“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

— Sun Tzu

What if future wars are decided before most people realise that a conflict has begun? Imagine a crisis unfolding in real time. Within minutes, social media is flooded with dramatic videos, satellite imagery, expert commentary and competing claims. Some are authentic, others manipulated, and many impossible to verify. Yet before governments issue official statements or militaries complete battle-damage assessments, millions of people—including policymakers, journalists and global audiences—have already formed opinions. Diplomatic positions harden and public sentiment shifts. The battle for perception is already underway.

This is becoming a defining feature of modern conflict. Military operations now unfold simultaneously in two interconnected arenas. One is the physical battlefield, where soldiers, aircraft, drones and missiles determine tactical outcomes. The other is the cognitive domain, where perceptions are shaped, narratives contested and political will strengthened or weakened. Increasingly, success in one does not automatically guarantee success in the other.

For generations, military power was measured through firepower, industrial capacity and technological superiority. Victory meant destroying an adversary's capability or compelling surrender through force. That logic remains valid, but it is no longer sufficient. In an age of ubiquitous connectivity and artificial intelligence (AI), influencing how people understand events may prove almost as important as the events themselves.

AI is often described as the next Revolution in Military Affairs. It is transforming intelligence, surveillance, autonomous systems and military decision-making. Yet its greater strategic impact may lie beyond the battlefield. AI can generate, personalise and disseminate persuasive content at extraordinary speed and scale, reshaping the information environment in which wars are conceived, legitimised, fought and remembered. The real revolution, therefore, may not be technological. It may be cognitive.

Wars have never been contests of firepower alone. They have always been contests of will. Military force seeks to compel an adversary to accept political objectives. Today, that objective can increasingly be pursued not only by destroying capabilities but by shaping choices.

 If leaders hesitate, soldiers lose confidence or societies become divided, strategic effects may be achieved without corresponding military success.

For India, the implications are profound. Future conflicts are unlikely to remain confined to the Line of Control or the Line of Actual Control. They will unfold simultaneously across battlefields, digital platforms, diplomatic fora and international media. Military effectiveness will remain indispensable, but it may no longer be sufficient to secure strategic success.

From Information to Cognition 

Every era of warfare has possessed a defining source of strategic advantage. The Industrial Age rewarded mass. The Information Age rewarded precision, surveillance and networked operations. The emerging age of cognitive competition is likely to reward something different: the ability to influence how information is interpreted and acted upon.

The distinction is important. Information superiority improves one’s own decisions; cognitive superiority seeks to influence the decisions of others by shaping perception, judgement and behaviour.

This is not an entirely new idea. More than two millennia ago, Kautilya recognised that influencing an adversary’s choices could be preferable to defeating him in battle. His four upayas—sama, dāna (gifts or inducements), bheda (dissension) and danda (force)—provided graduated means of pursuing political objectives.[1] Today, technology has transformed the tools of influence, not its underlying strategic logic.

The same insight appears in the Mahabharata narrative. Dronacharya was not overcome by superior arms. His resolve collapsed after he was led to believe that his son Ashwatthama had been killed. The decisive psychological effect preceded the physical act. Western military thought echoes this understanding. Napoleon’s observation that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one” underlined the importance of morale, confidence, leadership and national resolve. Technology changes; human psychology does not.

What artificial intelligence has changed is the scale, speed and precision with which psychology can now be targeted. Large-scale influence campaigns once demanded substantial resources, organised networks and considerable time. Today, convincing videos, fabricated speeches and realistic imagery can be generated within minutes and distributed globally at negligible cost. Messages can be tailored to specific audiences and amplified through algorithms that often reward emotion over evidence.

It is not necessarily about convincing people that something false is true. Sometimes it is enough to make them doubt what is true. Confusion, hesitation and mistrust can themselves become strategic outcomes. Influence is therefore no longer merely a supporting activity. It is becoming an instrument of national power.

When The Battlefield Meets the Information Space

Recent conflicts demonstrate that military operations and information operations have become inseparable. The war in Ukraine has shown how every missile strike, destroyed vehicle and battlefield advance is accompanied by an equally intense struggle to define its meaning. Videos captured by soldiers appear online within minutes, satellite imagery is analysed by independent researchers and competing narratives race across digital platforms long before official briefings are issued.

