Introduction
‘Cognitive warfare’ is becoming a conceptual buzzword across NATO and its allies,Footnote 1 reflected in an expanding vocabulary of ‘cognitive domain’, ‘cognitive dominance’, ‘cognitive superiority’, and countless similar terms.Footnote 2 In this discourse, the concept usually relates to technologically enabled, non-violent hostilities conducted for socially disruptive purposes.Footnote 3 As such, the associated literature tends to describe propaganda campaigns and their consequences, particularly those relevant to liberal democracies.Footnote 4
To probe the concept’s analytical utility, this article examines it through the lenses of general strategic theory and contemporary affective science. General strategic theory,Footnote 5 introduced further below, explains how to prevail in adversarial interactions, especially wars, and has a solid track record of exposing flawed ideas in strategic studies.Footnote 6 Therefore, if the current conceptualisations of cognitive warfare contradict the theory’s basic tenets, they likely hinder rather than enhance our understanding of contemporary conflicts. Affective science, also introduced later in the article, provides a complementary perspective, offering a robust and arguably the best available understanding of how the human mind and behaviour operate.Footnote 7 Because the cognitive warfare literature centres on mental, and sometimes behavioural, influence, it should be grounded in sciences that reflect the latest understanding of these phenomena. If it is not, the concept requires revisions to better align with findings from affective science. Given the early stage of the debate and an absence of any authoritative work on the subject,Footnote 8 the analysis encompasses a broad and diverse spectrum of publications. However, the article prioritises writings from NATO countries and its allies, despite similar conceptual efforts emerging among some of NATO’s adversaries.Footnote 9 The reasoning here is that if the ‘Western’ concept of cognitive warfare is to be analytically useful, it has to make sense on its own terms, instead of merely mirroring conceptual developments elsewhere.
To preview the argument, this article argues that the mainstream conceptualisations of cognitive warfare are flawed but can be fixed. From the standpoint of general strategic theory perspective, the concept mischaracterises non-violent adversarial interactions as warfare, blurs the distinction between core aspects of strategic effort, and draws on questionable rather than sound strategic thought. From an affective science perspective, cognitive warfare literature relies on an increasingly outdated paradigm for explaining the human mind, provides little insight into how cognition shapes behaviour, and overlooks the beneficial roles of emotions in maintaining social cohesion. Integrating these perspectives, the article argues that information aggression is better understood as attempted subversion centred on specific emotions. It is therefore more productive to speak about, say, fear-, anger-, or hatred-based subversions and to study the potential and real emotional effects of specific campaigns.
The article’s academic contribution resides in its interdisciplinary engagement with the emerging concept. By drawing on strategic studies and affective science, it reveals unique conceptual deficiencies and offers reconceptualisation opportunities that might remain unnoticed from a single-disciplinary perspective.Footnote 10 While each perspective provides grounds for a critique of cognitive warfare, together they provide a basis for its meaningful reconceptualisation. Therefore, besides offering a fresh perspective for conceptual analysis, this approach demonstrates the value of using affective science to deepen our understanding of strategic affairs. In this way, the article contributes to a growing interdisciplinary scholarship exploring emotions in political conflicts.Footnote 11
The article’s practical value is twofold. First, it helps political and military practitioners understand contemporary security affairs more effectively. By viewing adversarial interactions through the lens of cognitive warfare, NATO risks misunderstanding some of the challenges it faces. This is problematic, as accurate diagnosis is essential for prevailing in any conflict, especially war.Footnote 12 Information aggression presents a real threat, but treating it as warfare obscures its nature, especially its potential and limitations, making effective responses harder to devise. Interpreting it instead as attempted subversion promotes a realistic and proportional approach. Focusing on specific emotions further enables practitioners to anticipate shifts in cognition and behaviour and to design counter-measures that recognise emotions as vital for social cohesion of targeted societies.
Second, the article offers a new reason, and a suitable template, for revising the concept. Previous scholarship has argued that the militarisation of liberal democracies through concepts such as hybrid warfare or cyber warfare constitute security threats in themselves.Footnote 13 Although academics have largely discarded these two concepts,Footnote 14 cognitive warfare seems to convey similar militarising potential. In fact, cognitive warfare may be even more problematic because by militarising cognition, it risks defining all attempts to influence human thought as warfare, thus possibly undermining core liberal democratic principles like freedom of expression.Footnote 15 While the current article does not directly engage with the social risks of cognitive warfare, it shows that the cognitive warfare lens also leaves much to be desired as an analytical and problem-solving tool. Crucially, the article’s proposed solution of reframing the subject matter as subversion minimises both social and instrumental deficiencies associated with cognitive warfare.
The following sections briefly review existing conceptualisations of cognitive warfare and then examine them in detail against the perspectives of general strategic theory and affective science, respectively. The penultimate section shows how information aggression is better understood as attempted subversion enabled through specific emotions. The conclusion summarises the argument, outlines its practical implications, and suggests directions for further research.
The key contours of cognitive warfare
Cognitive warfare is a concept, and as every other concept, it consists of a label, a definition, and the phenomena it is supposed to capture.Footnote 16 In the context of cognitive warfare, the label part is obviously the very term ‘cognitive warfare’. Other, closely related terms have recently emerged and gained traction, notably ‘cognitive domain’, ‘cognitive superiority’, ‘cognitive dominance’, ‘cognitive manoeuvre’, ‘cognitive battlefield’, and ‘cognitive combat’.Footnote 17 These terms form an expanding landscape where the adjective ‘cognitive’ is gradually being added to other terms commonly associated with warfare as traditionally understood.
