Cognitive warfare is a contested, and somewhat controversial concept. It involves activities employed by states and non-state actors who seek to gain an advantage over their adversaries by ‘influencing, protecting, and/or disrupting individual and group cognitions’, all while remaining firmly in the ‘grey zone’ and not crossing the threshold of war. Russia’s use of social media and artificial intelligence (AI) for mass disinformation campaigns, for instance, is often raised as a contemporary example of cognitive warfare in action.

Rapid advancements in technology and the weaponisation of data are constantly changing the landscape of this specific form of grey zone activity, thereby allowing hostile actors to exploit the ambiguity of the space between war and peace to achieve incremental advantage. How to defend against such an exploitation is thus an urgent societal question. But whilst a lot of attention is often paid to AI and military investments in emerging technologies, less is paid to building societal resilience against cognitive warfare strategies that can be enhanced by the hostile exploitation of digital consumer technologies (DCTs).  

Consequently, many questions remain about the development, regulation and adoption of DCTs, and how they may account for (or threaten) individual and collective cognitive resilience against information operations, whether conducted by actors abroad or at home.  

This Seed grant project supports an interdisciplinary approach to examining societal resilience against the targeting and exploitation of (emerging) DCTs by hostile actors engaging in cognitive warfare and information operations. The consortium aims to to develop a stronger understanding of how contemporary DCTs and their precursors are—and have historically been—exploited by state and non-state actors to conduct cognitive warfare activities. The seed grant will help the consortium develop their research agenda and build collaborations across Dutch institutions, in view of larger, global collaborations.  

 
Project team

• Samuël Kruizinga (Faculty of Humanities) 
• Line Kuppens (Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences) 
• Jonathan Kwik (Faculty of Law / Asser Institute) 
• Carl Emilio Lewis (Faculty of Law / Asser Institute) 
• Peter Pijpers (Faculty of Law) 
• Marco Wyss (Lancaster University)