cognitive warfare, the deliberate targeting of human perception and decision-making through disinformation, AI-driven influence and psychological operations, has emerged as a critical domain of modern conflict. Speaking at the Chanakya Defence Dialogue 2025, Anshuman Tripathi, former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), outlined that for India, building cognitive resilience and strategic capabilities in this domain has become a national security priority.
Cognitive warfare represents the newest frontier in international security, where conflicts are waged not only through physical means or digital infrastructure but through the systematic targeting of human perception, belief and decision-making. It integrates psychological operations, disinformation campaigns, AI-driven influence systems, and information manipulation to influence, disrupt, or control the perceptions, emotions and reasoning of individuals, military forces or entire societies. It is the synchronisation of activities that affects cognition for strategic gain, operating in the grey zone between peace and war.
At the Chanakya Defence Dialogue 2025, Anshuman Tripathi captured this shift succinctly: “Warfare is all about technology. What’s the latest disruption? The latest disruption is that now your mind is the battlefield.” His framing aligns with the global consensus that cognitive warfare represents the next evolutionary stage after cyber warfare — one in which technological power is used to manipulate human judgement itself. For India, the world’s largest democracy and a rising digital superpower, the cognitive domain has become an indispensable new front.
India’s Strategic Context: A Landscape Ripe for Cognitive Operations
Simultaneous and layered challenges characterise India’s security environment. It faces persistent border tensions with China, ongoing instability and proxy warfare dynamics with Pakistan, and domestic socio-political contests that provide ample material for adversarial manipulation. These dynamics provide adversaries with numerous openings for perception management, narrative warfare and destabilising disinformation campaigns.
Cognitive warfare is designed to exploit societal divisions and magnify existing fault lines. External actors can amplify polarised narratives, undermine trust in institutions and mobilise segments of society against each other. Securing the cognitive domain, therefore, becomes essential to preserving democratic stability, social harmony and political legitimacy
Operation Sindoor illustrates this reality. While India was using electronic deception to draw out adversary air defences, external actors were attempting to exploit the information ecosystem, not only fabricating narratives about India’s military performance to manipulate international opinion. Such incidents underline the need for India to prioritise cognitive resilience and develop robust counter-narrative capabilities.
A Vast and Diverse Information Ecosystem
India operates one of the world’s largest and most heterogeneous digital ecosystems, with over a billion mobile users and hundreds of millions engaged on social media platforms. This scale ensures rapid information diffusion but also creates fertile ground for disinformation, polarisation and large-scale manipulation. Tripathi warns that this environment introduces serious vulnerabilities, emphasising the need to understand “the weaknesses which are being exploited by the algorithms of today.” Because much of the digital infrastructure is controlled by private or foreign firms, India’s information space is shaped by opaque, profit-driven algorithms that can be unintentionally or deliberately exploited.
Technological Intermediation of Cognition
The increasing centrality of AI, search engines and digital platforms in shaping public knowledge has intensified cognitive vulnerabilities. Tripathi points out the fundamental issue at stake when he states, “AI does not differentiate between proof and fiction… AI works on maps, not on the territory.” This probabilistic nature of AI-driven information flow allows adversaries to create synthetic consensus, spread falsehoods with legitimacy and confuse decision-making processes in both civilian and military domains. These weaknesses make India particularly susceptible to influence operations that exploit AI’s inability to verify truth.
Why Cognitive Warfare is a Strategic Imperative for India
Protecting National Cohesion: Cognitive warfare is designed to exploit societal divisions and magnify existing fault lines. India’s immense diversity — religious, linguistic, ethnic and cultural — makes national cohesion particularly vulnerable to targeted manipulation. External actors can amplify polarised narratives, undermine trust in institutions and mobilise segments of society against each other. Securing the cognitive domain, therefore, becomes essential to preserving democratic stability, social harmony and political legitimacy.
Securing Military Decision-Making and Operational Integrity: Tripathi’s remarks on Operation Sindoor demonstrate how easily adversaries and even automated systems can propagate false military narratives. His observation that search engines and AI platforms mistakenly report the loss of Indian fighter jets highlights how misinformation can distort battlefield assessments, influence public sentiment and mislead policymakers. Ensuring the integrity of military reporting and operational secrecy requires that India develop sophisticated counter-cognitive strategies to detect and neutralise such distortions.
Safeguarding Strategic Autonomy in a Digital World: India’s growing geopolitical responsibilities require the preservation of strategic autonomy, yet its digital ecosystem remains heavily dependent on foreign platforms and architectures. Tripathi’s reminder that every major power maintains its own search engines and digital infrastructures underscores the strategic disadvantage of relying on external systems infused with geopolitical or ideological biases. Achieving cognitive sovereignty requires indigenous platforms, independent AI models and national data governance frameworks that insulate India’s information space from external manipulation.
Preparing for AI-Accelerated Influence Operations: The proliferation of deepfakes, automated propaganda and AI-driven recommendation systems allows adversaries to conduct influence operations at unprecedented speed and scale. Tripathi argues that preparedness requires an understanding of “the weaknesses of our adversary that we can exploit” while simultaneously addressing our own vulnerabilities. This two-fold necessity — building defensive resilience while developing offensive cognitive capabilities — must be integrated into India’s strategic planning and national security doctrine.
