Why Is Israel Failing to Counter Cognitive Warfare?

Modern wars are no longer decided solely on the battlefield, nor are their outcomes measured only by the number of missiles fired, aircraft shot down, or electronic systems compromised. An increasing part of contemporary conflict has moved into a more complex and less visible arena: human perception, trust, and the ability to distinguish between fact and manipulation.

In this arena, contemporary operations do not merely target the information audiences receive. They also target how people interpret that information, whom they trust, and their ability to make decisions based on it. The objective, therefore, is not always to persuade an audience to accept a particular narrative. It may instead be to encourage people to doubt all narratives, overwhelm them with contradictory information, or provoke fear and anger to the point where calm judgment becomes increasingly difficult.

A series of operations attributed to Iran, Russia, and China, alongside the influence tools employed by other states, illustrates this transformation in the nature of conflict. Cyberattacks, fake accounts, fabricated news stories, psychological threats, and political and media influence operations are no longer necessarily separate activities. They can function as components of a single system aimed at shaping the environment in which public opinion is formed and decisions are made.

The Iranian operation associated with the 2024 Paris Olympics provides a telling example. A French company operating digital displays was reportedly compromised in an attempt to use the screens to display material attacking the participation of Israeli athletes. A fabricated news story was also published on a French media platform, while Israeli athletes and people close to them received threats in the name of a fictitious French far-right group.

The activity did not stop there. According to the study's findings, the same group used different identities to contact the families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, apparently in an effort to increase psychological pressure. U.S. and Israeli security authorities attributed these activities to the Iranian group Emennet Pasargad, which also used multiple names and fronts to conceal the source of its operations.

The significance of these incidents lies not in each event individually, but in the way they can work together. Cyber intrusion, information manipulation, impersonation, and psychological intimidation can form interconnected elements of a single operation whose objective is not necessarily to establish a particular narrative, but to influence the audience's state of mind, undermine trust in information sources, and affect its ability to judge and make decisions.

From Disinformation to Cognitive Warfare

This is where the distinction between traditional disinformation and the broader concept of cognitive warfare becomes important.

When false information circulates, the conventional response is to verify it, provide the relevant facts, correct the falsehood, and identify reliable sources. These tools remain essential, but they are insufficient when the objective of an operation goes beyond spreading a specific false claim.

Cognitive warfare does not necessarily require an audience to believe a falsehood. Its success may lie in making people lose trust in information altogether, question the institutions that produce it, or conclude that the truth itself has become impossible to establish. It can also achieve its objectives by flooding the public sphere with contradictory content, provoking emotional reactions, and transforming the assessment of evidence into a struggle over identities and political positions.

A study commissioned by NATO's Allied Command Transformation treated cognitive warfare as a domain of conflict alongside land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. It defined it as the exploitation of human cognition to disrupt, undermine, influence, or alter decision-making.

Seen from this perspective, the Iranian operation surrounding the Paris Olympics takes on a different significance. The threats directed at athletes and their families did not necessarily need to establish a particular political claim in order to have an effect. It was enough to generate fear and suggest that danger could reach individuals even in places presumed to be safe, including an international sporting event.

Traditional journalistic fact-checking therefore becomes insufficient on its own. The problem is no longer simply a false story that can be debunked, but a psychological and cognitive condition that the operation seeks to create.

When Manufacturing Illusions Becomes Part of the Operation

One of the most dangerous characteristics of cognitive warfare is its ability to manufacture the appearance of authenticity.

Audiences may encounter an account that appears independent, a political group that appears genuine, or a news story published on a seemingly credible platform, while all of these elements may in fact be part of a coordinated operation conducted by another actor.

In the operation associated with the Paris Olympics, individuals and groups appeared to be independent while actually forming part of a coordinated activity. The purpose of this approach is not merely to distribute particular content, but to conceal the identity of the real actor behind it.

This is central to understanding cognitive warfare. When citizens cannot determine whether they are dealing with an independent journalist, a genuine activist, a political organization, or an account operated by a foreign entity, the damage extends beyond the specific information being contested. The result may be a broader erosion of trust in the information environment itself.

