The United States military commands supremacy across land, sea, air, and space. Yet, in cognitive warfare to foreign audiences, we are outspent, out-gunned, and out-maneuvered by adversaries aggressively using propaganda and information manipulation to further their objectives and undermine American global influence without legal or ethical boundaries.
PSC on the Hill
Mar 25, 2026
With lower operating costs, adversaries gain cognitive advantages that undermine America’s national interests abroad, portraying the U.S. as a weaker partner of choice. This affects American influence and global status, costing the U.S. economically with restricted access to mining,oil, and gas resources; and inhibiting military access, basing, and overflight in strategic locations around the world.
Effective cognitive warfare is crucial to U.S. military warfighting and strategy, and Combatant Commanders consistently request greater investment.
Information transcends borders and cultural boundaries, amplifying the effects of U.S. power. The Administration’s strategic communication approach illustrates how the information element of national power can be maximized within the DIME framework of power projection — Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic.
By employing cognitive warfare as a primary tool, the information element can enhance the effects of diplomatic, military, and economic power.
Adversary propaganda from nations such as China, Russia, and Iran presents significant challenges to our efforts to advance American objectives overseas, particularly concerning Administration policy priorities.
Examples include:
- Iranian media and BotNets shape narratives around U.S. actions in Yemen, emphasizing civilian casualties and conducting personal attacks against POTUS. Sources from Iranian, Russian, Chinese, and Axis of Resistance media have framed POTUS as responsible for genocide in Gaza.
- Iranian media portrays U.S. energy policies as aggressive and destabilizing, particularly in the context of sanctions and military actions in the Middle East.
- Coordinated Chinese media campaigns criticize U.S. tariffs, portraying them as harmful to global economic stability, and target U.S. control over strategic waterways, which are vital for global trade and military operations. Chinese media frequently criticizes U.S. naval activities in the South China Sea, portraying them as threats to regional stability.
What to do about it: Maximizing U.S. Cognitive Warfare Efforts
1. Streamlined approval processes
In 2018, the U.S. issued an offensive cyber operations strategy and policy that reduced decision cycles from months to says – a similar approach is needed for cognitive warfare operations, including integrated interagency approval mechanisms, coordinated by the NSC, to eliminate delays for time-sensitive operations. A Campaign-Level Authorization Model would develop strategic pre-approvals, granting tactical flexibility within established guidelines that are aligned with the White House, OSD, and State Department policy.
2. Disciplined messaging leveraging commercially available capabilities
As part of DoD’s reform, we must reduce costs and promote efficiencies through modern technologies, integrating AI-powered analytical tools, data driven solutions, assessment mechanisms, and multi-platform dissemination. We must leverage American innovation, and Peraton’s experience building, testing, and deploying the Integrative Realtime Information System, or IRIS, shows the potential this approach holds to accelerate the planning and execution of operations in the information environment.
3. Illumination of adversary activity via advanced U.S. technology
Defense Industrial Base (DIB) companies are innovating and integrating technology from world-class partners to identify, assess, plan, and counter adversary foreign influence using automated dashboards to display who is saying what, by country— distinguishing between botnet activity and humans, as well as authentic and inauthentic content.
4. National Security Strategy
Integrating information as a key pillar into the National Security Strategy ensures coherence across diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of power, enabling the U.S. to achieve the President’s vision of peace through strength and safeguarding national interests.
5. Resourcing
Funding information activities is essential to achieving defense objectives in an era where strategic competition increasingly plays out in the information domain. It is imperative that the Department of Defense requests and receives adequate resources to enable the U.S. to conduct effective cognitive warfare to proactively shape global narratives that support defense objectives. Failure to request and provide sufficient funding risks ceding this critical space to adversaries and competitors, thereby empowering them to manipulate the information environment and eroding U.S. national interests around the world.
“In an era where strategic competition is increasingly decided in the cognitive domain, these reforms aren’t supplemental—they are essential to maintaining America’s global leadership and securing our interests in the 21st century.”
