"Cognitive Warfare" fails the cognitive test
Is anyone asking why are we trying to pattern our efforts off of those of our adversaries?
The estimable Frank Hoffman penned1 something that is part literature review of the term “cognitive warfare” and part defense of the term. I trust Frank’s assessments and generally defer to his experience and analytical rigor. In “Assessing Cognitive Warfare,” however, his work is incomplete; it reads as if it were lifted from a larger work. The result is a noble, if flailing, argument that “cognitive warfare” is a term that should be defended. This is, in part, because another nation uses it and because it has some unique value because… I’m not sure… is it because synonymous terms tried by the US over the past century haven’t stuck?
A problem with Frank’s article is endemic to similar literature: there is an implied, if not explicit, argument that it’s what we call these things that hamstring and limit the executive and legislative branches from understanding, implementing, and prioritizing such efforts to support national security. This is similar to the argument that if we only shifted the organizational chart (i.e., centralize authority under a separate organization to conceive and execute policies in the, er, “cognitive domain”), life would be much better. The latter—often heard as “bring back USIA”—is based on a profoundly defective understanding of what the US Information Agency did—and did not do—and the interagency and global environments in which it operated.
For example, Frank wrote, “In Cognitive Warfare, the message is the munition, and the target is the mind of either specific individuals (e.g., elites, influencers, policymakers) or the collective population of a democratic state.” This sounds remarkably like—if not identical to—the term “public diplomacy.” Though the term “public diplomacy” wasn’t adopted until the late 1960s, years after it was half-heartedly used to name a center at Tufts as part of a public relations compaign to elevate a struggling USIA, it applied to programs that were central to peacetime US foreign policy since 1945, efforts that were “permanently” authorized by legislation in 1948 (yes, by the Smith-Mundt Act). Frank doesn’t tell us why the need to specify the target as a “democratic state” is necessary. Is it because it’s only used in such countries with a free press? Well, I suppose that would be a reason to seek an alternative to “public diplomacy” since it didn’t have such a limitation.
To be clear, there are plenty of reasons not to use the term public diplomacy. The main one is because it was adopted as part of a bureaucratic struggle in the 1960s. As a result, the term is generally, if not nearly always, considered to apply only to some programs and offices under the State Department and, sometimes, to the now-largely-defunct US Agency for Global Media. Go back a couple of decades and talk to people about why the Defense Department adopted “strategic communication.” You’ll often hear it was because an alternative to “public diplomacy” was needed, because PD was something only the State Department did.2
It’s common to read that “public diplomacy” was “coined” in 1965, but it wasn’t. Relevant to this discussion, the term was commonly used before to describe the Russian practice of speaking to the press to conduct public diplomacy, knowing that their State Department counterparts wouldn’t lower themselves to do the same. The US press and foreign thinkers called this “public diplomacy.” There are several reasons USIA was created, one of which included the traditional notion that any public engagement in international affairs was a separate and inconsequential line of effort.3 It’s good to learn from our adversaries, but adopting “public diplomacy” didn’t help. In fact, it probably hurt. We always knew that “cognitive warfare” was waged, which is partly why the Smith-Mundt Act was passed (it was introduced in January 1945 and gained traction based on the understanding that public opinion mattered, and that disinformation and misinformation were harmful to our national security and to other nations). It’s just that the executive branch stopped caring, favoring containment with a Maginot mentality.4
Frank had “reservations about introducing a new term into a crowded field,” but these were overcome because “‘cognitive’ is superior to terms like information or influence.” I agree to the extent that “information” is deeply problematic in this context. It can be an anodyne term for a munition separated from intent and context.
He likes cognitive warfare over psychological warfare because the latter “is a broad field, and cognition narrows the subject to key features. It directs attention to the target and desired effect.” He’s also “less enthralled with the ‘warfare’ label,” a position shared by many since 1945 who were biased against “psychological warfare” and “political warfare.” The former because it was seen as an inherently military topic, and the latter because, well, it was irrelevant to international affairs outside of covert operations (or, put another way, because the priority was on containment with a Maginot mentality).
Frank added that he thinks that the “Chinese terminology is better,” but it’s not clear (at least to me) if he is referring to “cognitive domain,” “cognitive domain operations,” “domain of consciousness,” “cognitive confrontation,” or something else.
In the end, what is “cognitive warfare”? It is “not new,” he writes, adding that “a number of novel technologies that significantly enhance the reach and efficacy of activities that target the way decision-makers and individuals think about a crisis situation.” So, are we tethering the term to specific novel technologies? Similar “novel technologies” and their potential impact can be found in several points in history. An early relevant example comes from the president of Harvard University, who warned of the “formidable inflammability of our multitudinous population, in consequence of the recent development of telegraph, telephone, and bi-daily press.” The speed and reach of these new media technologies could make the US population “more inflammable than it used to be, because of the increased use in comparatively recent years of these great inventions.” That was 1898. I can provide examples from nearly every decade since then as information moved faster and farther with “novel technologies.” In 1940, noted British psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett wrote that “People, the elements of culture, the media of economic existence, ideas—all these can move with a freedom never before matched in history.”