The same pattern has appeared in the exchanges between Israel and Iran, where military action was rapidly followed by competing claims and coordinated messaging. The battle for perception unfolded almost as rapidly as the military engagement itself. For India, Operation SINDOOR offers an important illustration of this emerging reality. Operationally, the operation demonstrated India's ability to execute precise military action while exercising measured political control over escalation. Yet the operation was accompanied by an intense information contest. False claims, recycled imagery, manipulated visuals and competing narratives circulated rapidly across digital platforms, prompting repeated official clarifications and fact-checks.[3][4]

The Government subsequently reported that its Fact Check Unit worked round the clock during Operation SINDOOR to counter fake news, edited videos and misinformation. It also stated that a 24×7 inter-ministerial control room coordinated real-time information dissemination and that directions were issued for blocking more than 1,400 URLs carrying false, misleading or inflammatory content.[3]

The significance extends beyond individual pieces of misinformation. The episode demonstrated how rapidly the information environment can become contested during military operations—and how difficult it can be to restore clarity once competing narratives have taken hold. This should not be reduced to a question of public relations. A nation can achieve its operational objectives and still find itself responding to perceptions shaped by its adversary. Conversely, a militarily weaker actor can seek strategic effect by influencing how events are understood.

Operation SINDOOR therefore deserves study not only for its military execution but also for what it reveals about strategic competition in the cognitive domain. Information operations and strategic communication can no longer remain adjuncts to military planning. They must be considered as part of campaign design from the outset. Winning the battle is no longer enough. Nations must also compete for credibility, legitimacy and public perception.

Trust As Strategic Power

This brings the contest back to something older than technology: trust. Military capability, economic strength and technological innovation remain foundations of national power. Yet their effectiveness increasingly depends upon public confidence in institutions and the credibility of those who communicate on behalf of the state. AI enables adversaries to identify social divisions, amplify polarising narratives and exploit cognitive biases at unprecedented speed.

The objective is not merely to destroy infrastructure or degrade military capability. It is also to weaken confidence, create uncertainty and erode national cohesion.

In future conflicts, the first casualty may not be truth. It may be trust. If future conflicts increasingly target perception, resilience becomes as important as firepower. For an open democracy such as India, this presents a particular challenge. Openness creates vulnerabilities, but it is also a source of national strength. The answer cannot therefore lie simply in tighter control over information. It must lie in building institutions that command public trust and a society capable of resisting manipulation without becoming cynical about information itself.

Resilience begins long before a crisis. Citizens need the ability to recognise misinformation without assuming that all information is false. Government communication must be timely, coherent and credible. The armed forces, diplomatic community, intelligence agencies, technology companies, academia and media must recognise the information environment as a shared strategic space.

Most importantly, strategic communication can no longer be treated as a post-operation activity. It must be integrated into campaign planning from the outset. The first narrative often becomes the dominant narrative—not necessarily because it is accurate, but because it arrives first.

India has invested significantly in space, cyber, artificial intelligence and indigenous defence technologies. These efforts are essential, but address only one dimension of the challenge.

The next stage must connect military operations with strategic communication, information operations, diplomacy and technological innovation within a coherent national framework.

Commanders will increasingly need to think simultaneously about physical and cognitive effects. Every significant military action will have a second dimension: how it is understood by one’s own population, partners, adversaries and the wider international community.

This cannot be the responsibility of the military alone. It demands a whole-of-government approach in which national security encompasses information integrity, institutional credibility and societal resilience. These assets cannot be improvised during a crisis; they must be cultivated in peacetime.

AI will undoubtedly transform warfare. It will accelerate decision- making, improve intelligence and enhance precision. But its most consequential impact may lie beyond the technology itself. By reshaping the information environment, AI is changing how conflicts are perceived, legitimised and politically contested. It is multiplying the reach of an enduring principle of strategy: influence the adversary’s choices, and the need for force may diminish.

For India, the implication is clear. National security can no longer be measured solely by the strength of its armed forces or the sophistication of its weapons. It must also be measured by the resilience of its institutions, the credibility of its communication and the confidence of its citizens.

The battlefield will remain physical. But around it will exist another battlespace—one in which perceptions are contested, trust is tested and political will is shaped. Future wars will still be fought by soldiers. Increasingly, however, the battle for victory will also be fought in the human mind.

References

[1] Kautilya, Arthashastra; see also Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), Understanding Kautilya’s Four Upayas.

[2] Napoleon Bonaparte, commonly cited observation on the relative importance of the moral and physical elements in war: “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.”

[3] Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Government Debunks Pakistani Propaganda Against India and Armed Forces via Official Fact-Check Unit, 30 July 2025.

[4] Press Information Bureau Fact Check, List of Fact Checks since beginning of Operation Sindoor, May 2025.5

Lt Gen Tarun Chawla

Former Director General Artillery, DG Financial Planning of Indian Army