Before a single shot is fired, the battle for truth has already begun. That is the central argument of StratNews Global’s Editor-in-Chief Nitin Gokhale, a veteran war correspondent with decades of conflict coverage experience. “Cognitive warfare begins even before the kinetic phase of the war starts,” he says.
Nitin Gokhale traces the architecture of modern information control back to Sri Lanka’s final military campaign against the LTTE in 2008-09. The Sri Lankan government, having studied the failures of the Indian peacekeeping force in the 1980s, undone in part by a diaspora that successfully weaponised sympathetic press coverage, constructed what he describes as “a bubble around the battlefield.” Only government-approved footage, photographs, and narratives were permitted. The Tamil Tigers were cut off from the oxygen of international opinion. “That played a major part in the LTTE not being able to mobilise opinion for itself,” he says.
Today, that playbook is being run at a global scale. Iran has imposed a near-total internet blackout; only select leadership retains access to the outside world. Israel has issued military censorship restricting reporting; photographing or publishing the impact of Iran’s strikes is not permitted. During a recent LIVE broadcast from Israel, the CNN anchor said she could hear missiles overhead, but Israel’s strict media rules prohibited showing visuals of those missiles or interceptions.
Gulf nations have always maintained tight controls over media output. Take Dubai, for example. When Iran’s air strikes first hit the UAE, many posted videos of interceptions on their social media accounts. Close to 300 were arrested, including some Indians. The result of that swift action was visible immediately. Influencers literally flipped their narratives overnight, videos from the public of interceptions and impact of strikes disappeared in a flash.
Even commercial satellite imagery has come under restriction: platforms like Planet Labs and Maxar have been told to delay publicly accessible images by 15 days at the behest of the US government.
The consequences for audiences are profound. “The viewer is left confused, to put it very simply,” he says. Social media floods the zone with unverifiable content while governments restrict verified information. It’s a combination that breeds noise, not clarity, and ultimately disbelief.
Most troubling, he warns, is the long-term credibility trap this sets for governments themselves. “If you don’t give out facts, fiction will be written or shown,” he says, a principle he has taught for years.
Once a government cries wolf enough times, or stays silent too long, its own authentic warnings stop being believed. He concludes that the battlefield has moved decisively into the mind. And in that space, every viewer is already a participant.
