Prologue
“… what a fool believes, he sees …”
The Doobie Brothers, 1978
The first week of September 2025 showcased the (current) high watermark of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cognitive warfare campaign against Western democratic nations. The 3 September 2025 China Victory Day Parade in Beijing, staged as the 80th celebration of the CCP’s claimed victory against Japanese Imperial Forces as part of the ‘World Anti-Fascist War’ – the CCP’s label for what Western history books recognise as World War II – was a corruption of historical facts to support the CCP’s rewriting of history. Rewriting history is a form of cognitive warfare.
The military display was a pugnacious parade of martial cosplay, intended to showcase China’s recently acquired and growing military might. That military might has been enabled by China’s abuse of global trade access since 1990s which has provided China the funds for military development, and was achieved in part through industrial-scale theft of Western technology and intellectual property. The parade was staged to send a message about the might of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and, further, the futility of resisting the CCP. This messaging is cognitive warfare.
Australia featured in the military display in the form of a prominent cameo by former Premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, acting in his capacity as a private citizen albeit with significant personal business interests in China and Victoria. Andrews’ presence is emblematic of the CCP’s assessment that it can treat Australia as it pleases, based in part on the political and economic influence the CCP has developed, suggesting the CCP believes that Australian government and private sector leaders will, over time, have no choice but to comply. Or at least that is what the CCP wants Australians to believe. Another example of the CCP’s cognitive warfare.
In this article, offered under Pentagram Advisory’s In the National Interest opinion piece series, we will explore cognitive warfare and examine how the CCP’s waging of cognitive warfare has harmed, and will continue to harm, Australia’s national interests. We will consider what might be done to mitigate the risks posed by the CCP’s cognitive warfare.
Cognitive Warfare
What is cognitive warfare?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) describes cognitive warfare as: not the means by which we fight; it is the fight itself.
Cognitive warfare is a modern form of warfare targeting the human mind and human cognition. Cognitive warfare is an evolution from historical (1920s onwards) psychological operations and information warfare. Cognitive warfare utilises disinformation, propaganda, social engineering, and data to manipulate human perception, human reasoning, and human decision-making.
Cognitive warfare has been, and will be, intensified by technology, especially digital technology, including the internet and artificial intelligence making it a growing threat.
The brain is both the target and the weapon in the fight for cognitive superiority. Technology today enables cognitive warfare messaging to burrow into the brain.
Chinese Cognitive Warfare
Aptly, given the current state of China-centric geopolitical tensions, cognitive warfare’s roots may be traced to ancient strategies including Chinese general Sun Tzu’s “war of attacking the heart” and also his other (perhaps overused) quote, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill”.
This approach is demonstrated by CCP leader Xi Jinping’s comments on China’s long-sought absorption of Taiwan, by making false claims about mainland China’s historical ‘ownership’ of Taiwan and that reunification is ‘inevitable’. Couple this corrupt narrative with years of daily probing of Taiwan’s defences by the PLA, via air and sea, to weaken Taiwan’s preparedness and erode its citizens’ morale and resistance and you see a multifaceted cognitive warfare campaign.
Xi’s preference appears to be that the CCP subdues and assimilates Taiwan without the PLA fighting a kinetic war for it. Xi’s maximalist display of PLA military hardware and manpower in Beijing on 3 September 2025 is meant to convey to all adversaries, to all allies, and to the Chinese domestic audience that China under the CCP is so superior in military capability that war against the PLA would be futile, so better to just let China have its way on Taiwan (and anything else).
If Western democracies acquiesce and let Xi have his way on Taiwan, and on his bigger plan to reshape the global security and economic order to supplant the United States and the global system it has underwritten since 1945, in favour of China that would be a ‘head fake’ that Sun Tzu would be proud of.
Examples of the CCP’s Cognitive Warfare
In Pentagram’s July 2025 article In the National Interest – Critical Infrastructure as a National Security Priority, Pentagram explored some historical and contemporary dynamics amongst China, Russia, and the United States and their respective interactions with Australia. The article explored some economic, security, and realpolitik issues, citing elements of China’s menacing actions to Australia in recent years. The list included many acts of foreign influence and foreign interference.
Acts that the CCP has undertaken in recent years to convince its collaborators and adversaries, the latter a grouping Australia is part of, that China is the coming dominant power and is an overmatch for them in any strategic, military, or socio-economic contest include the following. The CCP is acting to alter the West’s perception.
- In 2014, China repudiated the United States and Western democracies to announce the New Asian Security Concept as the launchpad for a sustained attack on the U.S. alliance system, of which Australia is a part.
