The Invisible War
How Weaponized Information Manipulates Perceptions to Erode Trust—And How You Can Defend Yourself
“Cognitive warfare is now with us. The main challenge is that it is essentially invisible; all you see is its impact, and by then … it is often too late.”
- Bernard Claverie, François du Cluzel; The Cognitive Warfare Concept
The term “information war” or “info war” gets tossed around frequently, including by me, and typically in a manner that assumes the listener or reader has a grasp of what is meant. That’s likely true in most cases, and I know many in my audience are not only familiar with the term—they have workable knowledge of it and its application. But as the intensity of politics and online hysterics is ever-increasing, as the influencer model of news distribution continues to propagate, and as malcontents find amplification in the emotional fray, it is more important than ever for news junkies and those passionate about political issues to have a clear understanding of the battlefield on which they engage.
So with this article, I would like to both provide information and compound knowledge on the subject that will be both practical and useful to you in your everyday navigation and filtering of media.
Note: I did a reading of this article with added commentary in episode #325 of the Just Human Podcast.
Background
The term “information war” was first coined by reporter Dale Minor in his 1970 book, “The Information War: How the Government and the Press Manipulate, Censor, and Distort the News.” (1) The book explores propaganda and the interplay between news media and government influence during the Vietnam War. Its title alone suggests it remains strikingly relevant today.
In 1976, Boeing engineer Thomas P. Rona adapted the term for military operations in an internal white paper titled “Weapon Systems and Information War.” (2) The paper, developed for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), focused on sensors, communications, guidance systems, weapons, their integration, and their disruption. It’s highly technical, jargon-heavy, and filled with graphs and diagrams—the kind of document B movies portray as top-secret files coveted by villains.
The intended audience for the paper, the ONA, was a small but influential think tank within the Defense Department with about 15 staff members, and was tasked with “look[ing] 20 to 30 years into the future” and “develop[ing] and coordinat[ing] net assessments of the standing, trends, and future prospects of U.S. military capabilities and military potential…” as well as those of other nations. (3, 4) Basically, they evaluated militaries around the world and made sure ours was the best, most advanced, and well prepared. During the Cold War, the ONA provided critical evaluations of Soviet capabilities and trends. It also handled lots of contracts...
The term “net assessment” is used to describe the practice of “tackling problems from certain distinctive perspectives that involve skills that can be improved.” It’s something like systems analysis and something like operational analysis, but with a heavy dose of game theory and an orientation towards solving problems that have yet to fully materialize. (5)
When coaches evaluate sports teams or athletes with an eye toward the competitive season ahead, they engage in net assessment.
The ONA was recently shuttered, and its staff reassigned, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (6)
I enjoy reading Rona’s paper as a historical document that illustrates how Boeing and the Pentagon envisioned military engagements unfolding over the next quarter century and what was needed to prepare. More intriguingly, it provides a foundation for exploring cognitive warfare, which I’ll discuss further in this article.
Before diving into cognitive warfare, let’s further develop our understanding of information warfare.
Information Warfare Defined
In military and national security contexts, information warfare, sometimes shorthanded to IW, encompasses intelligence gathering, infrastructure, communications systems, cybersecurity, databases, and more.
A 1996 Brown Commission report described IW as "activities undertaken by governments, groups, or individuals to gain electronic access to information systems in other countries ... as well as activities undertaken to protect against it." (7)
A report by Brian C. Lewis expanded this definition, noting that it involves “the application of destructive force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers and networks that support the four critical infrastructures (the power grid, communications, financial, and transportation).” (8)
These definitions suit military contexts but don’t fully address regular people like you and me—individuals consuming news and navigating online arenas to stay informed on politics and current events.
For such a definition, we turn to this article from the Spring 1995 edition of Airpower Journal:
“Information warfare, in its largest sense, is simply the use of information to achieve our national objectives. Like diplomacy, economic competition, or the use of military force, information in itself is a key aspect of national power and, more importantly, is becoming an increasingly vital national resource that supports diplomacy, economic competition, and the effective employment of military forces. Information warfare in this sense can be seen as societal-level or nation-to-nation conflict waged, in part, through the worldwide internetted and interconnected means of information and communication.
