Cognitive Warfare Is Something You Do — And Always Has Been

A Definition

Cognitive warfare is the deliberate conduct of activities — across all domains and dimensions (physical, informational, and cognitive) — synchronised with other instruments of power, designed to affect the attitudes, perceptions, decision-making, and behaviour of adversary, neutral, or friendly audiences by influencing, protecting, enhancing, degrading, or disrupting cognition at the individual, group, or population level, in order to gain, maintain, or deny cognitive advantage.

This definition draws directly from NATO Allied Command Transformation’s published Exploratory Concept, which defines cognitive warfare as: “Activities conducted in synchronization with other Instruments of Power, to affect attitudes and behaviour by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual and group cognition to gain advantage over an adversary.” It also incorporates the broader doctrinal inheritance from Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and — importantly — what adversaries are actually doing.

I want to address a recent post that has gained some traction on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterclarke_ok-my-frustration-has-finally-boiled-over-activity-7437047694654758912-kEuH?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAATMVZYBaYJcUsCD9-7wcO-I_zRvwk5Rj18]. Its central thesis is that cognitive warfare is “not something you do” but rather “the fight itself.” The post invokes NATO’s concept, draws an analogy with electronic warfare, and insists that StratCom, PSYOPS, and disinformation campaigns are merely things used within cognitive warfare — but are not cognitive warfare.

I respect the author’s frustration with conceptual sloppiness. The term cognitive warfare is being over-used and under-defined. But the corrective offered is, I believe, fundamentally wrong — and wrong in ways that matter operationally.

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NATO’s Own Definition Says It’s Something You Do

The most immediate problem is that NATO Allied Command Transformation — the very organisation cited — defines cognitive warfare using the word “activities.” Not a contest. Not a state of competition. Activities conducted. The 2023 Exploratory Concept is explicit: cognitive warfare involves deliberate offensive manoeuvres aimed at influencing perceptions, beliefs, interests, decisions, and behaviour by directly targeting the human mind.

A peer-reviewed analysis of that same NATO concept, published in Frontiers in Big Data in 2024, classified cognitive warfare as “a tactic, which combines traditional and emerging technologies as well as measures above and below the threshold of war to achieve cognitive effects.” The academic community read the same documents and concluded the opposite of the post.

The phrase “fight for cognitive superiority” — which the post presents as the definition — is better understood as a Warfare Development Imperative: a strategic objective that NATO’s concept seeks to address. It describes what we are trying to achieve, not what cognitive warfare is. The distinction between an objective and a definition matters enormously when you are trying to build capability, write doctrine, and plan operations.

The Electronic Warfare Analogy Backfires

The post draws what it considers a clarifying analogy: “Think of it like Electronic Warfare. A radar jammer is not EW. SIGINT is not EW. Both are capabilities used within the contest for electromagnetic spectrum advantage. EW is the contest itself.”

This is precisely wrong. US Joint Publication 3-13.1 defines Electronic Warfare as “any action involving the use of electromagnetic or directed energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or to attack the enemy.” NATO’s own EW policy defines it as “a military action that exploits electromagnetic energy.” EW is explicitly defined as action — something you do — encompassing electronic attack, electronic protection, and electronic warfare support.

If you apply the EW analogy consistently, it proves the opposite point. A radar jammer is EW — it is an electronic attack action within the EW subdivision. Jamming is not merely “used within” EW; it is EW being conducted. By the same logic, a PSYOP designed to disrupt adversary decision-making is not merely used within cognitive warfare — it is cognitive warfare being conducted.

All War Is Cognitive — And Always Has Been

Clausewitz wrote: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The purpose of all warfare — kinetic, informational, or otherwise — is ultimately to change what happens inside the adversary’s mind: their will, their perception of the situation, their calculus of cost and benefit, their decision to continue or capitulate. As one scholar put it, “cognitive warfare as a concept articulates the essence of warfare, namely changing an opponent’s attitude and will — and hence their cognition.”

This is not a radical new observation dressed in fashionable language. It is the inheritance of two and a half millennia of strategic thought. Sun Tzu’s “supreme art of war — to subdue the enemy without fighting” — is a cognitive warfare objective. Clausewitz’s “strength of volition” as one of two irreducible factors of combat power is a recognition that the cognitive dimension is where wars are ultimately won or lost.

The implication is profound: cognitive warfare is not some novel sixth domain to be bolted on alongside land, sea, air, space, and cyber. It is the purpose that runs through all of them. A tank division crossing a border, a cyber attack on critical infrastructure, a precision strike on a command post — each of these is a cognitive act if its strategic purpose is to alter the adversary’s will and perception. The physical, informational, and cognitive dimensions are not separate lanes; they are concurrent and mutually reinforcing.

