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Editor’s Note
AI is transforming information warfare into a contest for the human mind.
The author argues that Cognitive Domain Operations (CDO) seek to shape perceptions, emotions, beliefs and decisions. As narratives become weapons, cognitive resilience is emerging as a critical national-security imperative. Future conflicts may begin with a narrative before a missile is fired.
The character of competition between states is changing. The battlefield is no longer confined to land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Increasingly, it extends into the human cognitive domain – the space where people perceive, interpret, believe, decide, and even act.
A fundamental change in the information environment is the speed and reach to populations across the globe. An information and an event that once took days or weeks to spread can now become a national or even global narrative within hours.
The combination of social media, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created a persistent cognitive battlespace. In this environment, information is not merely transmitted. It is selected, personalised, emotionally amplified, continuously modified and delivered to specific audiences. This represents a fundamental evolution from traditional Information Warfare.
From Information Warfare to Cognitive Domain Operations (CDO)
Traditional Information Warfare primarily sought to influence the information environment—to protect one’s own information, deny or disrupt an adversary’s information, disseminate narratives, conduct psychological operations, deceive the adversary, or shape perceptions.
Cognitive Domain Operations (CDOs) go further. Their objective is not simply to control information but to influence how individuals and groups perceive information, interpret events, form beliefs, experience emotions and ultimately make decisions.
Information Warfare seeks to control the information; Cognitive Warfare seeks to influence what people think, feel and decide. This does not mean that Information Warfare has become irrelevant. Rather, it is increasingly becoming an instrument within the broader cognitive battlespace. Cyber operations, electronic warfare, psychological operations, social media operations, strategic communications, and information operations can all contribute to a CDO campaign.
The centre of gravity, however, shifts from the information itself to the human response to information. This is why CDO is emerging as the contemporary paradigm of influence operations.
Why AI Changes the Equation
Artificial Intelligence is the principal technology accelerating this transition. Human limitations constrained traditional influence operations. Analysing millions of conversations, identifying vulnerable audiences, generating thousands of messages and monitoring their impact required enormous manpower and time.
AI obviates these constraints. Modern AI models can process enormous volumes of text, images, video, audio and behavioural data. Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), multimodal AI, sentiment analysis, graph analytics, recommendation models and generative AI can collectively provide an unprecedented ability to understand and influence the information environment.
AI-enabled CDO can operate through a continuous loop: Sense → Understand → Identify → Generate → Target → Disseminate → Observe → Adapt.
The system can detect an emerging narrative, determine who is driving it, identify the communities engaging with it, analyse sentiment and emotional response, generate alternative messaging, disseminate content through appropriate channels and then assess the reaction. The process can subsequently be repeated. This creates the possibility of continuous, adaptive, and personalised influence at machine speed and scale.
The application of AI in the cognitive domain is expanding rapidly. Its growing power lies not only in creating content, but in understanding people, identifying vulnerabilities and adapting influence in real time.
Cognitive sensing and narrative discovery: AI can continuously scan the information environment to detect emerging narratives, public concerns, emotional trends, misinformation and sudden shifts in sentiment.
Cognitive vulnerability assessment: AI can identify potential fault lines in society—from economic anxiety and institutional distrust to polarisation, communal tensions and other grievances. This has legitimate defensive value: understanding such vulnerabilities can help governments address them before they become crises. But the same capability could also be misused to exploit them.
Generative narrative: Generative AI can produce text, images, audio and video at unprecedented speed. What once required teams of writers, designers and media specialists can increasingly be done by AI. The threat, therefore, is not merely fake news; it is the ability to generate and distribute influence at massive scale.
Real-time adaptation: AI can monitor how audiences respond and continuously adjust content to maximise attention, emotional reaction or behavioural impact. This creates a potentially self-learning influence ecosystem—one that senses society, identifies vulnerabilities, generates narratives and adapts them in real time.
The battlefield of the future may therefore extend beyond physical terrain. It is increasingly becoming the human mind itself, perception of society and, in turn, perception of the Nation.
Society and Cognitive Security
The emergence of large-scale, digitally connected youth movements and social movements across different parts of the world provides an important illustration of information environment transformation.
The emergence of youth, or Gen Z, as a socially connected generation deserves particular attention. Gen Z has grown up in an environment where social media is not merely a communication tool but an integral part of social identity, community formation and expression. A movement can therefore develop horizontally rather than vertically. There may be no traditional leader, a control and command structure, or a formal organisation. A hashtag, video, image, influencer or emotionally powerful event can become a mobilisation catalyst.
Thus, in the current cognitive environment settings, it is important to understand such mobilisation movements. If these movements likely emerge from genuine social, economic, or generational grievances – then they need to be addressed in time, so that first it does not become a mass movement and secondly, they are not exploited through CDO by adversarial elements. On the other hand, if inimical elements are initiating or fostering divisions in society or creating disharmony for exploitation, etc., then such actions need immediate and strong counter measures.
It needs to be reiterated that the speed of propagation of these actions is so fast – a complementary counteraction not taken in time – results in obviating the distinction between a genuine grievance and one initiated by adversaries. This in itself is a victory for inimical elements. As seen in recent events – a non-issue a few weeks back – if it becomes the centre stage of all discussions, it exactly highlights the complexity of the current cognitive environment. A nation or an authority that understands only traditional structures may therefore misunderstand the new battlespace.
