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Weaponizing Education with Cognitive Warfare

Weaponizing Education with Cognitive Warfare

Cognitive warfare targets the mind as a battlespace, leveraging digital networks and psychology to influence perceptions and behavior.

Introduction

Modern conflict is increasingly defined not by clashes of tanks and missiles, but by battles for the human mind. Cognitive warfare – the coordinated struggle to influence, disrupt, and shape how people think – has emerged as a critical realm of competition alongside the traditional physical domains. NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) warns that “whole-of-society manipulation has become a new norm, with human cognition shaping up to be a critical realm of warfare”. Adversaries from state actors to insurgent groups are investing in capabilities to “affect attitudes and behaviours” by targeting individual and collective perception. In this 6th domain of warfare – the cognitive domain – education becomes a powerful strategic tool. By education, we mean not only formal schooling, but all systematic efforts to instill beliefs, values, and frames of reference in target audiences. Just as education can empower and enlighten, it can equally be weaponized to narrow minds into rigid obedience or broaden them into paralyzing confusion.

This white paper develops a strategic argument that weaponized education operates along two complementary tracks: a constrictive “narrowing” strategy and an expansive “broadening” strategy. Through these dual approaches, a state or non-state actor can cognitively shape allies, adversaries, and even its own populace to gain strategic advantage. We explore these concepts through the lenses of game theory, organizational thermodynamics, and cognitive architecture – frameworks that provide insight into how influencing knowledge and beliefs affects decision-making and group dynamics. Mathematical metaphors (e.g. entropy from thermodynamics, utility functions from game theory, and reversibility of cognitive processes) will be used where relevant to model these phenomena. Our analysis draws on contemporary examples and emerging research to illustrate how narrowing and broadening tactics are already at play: from the indoctrination of schoolchildren with propaganda to large-scale disinformation campaigns that sow chaos in open societies. We take inspiration from defense research and concept papers (e.g. NATO and U.S. studies) as well as thought leadership in the field, while integrating themes from supporting documents and literature.

Ultimately, we argue that the dual-track model of cognitive education – simultaneously constricting and expanding minds – should form a core pillar of modern strategic cognitive warfare architecture. A sophisticated cognitive campaign will know when to enforce a single narrative and when to unleash a pluralism of narratives. The paper concludes with policy-oriented recommendations and design principles for NATO and allied nations, emphasizing pragmatic steps to incorporate weaponized education into cognitive warfare doctrine. The goal is to remain rigorous in analysis yet accessible in language, equipping senior policymakers and technologists with a clear understanding of how educational strategies can be harnessed (and guarded against) in the quest for cognitive security and superiority.

Cognitive Warfare and the Battle for the Mind

Cognitive warfare is often described as “the battle for the mind”, where the objective is to alter what a target population knows, believes, and how it perceives reality. Rather than physically destroying capabilities, cognitive warfare aims to “attack and degrade rationality” – undermining the decision-making capacity of an adversary by influencing information flows, psychological states, and trust in one’s own perceptions. This form of conflict spans a spectrum of activities: influence operations, psychological operations (PSYOP), misinformation and disinformation campaigns, propaganda, cultural and ideological indoctrination, and cyber-enabled information attacks. Its targets are not only soldiers on the battlefield, but entire societies – civilians, leaders, communities – making it a whole-of-society battlespace.

What makes cognitive warfare especially potent (and dangerous) today is the ubiquity of digital technology and connectivity. Social media, 24/7 news, and global networks ensure that “malicious cyber incidents occur daily against Allied societies” and can be paired with psychological warfare. Adversaries from Russia to China explicitly recognize cognitive warfare as central. For example, Chinese doctrine frames cognitive warfare as achieving victory through public opinion and psychological operations, even employing new tools like emotion-sensing wearable tech on soldiers to monitor and shape their psychological state. Russia’s ongoing influence campaigns use “communication technologies, fake news stories, and perception manipulation” to influence public opinion and erode trust in factual information. A NATO review notes that Russia’s social media operations during the Ukraine conflict aimed to “label Ukraine as being at fault” in the war and “decay public trust towards open information sources” through a flood of misleading narratives.

In this context, education and training have become both targets and weapons. On one hand, a population’s level of education and media literacy will determine how resilient they are to cognitive attacks. On the other hand, deliberately shaping educational content is a means to pre-load beliefs and biases into the cognitive battlefield. An insightful analysis from the U.S. Army’s Modern War Institute bluntly states: “Cognitive superiority is achieved through education.”. In other words, the side that can better inform and prepare minds – whether through formal schooling, public information campaigns, or specialist training – gains an edge in the conflict of perceptions. Correspondingly, the absence or degradation of education can be a vulnerability: “A failure to understand the long-term national security implications of public education policy cripples our human capital,” leaving society less able to discern truth from falsehood. Cognitive warfare thus “turns the mind into the battleground” and makes educational systems into strategic infrastructure.

Weaponized education refers to the intentional use of curricula, narratives, and information delivery (or denial) to achieve military or political objectives. This can involve indoctrination – implanting a narrow set of beliefs to mobilize support or obedience – or manipulation of knowledge – selectively broadening or distorting people’s information to confuse and divide them. Both approaches aim to condition how people think and make decisions under stress. Importantly, these are long-term, preemptive operations: they shape the cognitive environment before a kinetic confrontation (and can often achieve objectives without any physical conflict at all). For example, a RAND study observes that Russian strategists have successfully used propaganda to “engage in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting”, thereby influencing events in Ukraine and elsewhere without firing a shot.

NATO and allied nations have begun acknowledging this reality. NATO’s concept of “cognitive resilience” emphasizes educating both military personnel and the public to recognize and resist malign information. A recent strategic insight from National Defense University calls for “cognitive readiness education and training” programs that give operators tools to detect and counter adversary information operations. The dual use of education – as shield and sword – is at the heart of cognitive warfare. In the following sections, we detail the two broad strategic approaches to weaponizing education: one that narrows and focuses cognition (constrictive strategy), and one that broadens and disrupts cognition (expansive strategy). These two seemingly opposite methods, when combined, form a powerful one-two punch in the cognitive domain. We will examine each in turn, with examples and theoretical insights, before exploring how they can be integrated into a comprehensive cognitive warfare architecture.

The "Narrowing" Strategy: Indoctrination and Cognitive Constriction

One way to weaponize education is to narrow the scope of information and ideas that a target audience is exposed to – effectively constricting their cognitive horizon. The aim of a narrowing strategy is to produce a unified, focused mindset that aligns with the influencer’s objectives, often characterized by unwavering beliefs, loyalty to a cause, and reduced ability to question or consider alternatives. This is the realm of indoctrination, propaganda, and narrative control. By tightly controlling the curriculum – whether in schools, media, or online content – an actor can impart a singular worldview that is advantageous to its interests.

