Cognitive Warfare: China's Information Operations Against Taiwan's Will to Resist
The most important battle in a Taiwan conflict may be fought before the first missile is launched, on platforms that do not appear in military order-of-battle assessments, by actors who are never uniformed and never identifiable. China’s information operations against Taiwan are not a supplement to its military strategy. They are the precondition for making the military strategy work. A Taiwanese population that has been sufficiently demoralized, divided, and confused about what is actually happening and who can be trusted is a population that provides less political support for resistance, less capacity for civil defense mobilization, and less coherent pressure on allied governments to intervene.
The infrastructure for information operations against Taiwan has been built over decades and operates continuously, not only during periods of acute tension. The entry points are numerous: Taiwanese media organizations that receive funding or content from mainland-linked sources, social media platforms that Chinese state actors have learned to use with considerable sophistication, the Taiwanese political and business community with cross-strait connections that create both information access and channels for influence, and the information environment of the Taiwanese diaspora in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, which is targeted with content designed to shape remittances, political engagement, and community pressure.
The specific content of the information operations has been analyzed by Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and by academic researchers at institutions like National Taiwan University’s Fake News and Disinformation research projects. The recurring themes: Taiwan’s defense is hopeless, American support will not materialize when it matters, the Taiwanese government is corrupt and untrustworthy, cross-strait reunification would preserve prosperity rather than eliminating it, resistance would produce civilian casualties that capitulation would avoid. Each of these themes is designed to reduce the psychological cost of acceptance and raise the psychological cost of resistance. Together, they constitute an attempt to win by eroding will rather than by defeating forces.
Taiwan’s response to information operations has been more systematic and more internationally recognized than is generally appreciated. The “debunking” infrastructure — government agencies, civil society organizations, and citizen fact-checkers who identify and counter specific disinformation narratives — has been developed into one of the more capable operations of its kind among democracies. The speed with which false narratives are identified, the coordination between government and civil society in responding, and the public communication culture that treats media literacy as a civic value rather than a specialist concern — all of these represent genuine investments in resilience.
The resilience has limits. Disinformation that is sophisticated enough, targeted enough, and delivered through enough channels simultaneously can outpace fact-checking infrastructure regardless of how well-developed it is. During a crisis — when events are moving fast, when official communications are disrupted, when people are frightened and seeking information — the conditions for disinformation to be effective are most favorable and the conditions for fact-checking to be timely are worst. Chinese planning presumably accounts for this. The information operation that would precede and accompany a military action is not the peacetime campaign that is currently visible. It is a version calibrated for crisis conditions that has not yet been publicly deployed.
The allied dimension of information warfare is underappreciated. Chinese information operations targeting Taiwan work partly by targeting the allied publics and governments whose political will is the precondition for meaningful intervention. An American public that has been exposed to narratives about Taiwan provoking the crisis, the futility of intervention, and the cost of war — narratives that circulate in American social media independently of whether any specific Chinese actor is responsible for them — is a public that provides less political support for the military commitment that Taiwan’s defense requires. The information operation against Taiwan is partly conducted in Washington, Tokyo, and Sydney.
Militaries can be rebuilt after defeat. Will is harder to reconstruct once it has been eroded. China’s information operations are aimed at the harder target.