Via NATO's Innovation Hub:
Resource 1: Cognitive Warfare, June-November 2020 (45 page PDF)
Resource 2: The Cognitive Warfare Concept, February 2022 (11 page PDF)
Cognitive warfare is now seen as its own domain in modern warfare.
Alongside the four military domains defined by their environment (land, maritime, air and space) and the cyber domain that connects them all, recent events that upset the geopolitical balance of power have shown how this new warfare domain has emerged and been put to use.
It operates on a global stage, since humankind as a whole is now digitally connected. It uses information technology and the tools, machines, networks and systems that come with it. Its target is clear: our intelligence, to be considered both individually and as a group.
Attacks are defined, structured and organized to alter or mislead the thoughts of leaders and operators, of members of entire social or professional classes, of the men and women in an army, or on a larger scale, of an entire population in a given region, country or group of countries. Cognitive aggression is boundless. It can have a variety of objectives and will adapt itself to other strategies being used: territorial conquest (a bordering region, peninsula or group of islands for instance), influence (elections, stirring up popular unrest), service interruptions (national or local administrations, hospitals, emergency services, and sanitation, water or energy supplies) or transportation (airspaces, maritime chokepoints...), information theft (through involuntary disclosure or the sharing of passwords...) etc.
Resource 3: Cognitive Warfare: An Attack on Truth and Thought, March 2021 (45 page PDF)
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Introduction 5
Evolution of Non-Kinetic Warfare 6
Origins 6
Psychological Warfare (PsyOps) 7
Electronic Warfare (EW) 7
Cyberwarfare 8
Information Warfare 8
Cognitive Warfare 9
Goals of Cognitive Warfare 11Destabilization 12
Case 1: Destabilization through Confusion 13
Case 2: Destabilization by Sowing Division 15
Case 3: Destabilization as a Means to Influence 17Influence 20
Case 1: Influencing to Recruit 21
Case 2: Influencing Policy Enactment 22
Case 3: Influencing as a Means to Destabilize 23
