The Role of Deepfakes in Cognitive Warfare
Synthetic media is routinely deployed as a cognitive weapon in modern theaters of conflict. Although we’re currently seeing deepfakes deployed at scale by Iran amid escalations with Israel and the US in the Middle East, this is not the first evidence of widespread use of deepfakes and synthetic media as a weapon of war.
In fact, the industrialization of AI-generated media as a psychological weapon, was a process developed and perfected by Russia throughout the conflict in Ukraine over the last four years.
Video Overview
Narrative Kill Chain Exposes Deepfakes as Cognitive Weapon
The Narrative Kill Chain, a model exposed in our new report and case study from the Ukraine battlefront, identifies a modular and repeatable sequence of deepfake-driven payloads designed to produce predictable cognitive effects on select target populations, such as frontline soldiers, Ukrainian civilians, and the Western public.
The aim of this cognitive weapon is to stimulate disengagement in the target through systematic emotional fatigue. In the report, this is demonstrated within the context of the Narrative Kill Chain through an archive of sample videos, selected from over 1,000 media harvested and categorized in the wild as part of our work alongside the intelligence community inside and outside Ukraine.
The findings are timely, because right now in the Middle East, we are seeing the same attack framework deployed by Iran, through comparable narrative structures, against neighboring countries and Israel-US in the early phases of the conflict.
Deepfake Dissemination Strategy
As with any other military operation, logistics plays a crucial role. Once deepfakes are produced, they need to be delivered to a specific environment to be launched against the targets. In the report, we also investigated the mechanisms through which content spreads, highlighting how distribution dynamics algorithmically embedded within social media platforms contribute to amplification and persistence. This cognitive weapon exploits the fact that proximity, similarity, and interaction patterns collapse traditional boundaries between populations.
Deepfakes Adopted as Cognitive Weapon in Conflict Disinformation
In the 12 months since our last published State of Deepfakes report, synthetic media has become truly democratized, but its ubiquitous presence in an information warfare environment has surprised even the most dogged observers.
The events at the start of March, 2026, not only confirmed our hypothesis that deepfake-driven cognitive warfare would become de facto in large-scale conflict, but asserted that its adoption is happening faster than anybody could have expected.
Today’s information conflicts respect neither borders nor time zones. The same disinformation narrative can be adapted and deployed across continents in parallel, whether the objective is to interfere with an election, erode social cohesion, or destabilize public trust in institutions.
Geography is no longer a constraint — only the capacity to produce and distribute content is. That dependency on connectivity and scale is what places this form of cognitive warfare squarely in the digital domain.
Download the full report now
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.
