By Oriane Cohen · August 2026
Cognitive warfare is a struggle over the architecture through which reality becomes visible, intelligible and actionable.
Most of the literature locates it "in the mind". Drawing on years of conflict reporting and HUMINT operations, I argue the opposite: influence operations rarely touch the mind. They act on the environment in which perception, judgment and decision become possible.
In brief
- Nobody invented cognitive warfare. It was assembled from psychological warfare, information warfare, cyber, behavioural science, strategic communications and neuroscience. That is why definitions never agree.
- The mind is not the battlefield. Operators manipulate access, timing, trust, visibility and sequence: the conditions of decision, not cognition itself.
- Influence starts before information. Every message enters an operational reality model that already decides what counts as evidence.
- Influence no longer needs an author. Algorithmic systems produce cognitive climates that shape decisions without anyone intending the outcome.
- The object worth defending is decision integrity, not the human mind.
Where the concept comes from
The practices are ancient: Sun Tzu, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and the Hebrew Bible all describe deception and the shaping of perception as ordinary statecraft. The vocabulary is recent. One of the earliest documented military uses of “cognitive warfare” appears in a 1996 thesis by Arden Dahl. In 1967, Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre formalized reflexive control. France published La guerre cognitive (Harbulot and Lucas, École de Guerre Économique) in 2002. China adopted the “three warfares” in 2003, then “cognitive domain operations”. The United States moved from perception management to Information Operations doctrine (1998).
Each power theorized in response to the others. Nobody is the origin.
Why 2020?
In 2020, François du Cluzel’s report for NATO’s Innovation Hub turned the term into a category almost overnight. That explains the timing, not the need. By 2020, six transformations had matured:
- Two drivers: platforms became the primary infrastructure of perception; authority and credibility became cheap to manufacture.
- Two accelerants: artificial intelligence and the return of great power competition.
- Two revealers: the COVID-19 pandemic and the collapse of disciplinary boundaries.
Oriane Cohen
The battlefield is not the mind
Apart from neurotechnologies that act directly on the nervous system, influence operations never touch a brain. To change a decision, you remove a trusted adviser from the room, change what reaches the target, and when, and through whom.
Cognitive science has said this for three decades: cognition is distributed (Hutchins) and extended (Clark and Chalmers). It emerges from the interaction between an individual and the environment through which reality reaches them. Fear, fatigue, deference to authority and social proof are not vulnerabilities. They are human features. The vulnerability is relational: it appears between the feature and the conditions around it.
Oriane Cohen
Key concepts
Reflexive control. Formalized by Vladimir Lefebvre in 1967: transmitting to another the foundations of their decision, so that they freely reach the conclusion you predetermined. Propaganda targets what you believe; reflexive control targets the terrain on which you decide.
Operational reality model. The pre-existing cognitive structure that, prior to any specific piece of information, determines what qualifies as evidence, what deserves attention, which actors possess legitimacy, which causal explanations appear self-evident, and which observations never become visible at all. Beliefs and narratives are its outputs.
Cognitive climate. An environment that continuously alters the foundations of decision without targeting any particular decision and without any single actor intending the outcome. Recommendation systems industrialized what René Girard described as mimetic desire.
Delegated perception. No one can verify everything; we delegate the construction of reality to journalists, analysts, institutions and, increasingly, AI. Delegation is necessary. Unconscious delegation is the problem.
Decision integrity. A decision emerges from a system of sources, relationships, interfaces, incentives and constraints. That system, not the mind, is what cognitive security must protect.
Cognitive sovereignty. Not the capacity to resist an adversary, but the capacity to govern the ecosystem from which your representation of reality is built. It is a discipline of maintenance.
Oriane Cohen
Oriane Cohen
Cognitive warfare and the Grey Zone
Cognitive warfare names a category of practices: what certain actors do to certain targets. The Grey Zone names the terrain: the conditions under which those practices become dominant, cheap and hard to counter. Confusing the two is like confusing naval warfare with the ocean.
How to defend: practical principles
- Audit your inputs, not your conclusions. Trace each belief back to observation.
- Count paths, not people. Three advisers relying on the same analyst are one source.
- Introduce friction. Force your information system to produce what it would not naturally produce.
- Organize contradiction. Keep people and sources whose role is to challenge your premises.
- Remove the compression. Periodically go back to raw reality: unselected customer calls, primary sources.
A dangerous information environment contains no lies. It gives you a coherent picture while deciding what you never get to see.
Oriane Cohen
Oriane Cohen
The series
- Why the world suddenly needed “cognitive warfare”, July 2026
- Cognitive warfare: from reflexive control to cognitive climate, July 2026
- The blind spot of cognitive warfare, August 2026
- A dangerous information environment contains no lies, August 2026
- No, your mind isn’t the battlefield, September 2026
- Naming is Not Knowing, Small Wars Journal, September 2026
Frequently asked questions
Is the mind the battlefield in cognitive warfare?
Rarely. Except for neurotechnologies that act on the nervous system, influence operations do not touch the mind. They act on everything around it: what someone sees, whom they trust, when information reaches them and through whom. The battlefield is the environment in which perception, judgment and decision become possible.
What is the difference between cognitive warfare and the Grey Zone?
Cognitive warfare is a category of practices: what certain actors do to certain targets. The Grey Zone is the terrain: the conditions under which those practices become dominant, cheap and hard to counter. Confusing the two is like confusing naval warfare with the ocean.
Who coined the term cognitive warfare?
Nobody invented it. One of the earliest documented military uses is a 1996 thesis by Arden Dahl on command-and-control warfare. France published La guerre cognitive, edited by Christian Harbulot and Didier Lucas, in 2002. The term became mainstream after François du Cluzel’s 2020 report for NATO’s Innovation Hub. The practices themselves are ancient.
Is cognitive warfare just propaganda?
No. Propaganda targets what you believe. Cognitive warfare, in the tradition of reflexive control, targets the terrain on which you decide: which options you consider, at what perceived cost, with what urgency and in what order they reach you. It can work entirely with true information.
How do you defend against cognitive warfare?
Not by fixing the human, but by maintaining decision integrity: auditing where your premises come from, counting independent paths rather than sources, introducing friction into your information system, organizing contradiction, and periodically removing the intermediaries between you and reality.
How to cite: Cohen, O. (2026). What is cognitive warfare? The Grey Zone. orianecohen.com/cognitive-warfare/