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March 11, 2026 — No Comments

AI, ICT infrastructures, and social media in today’s conflicts

By Giulia Saccone - AI, Cyberspace and Space Team

Introduction

The XXI century seems to be characterised by a redefinition of the international security scenario. Warfare is no exception. In this decade, the rapid evolution in the cybersphere, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and disinformation techniques has led a wide range of experts to gradually focus on the impact of these technologies on human decision-making. This has led to the emergence of a new concept: cognitive warfare.

While there is no univocal definition of it, the one provided by NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT), under the input of the Science and Technology Organisation (STO) in 2024 is as follows:

“Cognitive Warfare integrates cyber, information, psychological, and social engineering capabilities. These activities, conducted in synchronisation with other Instruments of Power, can affect attitudes and behavior by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual and group cognition to gain advantage over an adversary.”

According to the 2025 Chief Scientist Research Report, we can classify cognitive warfare as a standalone grey-zone, military and social issue. In this type of conflict, technology is the catalyst for its reach and effectiveness, and is also part of the solution to counteract cognitive campaigns, along with further understanding of the threat actors, information environment, and social implications of the phenomenon. This definition served as a notable input for further studies, but especially as legitimisation of this new warfare domain, allowing the development of a corresponding doctrine, and shifting the focus of psychological operations from the content to its effects.

In understanding cognitive warfare, we must point out the differences with its sibling: information warfare. Information warfare focuses on controlling disinformation and misinformation flows in their various forms, taking advantage of technologies without changing the nature of war. On the contrary, cognitive warfare aims at eliciting a psychological reaction, leveraging both technologies and neuroscience, involving information and activities that can take place online and offline.1 The different focus avoids a misinterpretation of cognitive warfare as “a rebrand of an old concept”, helping us to understand how technology is exploited.

How Cognitive Warfare is conducted

To evoke precise reactions, cognitive warfare triggers pathways that manage cognitive load, such as cognitive biases and heuristics (i.e., predicting outcomes by interpreting data inductively or through analogies), as well as emotional responses2. Taking into account the OODA loop (observe-orient-decide-act), cognitive warfare techniques affect the orientation step: the moment when information is filtered, analysed, and interpreted through prior experiences, analytical and synthetic strategies, and cultural features.

To achieve this, antagonistic actors expose targets to vivid, repetitive, and biased information, distorting heuristic reasoning, especially during uncertain times, causing people to misjudge the likelihood of events based on superficial similarities, neglect objective facts, and make anxious or irrational decisions3. These effects are exacerbated by the anchoring bias: the first-hand exposure to a variable that will condition all the subsequent evaluations.

This bias might appear similar to the priming effect, which has a different outcome. It consists of exposing an individual to the association between a subject and a certain set of characteristics, which, through association mechanisms, profoundly shapes the perception of the subject. This mechanism is effective in manipulating public opinion, since the repeated exposure to the association between a characteristic and a subject leads to an overreaction of the general public against the alleged antagonist, even when the subject does not clearly present that attribute4.

The diffusion of false narratives can also impact the confirmation bias: our tendency to privilege information that confirms our initial beliefs. This is particularly useful in radicalisation processes, which elicit an emotive response on the subject and deepen cognitive divides among groups, eroding social cohesion, which can then be exploited by malign actors against institutions5.

The event that marked the beginning of the exploitation of cognitive warfare, and well exemplifies its functioning, is the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, where Russian forces instrumentalised historical facts, legal ambiguities and exacerbation of political divide through the support of the Russian minority, which was leveraged to erode social cohesion, undermining institutions and confusing public international opinion on the interpretation of the events6. While Russia’s information campaigns are among the most studied examples, cognitive influence operations are conducted by a wide range of state and non-state actors.


Technological enablers of cognitive warfare: AI, ICT infrastructures and cyberattacks to undermine trust

The shift from hybrid to cognitive warfare is enabled by the rising centrality of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures in social processes, and the advent of AI-powered data mining, algorithmic profiling, and deepfakes. In cognitive warfare, ICT infrastructures are deployed as a vector for infodemic campaigns, taking advantage of the rising use of social media as the main source of information.

