Cognitive warfare in liberal democracies: key issues and their implications for the community of research and practice

The paper explores, for a theoretical/ conceptual perspective, a relatively new phenomenon, known in the community of research and practice as “influence operations”, “information warfare”, “computational propaganda”, “disinformation 2.0”, or “cognitive warfare”. We premise our conceptual work on the ideas that the new threats to the integrity of public discourse in liberal democracies emerge in a completely changed communication and information environment, driven by the technological factor (explosion of social media/ digital platforms), and the geopolitical factor (interconnectedness of the global information space, and loss of monopoly over the global information space from Western actors). The aims of the paper are to compare and discuss existing conceptualizations of this phenomenon, to provide arguments in favor of the idea that the term “cognitive warfare” best describes the consubstantiality between contemporary propaganda efforts and the new technological eco-system and to propose a working conceptual framework for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners alike. We show that cognitive warfare is a continuous, at-peace battle over the human mind, integrating cyber, information, psychological, and social engineering capabilities. Thanks to technological possibilities, it may target influential individuals/ decision-makers, specific groups, and large numbers of people, selectively or serially. Its final goal is to polarize, disrupt and strategically shape public discourse so as to kill the very possibility of debate and to render the opponent ungovernable. The implications for tackling this threat are discussed in the final section of the paper.