Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, much attention is being paid to the need to rebuild and revitalize Western defense industries, particularly in the United States and Europe. The growing threat of conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, has sharpened this focus. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear that China is preparing for “worst-case and extreme scenarios,” ready to face “high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms.” Its military is fast modernizing, with a shipbuilding capacity that outstrips that of the U.S. by a factor of 200, and a nuclear arsenal expanding faster than that of any other nation. Meanwhile, the U.S. lacks the shipyards needed to build and maintain its fleets, and Europe’s military capacity is weak, at best.
In this context, the Western preoccupation with bolstering its military hardware is understandable. Yet what such a focus overlooks is that, for Beijing, the true battlefield is not one of missiles or ships, but in the domains of information and cognitive warfare. People’s Liberation Army manuals describe cognitive warfare as its “fundamental function” and “the basis for the ability to accomplish military tasks.”
Soon after he took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi urged China’s military to expand an “ideological concept of information warfare,” to spread Beijing’s preferred narratives and silence global dissent, as well as one of cognitive warfare, to shape the perceptions and behaviors of its adversaries.
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