The same applies to warfare. AI thus becomes an important tool to identify emerging grievances, detect communities that are becoming highly engaged, map narrative propagation and forecast possible escalation.
The answer is to reconceptualise and expand Information Warfare into a broader cognitive-security discipline. It must be taught alongside Cognitive Domain Operations, AI, cyber operations, social-media dynamics, behavioural science, strategic communications, psychological operations, disinformation and societal resilience. Military officers, intelligence professionals, policymakers and diplomats must understand how online narratives can translate into physical mobilisation; how algorithms amplify polarisation; how adversaries exploit societal grievances; how AI-generated content can manipulate perceptions; and how coordinated inauthentic behaviour and deepfakes can be detected.
Equally critical is the ability to identify emerging narratives before they become crises, communicate credibly without appearing propagandistic, distinguish legitimate dissent from hostile manipulation, and build societal resilience against cognitive attacks. These are no longer media or public-relations challenges—they are national security imperatives requiring dedicated institutions, specialised capabilities, and AI-enabled cognitive awareness.
The Need for Cognitive AI Models
India therefore needs to develop indigenous Cognitive AI Models designed specifically for the Indian information and societal environment. Generic commercial AI models are unlikely to be sufficient for strategic applications. India is linguistically, culturally and socially diverse. Cognitive analysis must therefore encompass multiple Indian languages, dialects, cultural contexts and information ecosystems.
A national cognitive AI capability could provide: –
- Early warning – identification of rapidly emerging narratives and abnormal information patterns.
- Narrative mapping – understanding how competing narratives develop and propagate.
- Disinformation detection – identification of coordinated, synthetic or manipulated information.
- Social-media analytics – Analysing trends without compromising privacy.
- Deepfake detection – authentication of audio, video and imagery.
- Foreign influence detection – identifying coordinated external attempts to manipulate domestic discourse.
- Crisis communication support – helping authorities communicate rapidly and credibly during crises.
- Counter-narrative development – supporting evidence-based responses to hostile information operations.
- Pre-bunking – preparing citizens to recognise manipulation before it occurs.
- Strategic forecasting – modelling how narratives could evolve and what second-order effects they might produce.
The purpose of such systems should be cognitive defence and societal resilience.
The Democratic Red Line
This distinction is fundamental. There is a legitimate national-security requirement to protect society against foreign interference, coordinated disinformation, synthetic media, psychological manipulation and hostile cognitive operations. There is, however, an equally important requirement to protect freedom of expression, democratic debate and legitimate dissent.
An authority in power should not treat disagreement as disinformation. That may provide the very fodder for inimical elements to exploit through CDO. Further, AI systems should not have the authority to categorise people. The objective should be to protect the cognitive sovereignty of citizens, not to control their cognition. This requires strong governance, transparency, human oversight, legal safeguards, and independent auditing of AI-enabled cognitive systems. The most adversarial cognitive operation may be one in which a society loses trust in information itself.
From Cognitive Defence to Cognitive Resilience
The ultimate objective should therefore be cognitive resilience. A cognitively resilient society is not one in which everyone believes the same thing. It is one in which citizens can encounter competing narratives, identify manipulation, distinguish evidence from synthetic content, question emotionally charged claims and make informed decisions.
This requires investment not only in technology but also in media literacy, AI literacy, critical thinking and institutional credibility. Technology alone cannot defeat cognitive manipulation. A society needs to trust its institutions. Trust, therefore, becomes a strategic asset.
For India, the issue is particularly important. India’s enormous population, linguistic diversity, extensive digital penetration, youthful demographic, democratic environment and strategic competition with technologically capable adversaries create a uniquely complex cognitive battlespace.
India needs an integrated National Cognitive Security architecture linking defence, intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement, academia, technology companies and civil society.
The Armed Forces should develop dedicated CDO capabilities. Intelligence agencies need AI-enabled information-environment analysis. Universities should establish programmes combining AI, behavioural science, psychology, geopolitics and strategic communications. Industry should develop sovereign cognitive AI tools, multilingual models and deepfake-detection technologies.
Most importantly, these capabilities must be indigenous, trusted and auditable. Dependence on foreign AI models for understanding India’s cognitive environment could itself become a strategic vulnerability. Thus, we need Sovereign AI.
The New Cognitive Battlespace
The shift from Information Warfare to Cognitive Domain Operations is more than a change in terminology—it marks a shift in the centre of gravity of strategic competition. It is imperative to move from information superiority to cognitive resilience, and from reacting to information attacks to anticipating and countering them. In an AI-enabled battlespace, the decisive contest will increasingly be over how societies perceive events, form beliefs and make decisions.
The next conflict may not begin with a missile, a cyberattack or a military incursion. It may begin with a narrative. Strategic advantage will therefore belong not simply to those who control information, but to those who can understand, protect and shape the cognitive domain while preserving the resilience and autonomy of their societies.
Lt General Karanbir Singh Brar (Retd), Distinguished Strategic Advisor, IIT Madras Pravartak
The author is former DG, Armoured Corps
