‘Cognitive Warfare’ has become one of the most debated concepts in contemporary security discourse. As artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic media, algorithmic amplification, and increasingly sophisticated influence operations reshape the global information environment, militaries, governments, and policymakers across regions, particularly in strategically contested environments such as the Indo-Pacific, are grappling with a fundamental question: does cognitive warfare represent a distinct form of strategic competition, or a new conceptual framework for understanding longstanding efforts to influence perceptions, beliefs, narratives, and decision-making?

The debate has also raised difficult questions around measurement, causality, ethics, and operational control. While advances in AI may significantly expand the speed, scale, and personalization of influence activities, questions remain about whether adversaries can reliably manipulate cognition in predictable ways, or whether the concept risks overstating what can currently be achieved.

In this conversation with Eurasia Review, Dr. Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca delves deep into the evolving debate surrounding cognitive warfare, its relationship with established disciplines such as Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Information Operations (IO), Information Warfare (IW), and Strategic Communication (StratCom), and the challenges involved in translating theoretical concepts into practical capabilities.

Lumpy Lumbaca, PhD, is a retired United States Army Special Forces officer and currently serves as a civilian professor of irregular warfare, resistance, counterterrorism, and special operations with the U.S. Department of War. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). The views expressed in this interview are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government or the Department of War.

Drawing from his extensive body of work on cognitive warfare, Dr Lumbaca argues that the central distinction lies not simply in changing what people think, but in attempting to influence how individuals and groups form beliefs, interpret information, and make decisions. However, he cautions against assuming that cognitive effects can be easily measured, deliberately engineered, or predictably controlled in complex operational environments.

The conversation explores the role of artificial intelligence as a force multiplier for influence operations; the opportunities and limitations of AI-enabled persuasion; the challenges of assessing cognitive effects; the risks associated with offensive cognitive warfare; and the growing importance of cognitive resilience in contested information environments.

Dr Lumbaca also discusses why the defensive dimensions of cognitive security may currently offer a more practical path forward, highlighting the importance of resilience-building, prebunking, critical thinking, institutional credibility, and trusted communication systems in helping organisations and societies navigate an increasingly complex information landscape.

Q. In your recent Small Wars Journal essay, you reject both of the easy positions on cognitive warfare: that it is simply a recycled label for old practices, and that it is a wholly new domain with unique laws of action. What analytic threshold would have to be met before you would say a problem is genuinely “cognitive warfare” rather than better described as IO, MISO, PSYOP, IW, subversion, or StratCom?

A: First, thank you for the chance to talk here. I must state explicitly up front that everything I’m sharing here today is in my personal capacity and does not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government or the Department of War.

The threshold question is a definitional one. It hinges on the word “process.” Dr Frank Hoffman provided a definition of cognitive warfare that addresses this: the key is whether an operation targets how an adversary forms beliefs and makes decisions, rather than what they believe at any given moment. If you are pushing a narrative, correcting a false impression, or discrediting a source, that is PSYOP. The goal is a change in content. If the operation is designed to degrade the cognitive process itself, to erode the reliability of the mechanisms by which a person evaluates truth, to induce something like epistemic closure through sustained information overload or psychographically targeted curation, then you are now talking about cognitive warfare.

The secondary threshold is the scale and technical mechanism. Traditional influence operations are limited in their simultaneity. An AI system that generates thousands of individually tailored influence products targeting individual psychographic profiles, delivered simultaneously across a population (or at an individual), is doing something structurally different from what any PSYOP unit can currently replicate. The combination of that technical capacity and the process-level target is the key. The term ‘cognitive warfare’ should be reserved for operations that aim to restructure how an adversary thinks, rather than what they conclude.

Q. U.S. doctrine already defines IO as influencing or disrupting adversary decision-making and MISO as influencing foreign audiences’ emotions, motives, reasoning, and behavior. If those definitions are already broad, where exactly do you think ‘cognitive warfare’ adds explanatory or operational value: target, mechanism, time horizon, technical enablers, or organizational design?

A: All five, but the mechanism and the time horizon are the most important and the most underappreciated. The doctrinal definitions of IO and MISO describe goals: influence adversary decision-making, shape foreign audience emotions, without specifying the pathway. A PSYOP unit generating a commercial and an AI system running a sustained psychographic targeting campaign are both ‘influencing decision-making’ in the doctrinal sense, but the pathways are different. Cognitive warfare, in its most theoretical form, posits a specific neurological mechanism: repeated exposure to algorithmically curated content can produce structural changes in how the brain processes information. This is not done through persuasion but through neuroplasticity. This is a different claim about causation.

The time factor follows. You cannot induce neuroplastic change in an adversary theater commander’s cognitive processes during an operation cycle. The theory requires sustained, repeated exposure. That implies a peacetime and competition-phase activity with long lead times, which has major implications for authorities, campaign planning, and resourcing.

Q. It has been recently argued that cognitive warfare may be “dead on arrival” inside the U.S. military unless it confronts the same unresolved problems that weakened earlier information and influence efforts: measurement, norms, politics, and organizational structure. This sentiment is also echoed in numerous Global South military organisations as well. Do you agree with that diagnosis, and if so, which of those four problems is most likely to determine whether cognitive warfare survives as a serious military concept?

A: Cole Livieratos makes this argument in a recent publication with the IWI, and I think his diagnosis is largely correct. I engage it directly in one of my recent Small Wars Journal essays as well. As Cole pointed out, PSYOP and IO lost 74 percent of their budget between 2009 and 2015. Not because they........

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