Page 67 - Cyber Defense eMagazine RSAC Special Edition 2025

information (or disinformation) specifically directed at particular targets or groups to elicit reactions that
favour the goals of the "attacker" (in the classical sense of the word).

While some proponents already define conflicts that are "conducted through social engineering,
disinformation, cyber-attacks, artificial intelligence and autonomous agents" as fifth generation, others
lump them squarely into fourth generation. But regardless of the number, the cognitive domain has a
clear strategic and tactical role in today's conflicts, especially low-intensity and asymmetric ones.

Monitoring, the first step in controlling the cognitive domain

As in all other military operations, the first step is a reconnaissance of the terrain on which one wants to
act, although in this case the "terrain" is virtual. By knowing the state of the news in a geographical area
(city, region or country), as well as the sentiment of the population, it is possible to design the appropriate
strategies to achieve the desired objectives. In the case of the cognitive domain, these are usually related
to forming a favourable or unfavourable opinion about something or assessing how a particular action
would impact public opinion.

Such conflicts have a blurred line between political, intelligence and military actions, but this is the current
paradigm. Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, monitoring cyberspace related to specific geographic areas
is very easy. Platforms such as Intelion by ISID allow monitoring of open and private radio, television and
streaming broadcasts, as well as social networks, automatically locating keywords on a 24/7 basis, with
a system of alerts informing designated persons of the latest detections in a timely manner. With the
monitoring and analysis of hundreds of simultaneous channels, staffing requirements for surveillance are
greatly reduced and are limited to those operatives needed to attend, process and act when detections
are made.

AI modules can perform audio transcription, translation of audio if it is not in the desired language, as
well as facial or object recognition in video or image broadcasts, or the identification of voices or keywords
in communication monitoring. Finally, Intelion can analyse public sentiment regarding certain news or
actions using NLP (natural language processing), and determine whether it is positive, negative or
neutral.

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