The existing definitions of cognitive warfare vary considerably but generally converge on at least three aspects.Footnote 18 First, they assert that cognitive warfare conveys adversarial interaction exercised through non-violent means.Footnote 19 Second, cognitive warfare is enabled by innovations in information technology.Footnote 20 Third, cognitive warfare aims at the social disruption of the adversary’s society, especially through the creation or amplification of conflict lines between different societal segments.Footnote 21 Based on this literature, the mainstream meaning of cognitive warfare connotes non-violent, technologically enabled efforts to disrupt the adversary’s society. The upcoming sections then critique this meaning of the term and not the more tangential/marginal ones. For instance, this article does not engage with the literature on combat/command performance or direct electronic–magnetic interference with brain processes.Footnote 22
Cognitive warfare is used to describe diverse real-world phenomena, typically digital aggression performed by the West’s adversaries. Commonly referenced examples include Russian information operations in Romania,Footnote 23 in the Baltics,Footnote 24 in Canada,Footnote 25 in Ukraine,Footnote 26 and Chinese disinformation spreading in Taiwan.Footnote 27
General strategic theory
General strategic theoryFootnote 28 is a theory popular in strategic studies, the latter being a field predominantly occupied with an exploration of military power in political contexts.Footnote 29 The theory’s purpose is descriptive: it clarifies key concepts and their interactions to help practitioners navigate political conflicts.Footnote 30 The theory draws mainly on the works of classical strategic theorists, such as the nineteenth-century Prussian military thinker and practitioner Carl von Clausewitz and his modern disciples. While not lacking disagreements, the tradition provides a coherent understanding of how to navigate political conflicts, particularly wars. Three of its tenets are especially relevant to the current discussions of cognitive warfare: wars and warfare necessitate violent interaction, sound strategic analysis requires distinguishing between key components of strategic effort, and specific strategic theories require appropriate strategic thought. As the following analysis shows, the cognitive warfare literature fares poorly against all three.
First, general strategic theory asserts a conflict becomes war only when both sides actively employ, or are resolved to employ, violence.Footnote 31 Reciprocal violence, employed for political purposes, is the only thing that consistently distinguishes war from other social conflicts.Footnote 32 This distinction is not only analytically useful but also practically important, as it highlights how reciprocal violence, with its unique costs and consequences, fundamentally alters interactions within and between political collectives.Footnote 33 Accordingly, the theory encourages distinguishing war from peace to understand the nature of the conflict at hand.Footnote 34 Importantly, this does not mean that war involves only violent interactions, as these are often accompanied by non-violent efforts.Footnote 35 However, it does mean that ‘warfare’, which is simply ‘the actual conduct of war’, cannot exist without the employment of reciprocal violence.Footnote 36
On this point, general strategic theory firmly opposes attempts to broaden the concept of war, with cognitive warfare being but the latest example. Western strategic thought has long seen efforts to label hostile but non-violent activities as ‘war’ and ‘warfare’. Already in the 1960s, British military historian Michael Howard warned against ‘the tendency…of regarding all international relations as an extension of warfare’.Footnote 37 His caution had little impact, and the theorists and academics increasingly expanded the concept of war to include non-violent forms of conflict, reflected in terms such as information warfare, psychological warfare, hybrid warfare, cyber warfare, or political warfare.Footnote 38 Cognitive warfare continues this trend, with at least some of its proponents explicitly admitting it is not warfare in the traditional sense.Footnote 39
Proponents of expanding the concept of war argue that violent means no longer provide a reliable baseline for distinguishing war from peace.Footnote 40 They claim that non-violent means can be as effective as violent ones in achieving political objectives, and therefore conflicts involving exclusive use of non-violent means deserve the label war.Footnote 41 One problem with such assessments is that they may hold in the abstract but not in particular situations. Generally speaking, it is possible for both violent and non-violent means to bring about territorial conquest or regime change, though extermination of the adversary’s society is arguably only ever achievable through violent means. However, in practice, violence remains indispensable to achieve common political objectives in specific contexts, such as the security of the Ukrainian regime vis-à-vis the Russian invasion in early 2022.Footnote 42 Yet even if violent and non-violent means were equally effective politically, they still differ in other crucial aspects. Organised violence offers an unmatched degree of control over most situations and unparalleled speed at which it delivers results, both beneficial and counterproductive.Footnote 43 Given the existence of these differences, it is not sufficient to point to similarities to justify the conceptual expansion of war.
From a more practical perspective, others argue that conceptual expansion is appropriate because NATO’s adversaries are doing the same.Footnote 44 Logically, this is an erroneous line of reasoning because somebody acting in particular ways says little about the objective quality of such behaviour and is thus a poor reason for emulation. The proposition is also questionable on purely strategic grounds, since a good strategy is usually more about creating asymmetries rather than mirror-imaging.Footnote 45 Indeed, while the Russian and Chinese regimes do understand war in broader terms,Footnote 46 it is unclear what advantage such understanding conveys. Given the poor initial performance of the Russian military in the ongoing war in Ukraine,Footnote 47 and the fact that the planning for that war was grounded in the broad concepts of war,Footnote 48 it seems plausible that the adoption of such understanding can hinder rather than improve odds of success, at least in some forms of conflicts. At minimum, this case suggests that expansive concepts of war can impair practitioners’ ability to understand and anticipate the character of adversarial interactions, rendering any other potential benefits less appealing.
