Taiwan’s Democratic Resilience and Its Challenges: A Critical Reassessment of CCP’s Multi-Modal Cognitive Warfare

In recent years, Taiwan has been consistently targeted by cognitive warfare launched by China, using tactics that demonstrate a level of complexity beyond traditional academic definitions. This paper examines cognitive warfare through a multi-modal framework, integrating the concept of horizontal dissemination from political communication theory to expand scholarly understanding of these strategies. It also asserts that since cognitive warfare includes “malicious socio-disruptive technologies,” such tactics should not be categorized under the rights protected by free speech. This study extensively examines the theoretical and practical frameworks for countering cognitive warfare, focusing on three primary concerns: first, the clarification of the multi-modal cognitive warfare framework; second, analyses of cognitive warfare from both theoretical and practical perspectives; and third, proposing possible response strategies rooted in Taiwan’s democratic resilience. Keywords: horizontal transmission, democratic resilience, multidimensional linguistic analysis, multimodal framework, political communication, cognitive warfare