- In 2015, China’s military strategy became the expectation for the PLA to fight and win ‘modern’ wars, stating: “Integrated combat forces will be employed to prevail in system-of-systems operations featuring information dominance, precision strikes on critical nodes and joint operations”.
- President Xi Jinping has set a goal for the PLA to be a “world class military” by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PLA.
- The 2015 ‘Made in China 2025’ policy also made clear that China wants to dominate key sectors of the global economy, especially in high value technology, to the detriment of the United States and the Western democracies. China will not open its domestic market to foreigners in any meaningful way, having assessed economic domestic self-reliance is a key plank in its national security. Conversely, the CCP strives to have others depend on China’s manufactures at the expense of their self-reliance.
- Xi’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy from 2019 was intimidatory, manifesting in China’s open letter to Australia in 2020 listing 14 grievances China had with Australia, perhaps best captured by the Chinese advice to Australia at the time that “If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy.”
- China’s trade sanctions against Australia beginning in 2020, in response to Australia’s prime minister calling for an enquiry into the origins of COVID-19 global epidemic, were coercive. The sanctions sent a message to other countries about how China will penalise countries, especially smaller countries, that incur the CCP’s displeasure.
- China has deployed, since at least 2022, a persistent cyber-attack capability, known as SALT TYPHOON across an estimated 80 countries, to collect information and to disrupt and degrade critical infrastructure in Australia and internationally via the telecommunications sector. Reportedly this capability has collected information from heads of state and senior officials and has seeded disruptive software into critical infrastructure systems.
- In December 2024, President Xi Jinping said that no one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan. Xi said: “The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification.” The CCP wants to soon overmatch the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the commander of which stated publicly in 2024 that China will be placed to take Taiwan by force from 2027.
- In February 2025 PLA navy vessels, for the first time, circumnavigated Australia and held unannounced live fire missile drills in the sea between Australia and New Zealand, disrupting commercial air travel between the two countries as a clear show of ‘gunboat diplomacy’. This made clear the PLA’s superiority over the ADF and Australia’s lacklustre surveillance capabilities.
- Assessment in 2025 of China’s strategic nuclear weapons arsenal indicates China will rival the United States’ strategic nuclear weapons capabilities by the mid-2030s, and China is developing more tactical nuclear weapons. The CCP has not made public its reasons for this expanding nuclear weapons capability, nor has it made clear its nuclear weapons doctrine, though has said it does have an avowed ‘no first use policy’.
- The CCP devised, and has executed, a plan to create a global market-controlling stake in the mining and production of rare earths that are essential ingredients for modern technology, including domination of electric vehicle component and ‘green energy’ manufacturers.
- Two former Australian state premiers, one of whom was also a former Australian foreign minister, attended events around the 3 September Victory Day Parade and another serving Australian state premier headed a large trade delegation to China in mid-September seeking Chinese investment in their state. This shows that Australian politicians can be susceptible to the CCP’s narrative and are observed to be supporting the CCP’s overtures.
- In September 2025, the CCP reportedly disrupted both Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea signing formal security agreements with Australia. This sends a clear message, in a cognitive warfare sense, that the CCP can influence Australia’s near neighbours to favour China’s world-view, to overcome Western democracies and their influence.
All these actions are elements of cognitive warfare. These actions are examples of the CCP’s strategy to dominate contemporary global events just as the CCP claims China did in previous centuries. That is a false claim – China, in various forms, may have dominated parts of Asia and Eurasia in its long history but it never dominated globally the way that Britain (from 1763) and the United States (from 1945) have done. China is not the natural global hegemon, especially a China controlled by the CCP, a political party established in 1921 by academics embracing Marxism which had taken root, almost by fluke, in Russia in 1917.
The CCP is striving to bend nations to its will today through systematically applied false narratives advocating that Chinese dominance is the historical norm, that the CCP and its PLA cannot be deterred, that the West (especially the United States) is weak and in decay, and that the CCP is a fixture and force for good.
The CCP is in the midst of prosecuting its long-term plan, formed decades ago, to see China dominate the world by supplanting the dominance of the Western democracies. The acts we witness today, some listed earlier in the article, are way posts in the CCP’s journey to its planned destination of domination.
Has the CCP won yet?
However, the CCP has not yet created an omnipotent PLA and Chinese economy: there are real weaknesses and facts that counterbalance the CCP’s narrative.
- China’s economy is struggling under the weight of a construction ‘bust’ which has left many businesses, investors, and citizens poorer or ruined.