Some authors justify expanding the concept of war by redefining violence. General strategic theory defines violence narrowly, as the act of physically harming people.Footnote 49 Advocates of conceptual expansion suggest that non-kinetic actions may harm people, or even incite physical violence, meaning they too can be usefully conceptualised as violence.Footnote 50 Essentially, this latter approach suggests that violence is defined by its consequences rather than by the instruments used. While perhaps useful in other fields, this approach is analytically unproductive for understanding strategic affairs. Without a clear link to physical means, the concept of violence becomes too broad, as almost anything, from gossip to the lack of drinkable water, can harm people. If such an expanded concept of violence is used to justify broadening war, it becomes impossible to distinguish war from other social interactions.
The cognitive warfare literature then continues a long-standing contradiction of a central tenet of general strategic theory, without proper justification. This misalignment is more than a semantic problem; it also inhibits useful understanding of contemporary conflicts. By characterising non-violent interactions as a form of warfare, the concept implies that digital means alone can not only wage but also win wars. Yet despite the hype surrounding digital technology, wars in the twenty-first century are still largely shaped, and usually won, through violence.Footnote 51 Assuming that non-violent actions will determine the outcomes of future wars hinders NATO’s ability to prioritise threats, make strategically meaningful investments, and develop appropriate capabilities. Unfortunately, this conceptual and organisational misdirection is only the most recent manifestation of a broader Western tendency to inappropriately inflate the importance of a wide array of security threats and to respond to them disproportionately.Footnote 52
Second, general strategic theory emphasises the importance of thinking clearly about the key components of strategic effort and their relationships.Footnote 53 Theorists and scholars typically break conflicts into their constituting elements, focusing on the actors involved, the political objectives pursued, the means employed, the strategic effects generated, the geographies exploited, the relevant time scales, and so on.Footnote 54 This analytical separation is essential for understanding the character of any war, which largely results from the dynamic interactions of the belligerent’s strategic efforts.Footnote 55
In this sense, general strategic theory provides useful tools to make sense of the meaning and phenomena behind the cognitive warfare label. The technologies and techniques employed to disrupt the adversary’s society constitute the means. These means are usually employed in cyberspace, which constitutes a human-made and multilayered geography designed for information transmission.Footnote 56 The employment of means in this geography may or may not disrupt the adversary’s society. If it does, it generates a strategic effect, a situation that impacts the adversary’s ability to perform strategy.Footnote 57 Such an effect may or may not contribute to the achievement of a wide spectrum of political objectives, from territorial conquest to regime change. These strategic effects can vary in time and can potentially be mitigated by an adversary’s counter-measures.Footnote 58 Altogether, this is a useful perspective because it draws attention to not only the potential but also the inherent limitations of strategic effects. Specifically, it helps theorists and practitioners understand that despite means being employed, favourable strategic effects do not have to manifest and may fail to contribute to the desired political objectives, and the adversary may mitigate them over time. General strategic theory is then capable of grasping and usefully explaining the essential dynamics of information aggression, regardless of the means employed.Footnote 59
The cognitive warfare literature struggles to distinguish the basic elements of strategic effort. This is partly because it is not grounded in general strategic theory and partly because in emphasising the concept’s importance, it sacrifices terminological precision in favour of sensationalism. As a result, it often treats the human mind, simultaneously or alternatively, as means, effects, and geographies. For instance, NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) writes that ‘cognitive warfare is not the means by which we fight; it is the fight itself. The brain is both the target and the weapon in the fight for cognitive superiority. Contesting in this environment…’Footnote 60 Leaving aside the fact that the second sentence contradicts the first one, it is evident that the institution primarily responsible for preparing the Alliance for future conflicts does in fact see the human mind as means (‘weapon’), effects (‘target’), and a geography (‘environment’) all at once.Footnote 61 Other authors usually focus on one of the elements, further contributing to conceptual confusion. Some treat the adversary’s cognitive processes as means, arguing that the human mind itself has become a ‘weapon’.Footnote 62 The geographic aspect is usually framed by treating the human mind as a domain of warfare.Footnote 63 Accordingly, the concept’s proponents argue that cognition is an environment in which actors operate, akin to land, air, sea, or space, or cyberspace.Footnote 64 Still other works treat human minds as something to be influenced, thus framing the subject in terms of effect and presenting the only view compatible with the perspective of the general strategic theory.Footnote 65
Treating the adversary’s minds as either means or geographies is ultimately unconvincing, even metaphorically. Emerging research across disciplines suggests it is difficult enough to meaningfully influence, let alone employ, other people’s cognitive processes, especially through digital tools alone.Footnote 66 There is no reason, beyond technological optimism or apocalypticism, to assume technology can grant such superpowers.Footnote 67 In this sense, the concept of cognitive warfare overpromises, creating a false illusion about the amount of control actors can exercise over the minds of peoples on the adversary’s side. The geographic framing is equally problematic. It is impossible to operate or fight within human minds in any sense even remotely comparable to other geographies. At best, actors can operate outside of human minds by creating external stimuli and hoping these affect the target’s mind favourably.Footnote 68 Besides, treating cognition as a distinct domain seems redundant because mental effects have always been integral to operational conduct within and across all the traditional military domains.Footnote 69 Framing the human mind as a geography then again misleads practitioners about the dynamics of contemporary information aggression and the possibilities and limitations involved.