This is also what distinguishes traditional disinformation from cognitive warfare in terms of their objectives. Disinformation generally seeks to push an audience toward a false belief, whereas cognitive warfare may seek to undermine the very trust that makes it possible to assess whether information is true.

Five Different Functions, Not One

If the nature of the attack has changed, the way states organize their defenses must change as well.

The problem is that governments may treat all forms of communication and influence as a single function, despite significant differences in their objectives, audiences, tools, and legal constraints.

At least five distinct functions can be identified in this context: public affairs and media relations; public diplomacy; strategic communication; psychological influence operations; and the protection of the domestic information environment against foreign interference.

Public affairs engages journalists and the public through official channels and is primarily judged by accuracy and clarity. Public diplomacy, by contrast, seeks to build relationships and trust with foreign audiences over longer periods. Strategic communication seeks to ensure a degree of coherence between what state institutions do and what they communicate.

Psychological and military influence operations are different in both nature and purpose, as they seek to influence the behavior of an adversarial audience. Protecting society from foreign interference, meanwhile, requires the detection and exposure of manipulation and the strengthening of the public's ability to recognize it.

The distinction between these functions is not merely administrative. It also concerns the legal authorities and professional standards governing each one. Bringing them together under a single institutional umbrella can therefore weaken rather than strengthen them.

This is where the Israeli concept of hasbara becomes problematic. It has increasingly served as a broad umbrella encompassing highly different tasks, some of which require institutions, expertise, and legal authorities that cannot easily be concentrated within a single body.

Iran, Russia, and China: Different Strategies

A comparison of different cases shows that cognitive warfare is not a single model. States employ different tools according to their objectives and capabilities.

Iran appears, according to the study, to have developed the broadest combination of operational layers. It uses cyberattacks, fabricated identities and accounts, media manipulation, threats, and psychological pressure, allowing technological, media, and psychological tools to be integrated into a single operation.

Russia, by contrast, appears more focused on undermining trust in institutions and information itself. Its associated methods have included the creation of imitation news outlets, the production of fabricated videos, and the use of networks of influencers and platforms to distribute coordinated content.

In this model, the objective is not necessarily to persuade audiences to embrace a coherent Russian narrative. It may instead be to weaken confidence in political and media institutions and in the possibility of establishing a shared version of reality.

China presents a different case. According to the study, its targeting of Israel is not always an end in itself, but often forms part of a broader competition with the United States. This takes place through state media, covert networks, and social media platforms, as well as through efforts to shape the environment in which audiences encounter information.

Here, controlling the information environment may matter more than producing the message itself. Influence does not necessarily require a state to author every hostile message. It may be enough to shape the conditions that determine which messages spread and which disappear.

Qatar, meanwhile, relies on a different set of instruments centered more heavily on soft power, public diplomacy, media, and sustained relationships with institutions and elites. This case demonstrates that influence over the information environment does not necessarily require cyberattacks or covert operations. It can also be built through relationships, networks, resources, and cultural and media influence.

Artificial Intelligence Is Lowering the Cost of Disinformation

Generative artificial intelligence adds another layer of complexity to this environment.

The creation of fabricated identities, multilingual content, and synthetic audio and visual material has become faster and less expensive. This development lowers the barriers for actors seeking to conduct large-scale influence operations and makes it possible to produce vast amounts of content in a short period.

This does not mean that every piece of AI-generated content constitutes disinformation, nor that the information environment has become entirely unreliable. But technological advances are changing the balance between content production and verification.

The challenge may therefore lie not simply in the ability to produce a convincing falsehood, but in the speed with which it can spread—potentially faster than institutions can verify it and respond.

This gives a relative advantage to actors that build monitoring, analytical, and response capabilities in advance, rather than those that wait for an operation to occur before attempting to identify its source and determine how to counter it.

Why Is Israel Approaching the Problem Too Narrowly?

The study locates the core of Israel's problem primarily in its institutional structure, rather than in a lack of expertise or resources.

Israel addresses a significant portion of these issues through the concept of hasbara, which has become a broad framework encompassing multiple functions, despite their fundamentally different characteristics.

