition of CW can be constructed based on three necessary and co-existing attributes. First, there must be a clear intent to achieve cognitive effects—an attempt to alter the cognition of the targets. Second, these actions must occur within the context of warfare, understood as a hostile power competition with covert or overt measures that may fall above or below the traditional threshold of armed conflict. Third, it requires the use of technology as a primary enabler and amplifier for the cognitive attacks and their effects.4 This technological component is a key functional differentiator from adjacent concepts like hybrid warfare.
The strategic implications of this paradigm shift are profound. Adversaries are no longer conducting episodic influence campaigns but are engaged in a "single continuous effort" from peace through war to disrupt and deny the cognitive conditions in which entire societies operate.1 This creates a "gray zone" where the legal and political boundaries between peacetime and conflict are deliberately blurred, making it exceptionally difficult for democratic governments, which operate under strict legal frameworks, to formulate and execute timely and effective responses.13 This state of permanent cognitive contestation challenges traditional Western deterrence models that rely on clear thresholds for escalation, demanding instead a new posture of permanent cognitive vigilance.
1.2. The Human Brain as an Operational Domain
The most significant doctrinal shift accompanying the rise of CW is the formal recognition of the "human brain is positioned as a key battleground".1 This is not a metaphor but a practical, operational reality. Adversaries, particularly China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), are actively pursuing "mind superiority" as the next evolutionary step beyond dominance in the physical and informational domains.1
This operationalization of the human mind is predicated on a systematic and scientific approach. Modern CW integrates a diverse range of disciplines—including neuroscience, behavioral science, cognitive psychology, and linguistics—to precisely target specific cognitive functions.1 These disciplines are leveraged to study thought as a material object, with the explicit goal of identifying vulnerabilities in cognitive processes that can be exploited.2 Operations are designed to disrupt short-term thinking by manipulating attention and emotion, or to alter long-term cognitive structures by subverting motivation or radicalizing individuals.2 The aim is to exploit known cognitive biases, such as fear and confirmation bias, to influence perceptions and disrupt institutional trust.15
In its most extreme forms, CW can involve invasive technologies designed to alter the physical medium of thought—the brain and nervous system.2 This includes the suspected use of targeted radiation to induce neurobiological alterations and the development of "neuro-strike" weapons that use sonic or microwave energy to directly attack the neural functioning of personnel.2
This focus on the human cognitive element is further necessitated by the accelerating tempo of modern conflict. The convergence of AI, real-time data analytics, and ubiquitous sensors has created a battlefield environment where decision cycles have shrunk from days to seconds.17 This technological acceleration has outpaced the biological limits of human cognition, creating a "cognitive lag"—a growing gap between the speed of operations and the human capacity for quality decision-making.17 Cognitive warfare exploits this vulnerability by flooding decision-makers with information, inducing stress, and conditioning them to react incorrectly in critical situations, thereby exacerbating the cognitive lag and paralyzing an adversary's ability to respond effectively.2
II. The Global Arena: State and Non-State Actors in Cognitive Warfare
The global landscape of cognitive warfare in 2025 is characterized by a significant strategic asymmetry. Revisionist and authoritarian powers have developed and deployed mature, offensive doctrines that are deeply integrated into their statecraft. In contrast, Western democracies are still in a reactive phase, focused primarily on defense and resilience while struggling to formulate a coherent strategic response. This doctrinal gap is compounded by the proliferation of advanced, low-cost technologies that have empowered a new generation of non-state actors to engage in sophisticated cognitive operations.