Adversaries Already Understand This

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has arguably done more systematic doctrinal thinking on this topic than any Western military. PLA writings describe cognitive domain operations as “a full-scale attack and defence in the multi-dimensional field by using political, economic, military, diplomatic, public opinion, and other comprehensive means.” They explicitly recognise that “if the physical domain operation is the premise and foundation to eliminate the enemy’s effective forces… then the cognitive domain operation is the key to ultimately determine the victory or defeat of the war, force the enemy to yield, and achieve the war’s objective.”

The PLA does not treat cognitive warfare as an abstract contest separate from the activities conducted within it. They treat it as operations — planned, resourced, executed, and assessed — spanning from cognitive deterrence through cognitive shaping to cognitive deception. Their concept of “mind superiority” (制脑权) is an objective to be achieved through deliberate action, not a philosophical posture.

Russia’s approach is equally practical. Russian cognitive warfare “goes well beyond the dissemination of information and includes physical activities in peace, crisis, and war” — military exercises, sabotage, cyber-attacks, combat operations, and exaggerations of military capabilities. For Russia, a military exercise on NATO’s border is a cognitive warfare activity. A disinformation campaign on social media is a cognitive warfare activity. A missile strike on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine is a cognitive warfare activity. They are all conducted to achieve cognitive effect.

While we debate whether cognitive warfare is “something you do” or an ethereal contest, our adversaries are doing it.

StratCom, PSYOPS, and Info Ops Are Not Outside Cognitive Warfare

The post claims: “StratCom is not cognitive warfare. PSYOPS is not cognitive warfare.”

This creates an operationally useless distinction. If cognitive warfare is defined — as NATO itself defines it — as activities conducted to affect attitudes and behaviour by influencing cognition, then StratCom and PSYOPS are among the primary mechanisms through which cognitive warfare is prosecuted. NATO’s Science and Technology Organisation research explicitly identifies cognitive warfare as a convergence of disciplines including psychological operations, information operations, and cyber operations.

Saying “StratCom is not cognitive warfare” is analogous to saying “jamming is not electronic warfare” — a claim directly contradicted by EW doctrine.

Are StratCom and PSYOPS the entirety of cognitive warfare? No. Cognitive warfare is broader — it includes physical operations conducted for cognitive effect, the employment of emerging technologies against human cognition, and defensive measures to build cognitive resilience. But StratCom, PSYOPS, and Info Ops are firmly within the cognitive warfare enterprise, not adjacent to it.

The Real Question Is Not Definitional Purity — It’s Operational Utility

I share the original post’s frustration with the term being used loosely. Not everything with a cognitive dimension is cognitive warfare. A press release is not cognitive warfare. A training exercise is not cognitive warfare (unless specifically designed to signal and achieve cognitive effect against an adversary). Conceptual discipline matters.

But the corrective is not to elevate cognitive warfare into a philosophical abstraction so rarefied that it cannot be planned, conducted, resourced, or measured. If cognitive warfare is only “the fight itself” and never “something you do,” then it becomes the responsibility of everyone and no one. It cannot be tasked to a unit, assigned a budget, subjected to an operational design, or assessed for effectiveness.

The post asks the right question: “Are we winning?” But that question is answerable precisely because cognitive warfare involves identifiable activities with observable effects — not despite it. You measure whether you are winning a cognitive war by assessing whether your deliberate cognitive activities are producing the intended changes in adversary perception, will, and behaviour. You cannot assess a contest you refuse to define as an activity.

A Working Framework

Cognitive warfare, properly understood, has the following attributes:

• It is something you do. It involves deliberate, planned activities — not merely an ambient state of competition.

• It operates across all domains. Physical operations, informational operations, and direct cognitive operations can all constitute cognitive warfare when their purpose is to achieve cognitive effect.

• It is persistent and continuous. It operates across the entire continuum of competition — from peacetime through grey zone to armed conflict — with no clear threshold.

• The target is cognition; the objective is advantage. What distinguishes cognitive warfare from conventional operations is not the domain of execution but the nature of the target and the desired end state.

• It encompasses offence and defence. Building cognitive resilience in your own forces and population is as much cognitive warfare as degrading an adversary’s decision-making.

• It can be won. If it involves deliberate activity with measurable effects, then it can be assessed — and the strategic question “are we winning?” becomes answerable.

The next time someone tells you that cognitive warfare is not something you do, ask them how they intend to win it.