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Analysis of the American operation ‘Absolute Resolve’ targeting president Nicolas Maduro shows that cognitive warfare and economic warfare are intertwined but not identical. Cognitive warfare is the offensive use of rhetoric, based on sourced information, to frame the legitimacy of an intervention or to challenge it. Cognitive warfare is a sub-field of information warfare: an offensive use of rhetoric and knowledge, distinct from disinformation. A key precedent is Willy Münzenberg’s action after the Reichstag fire: mock trials undermined the Nazi accusation. The legitimacy of the term “war” is debated; the etymology werra (disorder, disagreement) supports its use. Two priorities then emerge: building a memory of cognitive confrontations and formalising offensive and defensive strategies.
This document presents a bibliometric analysis of a corpus of 187 recent bibliographic sources dedicated to cognitive warfare. By applying an automated semantic classification based on Hoffman’s analytical framework, we identified structural trends in the field of publication. The results show a marked predominance of the informational approach (44.1%) over neuroscientific aspects (14.4%), while revealing an emergence of resilience strategies (16.6%) in recent years. These data suggest that the conceptual domain of cognitive warfare is undergoing a doctrinal transition, moving from theory to defensive operationalization, enabled in part by the reduction of the complexity of the problem to a primarily informational dimension.
Cognitive warfare aims at shaping the adversary’s thinking by altering mental representations. In this context, concealment is not merely a tactical option but a structural feature of cognitive action. Operating at every stage of the cognitive chain - from raw data to actionable knowledge - it enables the attacker to remain invisible while manipulating the target’s interpretive processes. This article analyzes cognitive concealment mechanisms through a systemic lens: information overload, strategist invisibility, indirect action through mediating agents, classical forms of ruse such as Greek mètis, and modern doctrines like maskirovka. The study models the strategic and psychological impacts of concealment, with emphasis on ethical and doctrinal implications.