2.1. The Revisionist Powers: Russia and China
Russia's Doctrine of Reflexive Control: The Russian Federation's approach to CW is deeply rooted in the Soviet-era concept of "Reflexive Control" (RC). First defined in the 1960s, RC is a process of transferring the basis for a decision to an opponent, providing them with specifically curated information that leads them to willingly choose a course of action that is advantageous to Russia.1 The primary objective is not necessarily to convince an adversary of a falsehood, but to erode their will to act, shaping their decision-making to "do less so that Moscow can achieve more".3
Russian cognitive warfare is a continuous, multigenerational effort that spans multiple theaters and adapts narratives over decades to suit the Kremlin's changing needs.3 It is born out of a strategic necessity to bridge the gap between Moscow's ambitious geopolitical goals and its limited conventional military and economic means.3 The Kremlin's tactics are multifaceted, employing an array of tools that go far beyond simple disinformation. They include the use of selective and partial truths integrated with economic, diplomatic, and military actions, all aimed at generating a perception of reality that allows Russia to achieve its aims at a lower cost.3 This strategy targets the reasoning process of adversaries, seeking to create a world that simply accepts Russian premises and actions rather than contesting them.3
China's Strategy of Cognitive Dominion: The People's Republic of China has adopted an even more ambitious and technologically advanced approach, which it terms "Cognitive Dominion Operations" (CDO).1This strategy is an extension of its established "Three Warfares" concept, which integrates public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.1 The stated goal of the PLA is to achieve "mind superiority," viewing the human brain as the ultimate operational domain that must be controlled to secure victory.1
China's CDO framework is a continuous, whole-of-society effort that leverages its entire national power, from state-controlled media to private technology companies.14 It is characterized by the systematic application of neuroscience and psychology, combined with emerging technologies such as social media, AI, and brain-computer interfaces, to manipulate target perception and behavior.1 Chinese strategy explicitly seeks to exploit societal fault lines and internal divisions within democratic nations, using platforms like TikTok to undermine faith in republican institutions.14 At the more extreme end, analysis indicates the PLA is pursuing advanced capabilities, including neuro-strike weapons, to directly attack the neural functioning of adversaries.16
2.2. NATO and the West: A Doctrine in Development
The response from NATO and its member states has been one of growing recognition but lagging implementation. The Alliance officially acknowledges cognitive warfare as a critical threat and is actively working to develop a unified military concept. This effort, led by Allied Command Transformation (ACT), aims to provide a framework for understanding CW's dynamics, improving NATO's cognitive resilience, and protecting its warfighting capabilities.4 NATO's nascent doctrine is adopting a "behaviour-centric approach," focusing on influencing, protecting, and disrupting cognition to gain an advantage.9 The strategy emphasizes strengthening societal resilience through a combination of education, civil-military cooperation, and enhanced data sharing.8
Despite these efforts at the Alliance level, a significant gap remains in national-level strategy and operational readiness. A July 2025 report from the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee found that the Pentagon lacks "strategic clarity" in conducting cognitive warfare, particularly in response to China's comprehensive efforts.22This indicates a critical disconnect between acknowledging the threat and operationalizing a coherent, proactive strategy to counter it. The Western approach is further complicated by the inherent challenge of balancing the need for offensive capabilities with the foundational democratic values of transparency, accountability, and individual freedom.1 This structural difference provides a significant operational advantage to authoritarian regimes, which can execute seamless, whole-of-society CW campaigns without the legal and ethical constraints that bind democracies.
2.3. The Asymmetric Threat: Non-State Actors and the Democratization of Technology
The cognitive warfare landscape is not limited to great-power competition. The rapid proliferation of advanced, low-cost, and commercially available technologies has democratized capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of nation-states, empowering a wide array of non-state and irregular actors.23
Commercial satellite imagery with high resolution, inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), open-source software, and powerful AI tools are now accessible to insurgents, terrorist organizations, and transnational criminal networks.24 These groups can now conduct sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), execute targeted strikes, and launch information operations with unprecedented effectiveness.24 AI, in particular, acts as a force multiplier, allowing these smaller actors to process vast datasets—such as terabytes of social media posts or drone footage—to identify vulnerabilities in societies or military forces and engineer targeted disinformation campaigns.24 This "democratization of destruction and precision mass" erodes the traditional military superiority of states and creates a hyper-transparent, chaotic, and unpredictable battlefield where influence and perception are key weapons.23
III. The Technological Arsenal: AI, Big Data, and the Weaponization of Perception
The maturation of cognitive warfare into a distinct domain of conflict is inextricably linked to the rapid advancement and weaponization of technology. While historical propaganda relied on rhetoric and mass media, modern CW leverages a sophisticated arsenal of digital tools to target human cognition with scientific precision. At the center of this technological revolution is Artificial Intelligence, which serves as the "great magnifier," amplifying the speed, scale, and effectiveness of cognitive operations to an unprecedented degree.16
3.1. Artificial Intelligence: The Great Magnifier
Artificial Intelligence is the primary engine of 21st-century cognitive warfare. Its ability to process vast quantities of data from diverse sources—including social media, sensor networks, and satellite imagery—allows adversaries to achieve enhanced situational awareness and identify cognitive vulnerabilities in target populations with unparalleled speed and accuracy.16 This capability transforms CW from a blunt instrument of mass messaging into a precision-guided weapon of psychological manipulation.