If we take out the novelty of the speed of ideas and information (including disinformation and misinformation), what do we have? Let’s look at Frank’s definition of cognitive warfare:
My starting definition of Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes.
Since “Cognitive War,” not “warfare,” only appears in this definition, I’ll only briefly state what should be obvious: that “war” is far more limiting than “warfare” in bureaucratic circles discussing responsibilities.
What stands out in this definition is the emphasis on means—“messages and nonviolent methods”—and the absence of economic outcomes. This doesn’t seem to be an oversight, as “economic” appears only once in the article.
I also don’t understand why “to gain positional advantage in the cognitive domain” isn’t *TO* “gain desired political, military, and information outcomes.” Why is it “or”? For what reason do you want an advantage in what people perceive than for a purpose?
Bluntly, it’s not clear to me how this definition isn’t “political warfare.” It is more expansive than many common interpretations of “information warfare,” which almost exclusively focus on messages. It is probably more aggressive than most would be comfortable in thinking of “public diplomacy,” which is partly why the term exists and largely why the term and related methods are considered irrelevant to analyses such as Frank’s, despite their absolute similarity.
This is, at best, a literature review that oversteps by attempting to stake out a space for a redundant, overly narrow term that provides little value. Frank naturally looks at conceptual comparables, none of which are too narrowly defined because they recognize the problem with the focus on a munition. Not that my opinion matters, but I’ve said for a dozen or more years that the chief problem of “information warfare” is that the term focuses on a munition. Stripped down, the same is true of “cognitive warfare.” Though Frank nudges the readers to think about more than “information,” his sources and discussion virtually constrain the discussion to information, with other efforts appearing as tactical support to the main show of information.
There is a not-so-hidden restraint that hinders the potential of Frank’s analysis: he’s clearly writing for a military audience. The result is an analysis that is far more narrowly focused than the literature he reviewed. The Chinese, Frank shows, see the “cognitive domain” and its purpose precisely as US analysts defined political warfare in the 1950s and 1960s. Literally exactly. “The PLA has long extolled ‘disintegrating the enemy’ via politico-psychological attacks and subversion as a means of undermining an opponent’s will to fight,” as described by one author cited by Frank. Quoting Chinese authors, Frank shares:
Cognitive domain operations take the human brain as the main combat space and focus on striking, weakening, and dismantling the enemy’s will to fight, using human psychological weaknesses such as fear, anxiety and suspicion as a breakthrough point, focusing on soft-kill methods to create an atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty and mistrust within the enemy, and increasing their internal friction and decision-making doubts.
Missing from Frank’s analysis is the fact that both the Chinese and Russian discussions of “cognitive warfare” intend it to be used not just before kinetic activities, but also to undermine and prevent the adversary from effectively taking military action. It is an end run around our Maginot Line. Meanwhile, Frank is speaking to and invoking the military. See his section “Revision of Information Operation,” for example, and the suggestion that “Our special operations personnel bring a lot to this arena.” He states that the “US government has shuttered intelligence and law enforcement cells and agencies designed to thward foreign malign information efforts,” but fails to call why this happened (because this administration doesn’t care; while prior administration’s “merely” didn’t prioritize the mission), just as he fails to remind the reader those were reactionary defenses operating within the inner perimeter, so to speak.
I’m not an expert on Clausewitz, but I do appreciate Frank’s note that Clausewitz is relevant here, and that those “encultured with violent visions, per Clausewitz, will struggle with this concept.” They shouldn’t, but they do. This is because of the Maginot mentality. The discussions cited in this article are not new, as Frank noted. Except they are to us because we have willfully ignored this aspect of international affairs in our schools that train foreign policy professionals, in foreign policy analyses, and across the military schoolhouses. For example, look at the problems facing Psychological Operations: if we actually embraced the facts presented by Frank and others as tactical, operational, and strategic concerns, aren’t the PSYOP troops (and Civil Affairs, and Foreign Area Officers) best prepared to take the lead? Apparently not because they are never—ever—mentioned.
It’s not clear to me how “cognitive warfare” adds any additional meaning or utility beyond that of “political warfare.” In fact, it’s a step backward: an awkward term that requires new analysis. Worse, while it doesn’t focus on a munition (i.e., “information”), it fails to focus on a purpose. Frank’s definition, for example, seeks “to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or…” Or? Advantage in the cognitive domain to do what? For what purpose? To win their heart? (Have I told you about the bombmaker rolled up in Kandahar many years ago? When asked why he made IEDs, he said he was trying to make enough money to move his family to the US. We won his heart, but we failed to properly affect his will to act in the desired way.)
