Three Ways Cognitive Warfare Exposes Character And What To Do About It

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Cognitive Warfare: The Forces Shaping Judgment

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In a 2023 post, NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development Command unpacked a relatively new concept known as cognitive warfare. At its core, according to NATO, cognitive warfare is the manipulation of stories, information, and ideas to “gain an advantage.” It is not warfare in the traditional sense of the word in that we aren’t seeing soldiers exchanging fire on a battlefield. Instead, information is being manipulated to create stories and influence ideas that then circulate among the populations of a target country. These ideas then erode the norms and values that hold the country together, opening opportunities that an adversary can exploit. Indeed, we are regularly being targeted with cognitive warfare by our adversaries.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its far-reaching influence, has heightened the threat and underscored the need for solutions. Every day, we consume a diet of unhealthy and toxic information that nudges behavior, often without us understanding how or knowing the difference between fact and fiction. Plenty has been written about the systems required to detect and thwart these unwanted attacks, including cybersecurity and combating fake news; however, there has been little attention to how cognitive warfare exposes and undermines individual character, and how strengthening character should be a strategic priority to counter its effects. Identifying how cognitive warfare exposes character and what to do about it should prompt educators and organizations to consider character development as a strategic investment that not only achieves the aims of strengthening human flourishing and sustained excellence but is a cornerstone of strengthening democracy. Like anything that provides a sustainable competitive advantage, understanding, developing, and embedding character in organizations is complex; however, there are three key pillars to consider.

1. Understand Character As Vulnerability And Strength

The seeds for understanding how character can be both a vulnerability and a strength in cognitive warfare are revealed in research by a group of international scholars who published an article in Behavioral Sciences in 2024, entitled “Fake-News Attitude Evaluation in Terms of Visual Attention and Personality Traits: A Preliminary Study for Mitigating the Cognitive Warfare.” Focusing on the Big Five personality traits, they found that individuals who were lower on the trait of being “open-minded” were more likely to recognize fake news. These findings should be concerning. Personality theory seeks to identify semi-stable traits that differentiate individuals, with little in the way of a developmental paradigm. This is perhaps best understood in terms of one of the Big Five Personality traits – introversion and extraversion – as many people have come to realize that there are individual differences, but one is not inherently better than the other. The conclusion from the cognitive warfare study on open-mindedness is troubling. Should we be less open-minded? Research on character provides a different take.

Building on extensive research in philosophy, psychology, and education, researchers at the Ivey Business School identified 11 dimensions of character, each with a corresponding set of behaviors as shown in Figure 1. Being “open-minded” is one of the behaviors related to the character dimension of collaboration. A key insight from character research is that any dimension of character can manifest in a deficient or excessive vice state when not supported by other dimensions of character. Therefore, a person should not diminish a strength, like being open-minded, but rather strengthen the supporting dimensions. In the character wheel, the dimension of judgment is central – Aristotle called it “practical wisdom.” Differentiating fake news from facts relies on judgment. The dimension of judgment encompasses behaviors such as being a critical thinker and analytical. Instead of suggesting people should be less open-minded, the proper conclusion is that they should strengthen other dimensions so their open-mindedness does not become excessive, which can make them vulnerable to influence.

The deficient vice of being open-minded is being narrow-minded. Narrow-mindedness is a significant problem in organizations and society and should not be confused with being focused. Other character dimensions, like courage (e.g., tenacious, determined) and drive (results-oriented), help ensure proper focus. Still, dimensions like accountability and justice are especially valuable for guiding focus and preventing us from being caught in an echo chamber of self-interest; instead, they help us grow our accountability to a broader group of stakeholders and enhance our fairness, equity, and social responsibility.

Becoming an open-minded person requires effort. Forbes contributor Dede Henley described four practices that help cultivate an open mind: inviting outsiders in, being willing to listen before speaking, being open to being wrong, and asking good questions. All of these practices point in the direction of strengthening other character behaviors, such as the empathy and compassion associated with the dimension of humanity to hear, not just listen; the patience, calm, and self-control associated with temperance to listen before jumping in to speak, often associated with jumping to conclusions that compromise judgment. See my 2025 Forbes article on how temperance is the “quiet strength that shapes character.” To be willing to admit mistakes requires a great deal of humility, which is in short supply for most people. The challenge regarding individual judgment is to strengthen all supporting character dimensions—being open-minded is just one of 62 behaviors.

Strengthening character not only serves to combat cognitive warfare, but it is also the basis for sustainable competitive advantage as Bill Furlong, Rob Austin, and I argue in our 2023 MIT Sloan article, “Make Leader Character Your Competitive Edge.” The same forces shape how individuals think and act in organizations and life. The bottom line is that everyone should care about cognitive warfare, but perhaps see it through the broader lens of the headwinds that undermine character.

