On September 12, 2025 Nakasone Peace Institute held the Open Webinar on "Cognitive Warfare: An Alternative" with Ichida Kazuki of the Institute for New Operational Domains Studies (INODS) as the guest speaker. The webinar was moderated by Hirose Yoko, leader of the Russia Study Group and the research project "Intrinsic Examination of East Asian International Issues: The Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait Issues from a Regional Studies Perspective." There was a lively discussion between the panelists and participants.

Moderator

　Hirose Yoko, Senior Fellow, NPI; Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University

Speaker

　Ichida Kazuki, Institute for New Operational Domains Studies (INODS)

The main points discussed were as follows:

　Cognitive warfare alternatives aim to grasp situations comprehensively, taking a bird's-eye view and cross-sectional approach rather than being fixed on individual cases. They attempt to paint the full picture by combining research results and cases studies.
　Disinformation and misinformation are not the fundamental problems. Therefore, in many cases, the same problems arise even if disinformation and misinformation are eliminated.
　The impact of cognitive warfare has not been verified. The fact of interference has been confirmed, but its effectiveness remains unproven.
　Countermeasures taken to date lack a solid foundation and cannot be expected to yield results. Allocating personnel and budget to ineffective countermeasures has a negative impact in and of itself. In fact, the United States, which has allocated the most resources in this area, is seeing the situation only get worse.
　The target and impact of the attack are more problematic than the content of the attack. Many existing investigations are case studies and focus on specific attacks. Meanwhile, there has been little research or analysis into the targets and effects of the attacks, even though the targets and effects pose a greater threat to society.
　The impact of cognitive warfare has not been verified but tends to be overestimated by the media, politicians, and experts.
　Perception hacking refers to the spreading of distrust and suspicion towards information not by disseminating the disinformation and misinformation itself but rather by announcing that "disinformation and misinformation are a threat to society" or "Russia carried out digital influence operations." This is a strategy to spread distrust, generating suspicion throughout society and deepening doubts about democracy and social systems.
　Japan is vulnerable to interference from both domestic and foreign sources. Media outlets, politicians, and experts who overreact to foreign interference, especially from countries such as China and Russia, are easily exploited by such interference.
　During the House of Councillors election and the Noto earthquake, the media, politicians, and experts propagated unfounded risks, instilling an overly cautious attitude among the public which led to countermeasures being implemented to address risks whose actual nature had not been verified.
　Fact-checking is not always effective, and, in some cases, it can have the opposite effect of spreading disinformation and misinformation.
(Note that public health models and Canada's final report on election interference by China were introduced as effective countermeasures.)