Mechanisms of Narrowing: Narrowing tactics typically involve censorship of dissenting information, repetition of key narratives, appeal to authority or ideology, and emotional reinforcement. Education becomes a one-way channel – a top-down delivery of “approved” truths. Critical thinking and debate are discouraged; complexity and nuance are stripped away in favor of a black-and-white narrative. Historical memory may be rewritten to serve current aims, and alternative viewpoints are demonized or discredited by default. The result is a target population that is cognitively “locked in” to a particular interpretation of reality.

Real-World Example – Kremlin Curriculum in Occupied Ukraine: A stark illustration of the narrowing strategy is playing out in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. After occupying territory, the Kremlin has embarked on a comprehensive re-education campaign to align young minds with Russian narratives. Schools in these regions are “forced to adopt a Kremlin-curated curriculum designed to demonize Ukraine while convincing kids to welcome the takeover of their country and embrace a Russian national identity.” Teachers and parents who dare object face dire consequences. In a speech for the new school year, President Vladimir Putin emphasized the importance of indoctrinating Ukrainian children, lamenting that Ukrainian schools taught “wrong” historical facts. He insisted that children must learn that Ukraine has no legitimate independent history and that regions like Donbas are inherently Russian. This campaign has included purging Ukrainian textbooks, removing national symbols, and replacing them with Russian-approved materials, effectively erasing the Ukrainian identity from the classroom. Through these measures, Russia is weaponizing education to narrow the perspectives of a generation, instilling loyalty to Moscow’s version of reality at the expense of the truth. This is cognitive warfare via indoctrination: by the time these children become adults, many will know only the narrative their occupiers taught them.

Game Theoretic Perspective: In terms of game theory, narrowing strategies can be seen as a way to alter the “utility functions” and rules by which people make decisions. Classical game theory assumes players have fixed preferences, but cognitive warfare recognizes one can reshape those preferences. Indoctrination essentially reprograms the payoffs in the minds of the target: certain choices or loyalties are endowed with extremely high utility (e.g. “die for the Motherland and you will be a hero”), while other choices are made unthinkable or costly (“questioning the party line makes you a traitor”). By manipulating what people value and believe to be true, a narrowing approach forces them into predictable patterns of behavior that benefit the influencer. For instance, a population educated to fanatically believe in an ideology will act in ways that a rational outside observer might see as against their self-interest, but within their indoctrinated value system, those actions maximize their perceived utility. A tragic example is how terrorist organizations educate recruits – sometimes from childhood – to value martyrdom. Through religious or ideological schooling that narrowly defines glory and virtue as dying for the cause, they alter the utility calculus so that suicide attacks become a “rational” choice for the indoctrinated individual. The adversary has altered the game: the normal rules of deterrence (which assume people want to survive) no longer apply when death is seen as a payoff, not a cost.

From a collective game theory standpoint, narrowing strategies can reduce complex societal games into something closer to a single-player game dominated by the influencer’s strategy. If an entire population can be conditioned to share the same preferences and perceptions, they effectively move in lockstep. This can eliminate coordination problems and internal dilemmas for the influencer. For example, if a regime succeeds in schooling its citizens that any opposing information is “fake” or from an enemy, then citizens will reflexively ignore potentially destabilizing truths. The regime has achieved a stable equilibrium: the only “game” the public knows is the one the regime designed. As one cognitive warfare proposal noted, social engineering is an “applied branch of Game Theory where the rules and utility curves are altered… to adjust opponents’ play in reality”. Indoctrination is precisely that – rewriting the rules of the mind.

Entropy and Order – A Thermodynamic View: A narrowing strategy can be analogized to lowering entropy in a thermodynamic system. Entropy, in an information context, is a measure of uncertainty or diversity of states (possible beliefs or ideas). Indoctrination strives to create an ordered state of minimum entropy – everyone or nearly everyone in the target group shares the same narratives, the same values, the same mental “state.” This is akin to aligning all the spins in a magnet or all molecules moving in one direction. It can make the system extremely coherent and powerful in one direction. For example, a population unified by fervent nationalist education can mobilize for war or collective sacrifice with a high degree of efficiency and morale – there is little internal friction or doubt. Organizational thermodynamics gives us a language for this: if we treat information and belief as a form of energy, then narrowing is like concentrating that energy into a low-entropy, high-organization state (much as a laser concentrates light into a coherent beam). Under the framework of organizational thermodynamics, such a system has a lot of “informational energy” (focused will or consensus) and low “organizational entropy” (little dissent or randomness in thought).

However, the Second Law of Thermodynamics warns that maintaining a low-entropy state requires continuous work – external energy must be expended to prevent the natural drift toward disorder. In cognitive terms, sustaining indoctrination requires constant propaganda and enforcement. The moment the pressure is lifted (e.g. uncensored information seeps in, or the younger generation encounters new ideas), entropy will begin to increase as minds diversify. Indeed, historical experience shows that rigid ideological regimes often feel compelled to intensify propaganda or crackdowns over time to counteract the creeping influence of outside information (cognitive entropy) that inevitably filters in. The challenge for the indoctrinator is that while a perfectly ordered mindspace is powerful, it is also brittle. With no diversity of thought, the system lacks adaptability. If a core assumption of the narrative is falsified by reality (say, a prophesied victory turns into defeat), the shock can be catastrophic as individuals have no alternate frame of reference – the entire belief structure can come crashing down. In thermodynamic analogy, a system at near-zero entropy can be pushed far from equilibrium by even a small unaccounted input, leading to a breakdown. Thus, a successful narrowing strategy often tries to build in self-sealing rationales (e.g. conspiracy thinking that labels contradictory evidence as enemy lies) to survive such shocks, effectively trying to remain a closed system. But maintaining a genuinely closed cognitive system is extremely difficult in the information age.

Psychological and Cognitive Architecture Aspects: At the individual level, narrowing tactics exploit well-known cognitive biases and architectural features of the mind. The human cognitive architecture is such that repeated exposure to a claim (even a false one) makes it more familiar and believable – the illusory truth effect. By hammering the same messages and suppressing alternatives, indoctrination leverages this bias: over time, the brain literally builds reinforced neural pathways around the taught beliefs. Memory is biased to recall those oft-repeated narratives, especially if tied to emotional triggers (pride, fear, anger) that signal importance. The confirmation bias further locks in the narrow worldview: people trained to a belief will interpret new information in ways that confirm it. For instance, an education system that teaches “our nation is under constant threat from outsiders” creates a mental schema where any criticism from abroad is automatically seen as proof of that hostility (thus confirming the narrative). In essence, narrowing strategies re-architect the cognitive schema of individuals so that their default information processing funnels toward a predetermined conclusion.

