Application of AI in IW
The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and non-kinetic irregular warfare (IW) represents both a qualitative change in the nature of strategic threats and a quantitative increase in adversarial operational effectiveness. Indeed, IW has always relied on the exploitation of asymmetries in expectations, capabilities, attribution, legitimacy, and response thresholds. Indeed, tactics such as asymmetry and indirect approaches (e.g., employing covert or non-kinetic operations) are elements of both conventional warfare and IW. AI provides an unprecedented ability to operationalize these asymmetries and tactics at scale, and when used within IWs (often within a “matrix operations” paradigm that coordinates very large numbers of participants within or across vast networks), can achieve speed and accuracy to minimize costs (in resources and personnel) and increase the effectiveness of such efforts. Indeed, today’s peer and state adversaries clearly recognize that strategic objectives can be achieved through sustained sub-threshold engagements that avoid invoking conventional military retaliation.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC), for example, articulates this premise in its principle of “extra-limited warfare,” which advocates the comprehensive use of informational, psychological, economic, and legal means to undermine a competitor’s strategic posture without the need for dynamic confrontation. Similarly, Russia employs the principle of reflexive control, using manipulated information and distorted perceptions to shape adversary decision-making in ways favorable to Russia’s tactical positions and strategic objectives. Iran has refined a multi-layered model of proxy influence, social messaging, and deniable cyber engagement that exploits ambiguity, delay, and uncertainty of attribution. In each of these applications, AI-enabled non-dynamic IW serves as a key vector of strategic competition.
This is no longer just modernized propaganda. Rather, these are algorithmically mediated cognitive campaigns to shape the perceptions of target populations about what is true, what is an imminent threat, who and what institutions can be trusted, and what actions are necessary and/or deemed legitimate in light of these perceptions. In this way, AI enables non-dynamic IW to become adaptive, recursive, and self-improving. Therefore, hostile campaigns do not have to rely solely on disinformation. They can use distortions that are more subtle, personalized, and contextually plausible, but much more difficult to detect, define, and counter.
what it means
The impact on readiness is profound. In the current geopolitical environment, military effectiveness does not depend solely on weapons systems, troop strength, and logistics. It equally depends on morale, organizational cohesion, trust in leadership, organizational legitimacy, and the social trust that enables continued operational commitment. AI-powered influence operations can directly target each of these variables. Narratives that reinforce perceptions of institutional corruption, leadership hypocrisy, unfairness of the burden, and futility of the mission can undermine both current and future military personnel’s desire to serve and the domestic public’s willingness to support military action.
This is an important point. In IW, perceptions often achieve operational effects before factual corrections occur. AI compresses the time interval between narrative creation and dissemination to nearly zero, thereby taking advantage of the delays inherent in bureaucratic verification, government response, and target population influence. Often, the goal is not to convince the target that a falsehood is true, but rather to convince the target that the truth itself is uncertain, authority cannot be trusted, and cooperation is not trustworthy. This creates vulnerabilities and allows for more effective targeting of alliance architectures. Allied cohesion depends on shared trust, shared threat perception, and mutual public legitimacy. AI-powered influence operations aimed at instilling or exacerbating sociocultural, economic, ethnic, or political divisions can create tensions that tear apart allies’ consensus and instill operational paralysis. This can lead to delays in collective action, conflicting strategic messages, and impede and undermine a coordinated response in force deployment and escalation management.
More broadly, AI has made IW more persistent, personalized, and strategically important. The battlespace has now expanded into contested areas of recognition and social trust. Adversaries can continually examine social and military morale, alliance weaknesses, and apply calibrated pressure to stay below the legal and political threshold of perceived movement commitment. Therefore, we believe that AI-enabled IW preparedness should rely solely on cyber defense or public relations countermeasures. Instead, it will require integrated cognitive security principles, enhanced military-civilian communications, AI-powered detection of disinformation, synchronization of allied narratives, and continued assessment of societal trust vulnerabilities in both the military and civilian sectors. Simply put, if IW increasingly weaponizes cognition, strategic defense must increasingly seek to protect the epistemic and sociopolitical foundations on which military power depends.
Recommendations to the Department of War (DoW)
Towards that end, we offer the following recommendations.
1. Establish a dedicated AI-IW threat intelligence center. Integrated and permanent capabilities to continuously assess adversarial AI-enabled IW activity across all non-dynamic domains will become increasingly important. Such centers should integrate technical expertise in signals intelligence, open source intelligence, behavioral science, and AI to deliver decision-related products to combatant commanders, service chiefs, and national command authorities. Similarly, we believe there is a need to enhance and enhance the ability to attribute and characterize AI-enabled IW operations in relative real-time to support interagency and coordinated information sharing on emerging threats.
2. Develop and institutionalize cognitive resistance and resilience programs. As a core readiness function, DoW should prioritize resources and services that focus on developing and maintaining cognitive resilience among personnel, organizations, and associated populations. Toward such ends, evidence-based programs (i.e., based on neurocognitive science and social systems research) need to be implemented to educate and train personnel and forces to recognize and resist AI-based information manipulation, disinformation, and influence operations. Such programs should also be extended to defense agencies of allies and partners through security cooperation projects and channels.
3. Integrate AI monitoring and countermeasures into operational planning principles. Current joint doctrine should follow the development of AI-enabled IW as a separate operational challenge that requires dedicated planning. Such principles should integrate AI-based IW threat detection, disruption, identification, and response within the full range of operational planning processes (e.g., from theater operations to crisis response and action planning).
4. Fund a national program of AI-IW research and development. The DoW should consider AI-enabled IW as a high-priority research and development focus separate from modernizing conventional weapons detection, deterrence, and response. This will require dedicated funding lines to support cognitive and behavioral science research applicable to AI detection and attribution techniques, synthetic media forensics, adversarial AI analysis methods and protocols, and influence resistance. It is clear that partnerships with academic institutions, national laboratories, and private commercial organizations are essential for such undertakings, and such national approaches and projects should be established and maintained in a way that allows sufficient flexibility (of means and methods) to maintain and strengthen fixity of purpose.
conclusion
Irregular wars have always violated and abused the boundaries between peace and war, primarily by blurring the distinction between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imagined. While AI has not changed the enduring logic of IW: the exploitation of asymmetries and vulnerabilities, its scope, precision, and persistence have radically expanded. Adversaries that can most effectively manipulate awareness, trust, and collective fortitude will be able to achieve strategic gains without firing a shot. AI is furthering this fog (and momentum) of engagement. Today’s peers and adversaries understand this and are taking advantage of this capability.
Therefore, we argue that the DoW needs to recognize AI-enabled non-kinetic IW as a clear and current operational reality that demands the same weight of resource commitment, doctrinal innovation, and strategic attention as has traditionally been reserved for kinetic threats. This reality demands that the United States recognize AI not just as a tool for technological advancement, but as an augment to IW in the increasingly contested battleground of human cognition.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government, Department of the Army, or National Defense University.
Jocelyn Garcia is a master’s degree candidate in the Global Security (Irregular Warfare) Program at Arizona State University, where her research focuses on the methods, mechanisms, and effects of cognitive influence. She is also the Director of Strategic Communications. small wars journal.
Dr. James Giordano is Director of the Strategic Deterrence and Weapons of Mass Destruction Research Center and Program Leader for Disruptive Technologies and Future Warfare at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