What this means is that information warfare, in its most fundamental sense, is the emerging "theater" in which future nation-against-nation conflict at the strategic level is most likely to occur. Information warfare is also changing the way theater- or operational-level combat and everyday military activities are conducted. Finally, information warfare may be the theater in which "operations other than war" are conducted, especially as it may permit the United States to accomplish some important national security goals without the need for forward-deployed military forces in every corner of the planet. Information warfare, then, may define future warfare or, to put it another way, be the central focus for thinking about conflict in the future. Information warfare, in its essence, is about ideas and epistemology—big words meaning that information warfare is about the way humans think and, more important, the way humans make decisions.
Information warfare is real warfare; it is about using information to create such a mismatch between us and an opponent that, as Sun Tzu would argue, the opponent's strategy is defeated before his first forces can be deployed or his first shots fired.
The target of information warfare, then, is the human mind, especially those minds that make the key decisions of war or peace and, from the military perspective, those minds that make the key decisions on if, when, and how to employ the assets and capabilities embedded in their strategic structures.” (9)
This comprehensive definition, particularly its focus on the human mind, ideas, and epistemology, and how those can work to influence “the minds of key decision makers,” forms the scaffolding for the rest of this article. It correctly positions IW as a key component of Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW). (10, 11)
Here are the features of information warfare:
It is about ideas and epistemology—the way humans think and the way humans make decisions.
The battlespace is your mind.
Uses information to achieve objectives.
Can scale from individual vs. individual to group vs. group to community vs. community, all the way up to nation vs. nation.
Can be the theater or arena in which "operations other than war," i.e., direct kinetic conflict, are conducted.
Fifth Generation Warfare
5GW has become a buzzword in alt media over recent years, primarily thanks to Lt. Gen. Flynn and SGT Boone Cutler’s book The Citizen's Guide to Fifth Generation Warfare. (12) The Citizen’s Guide distills into a more accessible and workbook-like form the earlier work of numerous authors in 2010’s The Handbook of Fifth-Generation Warfare. (13)
The gradients or generations of warfare go as follows (from The Handbook):
1GW: Marked by regimental structure and strict discipline. Noted historians Keegan and van Crevald have attributed this to the advent of firearms, which create a need for more rigorous safety mechanisms.
2GW: In response to 1GW rank-and-file formations, fires (i.e., explosive and kinetic energy delivered by a variety of means, such as artillery) are massed to shatter their cohesion.
3GW: Massed fires are countered by maneuverability.
4GW: Maneuver forces are proved inadequate in the face of an asymmetric adversary who exploits the full breadth of the maneuver space (not only military but also civil) by denying sanctuary to 3GW units.
5GW: Moral and cultural warfare is fought through manipulating perceptions and altering the context by which the world is perceived
4GW is culture-based asymmetrical warfare, leveraging ideologies, religions, and values in kinetic conflicts (e.g., Iran’s proxy terrorist networks).
5GW is perception-based warfare. It is “the deliberate manipulation of an observer’s context in order to achieve a desired outcome.”
To achieve this manipulation, 5GW utilizes media, social engineering, psychology, and various forms of information to alter the targets perception of any given subject—the subject may be the safety of vaccines, the outcome of an election, the finances of a politician, a battle in Ukraine, the shadowy operations of an agency, or the allegiances of the President.
The end goal is to alter the individual’s perceptions of a given subject and manipulate them into acting (or not acting) or adopting (or failing to adopt) a position. It is by its nature ambiguous in its source or presentation but specific in its targeting.
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is essentially a 5GW field operations handbook for Leftists. (14)
Bad information is a key tool in these operations. By bad information I mean misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. In the 5GW sense, it is weaponized or weaponizable information.
You need to be aware of these forms of weaponized information.
Misinformation is false, inaccurate, or misleading information that is spread regardless of the intent to deceive. An adversary’s intent can change misinformation to disinformation.
Disinformation is false or misleading information that is deliberately created or spread with the intent to deceive or mislead.
Malinformation is an adversary’s deliberate use of otherwise verifiable information with malicious intent, such as by amplifying the information selectively or out of context, or to the detriment of specific persons. (15)
Collectively called mis-/dis-/mal-information (or MDM), these are weaponized to manipulate perceptions. I like the term misdismal-information, but I don’t think it has caught on. (I may have made it up)
It’s somewhat recently become quite popular to toss the term 5GW around and apply it as a catchall label for just about anything or to hashtag it in the description box of shows regardless of whether that show actually focuses on 5GW or not.
The term infowar is treated similarly, mostly thanks to the prolific disinformationist and charlatan Alex Jones and his network of sensationalist prats. Their misuse of the term alongside their dissemination of bad information has debased its meaning and function, reducing it to a slang term of little value.