In group terms, a narrowed collective mindset creates strong in-group/out-group dynamics that bolster social cohesion internally while erecting barriers to outside influence. Everyone inside the bubble shares a common narrative (in-group norm), and those outside it (out-group) are mistrusted. This is advantageous for the influencer because the group will self-police the narrative. For example, when an entire classroom or community is indoctrinated, any member who voices doubt may face social sanction or ostracism, reinforcing conformity. The architecture of communication in such groups often becomes hierarchical and closed – information flows from the approved source downward, and lateral or bottom-up flow of new ideas is blocked. In military terms, one might call it a “closed cognitive loop”: feedback that doesn’t fit the narrative is filtered out before it can propagate.

Benefits and Risks: Deployed effectively, narrowing/indoctrination can yield short- to medium-term strategic benefits: unwavering political support, a pool of motivated recruits or agents, and an opponent hamstrung by the lack of internal dissent. For example, a dictatorship that thoroughly indoctrinates its population can commit acts of aggression with little fear of domestic backlash, while a more pluralistic adversary might face public doubt or protest. However, the risks are twofold. First, a narrowed populace is vulnerable to surprise – if reality contradicts propaganda too starkly, morale can collapse. Second, indoctrination is often irreversible in the short run – once people are deeply brainwashed, even the indoctrinator loses flexibility. They cannot easily pivot their narrative without confusion or loss of credibility. In game-theoretic terms, you’ve created a single-strategy population that cannot adapt strategies easily, which an agile opponent could exploit by changing the rules of engagement. This rigidity is why some strategists argue that heavy-handed propaganda can be a double-edged sword: it makes your people follow you today, but if you need them to change their mindset tomorrow, you face an uphill battle.

Nonetheless, we see around the world that many actors judge the benefits to outweigh the risks, especially in authoritarian and extremist contexts. Narrowing strategies are in active use – from North Korea’s closed information ecosystem that deifies its leader, to ISIS’s recruitment madrasas teaching only their radical interpretation of religion, to state-sponsored media in various countries presenting a singular version of truth. Education in these cases is not a public good; it is a weapon – forging minds into a shape that serves the strategic ends of those in power.

The "Broadening" Strategy: Cognitive Expansion and Information Overload

At the opposite end of the spectrum from indoctrination lies the strategy of cognitive broadening – deliberately expanding the range of information, perspectives, and stimuli in the target’s environment to the point of overload, confusion, or transformative insight (depending on the intent). A broadening strategy weaponizes the idea that too much, too varied information can be as dangerous as too little, when one’s goal is to disrupt an adversary’s decision-making or social cohesion. Instead of telling a single unwavering story, the broadening approach floods the information space with a multiplicity of narratives – true, false, and contradictory – such that the target has difficulty discerning reality or deciding on a course of action. It can also involve exposing a population to previously taboo or censored perspectives (e.g. introducing democratic ideas into an authoritarian society), thereby widening their worldview in a way that undermines their loyalty to the current regime.

Mechanisms of Broadening: Key tactics include disinformation campaigns (spreading rumors, fake news, forged evidence), propaganda that is inconsistent or continually shifting, amplification of fringe or opposing viewpoints to fracture consensus, and sheer high-volume messaging that overwhelms the analytic capacity of individuals. The broadening strategy often leverages the chaotic nature of the modern information environment – social media virality, anonymous messaging apps, deep fakes, bots – to ensure that there is always another narrative, another angle, another “fact” (not necessarily a true fact) circulating. The effect on the target is cognitive dissonance and skepticism: when bombarded by too many competing claims, people may cease to believe anything firmly, or they gravitate to extreme theories simply to make sense of the chaos. A successfully executed broadening operation can lead an adversary population to be deeply divided, unsure of what is true or false, and thus paralyzed or demoralized in collective will.

Real-World Example – The “Firehose of Falsehood”: Analysts have identified the Russian propaganda model in recent conflicts as a prime example of the broadening strategy. Dubbed the “firehose of falsehood”, this approach is characterized by “high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions”. Rather than stick to a single story, Russian information operations pump out multiple, often conflicting narratives simultaneously – one observer noted that “new Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.” It is “rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to objective reality or consistency.” In practice, this meant that during events like the annexation of Crimea or the war in Syria, Russian outlets and trolls would flood the infosphere with numerous explanations, conspiracy theories, and denials. For instance, in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, the Kremlin’s sources floated various theories: it was a Ukrainian missile; no, it was a Ukrainian jet; or perhaps a CIA plot. The goal was not necessarily to make people believe one coherent alternative story, but to “obfuscate and confuse” – to plant enough seeds of doubt that no clear narrative could emerge in opposition to Russia’s actions. By overwhelming audiences with volume and variety, the firehose approach raises the entropy of the information environment to maximal levels. All signals drown in noise; truth becomes just one option among many, no more credible than the falsehoods to a fatigued public.

Distinctive Features of a Broadening (Firehose) Attack: Researchers note several features that make such campaigns effective:

  • High-volume, multichannel distribution: The propaganda comes from all directions – TV, social media, fake “grassroots” accounts, bot networks – giving a false sense that “everyone is talking about X.” Messages repeated across many sources become more persuasive simply by repetition and ubiquity.
  • Rapid and continuous flow: False narratives are pushed out faster than they can be debunked. By the time one lie is refuted, five more have taken its place. The audience is kept perpetually on the back foot.
  • No commitment to consistency: Different messages even contradict each other. This breaks the traditional rule of propaganda (which values a consistent message) – but the effect is to prevent the target from coalescing around any single counternarrative. If one story is disproved, another is ready to take hold of those inclined to distrust.
  • No commitment to truth: Obvious falsehoods are propagated without concern for credibility. The repeated exposure and emotional appeal (outrageous or sensational claims) can override logical scrutiny. Over time, people might internalize fragments of the narrative simply because they heard it so often. Moreover, by mixing partial truths with lies, it becomes harder to dismiss everything – some pieces sound plausible, giving the whole tapestry a veneer of possible validity.

This method is a textbook case of cognitive broadening used offensively. The result, as described by analysts, is “an engineered collapse of shared reality, executed at scale and speed.” The common understanding of facts that holds a society together is deliberately broken apart into personalized realities. Each person or faction may end up with their own version of truth, making collective action against the propagandist more difficult. In democracies, this can manifest as severe political polarization, where communities cannot even agree on basic facts, undermining democratic decision-making. Indeed, Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) operations in the United States aimed explicitly to “misinform and polarize US voters”, exploiting existing social divisions and widening them. By posing as multiple voices on extreme ends of issues (for example, simultaneously promoting far-right and far-left content, or stoking racial tensions by impersonating activists of different stripes), they broadened the extremes and pushed Americans further apart.

