Targeted Cognitive Effects Across the Narrative Kill Chain

The deepfake campaigns analyzed in our report report – The Role of Deepfakes in Cognitive Warfare, do not address a generic audience. Instead, they reveal a target-differentiated cognitive strategy, in which distinct population groups are exposed to tailored components of the Narrative Kill Chain, depending on their role, vulnerability, and strategic relevance.

The same underlying narrative architecture is adapted to three primary targets: Ukrainian troops, the Ukrainian public, and Western public opinion. Each target interacts with different steps of the Narrative Kill Chain, and the operational emphasis shifts accordingly.

Targeted cognitive impact

Target 1: Ukrainian Troops

Intent: Engineering Cognitive Fatigue Ukrainian soldiers represent the most sensitive and operationally valuable target. Deepfake content directed at them is not designed to incite rebellion or immediate disobedience. Instead, it aims to engineer sustained cognitive fatigue, degrading performance, confidence, and situational awareness over time. For this target, the Narrative Kill Chain is activated most fully, with particular emphasis on Emotional Grievance, Command Delegitimization, Situational Hopelessness, and Normalization of Surrender or Compliance. Deepfakes simulate exaggerated or entirely fabricated tactical crises: encirclements, devastating losses, collapsing defensive lines. These scenarios distort risk perception, forcing soldiers to anticipate threats that do not exist, thereby increasing cognitive load in an already extreme environment. Parallel narratives depict officers insulting recruits, lying about supplies, or admitting to sending “cannon fodder” to the front. The intent is not to provoke mutiny, but to seed doubt. In combat, doubt functions as a multiplier of uncertainty. Guided surrender videos then introduce a psychological exit option, presenting disengagement as rational, humane, and externally validated. Over time, this can erode agency—the perceived capacity to act meaningfully, without requiring belief in the content’s factual accuracy. The effects of these operations must be evaluated across two distinct but interconnected horizons: tactical outcomes, which influence near-term behavior and performance, and strategic outcomes, which reshape long-term political will, alliance cohesion, and the trajectory of the conflict. In hybrid warfare, tactical cognitive effects are designed to accumulate into strategic consequences.

Target 2: Ukrainian Public/Ukrainian Diaspora

Intent: Erosion of Vertical Trust Deepfake content aimed at Ukrainian civilians is designed to undermine vertical trust, defined as the trust flowing from citizens to state institutions, political leadership, and military command. These operations do not seek to provoke mass panic or overt unrest. Rather, they aim at a slow and cumulative degradation of confidence in the state’s capacity and ethical legitimacy. For this target, the most frequently activated Narrative Kill Chain steps are Manufactured Identity, Emotional Grievance, and Command Delegitimization. Deepfakes present themselves as spontaneous civilian or soldier testimonies, often in Ukrainian language or dialect, leveraging mimetic plausibility rather than factual detail. Emotional distress, fear for children, and civilian suffering are foregrounded to establish identification and empathy, while responsibility for these conditions is subtly reassigned to Ukrainian military presence, government incompetence, or command negligence. As exposure accumulates, these narratives begin to produce situational hopelessness, not in the form of imminent collapse, but as political fatigue: the sense that nothing is improving, that institutions do not listen, and that sacrifice is endlessly demanded without visible progress. Importantly, later stages of the kill chain—Normalization of Surrender/Compliance and Cynical Meaning Destruction—are used sparingly for this audience, as overt nihilism risks backlash. The intended outcome is not revolt, but disengagement: reduced civic participation, declining tolerance for prolonged mobilization, and weakening societal resilience.

Target 3: Western Public Opinion

Intent: Fracturing Strategic Consensus For European and American audiences, deepfake operations follow a different logic. The Western public is not existentially embedded in the conflict; their support for Ukraine is mediated by moral narratives, political framing, and perceptions of feasibility. Consequently, the primary objective is to erode the strategic consensus that underpins continued military, financial, and political support. Here, the Narrative Kill Chain emphasizes Manufactured Identity, Emotional Grievance, and Situational Hopelessness. Deepfakes portray exhausted soldiers, alleged underage recruits, or morale breakdown at the front, presented as authentic “voices from the battlefield.” These images are not meant to frighten Western audiences, but to create emotional shock devoid of operational context. Command Delegitimization reframes Ukraine as a failing or irresponsible state, while exaggerated depictions of Russian strength or Ukrainian collapse foster a perception of terminal inevitability. The subliminal message is consistent: continued support is morally ambiguous, strategically futile, or economically irrational. In this framing, disengagement becomes an act of prudence rather than betrayal. Symbolic victory narratives, when deployed, serve to provide psychological permission to look away— to conclude that outcomes are already determined.

Operational Emphasis Matrix: Narrative Kill Chain vs Target Impact

The Operational Emphasis Matrix further supports the observation that released deepfakes are not generic propaganda, but empirically demonstrates how:

• Different Narrative Kill Chain steps are emphasized for different targets
• Video categories are not randomly distributed
• Narrative design adapts to psychological vulnerability

The intended outcomes do not require:

• Mass belief in falsehoods
• Viral success of individual videos
• Overt attribution

They require only:

• Repetition
• Plausibility
• Psychological fatigue

This is why these operations are strategic weapons in hybrid warfare and not information anomalies.

The Role of Deepfakes in Cognitive Warfare: A Case Study from the Ukraine Battlefront

This State of Deepfakes report exposes our findings from work alongside the intelligence community inside and outside Ukraine over the past year. It outlines an attack framework for the deployment of synthetic media as a cognitive weapon in modern conflict.

Download Report