A key advantage conferred by AI is its capacity for real-time adaptation and learning. AI systems can be deployed to experiment with different narratives and tactics, continuously observing human behavior on digital platforms to determine which messages are most effective at triggering desired emotional responses and behavioral changes.16 This iterative process of testing and refinement occurs at machine speed, allowing adversaries to improve their manipulative techniques far faster than human operators could, creating a constantly evolving threat that is difficult to predict and counter.16
This AI-driven capability is enabling a fundamental shift in military philosophy, particularly within China's PLA. The goal is evolving from the physical destruction of enemy forces to a new form of victory achieved by overwhelming, disrupting, and paralyzing the enemy's cognitive systems, rendering them unable to operate effectively.16 The PLA is actively designing and procuring generative AI-based intelligence tools to improve the speed, efficiency, and scale of intelligence analysis, generate intelligence products, and support cyber-enabled influence operations designed to mislead Western analysts and decision-makers.27
3.2. Generative AI and the Disinformation Apocalypse
Generative AI—the technology behind systems that can create novel and highly realistic synthetic text, images, audio, and video—represents a revolutionary tool in the cognitive warfare arsenal.28 It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for creating sophisticated and convincing manipulative content, enabling the mass production of deepfakes and automated narratives with minimal effort and cost.29
Recent case studies from 2025 demonstrate the growing use of this technology in real-world influence operations. The persistent Russia-attributed "Doppelganger" campaign has employed deepfakes of prominent politicians to lend an air of authenticity to its disinformation narratives.30 During Taiwan's 2024 presidential election, researchers identified a likely Chinese-linked social botnet that used AI-generated profile avatars and amplified an alleged deepfake sex tape to disparage a political candidate.30 While fictional, strategically plausible scenarios illustrate the potential for hyper-targeted attacks, such as using a deepfake video of marital infidelity to psychologically neutralize a key military service member by exploiting known personal vulnerabilities.16
However, a nuanced assessment of the impact of generative AI is required. Analysis of the 2024 global election cycles indicates that while AI-generated disinformation did influence political discourse, amplify harmful narratives, and entrench political polarization, there is no conclusive evidence that it directly manipulated large-scale voting outcomes.31 The primary effect observed was the reinforcement of pre-existing beliefs among audiences already aligned with the messages being pushed.31
This points to a more subtle but perhaps more profound strategic threat. The ultimate danger of a media environment saturated with high-quality synthetic content is not necessarily that it will successfully persuade large numbers of people of specific falsehoods. Rather, it is the gradual erosion of the public's trust in all information, creating a "liar's dividend" where authentic evidence of wrongdoing can be plausibly dismissed as just another "deepfake".34 This corrosion of shared reality and the very concept of objective truth can paralyze democratic debate and decision-making, achieving a key strategic goal of cognitive warfare without having to win a single argument.
3.3. Emerging Frontiers: Virtual Reality and Biometric Exploitation
The next frontier for cognitive warfare is rapidly moving beyond two-dimensional screens and into immersive, three-dimensional Virtual Reality Environments (VREs), such as those envisioned for the Metaverse.35 These platforms are designed to generate a powerful sense of "presence" (the feeling of actually being in the virtual space) and "embodiment" (the feeling that a virtual avatar is one's own body), which can intensify emotional engagement and make users significantly more vulnerable to psychological manipulation.11
The most significant emerging threat lies in the convergence of these immersive VREs with advanced biometric tracking technologies. As wearable VR devices become more sophisticated, they will be able to gather multiple streams of real-time biometric data from the user. This includes galvanic skin response (measuring emotional intensity), electromyography (detecting subconscious facial micro-expressions), eye-tracking (revealing visual attention), and electroencephalography (EEG, measuring brain activity related to attention or distraction).11
An adversary with access to this data could build a comprehensive, real-time emotional and cognitive profile of a user. This would enable a paradigm shift from the current model of broadcasting manipulative narratives to the masses on social media to conducting bespoke, dynamic cognitive attacks on individuals at a subconscious level. An AI system could tailor and alter a manipulative narrative within a VRE in real-time, based on the user's subconscious biometric reactions, to maximize its emotional and psychological impact.11 This capability represents a move from influencing public opinion to directly engineering an individual's perceived reality, moving the battlefield from the public square into the private, subconscious space of the human mind.
IV. State-of-the-Art Countermeasures: Building Cognitive Resilience
The pervasive and sophisticated nature of modern cognitive warfare necessitates a multi-layered, whole-of-society defense strategy. Countering threats that target the human mind cannot be achieved through a single technological solution or government policy. Effective defense requires a synergistic combination of advanced technology to detect and mitigate attacks, robust government and military strategies to deter and respond, and a resilient, well-informed society that serves as the ultimate bulwark against manipulation. The strategic center of gravity for cognitive defense is not the algorithm, but the human.