Game Theory and Decision Paralysis: If we look at broadening through a game-theoretic lens, it often seeks to undermine the common knowledge and shared assumptions that rational actors rely on to make decisions. In a classic game, all players understand the rules and payoffs, even if they have different preferences. But what if one player can convince the other that the rules are something different, or that the payoffs are unknowable? Broadening strategies introduce elements of a Bayesian game with incomplete and asymmetric information – the target is made less sure about the “state of the world.” For example, consider a populace that must decide whether to resist an aggressor or accommodate them. If everyone shares a common belief that the aggressor is hostile (common knowledge), they might coordinate to resist (a collective action). But if a disinformation campaign convinces large segments that “maybe the aggressor is actually liberating us” or “our leaders are corrupt so maybe we’re on the wrong side”, then the population’s beliefs about the payoff of resistance vs. surrender diverge. Some think fighting is worth it, others think it’s hopeless or even wrong. The collective strategy breaks down into a lack of Nash equilibrium – or multiple competing equilibria – because there’s no agreement on the game’s basics. In effect, broadening can turn a coordinated game into a dis-coordinated one, where the group cannot align on a strategy, yielding an easy win for the manipulator who maintains clarity of purpose. We see echoes of this in Russia’s attempts to confuse Western publics about NATO’s intentions, vaccines, election integrity, etc., hoping that Western societies will become too internally divided to act decisively on the world stage.

Another game theoretic framing is the idea of hypergame or misperception game – each side might be playing a different game because one side has successfully altered the other’s perception of the game. The broadening strategy often tries to lure the opponent into “fighting the wrong war.” For instance, flooding a military’s open-source intelligence channels with misleading data could cause them to deploy forces in the wrong places (because they are acting on a broadened set of false possibilities). If done well, the target chases shadows. In multi-player scenarios (within a society), broadening equates to what one analyst called “bringing a chess set to a game of Go” – the target is applying the wrong paradigm while the initiator of cognitive warfare is exploiting a more complex one.

Entropy and Disorder – Thermodynamic View of Broadening: If narrowing was about low entropy, broadening is about injecting entropy into the adversary’s cognitive system. The goal is to increase the disorder – a high-entropy state where there is maximum uncertainty and minimal consensus. In an information-theoretic sense, entropy is high when messages are unpredictable and varied. A broadening attack pushes an overload of bits (information bits, whether truthful or not) at the target, raising the Shannon entropy of their information environment. Consider a society’s “information temperature” – an analogy to kinetic energy of particles. A broadening campaign heats up the cognitive space: ideas are buzzing chaotically, colliding, and nothing coheres for long. Organizational thermodynamics suggests that when cultural temperature (rate of change of ideas, emotional energy in discourse) exceeds the “cooling capacity” of real facts and trusted institutions, the society enters a kind of speculative or chaotic phase. This is similar to a market bubble in economic terms – lots of imaginary “information energy” but little stable foundation, leading to runaway instability. Indeed, parallels can be drawn to how financial bubbles form when too much speculative belief outpaces reality; in societal cognition, a “bubble” of conspiracy theories or false narratives can inflate to the point of dominating discourse (e.g., QAnon in the US, which was facilitated by massive amounts of online disinformation, effectively broadening believers’ perspective into a fantastical alternate reality).

From a thermodynamic cycle perspective, broadening corresponds to processes like isothermal expansion – where entropy increases as the system takes in heat (in this case, the heat of constant information input) and does work in the form of social disruption. If done continuously without relief, this leads to an adiabatic explosion – akin to a crash or collapse of consensus (the societal equivalent of a phase transition or system breakdown). We’ve seen glimpses of this when “post-truth” conditions prevail: public trust in formerly stable institutions (like science, journalism, elections) evaporates under the relentless onslaught of contradictory claims. A defense strategy here can be thought of as providing dissipation mechanisms – ways to vent entropy and restore order (like fact-checking, content moderation, and public education to improve critical thinking). If a society cannot dissipate the entropy introduced by broadening attacks, it suffers from cognitive fatigue and systemic weakening.

Broadening as a Double-Edged Sword: While we often discuss broadening as a weapon wielded by malicious actors (e.g. foreign disinformation), it is worth noting that broadening strategies can also be used in positive ways or by democratic actors under the banner of freedom of information. For example, during the Cold War, the Western bloc used a kind of broadening approach via radio broadcasts (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) and smuggled literature to communist countries. The intent was to expand the information diet of citizens behind the Iron Curtain, giving them perspectives beyond the narrow communist propaganda they were fed. This arguably helped sow doubt about the Soviet system and inspire desires for reform or resistance – effectively contributing to the ultimate collapse of those regimes. In this sense, broadening minds can be a way to undermine authoritarian control. When East Germans started hearing about the prosperity and freedom in the West, it widened their cognitive horizon and made the official East German line less credible by comparison. So broadening per se is not inherently nefarious – it depends on context and truthfulness. Democracies prefer broadening via truth and diverse viewpoints, believing that an informed citizenry will ultimately choose wisely. Authoritarian or malign actors often use broadening via falsehood and overwhelming noise to prevent any choice or to manipulate choices.

However, even a “benign” broadening campaign must be carefully managed. If you simply dump a trove of truth on a population that has been tightly controlled (a rapid broadening), it can be deeply destabilizing and potentially violent. There is historical precedent: rapid liberalization of information in societies that were closed can lead to unrest or conflict if not accompanied by frameworks to help people process new ideas. Cognitive overload without guidance can create a vacuum where extremist voices might capitalize on the confusion. Thus, broadening must be measured and often goes hand-in-hand with efforts to build critical thinking (so people can handle diverse info) – otherwise it’s just another vector for chaos.

Psychological Impact: Psychologically, the broadening strategy exploits our brain’s limited information processing capacity and need for coherence. Humans don’t cope well with being inundated by conflicting data. Analysis paralysis is a known phenomenon: when faced with too many options or too much uncertainty, decision-making quality degrades. We might delay decisions, make arbitrary choices, or fall back on simple heuristics (which may be inappropriate). A disinformation-heavy environment pushes people to cope via mental shortcuts – often defaulting to tribal loyalties (“I will just believe whatever my preferred group says is true”) or emotional reasoning (“I feel distrustful, so everything is a lie”). Broadening operations encourage these responses by design: they want the target to either disengage (tune out altogether) or engage in purely emotional, polarized ways, rather than calm, reasoned analysis.

Socially, cognitive broadening often creates splintering. We see “information tribes” form, each with their own narratives (since in a high-entropy info space, people cluster around the narrative that resonates with them). This can reach a point where, effectively, multiple realities coexist in one society. From the perspective of a cognitive attacker, that is a win: divide et impera – divide and rule. If the adversary’s population is arguing amongst themselves about what’s real, they are not uniting against the external threat. It’s notable that some foreign influence campaigns explicitly fan both sides of divisive issues (as observed with Russian IRA trolls in U.S. politics). They don’t care which side “wins” domestically as long as the society at large is distracted and fractured. Broadening is thus a tool to fracture the Overton window – instead of a single spectrum of acceptable discourse, you get shattered shards of extreme and incompatible discourses.