Third, general strategic theory recommends that specific strategic theories draw on appropriate strategic thought to guide practitioners in specific forms of conflict.Footnote 70 Unlike general strategic theory, specific strategic theories provide normative guidance for operational conduct in particular contexts, such as in land warfare, naval warfare, air warfare, and so on.Footnote 71 In order to convey such guidance, appropriate strategic thought needs to be grounded in the in-depth understanding of particular conflict dynamics. Julian Corbett’s work, published in 1911, exemplifies this approach, offering insights so enduring that they remain foundational to contemporary thinking about maritime warfare.Footnote 72
Per general strategic theory, the most appropriate strategic thought for a largely non-violent disruption of the adversary’s society seems to be the one associated with subversion. Subversion, generally understood as the creation or amplification of conflicts within the target society, is a well-recognised strategic effect.Footnote 73 Conveniently, there is a long tradition of classical strategic thinkers offering valuable insights into the generation and countering of subversion, ranging from ThucydidesFootnote 74 and Niccolò MachiavelliFootnote 75 to Vladimir LeninFootnote 76 and Mao Zedong.Footnote 77 Additionally, the so-called control tradition of strategic thought, with proponents such as Henri Eccles, Herbert Rosinski, and Joseph Wylie, puts social cohesion, and its disruption, at the forefront of strategic consideration.Footnote 78 Recently, there has also been a steadily growing literature on subversion in the digital age.Footnote 79 Altogether, these works provide a meaningful understanding of both what keeps societies together and actionable guidelines on how to tear them apart.
The cognitive warfare literature has taken a different path. Framing the phenomena as warfare, it mostly overlooks subversive strategic thought in favour of manoeuvre warfare theory.Footnote 80 While some works reference the classics, such as Thucydides or Clausewitz, they usually do it for rhetorical purposes rather than to derive any meaningful guidelines for the understanding of the phenomenon.Footnote 81 If there is one dominant strategic thought thread associated with cognitive warfare, it is that of manoeuvre warfare. Some experts explicitly advise to ‘use the tenets of maneuver warfare as a framework for gaining the initiative in the cognitive dimension’.Footnote 82 Others implicitly adopt this perspective by referencing the two most famous manoeuvrist theorists, Sun TzuFootnote 83 and John Boyd.Footnote 84
From the perspective of general strategic theory, this choice is not only surprising but also problematic. Manoeuvre warfare theory and its theorists primarily addressed violent rather than non-violent interactions,Footnote 85 rendering the quality of their insights into the latter uncertain. The theory itself rests upon shaky conceptual and empirical foundations, promising much without offering convincing evidence of practical effectiveness.Footnote 86 Furthermore, despite Boyd’s central focus on human decision-making, his understanding of the subject was flawed and overly simplistic,Footnote 87 which is a real problem if his insights are supposed to shed light on how the human mind works in conflict settings. Moreover, and in line with the general crux of manoeuvre warfare thought, Sun Tzu’s and Boyd’s thought emphasises quick victories over the adversary.Footnote 88 Such scenarios are the opposite of what cognitive warfare, as allegedly practiced by China and Russia, is about.Footnote 89 Instead of aiming at quick victories, these adversaries are supposed to gradually fragment the cohesion of Western societies. Therefore, the manoeuvrist strategic thought seems inadequate in helping practitioners to navigate the very challenge they seek to engage with. Together, these shortcomings indicate that manoeuvre warfare tradition cannot adequately explain contemporary information aggression or provide actionable guidance for its conduct.
Relatedly, this choice also directs attention to tactics at the expense of strategy. Per its more recent interpretations, Sun Tzu’s work provides limited strategic guidance because it deals almost exclusively with tactics.Footnote 90 Boyd’s expertise also lay in tactics rather than strategy, rendering his discussions of the latter unimpressive.Footnote 91 By drawing on this thought, NATO risks focusing on tactics at the expense of strategy, which is again a persistent flaw of Western strategic thinking.Footnote 92 Reflecting this emphasis, cognitive warfare often fixates on particular activities, and enabling technologies, while neglecting to explore how they translate into strategic effects and political consequences.Footnote 93 This tactical focus hinders threat prioritisation, as without considering consequences, it is difficult to determine which actions warrant immediate response. Likewise, developing meaningful ‘theories of victory’ becomes challenging if attention centres on implementation rather than instrumentality.Footnote 94
Affective science
Affective science, as a broad field of research, refers to ‘the empirical study of emotional responding and affective experience’,Footnote 95 especially sentiments, moods, emotions, attitudes, affective styles, and temperaments.Footnote 96 Its prominence has grown over recent decades due to neuroscientific and psychological findings demonstrating the central role of affect in human life.Footnote 97 Accordingly, the study of affect has become a central line of effort even in the traditional cognitive sciences, such as cognitive neuroscienceFootnote 98 and cognitive psychology,Footnote 99 and in related fields, such as behavioural economics.Footnote 100 A recent article published in Nature Human Behavior and authored by sixty-four leading scholars from a variety of disciplines discusses the emergence of ‘affectivism’, a paradigm in which affective explanations enunciate those derived from the previously dominant cognitivism.Footnote 101 While affective science brings forward countless interesting themes,Footnote 102 of particular relevance to discussions of cognitive warfare are findings that emphasise the integrative role of specific emotions in cognition, the primacy of emotional motivation in explaining human behaviour, and the ambivalence of emotional influence in individual and collective contexts. As discussed below, the cognitive warfare literature has yet to sufficiently engage with these themes.
