Cognitive Warfare Through the Lens of Critical Neuroscience: Data, Theory, and Values

Abstract This study examines cognitive warfare through the lens of critical neuroscience and situates it within peace research as a methodological contribution. Cognitive warfare-understood as the strategic modulation of perception, belief, and decision-making-highlights how the human mind has become a contested domain of contemporary conflict. The weaponization of neuroscience unfolds within sociocultural contexts where empirical findings, theoretical interpretations, and normative commitments are deeply entangled. Drawing on Johan Galtung’s epistemological triad of data, theory, and values, I propose a framework for analyzing cognitive warfare that makes explicit the normative dimensions of neuroscientific knowledge. This perspective highlights not only the weaponization of neuroscience itself, but also of its reputation: exaggerated claims and neuropolitical imaginaries can shape expectations, distort public discourse, and erode trust in science independently of actual technological capabilities. Applying this framework, the study examines resilience and solidarity as two domains in which empirical mechanisms, theoretical interpretations, and normative priors intersect. Cognitive warfare is shown to undermine resilience by destabilizing shared models of reality, while evolutionary and social dynamics demonstrate the long-term advantages of cooperation, reciprocity, and generosity over manipulation and defection. By integrating critical neuroscience with peace research, the article advances an expanded notion of peace as the safeguarding of mental and social autonomy-conditions under which cognition remains free from systematic manipulation and capable of sustaining cooperative forms of life.