4.1. Technological Defenses: The AI-Versus-AI Arms Race
As adversaries increasingly leverage AI for offensive cognitive operations, the development of AI-enabled countermeasures is an urgent priority.36 AI offers significant new opportunities for the automated detection, verification, and fact-checking of synthetic and manipulative content.37 By analyzing language, sentiment, and patterns of dissemination, AI systems can help identify and flag disinformation before it spreads widely.38Governments and their partners are actively pursuing these technologies; for example, the UK government is sponsoring innovation challenges to accelerate the state-of-the-art in deepfake detection capabilities, leading to the development of repeatable testing approaches and "gold standard" datasets for evaluating detection tools.39
However, a purely technological solution is insufficient and potentially dangerous. Research shows that generative AI can be a highly persuasive source of misinformation, and simple countermeasures like labeling AI-generated content or providing disclaimers have proven ineffective at reducing its influence on human reasoning.40 The development of generative AI will likely always outpace the development of detection tools, creating a perpetual arms race. Furthermore, current commercial detection systems still fall short of the precision achieved by trained human forensic experts, highlighting the ongoing importance of human expertise.41
Therefore, the responsible development and deployment of defensive AI require a carefully considered ethical and policy framework. A key recommendation is to mandate rigorous bias audits and the use of diverse datasets for training detection AI. This is critical to ensure that these systems are effective at identifying manipulative content that targets underrepresented linguistic, demographic, and regional groups, which might otherwise be overlooked.42 Most importantly, any AI-driven system used in a defensive capacity must preserve "meaningful human control," ensuring that human judgment remains central to high-stakes decisions, rather than ceding authority to an automated system.36
4.2. Governmental and Military Strategies
Beyond technology, democratic nations must develop and implement coherent strategies to operate effectively in the cognitive domain. This begins with the establishment of a formal doctrine for cognitive warfare. NATO is taking the lead in this area, having established an Applied Cognitive Effects (ACE) function within its command structure to drive the implementation of its CW concept and move the Alliance toward a "behaviour-centric approach".20 NATO's strategy focuses on four pillars: to Educate, Collaborate, Protect, and Shape the cognitive environment, providing guidance on awareness, civil-military cooperation, and data sharing.8
For military forces, a critical component of this new doctrine is the development of proactive and offensive capabilities. One proposed concept is "deception-centric warfare," which advocates for placing military deception at the very core of operational planning. This strategy would use emerging technologies, decoys, and cyber operations to deliberately mislead and shape an adversary's perception and prediction of allied military operations, thereby seizing the cognitive initiative.23
A foundational element of any government strategy must be investment in the human component. This requires the development of comprehensive cognitive readiness education and training programs for all military and government personnel, particularly those in strategic decision-making roles.2 Such programs should equip personnel with the tools and techniques to define, detect, deter, and defend against sophisticated information operations.43 This human-centric training must be augmented by technology, including the development of AI-integrated Command and Control (C2) systems. These systems are not meant to replace human commanders but to help them cope with the overwhelming speed and volume of information on the modern battlefield, augmenting their cognition and preserving their decision-making capacity under pressure.17
4.3. Societal Resilience: The Whole-of-Society Defense
The ultimate line of defense against cognitive warfare is a resilient, educated, and cohesive society. This is not a "soft" policy aspiration but a hard strategic imperative recognized by leading security institutions like NATO and the European Union.8 Because cognitive attacks target the entire population to exploit societal fault lines, a whole-of-society defense is the only viable countermeasure.
The cornerstone of societal resilience is media and digital literacy. This encompasses the skills, knowledge, and critical thinking that allow citizens to access, critically evaluate, and safely interact with the modern media environment.44 Equipping the public with the ability to recognize manipulation, verify information, and understand how digital platforms operate is one of the most effective long-term defenses against disinformation.13 The EU is actively pursuing this through major policy initiatives like the forthcoming European Democracy Shield, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), all of which contain strong provisions for promoting media literacy and platform transparency.44
However, resilience extends beyond media literacy. Cognitive warfare thrives on polarization, distrust, and social fragmentation.48 Therefore, building resilience requires a concerted effort to strengthen social cohesion and rebuild trust in democratic institutions. A society that is inclusive, trusts its leaders, and shares a common understanding of its democratic values is an inherently more difficult target for an adversary to manipulate.20This blurs the traditional lines between foreign and domestic policy. Long-term investments in public education, civic engagement, and initiatives that bridge social divides are no longer just domestic priorities; they are now essential components of a nation's defense posture in the 21st century. A poorly educated, deeply polarized, and distrustful populace is a critical national security vulnerability, regardless of the strength of its military.