A fundamental characteristic of ICT infrastructures is the speed and variety of news diffusion. This creates an infodemic environment that gradually weakens cognitive processes through information overload, creating uncertainty and consequential regression to heuristic reasoning ruled by biases. Fake news proliferates on social media, thanks to their algorithm-friendly design, which allows them to be omnipresent and function as an anchoring bias for distorted facts and narratives, molding the perception of the individual who is constantly driven to this cognitive-overloading environment7. Algorithms also help social polarisation and ideological manipulation: a recent study on the algorithm of X has demonstrated that its algorithms boost the engagement of inflammatory posts, expanding the role of social networks from enablers of cognitive warfare to active players8.

Anonymity also plays a role in cognitive load due to the time-consuming practice of verification of facts that increases the cognitive cost-to-scale and hence gets avoided by users9. Another effective instrument is the use of social media influencers, thanks to their friendliness, relatability, interaction frequency, and capacity to create parasocial relations similar to friendships10, along with their capacity to convey emotion-driven, yet credible messages, they can become enablers of confirmation bias and tools of cognitive warfare, as in the case of Russian interference with Romanian elections in 2024.

The outreach of malicious influencers and the pervasiveness of bots and troll farms are maximised by the increasing sophistication of AI-based content,11 which is rapidly and progressively blurring the distinction between real and AI-generated content and profiles. Bots and troll farms were among the first applications of AI for cognitive warfare, which, thanks to their characteristic inflammatory language employed directly towards users, are optimal tools for controlling the narrative. They are often employed during geopolitical events to control the narrative and influence public support for electoral outcomes, consultative democratic processes, direct democracy, policy decisions, alliances, and traditional media12.

Image by emerson23work on Pixabay

Indeed, AI is a perfect force multiplier of cognitive warfare, enabled by relentless data mining, which enables targeting individuals based on their preferred content13 and personalities at a superhuman speed.
Data are then operationalised to produce information that targets and elicits every individual’s personal bias, and through the cognitive effect of an infodemic environment, impairs effective elaboration of external data, leading us to instinctive reactions14.

The emergence of the metaverse could be the next enhancer of cognitive warfare: further blurring the border between digital and physical reality, it allows the collection of biometric data through wearable devices. Malicious forces can collect them to create a more precise profile of a user’s reaction to certain stimuli and modify the circumstantial scenario in which they are immersed, creating another domain for psychological operations15. However, despite the attention given by the research on cognitive warfare, studies suggest that these predictions are not coherent with the current maturity and diffusion of this technology.16


Conclusions

The article aims to trace how ICT infrastructure, social media and AI operate on our cognitive functions within the context of cognitive warfare, affecting how information is filtered, analysed, and interpreted through prior experiences, analytical and synthetic strategies, and cultural features. The emergence of this new dimension of conflict has caught the attention of scholars from psychological, international relations, war studies, and numerous other fields, with the 2021 NATO definition contributing to the conceptualisation and legitimisation of this phenomenon.

The cognitive domain has increasingly been described as a stand-alone type of warfare that situates itself within the grey-zone spectrum, involving both the military and civil society. It distinguishes itself from information warfare since it aims not only to control information flows but also to manipulate information in order to distort our perception of events. One of the earliest examples is the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. In this context, as well as in the 2016 American elections, distorted information was disseminated by exploiting the characteristics of ICT infrastructures: anonymity and rapid diffusion, as well as the algorithmic dynamics of social media and the use of troll farms to influence individuals’ perception of reality.

These examples illustrate how digital technologies have enabled the expansion of cognitive warfare, further amplified by data mining and AI-driven personalisation, which are progressively blurring the distinction between authentic and fabricated content.

As digital ecosystems become increasingly central to political and social life, cognitive warfare is likely to become a persistent feature of geopolitical competition. This raises important questions for democratic resilience, including the need for stronger media literacy, improved platform governance, and more effective mechanisms to detect and counter coordinated influence operations.

