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Cognitive Warfare and the Indo-Pacific
Editor’s Note: This article was submitted as part of the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s 2025 Writing Contest, in which authors were invited to explore how the…
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IWI is a public 501(c)3 charity and not part of a government agency. EIN: 88-4359941. The views expressed are those of the authors.
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Our Work
Technology is evolving in months, while defense organizations often take decades to adapt. This growing gap leaves practitioners in a dangerous reality: forced to make irreversible decisions in high-stakes environments without clear doctrine or updated ethics training. The Emerging Technology and Irregular Warfare Focus Area was created to bridge this divide by connecting the people closest to the challenges and building a community that learns faster than our adversaries.
Strategic Tensions & Core Dilemmas
We move beyond the tools themselves to analyze the friction generated when new technologies—from AI and autonomous systems to crypto and biotech—are embedded in irregular warfare. Our work focuses on four core dilemmas:
- Decisionmaking & Accountability: Reshaping decision dynamics in decentralized environments while maintaining political control and mitigating civilian harm.
- Diffusion & Escalation: Addressing how low-cost, high-impact technologies enable nonstate actors to evade intelligence and exploit deniability.
- Legitimacy & Effectiveness: Navigating the tension between operational success and public legitimacy as capabilities outpace existing laws.
- Influence & Trust: Leveraging technology for humanitarian effectiveness while countering adversary efforts to undermine trust through algorithmic bias and misinformation.
Our Operating Principles
We are not interested in technology in search of an application. Our efforts are guided by three functional pillars:
- Problem-driven: We start with the friction points practitioners face on the ground. When existing doctrine is ignored, we seek to understand why and identify practical solutions.
- Whole-of-Society Perspective: Technology in the gray zone reshapes populations and creates long-term dependencies. We utilize a systems approach to ensure technological impacts align with broader strategic objectives.
- Future-focused: We prioritize anticipating what’s coming next over merely analyzing last year’s conflict, ensuring we stay ahead of emerging tactics and dilemmas.
Meet the Team
