Recent years have seen lively discussions about cognitive warfare, centering on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). According to an October 5, 2022 piece in the PLA Daily, cognitive warfare is conflict in the cognitive domain formed from human consciousness and thoughts, which is believed to shape reality in a way favorable to China by influencing human judgment, changing ideas, and influencing the human mind through selective processing and propagation of information. In other words, the aim is to gain an advantage in war by influencing the perceptions of civilians, military personnel, and political leaders, who are targeted through various means such as dissemination of disinformation and cyberattacks, causing social confusion, reduced motivation to fight, military demoralization, and – among political leaders – reduced judgment.
Cognitive warfare, such as propaganda using radio broadcasts and deception through the dissemination of disinformation, is hardly a recent phenomenon, but the PLA’s focus on it follows developments in technology that greatly enhance its effectiveness. The first development was the global expansion of the internet and the rapid spread of social media. The latter in particular has made it possible to instantly distribute large volumes of tampered or biased information among a very large number of targets, creating the infrastructure for effective cognitive warfare.
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