India operates one of the world’s largest and most heterogeneous digital ecosystems, with over a billion mobile users and hundreds of millions engaged on social media platforms. This scale ensures rapid information diffusion but also creates fertile ground for disinformation, polarisation and large-scale manipulation
Operation Sindoor and the Lessons for Cognitive Strategy
Operation Sindoor offers a compelling illustration of cognitive warfare’s strategic power. By deploying unmanned aircraft to deceive adversary air defence systems, India created electronic signatures convincing enough to force adversaries to reveal defensive positions. The operation’s success was amplified when adversary sources themselves propagated false claims of having downed Indian aircraft, inadvertently spreading disinformation that India could later challenge on evidentiary grounds.
This was primarily due to the ability of the Indian Air Force to spoof signals. Electronic signatures heavily influence how modern air engagements are interpreted, and they can easily create misleading impressions. Pilotless aircraft, decoys and electronic warfare pods can imitate the radar cross-section, datalink patterns and emission profiles of advanced fighters such as the Rafale. Because these signatures are electronic rather than visual confirmations, they are vulnerable to spoofing. When unmanned systems broadcast such profiles or fly trajectories resembling high-end jets, an adversary’s ELINT systems may genuinely believe they are tracking sophisticated aircraft that were never actually present.
This distortion affects perceived outcomes. False radar returns can inflate aircraft numbers, alter the apparent sequence of events, and lead analysts to assume certain platforms entered combat or were threatened. In the speed of an engagement, when commanders rely on radar logs and ELINT summaries, deceptive signatures can create the illusion of tactical successes or losses that did not occur. Once these impressions enter initial intelligence assessments, they can persist.
International propagation amplifies the effect. Foreign governments often depend on shared or indirect ELINT, so spoofed signatures can appear in their reports as well. When a senior allied officer — such as a French general — suggests that “evidence points to” a particular scenario, that conclusion may rest on electronic indicators shaped by deception. When the United States includes such remarks in its own assessments, the interpretation gains global credibility.
India’s growing geopolitical responsibilities need preservation of strategic autonomy, yet its digital ecosystem is heavily dependent on foreign platforms and architectures. Achieving cognitive sovereignty requires indigenous platforms, independent AI models and national data governance frameworks that insulate India’s information space from external manipulation
Media and diplomatic channels then reinforce these early evaluations. As major powers echo them, the narrative solidifies, creating an international perception — such as Pakistan appearing more successful — based largely on electronically manipulated signatures rather than the actual composition or outcome of the engagement.
As Tripathi points out: “We were so convincing that they went chest-thumping to say they downed so many Indian planes… Where is the proof?” This episode demonstrates how cognitive control — manipulating perceptions and shaping narratives — can yield significant strategic advantages without resorting to escalation. Here, India played the cognitive warfare very well.
It also reveals the inherent instability of disinformation-based strategies, which can entrap adversaries within their own manufactured narratives.
Building National Preparedness: Policy and Institutional Imperatives
A National Cognitive Security Strategy: To address the multidimensional nature of cognitive warfare, India requires a comprehensive strategy. This framework should integrate the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Home Affairs, MEITY, intelligence agencies, academic institutions and civil society organisations. Such coordination would allow India to synchronise counter-disinformation efforts, strengthen psychological operations and ensure that narrative security becomes a core aspect of national security planning.
Indigenous Cognitive Technologies: Tripathi’s description of India as a “software superpower” highlights the country’s potential to develop advanced cognitive defence technologies. Indigenous large language models, secure domestic social platforms and real-time misinformation detection tools would help insulate the country’s cognitive space from external influence. By investing in research and development in these domains, India can ensure that its digital landscape reflects national interests rather than foreign priorities.
India requires a comprehensive strategy to address the multidimensional nature of cognitive warfare. As a ‘software superpower’, the country has the potential to develop advanced cognitive defence technologies. The framework should integrate the ministries of defence and home affairs, MEITY, intelligence agencies, academic institutions and civil society organisations
Military Cognitive Warfare Units: The Indian Armed Forces must incorporate cognitive warfare into doctrinal thinking, training and capability development. Specialised units focused on information psychology, digital deception, AI exploitation and adversarial cognition analysis would allow India to anticipate and neutralise cognitive threats. Such units can also support offensive operations that shape adversary decision-making and strategic perception.
Public Awareness: At the societal level, a culture of cognitive resilience is essential. Tripathi’s concluding advice — “check, cross-check, double-check” — captures the need for public literacy in discerning truth from manipulation. National programmes promoting media literacy, critical thinking and digital hygiene would strengthen India’s collective immunity against disinformation and psychological manipulation.
Conclusion: The Mind as Strategic Terrain
Tripathi’s central point — that cognitive warfare represents the newest and most consequential domain of conflict — is both timely and urgent. Protecting the battlefield of the mind requires a sustained, coordinated national effort. India has already demonstrated cognitive competence in operations such as Sindoor, but isolated successes must evolve into institutionalised readiness. In the years ahead, the countries that master cognitive warfare will shape global narratives, regional stability and international power structures.
For India, preparing for cognitive warfare is not merely an optional extension of national security — it is a fundamental requirement for preserving sovereignty, democratic stability and strategic autonomy in an increasingly contested cognitive age.
–The writer is a globally cited defence analyst based in New Zealand. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
