Col. (Ret.) Guy Itzhaki, former Chief of the Consciousness Department, IDF, and ICT Fellow sheds…
Col. (Ret.) Guy Itzhaki, former Chief of the Consciousness Department, IDF, and ICT Fellow sheds light on Cognitive Warfare in the “Swords of Iron” Era and how Israel must fight this battlefield:
Alongside kinetic operations, adversaries led by Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah conducted a sophisticated cognitive campaign targeting public trust, social cohesion, and state legitimacy. Advanced tools — AI-generated media, automated persuasion, chatbots, and coordinated bot networks — enabled real-time narrative dominance, emotional amplification, and the spread of unverified claims long before facts could stabilize the information space.
This exposed a structural vulnerability: centralized, slow-moving public diplomacy struggling against decentralized, agile influence networks, while internal political and social divisions were actively exploited. The lesson is clear: cognitive warfare must be treated as a top-tier strategic domain.
Israel needs a national cognitive architecture — including an empowered Cognitive and Influence Authority, early-warning systems for hostile narratives, and systematic investment in societal cognitive resilience through media literacy and unifying narratives.
Within the defense establishment, it must be recognized as an operational domain, embedded into planning, doctrine, and assessment, and supported by dedicated professional tracks and rapid-response cognitive task forces operating under clear ethical boundaries.
In an era where every citizen carries a broadcast device and every local event can become a global cognitive weapon within minutes, perception and public trust have become decisive battlegrounds.