First, affective science holds that specific emotions, and to some extent moods, permeate and shape cognitive processes in predictable ways. While the scholars of affect have struggled to agree on an authoritative definition of emotion,Footnote 103 they largely agree that emotions involve bodily systems that flexibly, though temporarily, integrate cognitive, motivational, and physiological mechanismsFootnote 104 whenever people encounter stimuli relevant to their concerns.Footnote 105 Moods resemble emotions in most aspects, except they last longer and lack association with any particular stimuli.Footnote 106 The general purpose of these affective states, especially of emotions, is to help individuals navigate the uncertainties of their lives.Footnote 107 In line with this purpose, emotions enable decision-making,Footnote 108 deploy attention,Footnote 109 alter perception,Footnote 110 modify judgements,Footnote 111 affect both the ‘content’ and the ‘depth’ of thought,Footnote 112 permeate belief formation processes,Footnote 113 and play an important role in both the storing and the retrieval of memories.Footnote 114 This literature suggests that cognitive processes rarely, if ever, occur without emotional influence because emotions and moods, whether experienced or merely anticipated,Footnote 115 accompany us practically constantly.Footnote 116
In the context of information aggression, focusing on specific emotions helps anticipate the character of emotional influence on cognitive processes.Footnote 117 For instance, fear deploys attention to dangerous stimuli,Footnote 118 renders people more pessimistic in their judgements,Footnote 119 increases people’s perception of further danger,Footnote 120 encourages deeper thinking about the threatening stimulus,Footnote 121 and makes it easier to remember the stimulus as threatening.Footnote 122 Anger, in contrast, deploys attention to the rewarding aspects of the relevant stimuli,Footnote 123 makes us perceive other people as responsible for negative situations,Footnote 124 encourages shallower thinking,Footnote 125 promotes optimistic judgements of risk,Footnote 126 and makes us better at remembering details related to the pursuit of particular objectives.Footnote 127 Affective science now recognises dozens of emotions, such as joy, sadness, awe, disappointment, resentment, nostalgia, and others,Footnote 128 and has developed unique cognitive profiles for each.Footnote 129 This diverse yet internally coherent emotional landscape enables using specific emotions as analytical bundles for studying cognition with a unified focus and a shared vocabulary. Underlying this utility, even leading scholars who introduced cognitivism to the study of international security, such as Robert Jervis and Janice Gross Stein, now acknowledge affective sciences’ immense potential for improving our understanding of cognitive processes in political conflicts.Footnote 130
In its current state, the cognitive warfare literature remains largely grounded in cognitivism rather than affectivism. This is evidenced by not only the label itself but also by the observations of some proponents who explicitly acknowledge this oversight and admit that traditional cognitive science tends to neglect the importance of affect.Footnote 131 It is further evidenced by frequent attempts of the relevant works to formally define cognition (without doing the same for affect or emotion),Footnote 132 and by common focus on one or multiple cognitive processes, such as attention, perception, judgement, decision-making, or memories.Footnote 133 In line with the cognitivist approach, many works centre on cognitive biases and heuristics.Footnote 134 By contrast, only a few have seriously engaged with the findings from affective science.Footnote 135 While these latter works highlight the importance of taking affective science into consideration, and provide some steps in that direction, they only engage with affective science in a limited manner, as discussed in more detail below.
The cognitivist foundation offers little basis for a focused research programme. The literature’s fragmentation is evidenced by not only the above-mentioned tendency of individual authors to focus on different cognitive processes but also disagreements about what counts as a cognitive process in the first place. For instance, some authors see belief as separate from cognition,Footnote 136 others view belief as integral to cognition,Footnote 137 and still others separate cognition from attention,Footnote 138 a position that contradicts the majority of the literature. Admittedly, this problem is not unique to the cognitive warfare literature; scholars in other disciplines also struggle to clearly define cognition as a standalone concept, though they generally agree on at least some of the processes that can be usefully characterised as cognitive.Footnote 139 This research fragmentation is not inherently harmful, and one could argue that no unified concept of cognition is necessary for individual scholars to focus on particular cognitive processes. This view, however, overlooks the importance of understanding the relative significance of particular processes and their relationships. Without such synthesis, fragmented research cannot illuminate the broader workings of the human mind, which is essential for understanding the potentials and limitations of information aggression.