- China’s export-driven economic model is in trouble because the traditional buyers of its cheap goods, the West, are suffering increasing financial hardship and social fracture resulting in less wealth and decreasing preference to buy Chinese goods. And the prognosis for Western economies and societies is not good and that impacts the CCP’s planning.
- China is vulnerable to seaborne interdiction, relying on almost $2 trillion in net exports and needing critical imports including food – China’s food self-sufficiency has dropped from 94 percent in 2000 to 66 percent in in 2020 – and oil which is required to enable military operations. China imports about 70% if its oil needs, much of it from Iran and Russia which could both be disrupted as suppliers.
- A vast over-capacity issue in China’s manufacturing, especially of electric vehicles (EV), means that the circa 100 EV brands in China need to rationalise to as few as 20 brands to be economically sustainable in terms of meeting Chinese domestic market needs and exporting to the West, which is not buying EVs in the numbers forecast.
- The PLA’s martial prowess has not been tested in contemporary war. The 3 September military parade, coupled with the PLA navy roughing up some Philippine navy and coast guard vessels, does not mean the PLA is equipped and experienced to fight successfully in medium- to high-intensity military actions.
- China’s ageing demographic and degrading economic outlook means it has a finite window of opportunity in which to make its bid to supplant the United States and the rest of the West.
Time is not on the CCP’s side and so it is using cognitive warfare as one key tool in a vast array of coercive and destructive methods to foment problems in Western democracies. The CCP is often helped by the West’s ‘own goals’ to expedite the decline of the CCP’s adversaries thus enabling it to meet its strategic objectives.
And Australia is offering plenty of ‘own goals’. Perhaps the most significant is Australia’s zeal to do more to achieve global ‘net zero’ carbon emissions than any other nation on the planet. This policy has, and will increasingly, inflict economic and social self-harm on Australia. It will continue to debilitate Australia’s capacity to protect itself from economic and military threats. Australia will, based on current government policies, become more reliant on China as a destination for our carbon-based exports to feed China’s growing need for coal and gas to power its economy. Australia is enabling China to increase greenhouse emissions whilst trying to de-carbonise Australia’s economy. China reaffirmed in September 2025 that it will not act to achieve net zero. Australia will buy from China the high-carbon input ‘green’ energy equipment for solar, wind, and battery capability whilst China increases carbon emission to shore up its national security.
Australia is an adversary of the CCP due to our alliance with the United States, our British (coloniser) history, democratic politics, and intermittent resistance to the CCP’s coercive actions. China’s support for, and export of, ‘green’ energy products to the West is a good example of cognitive warfare – Australia has been convinced by the CCP and its fellow travellers that Australia should cripple itself whilst enabling China to become the hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region.
While Australia participates in this toxic relationship with China, of exporting carbon resources and importing high-carbon manufactures, it opens the door ever wider for the CCP’s access to information about Australian people and events. For example, a Chinese electric vehicle or drone constantly captures information and exports it to the CCP, given all Chinese companies by law must do as the CCP asks. Any China-linked information technology (IT) or operational technology (OT) system will export information to the CCP and potentially allow the CCP and its proxies to control or disrupt systems, as evidenced by the SALT TYPHOON deployment. Australia’s current behaviour and policies are assisting the CCP to harm Australia and impair Australia’s freedom-of-action and sovereignty.
The CCP has not won, yet, but evidence shows the CCP is intent on winning and has relevant capability. The CCP believes it is near the Rubicon to effectively confront the West – a decision to act is within Xi’s grasp. Conversely, it appears that Australia either does not have the intent to compete and win, or worse, that Australia’s polity and people do not understand they are at war today.
Australians seem to either believe the CCP is benign or they are ignorant of the CCP’s intent and actions. There are Australians who see the threats posed by the CCP, though they are yet to mobilise effectively and press governments to act to mitigate the risk posed by the CCP’s cognitive warfare and other warlike actions.
Cognitive Warfare: Australia’s Critical Infrastructure and Security
The CCP’s cognitive warfare is relevant to Australia’s critical infrastructure entities, and to many other Australian entities that are not identified under the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (SOCI Act). The CCP’s cognitive warfare efforts are real, and may have the following deleterious effects for critical infrastructure and other operators, and to the people employed by these entities, harming Australia’s society and economy.
- Planting doubts about the reliability of Australia’s critical infrastructure assets – are critical services robust or vulnerable to disruption?
- Planting doubts about the reliability of Australia’s governments and national institutions.
