conference paper
Cognitive Warfare Execution: Harnessing Strategic Playbooks and Influence Frameworks
Abstract
Previous defense strategy documents categorized the United States as being in “competition” against other major powers, including Russia and the People's Republic of China,1 and developed an approach to execute the security strategy when interacting with these powers and other global actors. An overall "whole of government" effort was promoted, stressing cross-agency cooperation for crafting and exercising an overall game plan in an environment of conflict, concomitant with calling out “plays” during a sports match. Military operators, particularly military communicators and information operators, need to develop their own tailored playbooks with maneuvers to help guide planning, execution, and assessment. This implicitly calls for the need to deeply understand adversaries; assess their activities, strengths, and vulnerabilities; characterize and dissect their strategies and objectives; and decisively act in the information environment to create a competitive advantage. Technologies are required to detect the maneuvers, or “plays”, and detect the individuals or groups who are exploiting the information environment in novel ways. In addition to countering malign influence, it is important to be able to execute “plays” to achieve a variety of operational effects. The “plays” ultimately can be messages and/or military actions (e.g., show of force), diplomatic strategies, or social cyber messaging. For example, the BEND framework2 includes the primary information maneuvers in the (social cyber) information environment and highlights the interaction between actors, among groups, and high-level interactions. Finally, a crucial aspect regarding plays is the intended influence goal and how to characterize these goals via analytics. This paper will explore existing playbook frameworks (e.g., BEND and Playmaker)3,4 as well as influence frameworks (including election influence frameworks)5,6, identify associated analytics and models, and identify research gaps and potential growth areas. © 2025 SPIE.
Author keywords
influence; information environment; information framework; information maneuvers; playbooks; plays; social media analytics; social-cyber information