Think tanks act as the primary intellectual engine for cognitive warfare by transforming abstract psychological vulnerabilities into concrete, actionable national defense frameworks.
In modern strategy, cognitive warfare redefines deterrence. Traditional deterrence focuses on convincing an adversary that in the presence of nuclear weapons the war would be a “zero-sum game.” In classic term, “Deterrence is the strategy of preventing an adversary’s unwanted action through the threat of mass destruction, relying on the adversary’s rational calculation that the costs will exceed anticipated gains.” In contemporary strategic calculus, deterrence is described as the primary mechanism for maintaining strategic stability in the nuclear age. In the age of information and cyber warfare, where human mind has become a theatre of war and technological advancement has facilitated to influence the mind-set while making the time and space a luxury in any conflict, cognitive warfare has become a necessary condition for effective deterrence.
Cognitive dominance provides the capacity to control the public perception of adversary and at home ground too. The USA lost in Vietnam because her own public has the perception that the cost of war is much higher than the benefit therefore the US forces should withdraw. This cognitive bias forced the US government to abide by the public demand even at the cost of humiliating defeat. This was a turning point for the strategists to develop strategies to control perception and build cognitive biases in favour of the national interests within and across the borders. How can we forget the withdrawal of US Peacekeepers from Somalia. They withdrew after rebels killed two US soldiers and mutilation of their bodies was telecasted on television.
Cognitive Warfare, according to NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT), includes activities conducted in synchronization with other Instruments of Power, to affect attitudes and behaviours, by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual, group, or population-level cognition, to gain an advantage over an adversary. However, they ignored its instrumentlisation to build defences against enemy’s attempts to create cognitive biases in his favour. Moreover, cognitive domain plays fundamental role in building public perception in the favour of national interests.
Jeffrey Berejikian’s in his article, “A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence, Journal of Peace Research, 39 (2), 2003),” argues that prospect theory reveals “conditions required for successful deterrence” and “causes for deterrence failures that run counter to conventional understanding.” The model shows deterrence rarely involves rational actors as decision-makers operate under actual cognitive capacities, not ideal rationality. Robert Jervis, the author of well acclaimed book, “Perceptions and Misperception in International Politics,” also coined the similar idea that perception building acts as a cognitive filter through which leaders process information and meaning for decision making.
Thomas Schelling’s foundational deterrence theory emphasized that arms serve primarily as instruments of influence rather than destruction. Cognitive warfare extends this by making cognition “a new grammar of strategy, shifting competition from infrastructure to interpretation.” The battlespace now exists “inside the human mind,” where knowledge itself becomes strategic terrain. In Clausewitzian work, cognitive warfare represents an adaptation of war’s grammar (operational methods) while preserving its unchanging logic (instrument of policy). His book On War frames the cognitive battlespace as evolving operational methods serving policy’s enduring logic. It would be apt to say that mind is the new strategic depth in contemporary strategic calculus.
Victory is measured not in territory captured but in cognitive advantage gained and protected.
Historically, deterrence was a kinetic competition based on counting nuclear warheads, delivery system, troop numbers, and economic output etc. However, in the age of cognitive warfare, the psychological domain of deterrence has been expanded massively. Now it is an important tool to protect public’s mental resilience while successfully managing the mind-set, in order to gain strategic advantages.
Conventional deterrence is designed to prevent overt military aggression. Being a deterrence enabler cognitive warfare operates below the threshold of open conflict within the limits of the “Gray Zone.” Resultantly, a third layer has been introduced of “deterrence by managing public perception, willpower, and decision-making calculus.” The said dimension has transformed deterrence by including the human mind, critical technologies, perception building, decision-making, cognitive biases, into the theatre of war as the primary instruments of deterrent power. Rather than relying solely on kinetic capabilities or nuclear threats, cognitive warfare enhances deterrence by shaping adversary’s and own public’s perceptions of reality, and cognitive biases, to undermine and influence their strategic confidence, popular discourse, and rational choice well before conflict occurs.
Cognitive warfare within a deterrence framework aims at killing the opponent’s “will to resist,” a core component of any war winning strategy, even before a physical conflict even begins. By systematically eroding an adversary’s social cohesion, trust in leadership, and institutional belief, cognitive operations seek to induce a state of psychological paralysis leading to defeated mind-set as deterrence relies heavily on how an adversary perceives self and others, risks and his capabilities.
A core Soviet-era concept that heavily influences modern cognitive warfare is “Reflexive Control.” It is the practice of conveying specially prepared information to an opponent to incline them to voluntarily make a predetermined decision. In a deterrence context, this means manipulating an adversary into altering their military posture, backing down from a red line, or hesitating during a critical window because they falsely believe they are acting in their own best interest.
The recent Pakistan-India crisis of May 2025 demonstrates that effective integration of cognitive and cyber capabilities limit adversary’s strategic options and makes control over information domains essential for regulating international behaviour. This represents deterrence in the “post-truth era” where hybrid warfare shifts from direct military force to cognitive domains. Moreover, cognitive manipulation can alter threshold perceptions in nuclear deterrence, potentially destabilizing the stability-instability paradox by exploiting societal centres of gravity (public opinion, social media) to amplify nationalist narratives, affecting decision-making.
Cognitive warfare does not merely support deterrence, it reconstitutes deterrence itself as a cognitive phenomenon where controlling interpretation/epistemology dominates controlling infrastructure. Contemporary warfare considers perception as another contested territory. All segments of narrative and discourse building such as universities, think tanks, scholars, media, technology, publications, knowledge banks, informed sharing, and socio-political influencers have significant role to play. General N S Raja Subramani, CDS of India, during his inaugural speech in May 2026 stated, “Innovation in thought and action will drive the capability development of the Indian Armed Forces. Greater collaboration between the military, the industry, academia, startups and the research ecosystem will be the key enabler for modernisation,” another lesson learnt after operation sindoor failed to achieve its objectives.
Think tanks act as the primary intellectual engine for cognitive warfare by transforming abstract psychological vulnerabilities into concrete, actionable national defense frameworks. While militaries excel at kinetic defense, think tanks are uniquely positioned to protect the human mind, the “sixth domain” of conflict. They support two core pillars of deterrence, deterrence by denial through strengthening domestic mental resilience and deterrence by punishment through exposing and imposing costs on cognitive aggressors. They decode hostile doctrines and create compatible counters. One of their main job is to create enabling environment through research and capacity building for the implementation of state’s policies. Notably, organizations like the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), have developed specialized wargaming scenarios (such as the Gecko Project) to simulate how disinformation might fracture political and military decision-making during a crisis. Effective deterrence demands that a state should demonstrate the capability to detect, attribute, and retaliate against cognitive operations and think tanks are the most effective medium of credible communication of resolve. Cognitive warfare directly targets civilians, public institutions and structures, and the media, and think tanks can potentially play a fundamental role to coordinate a whole-of-society approach.