In summary, the broadening strategy uses the expansion of information space as a weapon. By maximizing cognitive entropy in the target, it seeks to degrade the target’s ability to think clearly, act cohesively, or trust its own judgment. It’s psychological jamming on a massive scale. Like a radar jammed by noise, a society under broad cognitive attack cannot “see” threats properly or coordinate responses. Whether through floods of lies or the sudden introduction of disruptive truths, broadening forces an evolution (or devolution) of the target’s thought processes. It can be incredibly effective in modern networked societies – but it can also backfire if, for example, a savvy population and leadership use the chaos to rally for stronger truth-finding measures and come out more resilient (a kind of “inoculation” effect). Thus, broadening as a weapon must adapt; often it is paired with narrowing tactics (on selected subgroups) to maximize impact – a synergy we explore next.

Dual-Track Cognitive Warfare: Combining Constriction and Expansion

Thus far, we have treated narrowing and broadening strategies as conceptually distinct, almost opposite approaches. In practice, sophisticated cognitive warfare campaigns often employ both tracks in parallel or sequence, using each where most effective. The true art of weaponized education lies in knowing when to narrow the target’s mind and when to broaden it. A modern strategic cognitive architecture will integrate these dual tracks in a coordinated fashion, recognizing that together they can create potent feedback loops to undermine an adversary or strengthen one’s own side.

Consider how an adversary might approach a target society in a holistic cognitive attack. They could, for instance, narrow a segment of the target population – identifying a susceptible subgroup and driving them via targeted education/propaganda into an extremist, singular worldview (a classic radicalization approach). Simultaneously, they broaden the general population’s information environment – unleashing waves of disinformation and contradictory messaging to confuse the majority. The result is a polarized society: a radicalized faction (narrowed, perhaps one that the adversary can influence or direct) versus a confused, paralyzed majority (broadened). This polarization is itself self-perpetuating; the radical faction might commit acts that further confuse or frighten the rest, while the majority’s confusion and perceived chaos might drive more people to seek certainty in extremist narratives, feeding recruitment. We have seen glimmers of this dynamic in various democracies where foreign influence operations quietly support both far-left and far-right extremist content online, pulling the center apart. By creating and amplifying the extremes (narrowing those cohorts) and muddying the middle, an adversary can degrade a nation’s internal coherence and ability to mount a unified response.

Sequential Use – Destabilize then Reframe: Another combined-arms approach in cognitive warfare is sequential. First, use broadening tactics to destabilize and soften up the target’s cognitive environment; then, at the opportune moment, introduce a narrowing intervention to impose a new order or narrative that favors the attacker. It’s analogous to how in kinetic warfare an area might be bombarded (softening) and then occupied (establish control). In cognitive terms, an attacker might spend months flooding a country’s media space with scandal, conspiracies, and confusion to erode trust in institutions (broadening phase). Once people lose faith in their government and don’t know what to believe, the attacker can insert a strong, simple narrative (narrowing phase) – perhaps via a puppet media outlet or a charismatic proxy leader – that promises clarity (“the truth”) and scapegoats for the chaos. A population desperate for certainty may latch onto that new narrative, particularly if their prior belief system has been dismantled. Essentially, the attacker creates a cognitive void and then fills it. Historically, this pattern is recognizable: for example, some disinformation campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic first disseminated a swarm of conflicting information about the virus and vaccines (from wild theories of origin to fear-mongering about vaccine safety), and then moved to amplify a unified anti-vaccine narrative once public confusion was high, thereby narrowing a segment of the public into a determined anti-vax movement.

We can also invert the sequence: sometimes a regime will use narrowing first (hard indoctrination) and then, if cracks begin to appear or resistance forms, switch to broadening tactics to confuse and divide any opposition. A real case of this is the Syrian civil war: the Assad regime had long indoctrinated loyalty through Ba’athist education and propaganda (narrowing). When uprisings occurred, beyond brutal force, the regime also released jihadi prisoners and engaged in propaganda to splinter the opposition into moderates vs extremists and to confuse international observers about who the rebels were. This effectively broadened the conflict’s narratives (“it’s terrorists vs government, not people vs dictator”) and bought the regime time and international ambivalence. Meanwhile, Assad’s own base was kept on a narrow diet of “we are defending the nation from terrorists,” ensuring continued coherence on his side. This simultaneous application prolonged his hold on power.

Cognitive Architecture Perspective – C3 and Reversibility: We can think of an organizational cognitive architecture that manages these dual strategies the way a control system manages inputs of heat and cold. One conceptual model worth noting is the Command–Coalition–Operations (C3) cycle proposed as an ideal organizational thermodynamic cycle. In a C3 model, an organization (like a NATO cognitive warfare task force) would cycle between a high-“temperature” phase of Command (where strategy and new ideas – high entropy – are introduced), a closed transition of Coalition (partners align without external input, adiabatically), and a low-“temperature” Operations phase (focused execution – low entropy), before another Coalition phase to gather lessons learned and reset without information loss. The beauty of such a cycle is reversibility – ideally no net entropy gain or loss after a full cycle, achieving maximum efficiency in converting knowledge to action.

While the details are abstract, the implication for dual-track cognitive warfare is: a well-structured cognitive campaign can alternate between broadening and narrowing in a controlled, reversible manner to maximize effect. For instance, during the “Command” stage, you might broadly brainstorm and introduce diverse narratives (some entropy injection) – for example, exploring various angles to exploit in an adversary’s culture. Then during “Operations,” you narrow the focus to the chosen narrative and push it efficiently (reducing entropy during execution). Afterwards, in a review phase, you broadly analyze outcomes (taking in all feedback) and then refine your strategy. By doing this cyclically, you avoid permanent chaos (because you eventually narrow to act) but also avoid stagnation (because you broaden to adapt). In effect, the dual-track approach can be made reversible – one can ramp cognitive effects up or down as needed, without irreversible damage to one’s own side.

For the adversary on the receiving end, however, we typically seek irreversibility: to trap them either in a permanently narrowed tunnel vision or in a permanently broadened state of confusion, depending on what serves our aims. This asymmetry is key. A successful strategy is to keep your opponent in a high-entropy or misguided state, while you remain or return to a low-entropy, coherent state at will. It mirrors Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum: “to hold the enemy’s fate in our hands” by being formless when needed and form-full when needed.

Offense-Defense Dynamics: In a conflict, one side’s narrowing effort is often the other side’s broadening attack. For example, an authoritarian adversary tries to narrow (indoctrinate) its population to hate the West; NATO might counter that by broadcasting factual information and alternative viewpoints into that population (broadening their perspective to weaken the regime’s narrative). Conversely, that adversary might try to broaden (confuse) NATO publics through disinformation, and NATO must respond by narrowing focus (e.g. emphasizing a clear, unified message or patriotic education that inoculates citizens against the adversary’s lies). Thus, the cognitive war becomes a dialectic of narrow vs broad moves. Each side will oscillate: if your enemy’s mindspace is too closed, you try to pry it open; if it’s too chaotic, you try to impose your narrative; while protecting your own in the opposite manner (closing your ranks or opening your people's minds as needed for resilience).