2. Account For The Headwinds That Undermine Character And Amplify Cognitive Warfare

Cognitive warfare focuses on the intentional approaches and practices to influence people’s beliefs. Like a hacker looking for vulnerabilities in a computer network, perpetrators seek weaknesses in the way we make decisions. Although there is a lot of attention to vulnerabilities such as biases, the discussion often neglects the fact that human systems already have significant vulnerabilities that need to be understood and addressed – the headwinds that undermine judgment more generally. These headwinds can be so strong that philosophers debate whether we have any free will at all. Instead, the way we think is determined or programmed by the systems we are in. Like the famous Matrix movie, people often fail to recognize the influence of the systems that shape their perceptions and judgments. Psychologists and sociologists have identified major forces, such as the bystander effect, whereby individuals lose their sense of accountability in groups, and social comparison, whereby others influence how we think and act. Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated that the system we are in shapes how we think and act. In his experiment, students who were randomly assigned to be guards began abusing the students who were prisoners after only five days. Although the strength of character of participants has not been examined in these types of social experiments, it is noteworthy that there are always outliers who don’t conform to the toxic influences. Ivey researchers reveal that the differences between weak and strong character are correlated with significant outcomes, such as an 18% difference in employee voice, indicating that individuals with stronger character are more likely to express their point of view. That research also reveals a 16% difference in psychological safety between individuals with weak and strong character, as I described in my 2025 Forbes article, “Getting to the Heart of Psychological Safety Through Character.”

AI amplifies the challenges to character. In my 2025 Forbes article “Why Artificial Intelligence Needs Character-Based Judgment,” I reinforce Shannon Valor’s view that AI is a mirror of our collective character. This means that weaknesses in character and character imbalances are embedded in AI. While AI can provide enormous gains in productivity, it comes with risks. One of the significant risks is that it can compromise judgment. When AI reflects to us what we want to see and hear, it becomes a massive echo chamber of skewed judgment.

Ultimately, a profound difference across generations is the extent to which social media has influenced character. Forbes Contributor Alison Escalante, in her 2024 article on the mental health harms of social media, documents that “Overuse of social media is so detrimental to teens’ mental health that the surgeon general of the United States issued a social media advisory in 2023.” Social media has significantly influenced the current generation entering the workforce, primarily by weakening character dimensions such as integrity, where people struggle with identity development and their authentic selves. Furthermore, social media operates like a weapons delivery system for those who seek to influence how we think and what we think about. As my colleague Matthew Bentley, who has served in the military and specializes in cyber security, describes: “Social media is the perfect tool for a cognitive warrior! My view is that they are weapons delivery systems. They are the airframes of cognitive warfare that deliver cognitive payloads to achieve desired effects on identified targets. The fact that we are allowing our youth to spend so much time on these platforms without providing them with a means to defend themselves (through character development) is, in my opinion, one of the most significant national security issues. These platforms create the illusion of freedom for the user, while stealing their ability to freely develop their own character (the best type of freedom).” Failure to understand and address these headwinds leaves individuals particularly exposed to cognitive warfare. Focusing on character development not only combats the headwinds but also the effects of cognitive warfare.

3. Develop Character To Combat Cognitive Warfare

Developing and strengthening character inoculates individuals. Bentley describes the term “inoculation” as being on point. He states: There is a concept of a neurolinguistic virus that I find helpful in understanding cognitive warfare. A virus isn’t dead or alive; it is just a packet of information that floats around looking for a vulnerable host. Once it finds a vulnerable host, it takes control of the host and does one thing: replicate the virus. This phenomenon occurs in the biological domain with biological viruses, but it also exists in the digital space with neurolinguistic viruses. Some people are more vulnerable (weaker immune systems), and some people are super spreaders (social media influencers). Without inoculating people through character development, we are sending them into the virus-infested information space without any immune system.”

Strengthening character inoculates individuals by enhancing the quality of the person’s judgment and decision-making. Imagine if we focused on developing character as much as we do competence in our educational systems and organizations. It would be the cornerstone of human flourishing and organizational excellence. Neglecting character development has exposed extensive vulnerabilities, as first revealed in the 2009 Ivey Business School “Leadership on Trial” study, implicating character-based judgment in the Global Financial Crisis.

Understanding character and how it manifests in the deficient and excess vice states is the first step to inoculating individuals and organizations. It is easy to misunderstand character, as I wrote in my 2025 Forbes article “Addressing the Crisis of Leadership Character.” However, knowing what character is and how it operates is like understanding the anatomy of the body and thinking that leads to fitness. In the same way that we need physical exercise, we also need to exercise our character intentionally. To help individuals and organizations understand what it takes to elevate character alongside competence, I wrote a 2025 Forbes article, “From Good to Great: 10 Ways to Elevate Your Character Quotient.”

The key point is that we need to see the development of character as the foundation and starting point for not only combating cognitive warfare, but also for addressing the broader threats to judgment that will undermine human flourishing, sustained excellence, and democracy.