References:

  1. Hung, Tzu-Chieh, and Tzu-Wei Hung. “How China’s Cognitive Warfare Works: A Frontline Perspective of Taiwan’s Anti-Disinformation Wars.” Journal of Global Security Studies 7, no. 4 (2022): ogac016. https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogac016.
    Marsili, Marco. “Cognitive Warfare in Historical Perspective: From Cold War Psychological Operations to AI-Driven Information Campaigns.” Preprint, Social Sciences, December 17, 2025. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202512.1596.v1. ↩︎
  2. Hung and Hung (202) ↩︎
  3. Kim, Daeun. Psychological Mechanisms of Cognitive Warfare  on Decision-Making. 27, no. 2 (2025): 249–66. ↩︎
  4. Ibidem. ↩︎
  5. Ibidem
    Hung and Hung (2022)
    Deppe, Christoph, and Gary S. Schaal. “Cognitive Warfare: A Conceptual Analysis of the NATO ACT Cognitive Warfare Exploratory Concept.” Frontiers in Big Data 7 (November 2024): 1452129. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2024.1452129. ↩︎
  6. Marsili, Marco. “Cognitive Warfare in Historical Perspective: From Cold War Psychological Operations to AI-Driven Information Campaigns.” Preprint, Social Sciences, December 17, 2025. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202512.1596.v1.
     Danet (2019)
    ↩︎
  7. Datta, Pratim, Mark Whitmore, and Joseph K. Nwankpa. “A Perfect Storm: Social Media News, Psychological Biases, and AI.” Digital Threats: Research and Practice 2, no. 2 (2021): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3428157.
    Ferreira, Vinícius Marques Da Silva, Carlos Alberto Nunes Cosenza, Alfredo Nazareno Pereira Boente, et al. “GUERRA COGNITIVA NAS REDES SOCIAIS: AMEAÇAS, DESAFIOS E IMPLICAÇÕES PARA A SOCIEDADE.” ARACÊ 7, no. 3 (2025): 14287–303. https://doi.org/10.56238/arev7n3-240. ↩︎
  8. Gauthier, Germain, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. “The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm.” Nature, ahead of print, February 18, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2. ↩︎
  9. Datta et al. (2021). ↩︎
  10. Kim and Kim (2022) ↩︎
  11. Fenstermacher, Laurie H., David Uzcha, Kathleen G. Larson, Christine A. Vitiello, and Stephen M. Shellman. “New Perspectives on Cognitive Warfare.” In Signal Processing, Sensor/Information Fusion, and Target Recognition XXXII, edited by Lynne L. Grewe, Erik P. Blasch, and Ivan Kadar. SPIE, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2666777.. ↩︎
  12. Paziuk, Andrii, Dmytro Lande, Elina Shnurko-Tabakova, and Phillip Kingston. “Decoding Manipulative Narratives in Cognitive Warfare: A Case Study of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.” Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 8 (September 2025): 1566022. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2025.1566022.
    Da Silva et al. (2025). ↩︎
  13. Marsili 2025
    Fenstermacher, Laurie H., David Uzcha, Kathleen G. Larson, Christine A. Vitiello, and Stephen M. Shellman. “New Perspectives on Cognitive Warfare.” In Signal Processing, Sensor/Information Fusion, and Target Recognition XXXII, edited by Lynne L. Grewe, Erik P. Blasch, and Ivan Kadar. SPIE, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2666777.. ↩︎
  14. Meriläinen, Niina. “Artificial Intelligence as a Tool in Cognitive Warfare on Digital Platforms.” International Conference on AI Research 5, no. 1 (2025): 306–12. https://doi.org/10.34190/icair.5.1.4353. ↩︎
  15. Marsili, Marco. “Guerre à La Carte: Cyber, Information, Cognitive Warfare and the Metaverse.” Applied Cybersecurity & Internet Governance 2, no. 1 (2023): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.60097/ACIG/162861.
    Fenstermacher et al (2023). ↩︎
  16. Liu, Zhiguo, Yan Huang, Junyu Mai, Wei Li, Zhipeng Cai, and Yingshu Li. “Is the Metaverse Really Coming to Fruition? A Survey of Applied Metaverse and Extended Reality.” High-Confidence Computing, December 2025, 100376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hcc.2025.100376. ↩︎
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December 19, 2022 — No Comments

Misogynistic influencers and the dark side of social media: The fine line between hate speech and free speech

Author: Camilla Cormegna.