Let’s test the term. Stepping back, would George Kennan have achieved greater effect with “cognitive warfare”? On July 22, 1946, as the head of Secretary of State George Marshall’s Policy Planning Staff, Kennan distributed the “Draft of Information Policy on Relations with Russia,” in which he wrote, “They evidently seek to weaken all centers of power they cannot dominate, in order to reduce the danger from any possible rival.” Sounds like cognitive warfare to me.
He expanded on the idea in a later document commonly regarded as the starting point for how the US government understood and defined political warfare (which is correct if you focus on the term and not the underlying concepts, which were recognized two years earlier, but “information” was inadequate then, too): Kennan’s memo dated May 4, 1948, titled “The inauguration of organized political warfare.”
Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In [the] broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as ERP), and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states…
Understanding the concept of political warfare, we should also recognize that there are two major types of political warfare—one overt and the other covert. Both, from their basic nature, should be directed and coordinated by the Department of State. Overt operations are, of course, the traditional policy activities of any foreign office enjoying positive leadership, whether or not they are recognized as political warfare. Covert operations are traditional in many European chancelleries but are relatively unfamiliar to this Government.
For the Clausewitz reference, Kennan likely relied on the 1943 translation of “On War” by O.J. Matthijs Jolles. According to Clausewitz, war is not separate from a state’s political activities, nor are all means separate from peace.
We know, of course, that war is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations; but in general, it is supposed that such intercourse is broken off by war, and that a totally different state of things ensues, subject to no laws but its own. We maintain, on the contrary, that war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means. We say ”with an admixture of other means,” in order thereby to maintain at the same time that this political intercourse does not cease through the war itself, is not changed into something quite different, but that, in its essence, it continues to exist, whatever may be the means which it uses, and that the main lines along which the events of the war proceed and to which they are bound are only the general features of policy which run on all through the war until peace takes place.
Reading Kennan’s “logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace” based on the Jolles translation can lead to a different interpretation than doing so with the modern Howard-Paret translation. Howard-Paret’s “with the addition of other means” is additive, like icing on a cake. Jolles’s “with an admixture of other means” captures the complexity: an ingredient is blended in, similar to changing a recipe by adding flavoring or coloring. They are similar but not identical. Political warfare was warfare during times of peace, essentially waging cold war rather than hot war. The objectives could be the same, with only a thin line of rules, great power relations, and views on industrial warfare separating the two.
In 1954, Robert Strausz-Hupé and Stefan T. Possony built on Kennan’s support of Clausewitz by arguing that there is a condition of “war in peacetime.” Political warfare remains a mix of tactics rather than just the addition of new tools, but it becomes clearer in what it is and what it is not.
Wars are fought to impose one’s political will on a foreign state. But military techniques are not the only ones to achieve this objective. Propaganda and political warfare can be defined as a continuation of war with the admixture of nonmilitary means of pressure. The purpose of this pressure is to make war unnecessary; or to create the most favorable conditions for the implementation of one’s own policies and military plans should war become inevitable.
Political warfare, briefly, is a systemic activity, mostly of a secret nature, to influence and direct the policies of other nations. The ultimate objective of political warfare would be reached if the government of nation A would make not only its own decisions but also the decisions for nation B and do so without resorting to coercion by force of military occupation.
The refinement continued to emphasize a purpose rather than just a means. In 1962, William Kintner and Joseph Kornfeder updated their definition to describe “a form of conflict between states in which a protagonist nation tries to impose its will on opponents without directly using armed force.”
Political warfare combines the operations of diplomacy and propaganda, frequently backed by the threat of military force. Political warfare aims to weaken, if not to destroy, the enemy by use of diplomatic proposals, economic sorties, propaganda and misinformation, provocation, intimidation, sabotage, terrorism, and by driving a wedge between the main enemy and his allies.
In 1959, in his book The Weapon on the Wall, Murray Dyer made a strong attempt to propose a term more acceptable to various government actors: “political communication.” William R. Kintner and Joseph Z. Kornfeder praised Dyer’s efforts in their 1962 book, The New Frontier of War: Political Warfare, Present and Future, but they argued that “communication” disconnects methods and intent, which hampers understanding of the actions’ nature and urgency.
Kintner, who had served in the US Army as Chief of the Plans Branch for the United Nations Command, in the Secretary of Defense’s office, as an instructor at the US Command and General Staff College, with the Central Intelligence Agency, and later as a Professor of Political Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, had some experience with the subject. Kornfeder did, too, as an insider: he studied at Lenin University’s political warfare college in Moscow and co-founded the Communist Party USA.