V. Strategic Outlook and Recommendations: Navigating the Future of Cognitive Conflict
The evidence from 2025 demonstrates that cognitive warfare has matured from a theoretical concept into a persistent and pervasive feature of the global security landscape. It is a continuous form of conflict waged by adversaries who seek to achieve strategic outcomes by targeting the minds of their opponents. As technology continues to accelerate and the confrontation between democratic and authoritarian models of governance intensifies, the cognitive domain will only become more contested and more decisive. Navigating this future requires a clear-eyed assessment of the evolving threat and the urgent adoption of a new strategic paradigm.
5.1. The Evolving Threat Landscape: Forecast to 2035
The strategic and economic investment in cognitive capabilities is poised for explosive growth, signaling the central role this domain will play in future conflict. Market forecasts project that the global cognitive electronic warfare market will expand dramatically, from approximately $24.8 billion in 2025 to over $115.1 billion by 2035, with the People's Republic of China expected to lead this expansion with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 22%.49 This massive investment reflects a global recognition that superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum is now intrinsically linked to superiority in the cognitive domain.
The future character of war will be defined by the synthesis of human intellect and machine intelligence. Victory will not go to the side with the most advanced technology alone, but to the side that can best master the dynamic interaction between human factors—such as cunning, resilience, and will—and emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and neuroscience.50 This necessitates a fundamental shift in military thinking toward developing effective Human-Machine Cognitive Collaboration and Human-Machine Combat Teams, where technology serves to augment and extend human cognitive capabilities, not replace them.50
The geopolitical confrontation between democracies and autocracies will increasingly focus on the cognitive domain. Adversaries will leverage new technologies to target the mental structures, cultural values, and historical memories of democratic societies with ever-increasing precision and effectiveness.51 This will create immense challenges for open societies, which will struggle to distinguish between foreign-driven manipulative forces and legitimate domestic political dissent, thereby threatening the very foundations of democratic discourse and governance.51
5.2. Strategic Imperatives for Democratic Nations
In the face of this evolving and persistent threat, a reactive, defense-oriented posture is insufficient. Democratic nations, led by the United States, must adopt a proactive and comprehensive strategy to secure their interests in the cognitive domain. The following strategic imperatives should guide this transformation:
Achieve Strategic Clarity and Coherence: The United States and its allies must move with urgency to develop, articulate, and implement a clear, proactive, and whole-of-government strategy for cognitive warfare. This strategy must break down bureaucratic silos and integrate offensive, defensive, and deterrent actions across all instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. It must define the roles and responsibilities of different government agencies and establish clear legal and ethical frameworks for conducting cognitive operations in a manner consistent with democratic values.
Prioritize Societal Resilience as a National Security Imperative: The ultimate defense against cognitive attack is a resilient populace. Governments must elevate long-term investment in societal resilience to the same level of importance as traditional military procurement. This requires sustained, nationwide funding for media and digital literacy programs embedded in school curricula from an early age, robust support for civic education to foster an understanding of democratic principles, and transparent, good-faith governance to rebuild institutional trust.
Lead in Establishing International Norms and Standards: Democratic nations should proactively lead a global effort to establish international norms, standards, and legal boundaries for state behavior in the cognitive domain. This includes developing clear "rules of the road" for the use of AI-driven manipulation, defining what constitutes a prohibited cognitive attack on critical civilian functions (such as elections or public health systems), and creating mechanisms for attribution and accountability.
Foster a Cognitive-Ready Force and Government: A continuous program of cognitive readiness training and education must be implemented across all levels of the military, intelligence community, and civil service. This training should go beyond basic cybersecurity awareness to prepare personnel to recognize and counter sophisticated psychological and information manipulation, to operate effectively in a degraded or deliberately confusing information environment, and to understand the cognitive effects of their own actions.
Accelerate Research and Development in Human-Centric AI: Technological investment must be strategically focused. While developing AI for autonomous systems is important, priority should be given to creating AI systems designed to augment human cognition, enhance decision-making under pressure, and provide robust, adaptive defenses against cognitive manipulation. This includes investing in advanced data visualization tools, AI-powered decision aids that can identify and mitigate cognitive biases, and secure human-machine interfaces that extend the warfighter's cognitive capabilities. Mastering this human-machine nexus will be the decisive factor in securing cognitive advantage in future conflicts.
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