- Promoting the CCP’s narrative that China is a benign actor wanting peaceful relations and collaboration. This has clearly been successful within a significant component of Australia’s population and polity (at state and federal levels) which leads Australians to the mindset that the CCP can be trusted. Trust in the CCP is misplaced as evidenced by the CCP’s ongoing aggressive behaviour towards Australia and other Western democracies over the last four decades.
- Procurement processes and secure supply chain management that either willingly accepts China-based inputs or is oblivious to procuring China-based inputs. Not all manufactures from China are ‘bad’ however supply chain security – especially for critical infrastructure, telecommunications, government, and the defence sector – requires a comprehensive understanding of the true origin of components and sub-components, especially with respect to information technology, operating technology, and operational and communications software.
- Debilitating the morale of Australia’s population through frequent and incremental signalling that any Australian resistance, to whatever the CCP is seeking from or wanting to do to Australia, is futile. The CCP’s actions in September 2025 to derail Australia’s planned security agreements with Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, along with the CCP’s infiltration of the Solomon Islands, showcases this behaviour.
- Conjuring and stoking supposed anti-Chinese racism, both in Australia and abroad, as a cover under which the CCP strives to achieve its objectives in Australia and other Western democracies which are seemingly deterred from protecting themselves by accusations of ‘racism’. This has been a very successful component of cognitive warfare waged by leftists and post-colonialists since the 1960s.
- Academia accepting funding from the Chinese government or its proxies, and participating in joint research, provides the CCP with an invitation to obtain technology secrets and to cultivate sympathisers. This also provides the CCP access to troves of information about technology and people, both of which enable the CCP’s intelligence collection.
- People employed by, or contracting into, Australia’s critical infrastructure and other key entities may be conditioned by the CCP’s cognitive warfare efforts to cooperate with Chinese entities because the person believes the CCP is benign, or perhaps the person seeks out and volunteers to work with Chinese entities on the basis that they believe the CCP’s triumph is inevitable and so will cooperate to further their own interests.
This list of the CCP’s cognitive warfare actions is a small sample. These actions span foreign influence, foreign interference, and espionage. The CCP is no friend to Australia.
What might be done?
The mitigation for the risk posed by cognitive warfare is twofold. First, recognise the threat exists and that it is relevant to your enterprise and its people. Second, be the author of your own messaging to your people – employees and contractors – so they are alert to the threat posed by the CCP’s cognitive warfare and are equipped to mitigate it.
The CCP’s cognitive warfare targets the brain, seeking to persuade and condition people to align their attitudes, behaviours, and actions in support of the CCP’s agenda. This cognitive approach has been used by political parties and leaders throughout history, but the game-changing difference today is digital technology that enables cognitive warfare like never before. Technology enables the CCP to ‘flood the zone’ with overt messaging, embed covertly into online content, seamlessly manipulate public opinion in Western democracies, and interfere with Australia and its people in ways that support the CCP’s objectives.
The mitigations for the risks posed by cognitive warfare are multi-layered.
At the national level, Australia must recognise cognitive warfare as a strategic threat requiring coordinated long-term action. Government should enhance whole-of-nation awareness, strengthen partnerships between intelligence, defence, industry regulators, and civil society, and launch public campaigns that help Australians recognise and resist disinformation. Internationally, Australia should work closely with allies and friends to share intelligence, counter hostile narratives, and reinforce resilience.
At the enterprise level, boards and executives should treat cognitive warfare as an enterprise risk. Critical infrastructure and other essential service providers should embed cognitive warfare awareness into their risk management frameworks. This includes educating employees and contractors to be alert to disinformation and foreign influence campaigns, assessing procurement and supply chains for exposure to CCP-controlled entities, and protecting corporate communications from manipulation. Academia and research organisations should also conduct rigorous due diligence on funding and partnerships to prevent covert CCP influence.
At the individual level, employees, contractors, and citizens are both the targets and the first line of defenders. Organisations should equip their people to critically evaluate information sources, understand the nature and reality of foreign influence, and report their suspicions. By fostering a culture of awareness, transparency, and resilience, Australians can be equipped to protect themselves and blunt the effect of CCP narratives. Individuals can take action to avoid being conditioned to accept the CCP’s narrative as normal or inevitable.
Cognitive warfare targets Australia’s most valuable asset: its people.
If the Australian Government, and Australia’s people, allow the CCP and its sympathisers in Australia and offshore the freedom to run the CCP’s narratives unchallenged then Australians will have been fooled into allowing the CCP to cause Australia harm. Are we fools?
As the Doobie Brothers sung almost 50 years ago “… what a fool believes, he sees …”
