We explore a foundational statement of doctrine for modern Military Information Support Operations—MISO—and the more hostile field of cognitive warfare. We briefly define a two-step process of intelligence and operation. The first step involves a deep analysis of a target’s core identity. The second step involves weaponizing that identity to manipulate the target’s perceptions and behavior. This principle is the central mechanism for population manipulation.
“Understanding the enemy’s values”—is the formal intelligence-gathering process known in military doctrine as Target Audience Analysis. This is not a superficial survey but a rigorous, systematic deconstruction of a population’s attitudes, beliefs, grievances, fears, cultural narratives, and internal divisions. MISO planners conduct this analysis to identify existing vulnerabilities and the underlying emotional and motivational architecture of their target. The objective is to find the pre-existing psychological and cultural fault lines that can be exploited.
“Using their representational system”—describes the operational phase of message design and delivery. This phrase has a dual meaning. On a macro level, it means crafting propaganda that uses the target’s own symbols, history, heroes, and language. A message delivered in this manner feels indigenous and authentic, which allows it to bypass psychological defenses that instinctively reject foreign influence. The target population does not perceive the message as propaganda but as a reflection of their own truth.
On a micro level, “verbal and nonverbal language” refers to a core concept of psychological influence—matching a target’s internal “representational system.” This model suggests people process the world through preferred sensory modes—visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. An operator who mirrors a target’s sensory language—for example, using “I see your point” to a visual person or “I hear you” to an auditory one—builds subconscious rapport. This rapport makes the target highly receptive to the operator’s embedded messages, allowing the operator to “communicate with the enemy’s mind” directly.
The principle of Cognitive Warfare is the primary enabler of population manipulation. In MISO, the goal is to influence a target to act in a manner favorable to the operator’s objectives. In the more aggressive domain of cognitive warfare, the goal is to disrupt, degrade, or destroy the target’s ability to build their own reality. This method allows an operator to turn a population’s most deeply held values into a weapon against it.
An operator will not attack a value. Instead, the operator will “relate” to that value and amplify it to create a desired behavior. An operator seeking to fragment a society will not state “Your country is divided.” An operator will find an existing grievance, adopt the language of the aggrieved group, and broadcast messages of “Our sacred traditions are being ignored.” The target group then co-opts this narrative as its own and prosecutes the operator’s objective with genuine passion—believing it is acting in self-defense.
The method achieves the ultimate goal of psychological operations—the target population willingly performs the desired action, convinced the idea was their own. It moves the battlefield from physical territory to the human cognitive domain, seeking to achieve victory by manipulating a population’s perception so completely that they defeat themselves.
