China’s New Vision for Capturing Taipei | War on the Rocks

Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Howard Wang put out “Total War on Taipei: China Explores Elevating Cognitive Effects into Its Vision of Warfare” in War on the Rocks on July 22nd. The piece examines a Chinese military concept called “all-domain megacity incapacitation warfare,” which appeared in the March 2025 issue of Military Art, a restricted internal journal overseen by China’s Central Military Commission. This concept, the authors argue, shows how Chinese planners might use combined kinetic and cognitive attacks to force Taipei into rapid surrender rather than fight a long and costly invasion.

Themes from the analysis 

Urban warfare gets a psychological front. The plan treats Taipei’s population as the real target. Kinetic strikes and propaganda all serve one goal, breaking the will of civilians and soldiers to keep resisting.

Reconstruction planning starts before the war does. Chinese planners avoid destroying power plants and other critical infrastructure. This suggests they are already thinking about occupying and running the city after capture.

Social media is a weapon system. The concept names Meta and TikTok directly as platforms for spreading deepfakes and coordinated propaganda. This moves cognitive operations from a supporting role into a primary line of attack.

Civilian institutions join the fight. The plan calls for a national coordination system linking media, financial tools, and other civilian sectors with the military. This matches China’s broader strategy of “national total war,” where the whole of society mobilizes for conflict.

U.S. wargames lag behind this thinking. Most Western analysis still models blockades and strikes as the main events, treating civilian morale as a fixed number.  Taiwan’s information networks and civil defense agencies deserve the same attention as its airbases and ports in future planning.

Read the original article here.

We have an excellent trove of work on the cognitive domain. Check out these recent highlights for starters:

Charles T. Cleveland, Daniel Brookes and David S. Maxwell’s “Cognitive Warfare: An Allied Blueprint and a Pentagon Opportunity.”

Robert Schmidle and James Giordano’s “Cognitive Warfare at the Crossroads: Defining and Developing Capabilities.“