Developments in the digital communication have changed human interactions and influencers are at the forefront of this advancement, leveraging on social media outlets to spread information and influence behaviours and opinions. Because of their large following, influencers are considered credible and trustworthy digital opinion leaders. However, some influencers can disseminate deceitfully subversive and powerful narratives to promote an alternative to mainstream views, convey a message and generate revenue from their content. Sometimes, this may result in the dissemination of extremist beliefs and conspiracy theories, a worrying issue when it is advertised by influencers with a large following thus able to attract engagement. By analysing the recent scandal of Andrew Tate, this article argues that the promotion of extremist online messages by influencers can pose a serious harm to society, making misogynistic attitudes and toxic masculinity traits mainstream while leveraging on young men’s identity crises. At the same time, the content moderation practice of deplatforming reopens the debate between free speech and hate speech and how far social media companies (SMC) should go to allow free speech while also being accountable for making extremist content go viral. 

Image source: pexels.com

Andrew Tate and mainstreaming misogyny

Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and hypermasculine kickboxer, has gone viral this year over his misogynist comments, reaching 11 billion views on TikTok and 8 million followers on Instagram and Twitter combined. Tate has a long history of misogyny, both online and offline, starting in 2016 when he was kicked out from the Big Brother following a video of him hitting a woman. His content is centred on dispensing self-motivating tips for aspiring alpha males– posing with fast cars, guns, and smoking cigars- while denigrating women. Allegations of abuse, rape, and human trafficking have accompanied statements blaming women for being raped, portraying them as deceitful and lazy if suffering from mental illnesses. 

By showing ‘a woman her place’, teaching men their value is from wealth and being womanisers, Tate’s content furthers an agenda underpinned by misogyny, heteropatriarchy and hegemonic masculinity.  Misogyny has been defined as a system put in place “within a patriarchal social order to police and enforce women’s subordination to uphold male dominance”. Misogynistic ideology is rooted in male dominance and in a return to a patriarchal social order where women’s subordination is essential to maintain society’s hierarchy and men’s empowerment. Above all, misogyny is part of gender inequalities and structural discriminations against women that have always permeated society and that are now amplified and exploited by the online world. The reasons for showing misogynistic instances online are the same reasons underpinning harassment and anti-women sentiment in the offline world. 

Tate’s content is highly concerning because his following is mainly comprised of young men and teenagers and there is the risk of exacerbating misogyny and encouraging gendered hate and violence both online and offline. By framing men as suffering economically and socially, blaming feminism for their condition, Tate employs a narrative and conspiracy theories often used by extremists and he emerges as a hypermasculine hero. Tate is not the only one to voice men’s victimisation online. Many believe that the ‘gynocentric dictatorship’ of feminism, gender equality, and women’s empowerment is responsible for men’s emasculation in the public and private life. The white men’s struggle is often based on society’s changes and their consequences such as unemployment, civil liberation, immigration. As a response, some men display hegemonic masculinity features such as power and dominance to reinforce gender norms established on a hierarchy in which women are belittled and equal rights are scrapped. Some may even turn to violence to make women comply with cisheteropatriarchal standards and to avenge their frustration with the current social order. Therefore, by combining misogyny with conspiracy theories to justify hate and violence over women, Tate’s content could be a gateway to other extreme ideologies. In turn, misogyny can also be the driver of and warning sign for violent extremist acts, as well as the starting point for the hatred of other categories such as racism and homophobia.

Tate’s misogyny, the portrayal of women as deceitful and his comments associating the #MeToo issue to a societal threat put him close to the alt-right worldview of the manosphere, a heterogeneous group of online misogynistic communities worried about oppressed masculinity and misandry. These online spaces started as a place for men to express their grievance about everyday issues such as sexual or domestic abuse, but the new communities have become more toxic and misogynist, using a sexually explicit, racist, and violent language. Manosphere communities play on the masculinity crisis to promote toxic and hegemonic conceptions of masculinity, sharing the belief that all women are a threat and rejecting the inclusive approach of masculinity, or an anti-feminist stance, fighting against feminism progress and anti-rape policies. By giving voice to men’s aggrieved entitlement about their lost social status and by offering young men hypermasculine alternatives, Tate’s message is a call to restore and reassert a lost masculinity over women. Worryingly, younger audiences, disaffected and unsatisfied with their livers, are flocking the manosphere in search for belonging and Tate becomes a hero for his self-help advice. 