Game-theoretically, one can picture a matrix of strategies: {Narrow, Broad} for each player. There isn’t a simple pure-strategy equilibrium; the optimal play might be a mixed strategy or conditional: broadening the enemy works best when their cohesion is high, but if they’re already in disarray, a selective narrowing (like supporting one faction) might yield more. Similarly, narrowing one’s own population (e.g. via patriotic fervor) can boost short-term unity in crisis, but over-reliance on it can reduce adaptability – so maybe a bit of internal broadening (fostering innovative thinking in the ranks) is needed in peacetime to prepare for new threats. The interplay is dynamic.

Designing a Dual-Track Campaign: A practical design of a dual-track cognitive campaign would involve distinct lines of operation that are nonetheless synchronized:

  • Constrictive Line of Operation: Identify target audiences for narrowing. These could be enemy leadership circles (to be seduced or coerced into a singular outlook that we can predict or manipulate), extremist groups in the enemy society (to be fueled and directed), or even one’s own citizenry when needing to rally unity (with careful ethical constraints). Develop educational/proper messaging tailored to these audiences that simplifies their worldview in the desired direction. Use tools like targeted propaganda, memes, closed groups, and authority figures or influencers to reinforce the narrative. Keep the messaging consistent and repetitive for this group.
  • Expansive Line of Operation: In parallel, run broadening efforts aimed at multi-faceted disruption. This might include mass dissemination of various narratives into mainstream channels, leaking true information that causes embarrassment or doubt in the enemy’s institutions, amplifying voices of dissent, introducing contradictory accounts of events, etc. The expansive line should sow uncertainty widely and prevent the enemy from formulating a coherent response or consensus. Cyber operations often support this (hacking and releasing emails to create scandals, for example, introduces new information that can be weaponized for confusion).

A coordinator of the cognitive campaign ensures these two lines do not work at cross purposes. For example, you wouldn’t want to overly confuse the very group you intend to narrow (you first move them out of the mainstream info flow into alternative channels, then feed them the fixed narrative). Likewise, as broadening chaos unfolds, you time your narrowing messaging to be a beacon of sense among the nonsense for those you want to capture.

Defensive Dual-Track: On the defensive side, NATO and allies need their own dual approach: broadening our understanding and awareness, while narrowing our focus and resolve when needed. Broadening understanding means educating our policymakers, military leaders, and general public about the cognitive threats out there – encouraging open-minded analysis of how adversaries operate, cross-cultural understanding to anticipate enemy narratives, and innovative thinking to counter them. This has been described as achieving “cognitive superiority” through broad education and technological augmentation. At the same time, narrowing our focus means solidifying commitment to core values and facts – essentially, reinforcing an internal narrative of truth and democracy that is not easily shaken by adversary disinformation. This is a kind of resilience narrative: teaching citizens what to watch out for (e.g. “if a story seems designed to provoke an emotional reaction, double-check it”), and strengthening identification with the nation or alliance so that divisive influence finds less fertile ground. There is evidence that such resilience can work: countries that have high public awareness of disinformation techniques (like some Baltic states familiar with Russian tactics) tend to be less susceptible to them. They have an educated skepticism that acts as a filter (a narrowing filter accepting only credible info).

In essence, defensive cognitive warfare must broaden situational awareness but narrow the attack surface. We broaden by gathering diverse intelligence, perspectives, red-teaming our own assumptions, and educating widely. We narrow by forming united fronts on critical issues – for example, establishing cross-partisan agreement on the reality of foreign influence campaigns so that becomes an un-contested fact, rather than itself a polarizing issue (which adversaries would exploit).

The Need for Ethical Clarity

Before moving to concrete recommendations, a note on ethics: Democracies face a conundrum in cognitive warfare. Many narrowing tactics (propaganda, psyops on domestic populations) and broadening tactics (spreading falsehoods) conflict with democratic norms of truth, transparency, and individual autonomy. Militarizing education and information can easily cross into territory that undermines the values we seek to protect. NATO, founded on principles of liberty and rule of law, must therefore calibrate its cognitive warfare strategy to avoid self-inflicted moral injury. This means likely favoring truth-based broadening (exposing adversary lies, providing factual narratives) over fabrications, and value-based narrowing (promoting unity around democratic values or verifiable facts) over deception. Indeed, some experts suggest leveraging “transparency as a weapon” – turning the tables by revealing the truth in ways that the enemy finds destabilizing. For example, openly publishing intelligence about enemy war crimes or corruption can broaden the perspective of their populace (undermining their propaganda) while keeping us on ethical high ground.

In practice, a purely clean approach might not always be possible – there may be grey areas where some deception is used offensively (e.g. tactical psychological feints in military ops). But strategic cognitive warfare for NATO likely will stress cognitive security and literacy for its own societies (a defensive posture) and precision targeting of hostile leadership or military audiences with influence operations (an offensive posture), rather than mass mind manipulation that risks our legitimacy. The dual-track model can still apply robustly within those guidelines: one can imagine an alliance strategy that narrows adversary military officers’ worldview by covertly feeding them certain doctrines (like persuading them their cause is hopeless or that a coup is in their interest), and broadens the adversary’s general populace’s access to uncensored information. Those are heavy-handed moves against the enemy, but still fundamentally about revealing truth or leveraging their own fissures, not manufacturing completely false narratives out of whole cloth. Each democracy will have to navigate these choices carefully, ideally establishing a doctrine and oversight for cognitive operations as rigorous as those for kinetic operations.

With this understanding of how narrowing and broadening can interplay, we turn now to concrete recommendations for NATO and allied nations to incorporate these insights into policy and practice.

Implications and Recommendations for NATO and Allied Actors

Cognitive warfare is not a future concept – it is here and now, demanding an active response. Education-based tactics, both constrictive and expansive, must be consciously integrated into NATO’s strategy if the Alliance is to maintain cognitive security and outmaneuver adversaries in the information domain. Below we present policy-focused conclusions and design principles for leveraging the dual-track (narrowing & broadening) model as part of a modern strategic cognitive architecture. These recommendations are formulated to be pragmatic and actionable, reflecting the realities of both technology and geopolitics in 2025 and beyond:

