On Victory in the Cognitive War

If the cognitive war were to have a face without a face, and be embodied in a precise instrument able to fanatize some of its members, QAnon would be the perfect surface and instrument. Born in the anonymity of obscure forums, it took over from Anonymous, but inverted its logic: from libertarian hacktivism based on evidence, we have moved to authoritarian conspiracism based on belief.

This shift wouldn’t have occurred without the blind appetite of the media for the spectacular and without the troubled mythification of the whistle-blower. The great leaks — Wikileaks, Panama, Paradise, Pandora — taught minds to believe that every power rests on a secret, and that the one who claims anonymity holds the key. The journalists’ consortium, by orchestrating these massive revelations, has become, despite itself, the catalyst of a systemic mistrust.

QAnon then exploited this expectation: no longer necessary to provide evidence, belief suffices.

From that moment, accusation becomes a weapon. As the saying goes: “you always accuse the mad dog so that it may be killed.” Not to establish truth, but to delegitimize and neutralize. QAnon pushes this logic to fanatization: the designated target — the “elite”, the “deep state”, the political opponent — becomes the absolute enemy.

But this mechanism is not confined to American soil: it is connected to a broader geopolitical matrix. The permeability to the prestige of the Kremlin — presented as a bulwark against Western decline — is not accidental. Media relays like Tucker Carlson translate Russian propaganda into cultural warfare for the American public, normalizing a fascination with authoritarianism. In this architecture, Steve Bannon plays the shadow eminence.

He acts as a transmission belt attempting to forge a Judeo-Christian international along the Washington → Tel-Aviv → Moscow axis. This axis recruits, feeds on ideological and electoral successes, and convinces itself that Trump and Musk are its lieutenants — which, wrongly, sustains its sense of power. It seems both unstoppable and invincible.

That is why democracies, which are believed to be defeated or corroded by the cognitive weapon, are defeated only in appearance. For as they are probed, weakened, manipulated, they become aware of their own essence. They turn against their adversaries the very tool that sought to enslave them, and transform poison into antidote.

The cognitive war launched by Russia and its Sozbez*, with unprecedented skill and depth, claims to understand free societies in order better to destabilize them; but in doing so, it forces them to understand themselves with a new lucidity.

They rediscover a more powerful center of gravity and, above all, in a certain manner they self-center, which is the regular, universal form that allows for the governance of their interests and their relations with others — which is the meaning of the outstretched hand that Xi Jinping’s proposal of the GGI (Global Governance Initiative) seems to offer for China, in its aim to restore the preeminence of the UN and the WTO.

On Victory in the Cognitive War

*Sovbez (Совбез) is the commonly used abbreviation for the Security Council of the Russian Federation (Совет Безопасности Российской Федерации).