Consequently, the cognitive warfare framing seems unfit to provide coherent guidance regarding what professionals should focus on. It remains unclear whether they should seek to manipulate, or to defend against the manipulation of, attention, perception, judgement, thinking, decisions, or memories.Footnote 140 Measures and efforts designed to alter perception of contemporary events may be inadequate to influence the development of memories. Belief formation is a long-term process that takes years, while attention can shift in seconds. Accordingly, one study found that even authoritarian regimes, despite tight control over information spaces, struggle to reshape certain beliefs, though they can easily redirect immediate public attention.Footnote 141 Importantly, attempting to influence, or defend against influence, without a clear idea of what mental effect is sought risks not only failure but also counterproductive outcomes. For example, the very act of trying to influence someone’s judgements may inspire a belief that the perpetrator of such influence efforts is doing something bad,Footnote 142 and thus is overall untrustworthy. Alternatively, well-intentioned attempts to promote sceptical thought, and therefore reduce the spread of false information, may backfire by making people distrust most subsequent bits of information, including the accurate ones.Footnote 143
Second, affective science suggests that emotions are the prime cause, and usually the necessity, for human behaviour.Footnote 144 Cognitive processes alone do not predict behaviour.Footnote 145 Instead, a growing body of literature highlights the importance of motivation, the state of ‘wanting change’,Footnote 146 as an essential interfering variable between cognitive processes and behaviour.Footnote 147 Affective science posits that emotions, in combination with basic human needs, provide everyday motivationFootnote 148 across a broad variety of human endeavours.Footnote 149 Accordingly, pre-eminent Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda famously described emotions as ‘states of action readiness’.Footnote 150 Admittedly, not every emotional motivation translates into behavioural change.Footnote 151 People often do not act out particular emotional motivations because they either regulate those emotions or get overwhelmed by the motivational urge from other emotions.Footnote 152 Yet since the very desire to regulate emotions often stems from prior emotional motivation,Footnote 153 emotions generally explain both how cognitive processes translate into behaviour and how that translation can fail.
Moreover, just like with cognitive processes, the motivational and behavioural aspects of specific emotions seem remarkably consistent, not only within particular populations but also across different cultures.Footnote 154 This is because each emotion brings forward a broad overarching goal that is to be pursued, along with a spectrum of behaviours that may be contextually useful in the pursuit of that purpose.Footnote 155 Fear motivates the search for security through fleeing, freezing, or fighting,Footnote 156 humiliation motivates search for revenge, often through aggression,Footnote 157 and pride motivates long-term goal pursuit despite it being costly in the short term.Footnote 158 Therefore, despite emotional motivation not always manifesting in behaviour, and the contextual variance of specific actions, emotions still provide solid grounds for anticipating human behaviour.
The principal benefit of affective science in this context lies in its ability to help practitioners anticipate strategically relevant behaviours through the study of specific emotions. For example, if hatred towards minorities dominates a society’s emotional landscape, it is reasonable to expect intensification of divisive actions, including internal violence.Footnote 159 Conversely, if the adversary successfully inspires emotions that are unlikely to translate into meaningful disruptive behaviour, countering such attempts can be deprioritised to conserve resources. The Russian–Ukrainian war illustrates that a society sharing a strong unifying emotion, such as national pride, does not easily succumb to fear’s potential to sap away the original motivation to keep up resistance.Footnote 160 Moreover, understanding the motivational profiles of specific emotions is also crucial for offensive purposes, as it enables the deliberate cultivation of emotions most likely to generate behavioural change within the adversary’s society.
In contrast with affective science, the cognitive warfare literature seems to contain a notable gap in its theorisation of the relationship between cognition and behaviour. Admittedly, some works only speak about influencing cognitive processes, paying little attention to behavioural outcomes.Footnote 161 Yet it remains unclear how an effective disruption of the adversary’s society is to be achieved if people’s minds change, but their behaviour, such as voting, remains the same. Others tie cognitive warfare to the aspiration to shape behaviour but do not convincingly explain how exactly cognition and behaviour interact.Footnote 162 For instance, Oliver Backes and Andrew Swab define cognitive warfare as ‘a strategy that focuses on altering how a target population thinks – and through that how it acts’,Footnote 163 assuming linear progression from thinking to behaviour. Since the cognitive warfare literature neglects emotions, and by extension the motivations tying cognition to action, it generally struggles to offer a meaningful and systematic account of how cognitive influence translates into behavioural consequences. Even the few works that do engage with some findings from affective science do not explore the nuances of behavioural motivations associated with specific emotions in much detail.Footnote 164
Failing to theorise the relationship between cognition and behaviour further constrains NATO’s ability to prioritise threats and develop its own ‘theories of victory’. Since it is actual behaviour, rather than individual cognitive processes, that usually tears societies apart, information aggression that provokes behavioural change can be considered more dangerous than that which merely changes cognition. Yet without understanding which adversarial efforts translate into disruptive behaviour, practitioners lack a meaningful basis for prioritisation and are forced to counter everything indiscriminately. This approach is inherently inefficient, as hostile actors can launch extensive propaganda campaigns against NATO members frequently and at minimal cost. Treating all this information aggression as potentially equally harmful thus wastes the Alliance’s resources. Conversely, when NATO conducts its own information aggression, it must understand how its attempts at influencing cognition translate into behavioural change; otherwise, it risks only affecting the former. For these reasons, focusing on specific emotions appears to be a more promising avenue for both defensive and offensive purposes.