  • 1. Establish Cognitive Warfare Units and Doctrine: NATO should formalize the cognitive domain as a warfare area with dedicated units or inter-disciplinary task forces. These units would plan and execute influence operations, including weaponized education initiatives. A clear doctrine should outline the use of narrowing vs. broadening strategies, acceptable targets, and methods. For example, NATO’s doctrinal development can incorporate guidelines on when to focus Allied messaging (e.g. during crisis, emphasize a unified narrative to NATO populations) versus when to flood adversaries with multi-faceted information (e.g. prelude to conflict, sow doubt in opposing ranks). Formal recognition will facilitate training and resource allocation, treating cognitive capabilities on par with cyber or electronic warfare capabilities.
  • 2. Invest in Cognitive Readiness Training and Education: Just as soldiers drill for physical combat, personnel (military and civilian) must train for cognitive combat. As recommended by experts, NATO and member states should “develop programs of cognitive readiness education” that teach how to detect, deter, and counter adversary info ops. This includes media literacy, psychology of influence, critical thinking under stress, and exposure to simulated adversary propaganda so that operators and even the general public build an immunity. Such training can be integrated into military education (academies, staff colleges) and even civilian education campaigns. The goal is to create a baseline of awareness so that broadening attacks (disinformation floods) meet a skeptical, analytical audience, and narrowing attacks (indoctrination attempts) find less fertile ground. A population that understands cognitive warfare tactics becomes a hard target.
  • 3. Leverage Advanced Technology (AI, Big Data) for Cognitive Operations: Modern cognitive campaigns must operate at the speed and scale of the information environment. NATO should incorporate AI-driven tools for both offense and defense in the cognitive domain. On offense, AI can help micro-target audiences with tailored messages (within ethical limits) and generate influence content at scale. On defense, AI can detect early signs of disinformation campaigns (through anomaly detection in social media trends) and help swat down false narratives faster than human analysts could. For example, large language models (LLMs) fine-tuned on adversary propaganda could be used to simulate and predict adversary narratives, allowing preemptive responses. The Odyssey project concept – pairing analysts with AI tutors and automating content generation for training – shows how AI might accelerate our own educational throughput. In operational terms, imagine an AI that monitors the information space and suggests when to switch from a broadening approach to a narrowing one or vice versa, based on real-time sentiment and confusion metrics. Investment in such tech (with proper human oversight) will be a force multiplier.
  • 4. Define Ethical Guidelines and Use “Truth Bonding”: NATO should articulate a strong ethical framework for cognitive warfare. This includes a preference for truth and transparency as strategic tools, and clear red lines against tactics that violate international law or core values (e.g. inciting genocide or using child indoctrination as a weapon). By establishing what we will and won’t do, we also shape the battlespace: NATO can choose to wield “truth-based weaponized education”. For instance, rather than spreading lies about an adversary, NATO can declassify and broadcast truthful information that the adversary suppresses (corruption, war crimes, economic data). This approach, sometimes called “lawfare” or “counter-propaganda by truth”, uses broadening to our moral advantage – it sows discord in enemy ranks without deceiving our own people. An example could be creating educational media in local languages for authoritarian states that teach critical thinking and factual history (broadening minds legitimately) as a means of long-term subversion of hostile ideologies. By sticking to truth, we maintain credibility, which in the long run is a strategic asset – adversaries’ reliance on falsehood can backfire when exposed.
  • 5. Utilize Dual-Track Messaging in Strategic Communications: Allied communications should consciously employ dual-track principles. In practice, this means on any given issue, determining which audience segments need a unified, narrow message and which would benefit from a pluralistic, broad information approach. For example, internally (within the Alliance and friendly populations) use a clear, consistent narrative about why NATO’s cause is just and why unity is essential – essentially an educational campaign reinforcing core values and facts. This might include public service messaging, school curricula emphasizing media literacy and democratic values, and frequent truthful updates during crises to prevent adversary rumors from filling the void. Externally (toward adversary audiences), simultaneously push multiple messages that stress their uncertainties: highlight their economic troubles, question their leadership’s competence, amplify both liberal dissent and hardliner dissatisfaction to stretch them from both ends. NATO strategic communicators should have playbooks for both tracks and a sense of sequencing (e.g. in early stages of conflict, broadening external comms to confuse enemy, later stages maybe narrow an “exit narrative” for enemy soldiers like “surrender and live”). A concrete step could be establishing a Joint Cognitive Effects Coordination Cell to ensure information operations, PSYOP, public affairs, and cyber actions are harmonized in delivering these dual messages rather than working at cross-purposes.
  • 6. Promote Organizational Thermodynamics Analysis: NATO analysts should borrow concepts from organizational thermodynamics to assess the “entropy” of information environments. This means developing metrics for societal entropy (fragmentation of opinions, volume of conflicting narratives) and organizational entropy (level of confusion within command structures), and using those metrics to guide strategy. For instance, if adversary society entropy is measured to be high (e.g. through social media sentiment analysis showing extreme polarization and wildly divergent narratives), NATO might focus on a narrowing move – perhaps quietly back one side or inject a clarifying narrative that nudges the chaos toward a direction favorable to us. If adversary entropy is low (populace all toeing the regime line), a broadening campaign should be intensified to heat things up. Conversely, NATO should monitor its own entropy: if we see our public coherence slipping (maybe due to enemy disinformation success), we need to take narrowing actions like crisis communications to dispel rumors and reinforce unity. Regular “entropy audits” could be performed, akin to morale or public opinion surveys but focused on information disorder levels. In effect, treat information space like a thermal system – apply cooling (structured truth campaigns) or heating (diversifying narratives) as needed to maintain an optimal range for operations. TheCarnot efficiency concept reminds us that maximum work (strategic effect) comes from cycling in a controlled way between hot and cold reservoirs (broad and narrow phases) without dissipating energy uselessly.
  • 7. Encourage Whole-of-Society Resilience Programs: Because cognitive warfare blurs civilian-military lines, NATO nations need policies that engage civil society, tech companies, educators, and local communities in building cognitive resilience. This could involve public education campaigns about disinformation, support for independent fact-checkers, partnerships with social media platforms to quickly identify fake news targeting military crises, and even simulations or war-games with journalists to practice handling information attacks. A resilient society is one where an adversary’s attempt to broaden (confuse) or narrow (indoctrinate) is met with broad public skepticism and quick corrective action by a network of trusted sources. For example, Finland has incorporated media literacy into school curricula and runs annual exercises in spotting misinformation – practices that NATO could encourage alliance-wide. The result is a citizenry that is harder to manipulate, essentially “inoculated” against certain cognitive attacks (much as a vaccine prepares the immune system). NATO can facilitate sharing of best practices among member states on this front, as part of a “Cognitive Security Center of Excellence” perhaps, analogous to its existing centers for cyber defense etc.
  • 8. Strategic Narrative Unity and Coalition Coherence: Within NATO and its partners, it is crucial to maintain a common narrative and understanding of events in the face of adversary propaganda. This doesn’t mean stifling healthy debate, but rather ensuring that at the strategic level, Allies align on core messages. A fragmented narrative within NATO would be a vulnerability that opponents exploit via broadening mischief (e.g., trying to turn one NATO member’s public against an Alliance policy with targeted disinfo). Mechanisms like NATO’s Communicators Network and rapid information-sharing agreements can help present a united front. In cognitive warfare terms, NATO must practice what one paper called “Coalition – adiabatic reconfiguration via information-sharing frameworks” – meaning Allies rapidly share information and align (privately) so that publicly they speak with one voice (or at least a harmonious chorus) even under information attack. An example success was the intelligence sharing in early 2022 about Russia’s invasion plans for Ukraine – by preemptively broadening those intel to the public, NATO narrowed Putin’s options for false pretexts. That preemption required coalition unity on declassifying and releasing truth. This principle should be standard: coordinate to deny adversaries the ability to play Allies off against each other in the information space.
  • 9. Target Adversary Vulnerabilities – “Reverse Cognitive Warfare”: NATO should not shy away from going on the offensive (within legal and moral bounds) to exploit adversary cognitive weaknesses. Many authoritarian regimes have their own indoctrination (narrowing) that creates blind spots and disgruntled subsets, as well as censorship that leaves their public hungry for truth. These are opportunities. For instance, the Chinese Communist Party spends enormous effort on domestic narrative control – but Chinese netizens are resourceful at obtaining outside info. NATO nations could collaboratively support platforms or content that circumvents censorship and exposes Chinese audiences to diverse viewpoints (broadening their perspective), even as the CCP narrows it. Similarly, regimes like Iran have internal divides between hardliners and reformists – a tailored campaign could narrow Iranian hardliners’ view (reinforce their echo chamber biases to miscalculate) while broadening the general population’s access to Persian-language truthful media. Such “reverse CogWar” – giving authoritarian populations a taste of open information – has been posited as a way to push back on those regimes’ cognitive dominance over their people. Of course, this must be done smartly to avoid simply causing crackdown on those citizens; but quiet support to grassroots education (e.g. offering online courses, VPN access, cultural exchanges) can be part of a long game to erode adversary indoctrination. We should view support for free education and information globally as not just philanthropy, but as a strategic investment in undermining hostile ideologies over time.
  • 10. Continuous Evaluation and Adaptation: Finally, cognitive warfare is an emerging discipline – NATO must be a learning organization in this domain. That means rigorous assessment of what works and what doesn’t. Every information operation or influence campaign should be followed by analysis: did our broadening effort actually confuse the adversary or inadvertently confuse our own? Did our attempt at a unifying narrative resonate with the public or come off as propaganda (and thus backfire)? Use metrics like changes in polling, social media sentiment analysis, rates of misinformation spread, etc., to quantify success. Then refine techniques accordingly. The environment also changes – new social media platforms rise, AI-generated “deepfake” content becomes more prevalent – so our approach to broadening and narrowing must evolve. Innovation in cognitive warfare should be encouraged, perhaps via interdisciplinary war-games that include psychologists, marketers, data scientists alongside military officers to brainstorm creative tactics. Similar to how NATO does cyber exercises, we should do cognitive domain exercises, practicing dual-track strategies in simulated crises. As one expert noted, “Strategic success is forged not by singular moments, but by sustained superiority across cycles of disruption and adaptation.”. We must be prepared to adapt repeatedly – applying broadening or narrowing in new ways as adversaries adjust.

