NATO Cognitive Warfare Strategy in the Intelligent Age

A 2026 paper in Information Security and Communications Privacy describes NATO's cognitive warfare system as a coordination, execution, and research structure. NATO documents from 2020 and 2023 define cognitive warfare, set monitoring indicators, and identify China and Russia as primary cognitive threat actors.

A paper by Zou Chuyu and Han Na in Information Security and Communications Privacy, 2026(8): 53-67, examines NATO's cognitive warfare strategy as artificial intelligence spreads. The authors write that great-power competition now reaches a sixth domain, the cognitive domain, and that NATO, following the United States, has made cognitive warfare an alliance strategy.

From scattered practice to a system

In 2020, NATO published Warfare 2040: How NATO Will Compete in the Future, treating information and cognition as factors in future operations. The paper describes three linked modules: an organizational model, a knowledge system, and an action process.

The organizational model uses a coordination, execution, and research split. The knowledge system runs from concept to elements to capability. Action runs surveillance and research in parallel. Organizations provide institutions and resources, knowledge supports decisions, and action turns both into cognitive effects, with assessment feeding back into the system.

Organizational model

The United States placed the cognitive domain in national security and strategic competition. The Russia-Ukraine conflict further raised the profile of cognitive operations. The field spans psychology, computing, military science, and political science, which NATO addresses through a layered structure.

NATO Headquarters sets political direction. The 2020 report NATO 2030: United for a New Era urged members to cooperate against emerging-domain threats, including cyberspace competition, disinformation, and hybrid warfare.

Allied Command Transformation (ACT) leads concept work and multi-domain capability. In 2023, ACT issued Cognitive Warfare: Strengthening and Defending the Mind and Cognitive Warfare: Beyond Military Information Support Operations. The latter separates cognitive warfare from traditional military information support operations, stating that cognitive warfare targets cognitive effects rather than information itself and must be coordinated with electronic warfare and cyber operations.

Execution sits with specialized centers. The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE), founded in 2014, covers hybrid and information warfare, the information environment, manipulation, disinformation, AI-generated content, and deepfakes, and runs an AI Lab. The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) supports threat identification and warning. The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) covers cyber information security, situational awareness, hybrid threats, and exercises. Locked Shields is among the largest cyber defense drills and includes information penetration and cognitive intrusion defense.

Research support comes from the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO), the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA, 2023), and the ACT Innovation Hub. STO's Human Factors and Medicine panel studies cognitive psychology, its Information Systems Technology panel works on information technology, and Research Group 356 studies cognitive operations theory. DIANA aims to convert civilian science and technology into military and security capability. The Innovation Hub runs open innovation on cognitive challenges.

Knowledge system

Using Sherman Kent's categories, the authors reviewed 31 NATO cognitive warfare reports and counted five basic descriptive products, three current-report products, and three predictive-assessment products.

ACT's 2023 definition describes cognitive warfare as activities conducted in synchrony with other instruments of power, influencing, protecting, and/or disrupting individual and group cognition to affect attitudes and behavior and thereby gain advantage. STO's Cognitive Warfare: Battle for the Brain extends that definition to technology acting on human cognitive mechanisms.

NATO names five pillars: comprehensive cognition, systemic resilience, active environment shaping, multi-domain integrated defense, and cross-domain command. In 2023 it proposed a house model for knowledge pillars and technical elements. The paper says NATO draws operational knowledge from mixed-conflict cases, stressing cultural narrative, social psychology, flexibility, and scene fit.

In intelligence assessments, NATO identifies China and Russia as primary cognitive threat actors. The authors say NATO uses strategic discourse to frame a China-Russia threat, including distorted accounts of Chinese diplomacy, claims of Chinese cognitive infiltration, and assertions that Russia has had continued success with disinformation.

Technical work includes an information-environment wargaming system for social media, combined electronic reconnaissance and psychological intervention, neuroscience-based target classification (interference, bias, enhancement), human-enhancement research such as brain-computer interfaces and neurostimulation, and research on biochemical covert cognitive means, including low-dose neuromodulators that affect emotion, judgment, and alertness.

Surveillance and research

Surveillance focuses on information flows, opinion structure, and behavior patterns. After the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, then Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in May 2022 that NATO had increased monitoring of Russian hybrid attacks and had a memorandum with Ukraine on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sharing. The U.S. Department of Defense 2023 Information Environment Operations Strategy called for continuous situational awareness of the information environment. NATO launched the Virtual Manipulation Brief, using AI tools on 10 social media platforms to assess Russian cognitive manipulation related to the conflict, then concentrated on disinformation detection, audience-effect analysis, and attribution with open-source intelligence and multi-source checks.

Monitoring indicator matrix

NATO formed a matrix covering the information environment, narrative structure, dissemination structure, behavior patterns, audience effects, and attribution.

Information environment indicators are information density, burst frequency, issue concentration, and event synchrony, used to flag abnormal volume, focus on specific geopolitical issues, and bursts timed with major military or political events.

Narrative structure indicators are core themes, duration, and local adaptation. NATO analysis of Russian information operations highlighted narratives on corruption, mobilization, social injustice, and religious controversy.

Dissemination structure indicators include node concentration, cross-platform chains, and synchronized posting, treated as signs of organized activity involving a small set of core accounts and automated fake accounts.

Behavior pattern indicators record tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), node triggering, and tool use, including opinion laundering, cross-platform narrative reshaping, AI-generated content, and automated manipulation tools.

The authors conclude that NATO cognitive warfare is moving from scattered exploration to systematic development and will affect great-power competition in the cognitive domain.