Third, affective science suggests that emotions and moods can have both beneficial and detrimental effects, individually and collectively. At the individual level, emotions seem to be necessary to make any decisions at all,Footnote 165 because they help people choose among multiple options at any given moment.Footnote 166 Beyond this general observation, the literature suggests that emotions can be beneficial or detrimental to our decision-making, depending on the context. Some situations may require deep thought and rumination conveyed in emotions such as sadness, while others may call for swift and bold decisions facilitated by anger.Footnote 167 It seems that emotions generally benefit our navigation of the world if their character, intensity, and stimulus correspond proportionally to the situations we engage with.Footnote 168 Obviously, emotions that are too intense or otherwise inappropriate to the situation may impair our ability to think clearly and act appropriately.Footnote 169
Furthermore, findings from social and political psychology indicate that emotional influence is equally ambivalent at the collective level. Emotions maintain social cohesion while also being a potent force in social disruption.Footnote 170 They sustain social cohesion by making individuals care about others, but they can equally easily promote hostile attitudes and motivate antagonistic behaviour, thus tearing societies apart.Footnote 171 Generalising about specific emotions is again difficult because much depends on the context, especially on the stimulus towards which the emotion is felt.Footnote 172 Fear felt towards an out-group can certainly unite the in-group,Footnote 173 while fear directed towards individuals inside one’s own group may be disruptive.Footnote 174 Still, some emotions do seem to be more ‘prosocial’ while others are likely to more easily fragment societies.Footnote 175 For instance, love, gratitude, awe, and adoration have evolved primarily to sustain in-group cohesion.Footnote 176 In contrast, disgust or hatred are well designed to promote conflict, and as such can be considered generally disruptive.Footnote 177 Dissapointment may be the core emotional cause of social polarisation,Footnote 178 while loneliness makes Westerners particularly vulnerable to foreign interference efforts.Footnote 179
To the extent the cognitive warfare literature discusses emotions at all, it largely portrays them as detrimental, both individually and collectively.Footnote 180 At the individual level, emotions are generally associated with poor decision-making and increased susceptibility to believing falsehoods.Footnote 181 Multiple works contrast emotional decision-making as being in opposition to rational decision-making,Footnote 182 which, according to the reviewed affective science literature, is a false dichotomy.Footnote 183 Collectively, emotions are typically framed as vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit to manipulate the public in Western societies.Footnote 184 Even the few studies that try to engage with findings from affective science focus solely on the detrimental aspects of emotional influence. For instance, Tzu-Chieh Hung and Tzu-Wei Hung’s article draws on affective science to illustrate how emotions distort belief formation, perception, and decision-making.Footnote 185 However, the article’s proposed ‘counter-measures’ contain no mention of emotions, instead arguing for ‘structural’ and ‘cognitive’ ‘intervention’.Footnote 186
Understanding the harmful aspects of emotions is necessary, but disproportional focus on this subject makes it difficult to appreciate the utility of emotions in national security. Viewing emotions as inherently harmful naturally leads to efforts to suppress them and discourages professionals from their cultivation. Practitioners are often advised to rely on purely technocratic approaches such as ‘debunking’ or, at best, developing ‘positive narratives’, the latter recommendation being so abstract as to be largely devoid of specific emotional content.Footnote 187 This sterile approach obscures the nuances of specific emotions, particularly the potential of negative ones, such as fear, to foster social cohesion under certain conditions. In this sense, cognitive warfare signifies a continuation of the long-term Western neglect of emotional manipulation in the context of adversarial interactions.Footnote 188 This approach is especially problematic to embrace at a time when at least some NATO members, such as the United States or Slovakia, suffer from dangerously low levels of social cohesion and declining trust.Footnote 189 By disregarding the constructive potential of specific emotions, Western practitioners deprive themselves of opportunities to increase social cohesion through emotional regulation.Footnote 190 Rather than suppressing emotions altogether, they could differentiate between those that fracture societies and those that bind them together, suppressing the former and cultivating the latter. Interpreting information aggression through the prism of specific emotions thus enables a more creative approach to national security, one that seeks to make the most of emotions, rather than treating them as something inherently undesirable.
A way ahead
The preceding analysis has shown that mainstream conceptualisations of cognitive warfare are problematic when assessed through the perspectives of general strategic theory and affective science. Yet some aspects of the phenomena the cognitive warfare literature describes are strategically significant. What is needed, therefore, is a reconceptualisation of the subject, one that integrates the strengths of both traditions. This section outlines a draft of such a concept. It argues that contemporary attempts at social disruption are best understood as attempted subversion, and that placing specific emotions at the centre of analysis offers a more coherent and practically useful way to grasp the dynamics of this contest.
First, and most obviously, a change in terminology is needed. The preceding analysis suggests that a more useful vocabulary should centre on subversion and emotions.Footnote 191 Indeed, it is tempting to coin emotional subversion as a fresh and marketable term. However, we should resist the temptation to simply switch cognition for emotion, since both terms are equally vague and provide shaky grounds for a focused study or practical guidance. The term emotional subversion would then obscure rather than clarify our understanding of the challenges facing NATO, offering poor ground for developing effective counter-measures. Besides, any subversion worth the label is bound to be emotional simply because it is emotions that tear societies apart, as Thucydides explicitly states and vividly illustrates in his commentary on internal conflicts in Ancient Greece.Footnote 192 Therefore, the general term emotional is redundant and can be left out entirely.