This article aims to restore their value with clear, practical insights.
Cognitive Warfare and You
In 5GW, the battlefield is not far away on another continent, in a country you’ll never visit. It is not necessarily even a physical space.
The battlefield is YOU. It’s in your mind.
This type of warfare distorts and disrupts understandings, it insidiously subverts and manipulates, it undermines and contorts information and knowledge—even well established knowledge and truths. That is what makes it cognitive warfare.
“Cognitive Warfare exploits the innate vulnerabilities of the human mind because of the way it is designed to process information, which have always been exploited in warfare, of course. However, due to the speed and pervasiveness of technology and information, the human mind is no longer able to process the flow of information. Where CW differs from propaganda is in the fact that everyone participates, mostly inadvertently, to information processing and knowledge formation in an unprecedented way. This is a subtle but significant change. While individuals were passively submitted to propaganda, they now actively contribute to it.” (16)
You may not seek out cognitive warfare, but it targets you.
In cognitive warfare, a person who has been substantially misinformed is not merely at risk of being mistaken or appearing foolish—they are at risk of being weaponized.
The trolls in the comments, the sarcastic posts, the baiting questions, the fake news headlines, the misleading pull quotes from articles, these are like drive-by assaults or guerilla attacks on your perception of information, of reality.
These cognitive conflicts—between memes, speculation, facts, and reality—are not mere thought exercises or games to see who can be the most pithy contrarian in the comments. They are critical engagements in an information war that none of us can escape.
This is where memes so often outpace evidence and reason. This is where, while the truth is still being gathered, half-baked memes and hot takes that are lacking or even entirely absent of facts will spread and take hold in people’s minds.
That’s the mis-/dis-/mal-information delivery zone. That is where pieces of information are weaponized, where you are weaponized.
Remember the Rona white paper that was made for the ONA? Here’s a small section from it that illustrates the point I am making here.
Where you see the term “interference,” think mis-/dis-/mal-information—false or misleading content weaponized to disrupt.
Where you see “information link,” think your mind, the battlefield where perceptions are shaped.
Weaponized information leads people to adopt erroneous beliefs and flawed understandings. When confronted with conflicting information—such as reality, evidence, or disclosures—individuals face a choice: adjust their beliefs, refine their understandings, or reject the facts before them.
In that turmoil, faith erodes, and trust degrades.
That is what victory manifests as in a cognitive war.
And by the time the investigations are complete and made available for all to consider, by the time the truth is fully disclosed, it’s often too late. The battle for truth was lost in the initial skirmish; half-truths and outright lies have not only taken territory—they’ve built fortifications on that territory.
Why does this matter to you?
Because these mental intrusions have real-world consequences.
Example:
Mis-/dis-/mal-information re: Trayvon Martin in 2012, then re: Michael Brown in 2013, led to the Black Lives Matter movement. Seven years later, mis-/dis-/mal-information re: George Floyd rapidly disseminated online during the lockdowns and the result was the 2020 Summer Riots across.
2,000 plus American cities and towns, billions of dollars in damage, almost two dozen deaths, over 2,000 injuries to law enforcement, and over 14,000 arrests.
“Cognitive warfare is now with us. The main challenge is that it is essentially invisible; all you see is its impact, and by then … it is often too late.”
- Bernard Claverie, François du Cluzel; The Cognitive Warfare Concept
Let’s consider a recent series of engagements that evolved rapidly, lasted for days online and managed not only to make headlines—it got world leaders to respond. It’s also one that isn’t over and to some extent never will be.
The Jeffrey Epstein Issue.
In May of 2025 FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino made this post on X.
I wrote about it here.
The reaction to the Bongino post was prologue to the outrage of recent days.
The Trump Admin’s handling of the “Epstein files”, the DOJ/FBI review memo, the prison videos, and Trump’s comments, have caused a hellacious firestorm online.
What transpired in reaction to these things was a malign influence operation, one that was mostly self-actuating—meaning there was no centralized organizer or figure, it was a constellation of networks and online influencers using their poorly informed but emotionally charged audiences reacting to what they perceived as the Trump Administration failing them.
Trust—trust in FBI Director Kash Patel, in AG Pam Bondi, and in President Trump—was the target.
Trust is always the target.
Influencers, personalities, and politicians, using the mis-/dis-/mal-information re: Epstein that had long been programmed into the minds of many, exploited that programming for maximum effect. They assigned blame, called for resignations, issued ultimatums. Their audiences, with perceptions shaped by this information, were weaponized.