Conclusion

The expanding arena of cognitive warfare demands that we reconceptualize “education” and information not just as soft power afterthoughts, but as central instruments of statecraft and security. Through this analysis, we have shown how education can be weaponized along two divergent yet complementary paths: by narrowing minds – focusing and fortifying a singular narrative to induce unity or compliance – and by broadening minds – proliferating information and perspectives to induce uncertainty, creativity, or chaos. These strategies map onto age-old techniques of propaganda and subversion, but in today’s hyper-connected infosphere they take on new dimensions and lethality. Game theory illuminated the strategic interplay: changing what a rival wants or believes can alter their choices more profoundly than any tank maneuver. Thermodynamic analogies highlighted the importance of managing “cognitive entropy”: an orderly mindspace can drive concentrated effort, while a disordered one can stall an entire society.

For NATO and its allies, the implications are clear. We ignore the cognitive domain at our peril – our adversaries certainly are not. The dual-track model of weaponized education provides a blueprint for engagement. It counsels that we must be agile and ambidextrous: able to tighten the flow of truth to a laser point when focus is needed, and also able to open the floodgates of information when an opponent’s closed world needs to be inundated or our own understanding needs expansion. We must strengthen our own populations’ mental defenses through education and digital literacy, even as we find the cracks in hostile populations’ mental armor and exploit them. Crucially, we must do so while upholding the values that define us – employing truth where our adversaries lie, and openness where they sow fear.

NATO’s Allied Command Transformation has already embraced the notion that “the human mind is the new battlefield”. The next step is to field the forces and tools to contest that battlefield. A modern strategic cognitive architecture will incorporate psychologists and data scientists alongside generals, will treat curricula and social media campaigns with the same importance as tanks and jets, and will draw on the best of our academic and tech communities to innovate. It will also demand difficult conversations about ethics, oversight, and cross-government coordination, as the dividing lines between military IO, civilian communications, and education policy blur.

Victory in cognitive warfare will not be as visible as a tank parade – it may be seen in the crises that never erupt because an adversary was quietly dissuaded, or the collapse of a hostile regime’s legitimacy by its own people’s awakening. It will be measured in levels of trust, clarity of thought, and unity of purpose. If NATO and its allies can harness the dual power of education – to both enlighten and obfuscate strategically – they will hold a keystone of 21st-century security. In the quest to win hearts and minds, we must remember that hearts follow minds: shape the education of minds, and the hearts (and hands) will follow. The battle for cognition is ongoing; armed with the twin strategies of narrowing and broadening, and guided by principled innovation, we can ensure that this is a battle NATO is prepared to fight and win.

Sources:

  1. NATO ACT – "Cognitive Warfare includes activities… influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual, group, or population level cognition"
  2. Atlantic Council – Example of Russia weaponizing education in occupied Ukraine (forced curriculum to demonize Ukraine, promote Russian identity)
  3. Lind et al. – Definition of cognitive warfare as altering game theory rules and utility curves; information bent to will of beholder
  4. RAND Corporation – "Firehose of falsehood" model: high-volume, multi-channel propaganda that “entertains, confuses and overwhelms” audiences
  5. Modern War Institute (West Point) – "Cognitive superiority is achieved through education… The ability to discern truth from falsehood is crucial"
  6. National Defense University – Recommendation to “develop cognitive readiness education and training” for tools against information threats
  7. NATO ACT News – "Attacking and degrading rationality… influencing perceptions of reality has significant impact"
  8. Atlantic Council (UkraineAlert) – "Weaponizing education: Russia targets schoolchildren… Kremlin-curated curriculum… indoctrinating young Ukrainians"
  9. RAND – Effectiveness of Russian disinformation: obfuscation and confusion erode truthful reporting
  10. Li Changchun (CCP) – Confucius Institutes abroad as “important part of China’s overseas propaganda setup”, illustrating educational influence as statecraft