The same institution, for example, cannot realistically be expected to manage relations with foreign governments, counter Iranian influence operations, protect the Israeli public from foreign interference, and engage with skeptical international academic and media environments. These are different tasks and therefore require different forms of expertise, legal frameworks, and coordination mechanisms.

The problem is particularly visible in the operation surrounding the Paris Olympics. There was a clear authority responsible for the cyber dimension, but no single body responsible for the remaining elements of the operation, from psychological threats and fabricated news to the broader strategic framework of the response.

In other words, the operation targeted several layers simultaneously, while Israel had a clearly established structure for dealing with only one of them.

The Israeli government has attempted to address part of the problem by increasing resources for public diplomacy, reorganizing the field, and appointing new leadership. Yet increased funding does not necessarily resolve an institutional problem if authority remains dispersed among multiple bodies without a central mechanism capable of effectively coordinating them.

The issue, therefore, is not necessarily the amount of money available, but how resources are transformed into an integrated system capable of detecting an operation, determining its nature, assigning responsibilities, and responding in time.

Between Protecting Society and the Risk of a "Ministry of Truth"

Building a system to protect society from foreign manipulation raises a highly sensitive democratic question: how can such capabilities be prevented from becoming tools for monitoring citizens or controlling the public sphere?

The answer proposed by the study rests on institutional separation and strict legal safeguards.

The body responsible for detecting foreign interference should not be tasked with monitoring citizens or silencing dissenting views. Its role should be to identify and expose foreign operations. It should also operate within clearly defined legal boundaries, rely on open sources, and remain subject to independent legal and scientific oversight.

This separation is particularly important because the fusion of functions can produce precisely the outcome these safeguards are intended to prevent. If the same institution is responsible for defending the state's image abroad, influencing audiences at home, and monitoring hostile actors, the boundaries between official communication, political influence, and security activity can become blurred.

Institutional separation, therefore, is not merely a bureaucratic arrangement. It is one of the essential safeguards for protecting the public sphere and preventing mechanisms designed to counter foreign interference from becoming instruments of domestic control.

The Problem Is Not the Message, but the Environment That Receives It

These cases demonstrate that the new information war is no longer simply about the traditional question: Who has the stronger narrative?

The more important question is: Who can influence the environment in which narratives are formed and the conditions under which audiences make decisions?

A state may successfully debunk a false story, yet face a larger problem if the public has lost trust in all sources. It may shut down a fabricated account, only to see dozens of new ones emerge. It may provide accurate and well-documented information, yet have limited impact if audiences have already moved into a different information environment shaped by other platforms, algorithms, and channels.

This is why confronting cognitive warfare cannot be reduced to public relations, media campaigns, or the production of counter-messages. It requires a system capable of detecting foreign operations, analyzing their networks, understanding their objectives, and responding rapidly—while simultaneously maintaining the legal and political boundaries that protect the public sphere.

The Message Alone Is Not Enough

In light of this, the Israeli problem, as presented in the study, appears to have less to do with a shortage of messages and more to do with how the state organizes the capabilities that produce those messages and confront its adversaries.

Israel's adversaries increasingly treat the information environment as an interconnected system. An operation can begin with a cyber intrusion, move to the dissemination of a fabricated story, proceed to the impersonation of a political group, escalate into threats against individuals, and then use social media to amplify the psychological impact.

When the institutions responding to such an operation treat each link as a separate issue, the response becomes fragmented by design.

This is the central paradox: in a conflict that targets trust, perception, and the ability to make decisions, possessing the "right message" may not be enough.

The battle begins before the message itself. It begins when an individual asks: Who is providing me with this information? Do I trust them? Is what I am seeing real? And can I distinguish an independent voice from one designed to appear independent?

From this perspective, cognitive warfare does not merely target what people believe. It targets the mechanisms through which they arrive at what they believe.

And this is precisely where technological superiority and abundant resources may prove insufficient. A state that cannot understand the nature of the conflict, distribute responsibilities accordingly, and maintain clear boundaries between communication, influence, and defense may find itself confronting adversaries that are not merely trying to change the narrative, but to change the environment in which the narrative itself is produced.