This coordinated assault was effective, impacting even the nation’s top law enforcement officer and prompting the President to respond.
What people “know” that “isn’t so.”
The perceived lack of disclosure is only a small part of why people are troubled by the Epstein issue.
What bothers them most is first, a sense of inadequate justice and accountability; and second, the friction between what they believe they know grating against what is so, what is evidenced as true.
This is key.
What they know that isn't so ensures that no amount of disclosure, no measure of accountability, and no pursuit of justice will ever satisfy them.
That is the public-facing hard problem that Trump, Bondi, and Kash are confronting re: Epstein and a number of other issues.
This gap between what people believe they know and what evidence shows is exploitable.
Malign operators and low-integrity grifters exploit this gap for obvious purposes: to manipulate perceptions, erode trust, protect swampy friends, and generate clicks/views.
Defending Yourself
Since this a war for your mind, you are naturally placed in a defensive position.
You must defend yourself—you must guard your mind.
Fortunately, this is not nearly as complicated as the Weapon Systems and Information War white paper or the The Handbook of Fifth-Generation Warfare might lead you to imagine. You don’t need special equipment or tools—you need skills and practices. Do not underestimate the effort, difficulty or time involved, though. These are things you will need to put into practice, that you will train and continuously improve.
Your defensive to-do list can be bullet pointed.
Awareness.
Be aware at all times that your mind is targeted. By advertisers, influencers, commenters, bots, news channels, etc.
Be aware of your own cognitive biases, your own premature conclusions, your own emotions.
Meditation, journaling or simply noting your thoughts on a subject will help you discover these things within yourself. It will also help slow down your trained reactions. In some battles, you want to speed things up, but in this type of warfare you want to slow down.
As G.I. Joe famously told us:
Understanding > Reacting
Ask yourself if you are seeking to understand or to respond? Are you processing information or are you reacting to it? If the former, ask is the information credible, is it useful? If the latter, consider if are you being manipulated into that reaction?
Use the OODA Loop
Map your sources of information and assess them for biases and credibility.
Curate your social media.
Follow good sources and unfollow poor ones
Mute/Block as needed
Cross reference EVERYTHING. Three sources is a good rule.
Accuracy > Speed. There’s no prize for being first, but wrong. (Well, clickbaiters who put BREAKING at the begining of every post would disagree, but you unfollowed them, right?)
Practice Critical Thinking over and over again.
Be willing to change your thinking, your views, your conclusions.
Don’t consider it being wrong, or being fooled (though we all have been and will be in the future). Consider it taking feedback from reality. When you go from mistaken to corrected, you are not wrong—you are improving.
The aim is to be a clear thinking contarian. (video)
Thank you for reading. Please let me know your thoughts on this subject in the comments.
By the way, if you enjoyed this article, I did a reading of it with added commentary in episode #325 of the Just Human Podcast.
Citations:
1. The Information War Hardcover—January 1, 1970
2. Weapon Systems and Information War—July 1, 1976
3. Inside The Pentagon’s Idea Factory—March 10, 2009
4. DoD Directive 5111.11—December 23, 2009
5. Net Assessment: A Practical Guide—2006
6. Hegseth ‘disestablishing’ Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon’s strategic analysis specialists—March 13, 2025
8. Information Warfare by Brian C. Lewis
9. Information Warfare by Prof George J. Stein, AWC, Airpower Journal, Spring 1995
10. An Introduction to Fifth Generation Warfare, Grey Dynamics—March 2022
11. Video: An Introduction to Fifth Generation Warfare by Just Human
12. The Citizen's Guide to Fifth Generation Warfare by Flynn, Cutler—December 2022
13. The Handbook of Fifth-Generation Warfare by numerous authors, edited by Daniel H. Abbott—2010
14. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky—1971
Cognitive Warfare—2020
Just Human threads used for this article:
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Note: In the 1960's, the KGB did some fascinating psychological experiments. They learned that if you bombard human subjects with fear and/or propaganda messages non-stop, in two months or less most subjects are completely brainwashed to believe the false messages. To the point that No amount of clear information they are shown, to the contrary, can change their mind.
Thank you for the concise post on the elements of information/(perception) warfare. Further support for my own personal determination to leave emotion out of what is broadcast, to wait and see who does what. There are also many diversions in play to keep attention from serious movements in the background. It’s good to be skeptical about everything and always keep questioning at the forefront! Thank you, Just Human! Blessings to you.