For these reasons, it is more useful to link subversion to specific emotions. Instead of relying on a broad, generic label, we should adopt a more precise terminology, speaking of fear-, anger-, or hatred-based subversion, for instance. There is no theoretical limit to specific emotions that can serve as analytical lenses for subversion, though some are likely to prove more common and relevant than others. Analytically, this terminology allows for multiple forms of subversion to coexist, which often happens in practice, and to explore the interactions of specific emotions. Its key practical value lies in clarity; identifying a particular information aggression as an attempt at fear-based subversion immediately signals the nature of the threat and the contours of the response. Practitioners who recognise they are facing fear-based subversion can anticipate how fear may shape collective cognition and behaviour and employ targeted emotion regulation approaches to mitigate the harmful consequences.
In accord with the change in terminology, a slight adjustment of meaning is also required. Subversion centred on specific emotions can be understood as attempts to disrupt society by inspiring or cultivating those emotions. The meaning of each term should then correspond directly to the emotion in question. For instance, anger-based subversion refers to attempts to destabilise society by inspiring or cultivating anger, while hatred-based subversion connotes efforts to do the same through hatred. This formulation remains close enough to the meaning associated with cognitive warfare to facilitate adoption by its proponents, yet it also offers flexibility to adapt the concept to different contexts.
This revised meaning clarifies the range of phenomena that scholars and practitioners should focus on. Since subversion works through specific emotions, analytical attention should primarily focus on two aspects: the emotion-inspiring potential of the means employed, and the actual emotional states or moods within the targeted societies. Examining the emotion-inspiring potential of particular means helps anticipate the kind of emotions that could emerge in the affected society. The methods for this kind of study vary with the specific means, social media campaigns being especially relevant in the contemporary world. Although techniques for assessing emotional potential keep evolving, existing research already offers useful tools for the relevant phenomena, such as narratives or messages appealing to specific emotions.Footnote 193
A related but distinct question concerns whether such campaigns in fact succeed in eliciting the intended emotions. Addressing this question requires studying the emotional dynamics in relevant societies, with an emphasis on specific emotions.Footnote 194 This can be achieved through a variety of methods, from computational analysis of emotional reactions on social mediaFootnote 195 to large-scale surveys that regularly measure emotions and moods on national scales.Footnote 196 Based on this monitoring, practitioners can attempt to regulate the existing emotions, decrease the intensity of the undesired emotions, and promote the emergence of the desired ones. In doing so, they may draw on insights from political science and conflict studies literature, which have already explored the nuances of emotion regulation in adversarial contexts.Footnote 197
Conclusion
Cognitive warfare is a problematic concept. It obscures the nature of adversarial interactions, provides a weak foundation for strategic analysis, engages inappropriately with existing strategic thought, relies on an increasingly outdated understanding of how the human mind works, fails to sufficiently explain how cognitive influence translates into behavioural influence, and promotes a simplistic view of emotions as inherently harmful. As shown throughout the analysis, some of these deficiencies present merely the most recent manifestation of trends that have long impaired NATO’s thinking about security challenges. Others seem especially pronounced with cognitive warfare. Taken together, however, these shortcomings render the concept of cognitive warfare analytically troubling and undermine NATO’s ability to understand and navigate contemporary and future conflicts.
Accordingly, it is more analytically and practically useful to view contemporary information aggression through the prism of subversion grounded in specific emotions. Focusing on subversion enables a more proportional treatment of the challenge, clarifies its place within the broader strategic effort, and allows practitioners to draw on the rich legacy of relevant strategic thought. At the same time, analysis rooted in specific emotions facilitates a more focused exploration of the associated cognitive effects, improves anticipation of strategically relevant behaviour, and fosters appreciation of the ambivalent roles particular emotions can play in national security. This reconceptualisation highlights that the challenge at hand is neither strictly cognitive nor warfare. Instead of worrying about exaggerated dangers associated with a supposed new kind of warfare, the Alliance should concentrate on its adversaries’ capacity to create emotional effects, deepen its understanding of the actual emotional dynamics within its own societies, and develop appropriate measures grounded in the logic of emotional regulation. Equally importantly, if NATO aspires to use information offensively, it should ask what specific emotions it can and seeks to generate, whether any of them can be generated and sustained in practice, and how they are supposed to contribute to the Alliance’s political objectives.
This reconceptualisation gives scholars of international security an opportunity to conduct practically relevant research grounded in the most up-to-date science of human mind and behaviour. The potential avenues for further research are manifold. One promising direction concerns exploring the subversive potential of a broader spectrum of specific emotions. Another is to test the effectiveness of specific emotions, and alternative emotion regulation approaches, in sustaining social cohesion. These research efforts could be further complemented by attempts to identify the specific conditions under which particular emotions are more likely to disrupt or increase cohesion. Together, such lines of research will not only yield immediately useful insights but also provide academic value by deepening our knowledge about the potentials and limitations of specific emotions in political conflicts.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank James Horncastle, Davis Ellison, and the anonymous EJIS reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript.
Funding statement
This research was funded by Tomas Bata University under the project Assessment of Territorial Vulnerability to Current Security Threats (project code: RVO/ FLKŘ/2024/02) and supported through the programme ‘Creativity, Intelligence and Talent pro Zlínský Kraj’. The financial sponsor did not play any role in the research process.
Samuel Zilincik is currently an assistant professor at the Royal Danish Defence College. His current research explores the intersection of military operations and strategic effects. He has published widely, including in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, Texas National Security Review, RUSI Journal, and Military Strategy Magazine.
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