James Burnham’s 1961 definition of political warfare is interchangeable with the Chinese definition of cognitive warfare:
True political warfare, as understood and practiced by our enemy, is not mere rivalry or competition or conflict of some vague kind. Political warfare is a form of war. It is strategic in nature. Its objective, like that of every other form of war, is to impose one’s own will on the opponent, to destroy the opponent’s will to resist. In simplest terms, it aims to conquer the opponent.
The purpose, Burnham wrote, “is always to increase one’s power in some definite way or to decrease the power of the opponent… The power objective may be grandiose—conquest of a nation, disintegration of an empire; or the minor takeover of a trade union, scaring a parliament into defeating a bill, or the sabotage of a factory. But whether big or small, the objective is always power.”
For the record, my definition of political warfare is:
The use of power with hostile intent through discreet, subversive, or overt means short of open combat against another. Political warfare is not just rivalry or competition, nor is it limited to strategic or tactical objectives. It can operate across political, societal, economic, or psychological domains to bring about change.
I should add that a public diplomacy program seen as utterly benign and boring in, say, Paris could, using the exact same script, be accurately perceived as political warfare in Beijing or Moscow.
“Cognitive warfare” is a step backward for the same reasons Kintner and Kornfeder criticized Dyer, who had proposed “cognitive warfare” under a different label.
As we debate labels, are we hoping policymakers will come to their senses and act? Have they failed because the right terms haven’t been adopted, are too complex, or are too easily diminished by bureaucratic squabbling? No, it’s because they—and by “they” I mean executive branch leadership from Presidents (plural) on down through cabinet Secretaries and below, and legislative leaders and university international relations and political science professors—don’t see any of this as truly relevant to international affairs. Those other things are just too messy, too complex, and too unpredictable.
Our adversaries, however, get it. That’s why we see so many analyses of what they are writing about this and how they are organizing and operating. They realize that they must “get it” for our Maginot Line of military deterrence is strong. Why commit a frontal engagement when bypassing the chief defenses, the only defenses we have really committed to for many decades, is cheap and far easier and without repercussion? Meanwhile, we fail to fund, prioritize, delegate, authorize, and let operate virtually everything that is not solidly within the Maginot Line of defense. Though starkly evident today, it has been true for decades and decades. The result is a scholarship that grasps at what our adversaries are doing to justify doing something—anything—even if it is only reactive.
Should we put “pen an article” in the same bucket as “dial a phone”?
Digging deeper, it was clearly something only part of the State did. For example, DRL was never described as doing “public diplomacy.”
Armstrong, Matt. 2020. “Operationalizing Public Diplomacy.” In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, edited by Nancy Snow and Nicholas John Cull, 82–95. New York: Routledge. If you’re reading this, you might also like Anisimov, Oleg. 1955. “A New Policy for American Psychological Warfare.” The Russian Review 14 (3): 175–83. And, Congressional Research Service. 1977. Survey of proposals to reorganize the U.S. foreign affairs agencies, 1951-1975. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, specifically pages 48-66 reviewing information and cultural programs, starting with the Jackson Committee (1953), Second Brookings Plan (1959), the Sprague Committee (1961), the Lloyd Free Task Force (1961), the Fascell Subcommittee (1968), and the US Advisory Commission on Information (1973), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report (1973), the Barbara White Study (1973), and the Stanton Panel (1975), and the Murphy Commission (1975). Other reports and recommendations on fixing USIA aren’t mentioned, including one by the USIA assistant director that the agency should influence, not merely inform, audiences abroad.
“Cognitive warfare” was central to Russian and later Chinese policy. If you’re curious, see Lawson, Murray G. 1962. Communist propaganda around the world: apparatus and activities in 1961. Washington: US Information Agency. If you want confirmation that the White House didn’t care, you will do no worse than reading about the creation of the Active Measures Working Group: Schoen, Fletcher, and Christopher J. Lamb. 2012. Deception, disinformation, and strategic communications: how one interagency group made a major difference. Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press. See the section on creating IAWG, specifically the chapters “Devaluing the Counter-Disinformation Mission: 1959–1977” and “Rebounding to Take the Offensive: 1977–1981.” For example, “The inclination to challenge Soviet disinformation declined over the 1960s until, by 1975, there was no organized, overt effort to expose Soviet disinformation at all.”
We keep relabeling political warfare while our adversaries shape what is believable. Capability, not terminology, is the real deficit. If anything, we are past cognitive warfare; this is ontological warfare now. The fight is not over what people think, but over what they are even allowed to consider real.
Oh and of course it's by Matt Armstrong hence it is 'self-recommending.'