Free speech vs hate speech 

Tate is only an example of how the dissemination of extremist and vitriolic online comments by influencers with a large following can pose a threat to society, but it also raises concerns about regulating hate speech. Tate has been banned from social media, as his content has broken platforms’ rules for appropriate behaviour. Deplatforming is an extreme step that raises ethical and legal concerns, but research has shown that it reduces the spread of offensive ideas and the impact the influencers have on the platform, thus improving the quality on the social media. However, deplatforming does not eliminate all misogynist or anti-Semitic rhetoric from the internet, it only addresses one individual by removing the spotlight from them. Instead, it produces a migration of users to other less regulated platforms which promise not to suppress any type of political rhetoric or views. The Streisand effect of banning profiles – increased publicity over a censored information- must also be considered when examining the role of deplatforming in limiting extremist content. 

More importantly, this practice could also make people like Tate a martyr, with his followers accusing cancel culture and violation of free speech and reigniting the debate between free speech, hate speech and SMC. The controversy first emerged in January 2021, when Trump’s account was suspended from social media. Many Republicans accused SMC of censorship and expressed suspicion about the arbitrary power of social media against free speech while others supported the decisions to hold hate speech accountable. Free speech is a double-edged sword, as it encourages people to freely express their opinions, but it can also be exploited to spread hate and misinformation, thus requiring drawing a line between freedom of expression and hate speech. While SMC state they are not actively censoring political views, they have discretionary powers in the US when it comes to free speech because of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act 1996, which prevents them from being liable about their users’ content. Section 230, however, causes dispute among conservative policymakers for censoring political opinions while Democrats call for platform accountability when it comes to misinformation and child abuse. Moreover, banning and censorship by social media platforms perpetuates cancel culture, a threat to pluralism and discursive democracy which, according to critics, violates the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Opposers believe Big Techs should not have the discretion of deciding how to regulate free speech but SMC are private companies and thus not regulated by the First Amendment. At the same time, difficulties in addressing hate speech concern its lack of an internationally accepted definition, as hate is a vague term and even SMC’s CEO such as Zuckerberg struggle to define it. To curb hate speech, SMC have adopted several moderation practices, but they may result in inconsistencies and double standards, as Kanye West is banned for anti-Semitism, but the Iranian government’s Twitter account is still running. 

At the same time, social media platforms share the blame in promoting extremist content because of their algorithms and they need to take accountability. This is how Tate’s content went viral, as TikTok reacted too late to limit his content - although it was clearly breaking the platform’s rule- allowing him to become mainstream. Other far-right and alt-right influencers are taking advantage of this loophole to promote their content and grow audience, as the recommender system prioritises extreme content because it is always associated with higher engagement, creating radicalisation pathways. TheYouTube algorithm is believed to recommend extreme content to those who already consume materials belonging to fringe ideologies, but it is also a gateway for teenagers who cannot distinguish between mainstream and fringe content, as they use the platform daily. YouTube and other platforms monetise on everyone’s content regardless of their nature and beliefs, allowing for extremist content to thrive, generate revenue, and possibly contribute to the radicalisation of young people. 

Conclusion

Andrew Tate is an example of how social media platforms are leveraged to promote hateful content. Online misogyny is a reflection of the gender inequalities of society, and the hatred towards women has managed to become amplificated thanks to online misogynistic communities. The risk of mainstreaming anti-feminist stances is worrying, especially when figures like Tate can represent a hypermasculine hero to young and disillusioned youth. There is a fine line between hate speech and free speech and SMC are caught in a difficult situation: they want to create a safe space for users but also uphold free speech. Hate speech needs to be better defined legally to respect freedom of expression to allow a correct policing that does not results in censorship. At the same time, SMC appear to be reluctant to deplatform sources of hate because they are a lucrative business. Still, they must create a review system that allows a proper regulation of free speech although now, legally, they are not forced to do anything.