This article was originally published in Maariv on July 22, 2026.
While Israel is investing tens of millions of dollars in an effort to influence public opinion in the United States, it is worth pausing to ask what cognitive influence actually is and why those who speak about it most often are usually the least capable of creating it.
One of the most impressive influence operations of recent years did not involve bots, avatars, or social media influencers, nor was it conducted quietly. Iran, despite possessing limited military capabilities relative to its adversaries, asserted its authority over the Strait of Hormuz by establishing a Strait Authority, publishing transit regulations, requiring permits and insurance issued under its own authority, and warning commercial vessels to seek its approval or risk being targeted.
But Iran did not stop at the declaration. It connected that declaration to physical capability, a credible threat, and economic uncertainty in a way that compelled others to change their behavior. Shipping companies were forced to register and obtain authorization, and according to Lloyd’s List, at least some vessels paid for passage, one reportedly paying close to $2 million for a single transit.
Even Washington ultimately adopted part of Iran’s logic. U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the United States controlled the Strait and proposed charging a 20 percent fee for securing maritime transit. Iran’s foreign minister was quick to respond, stating that whoever provides safe passage is indeed entitled to compensation.
This illustrates the difference between messaging and influence. Messaging seeks to change what people think; influence is measured by changing how they behave. Iran did not need to convince its adversaries that it was right. It was enough for its capabilities to become, in their eyes, a reality to which they had to adapt and act accordingly.
This is the definition that has been lost in Israeli discourse. Cognitive influence is not about what others think of us; it is about what they do because of what they think. An influence operation does not begin by asking which message will generate the most attention. It begins by asking what behavior we want to produce, in whom, and through which lever of influence. The message is the final link in the chain, not the first.
In Israel, the discussion often proceeds in the opposite order. It begins with the tool—a video, a campaign, an influencer, a bot, or an avatar. Then come the metrics: views, impressions, and engagement. Only rarely does anyone ask what behavior we sought to change, in whom, and by what means.
Amid this confusion, spokespersons, advertisers, political consultants, and television commentators have been elevated to the status of “cognitive warfare experts,” even though these are entirely different professions. As long as success is measured by exposure rather than by sustained behavioral change months after an event has ended, we are measuring the wrong thing.
Israel’s adversaries operate precisely in the arena that Israel too often overlooks. Hamas and its supporters did not need to deny the atrocities of October 7. Instead, they sought to change how the perpetrators themselves were perceived. In parts of Western discourse, the murderers and rapists were recast as “resistance fighters” and “liberators,” while the massacre was framed as an act of resistance against occupation. This was not denial. It was a substitution of meaning—and it is even more dangerous. Such a transformation is not achieved through a single social media post.
It rests on a conceptual vocabulary that had already been cultivated for years within academia, civil society organizations, media outlets, and online platforms: colonialism, resistance, indigeneity, and liberation. Whoever succeeds in placing an event within a conceptual framework already familiar to the audience does not need to invent a new message each time. The framework itself interprets the event on their behalf. That is cognitive influence—not public relations.
The root of Israel’s failure is not a shortage of messages, but the absence of the necessary preconditions. When the state fails to define the field, establish the expertise it requires, and determine who is qualified to operate within each arena, public relations, advertising, political campaigning, and social media management are all mistakenly treated as expertise in cognitive influence overnight.
Millions of Messages—But Was Any Influence Created?
Israel’s current effort in the United States illustrates this problem. According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel is investing tens of millions of dollars in an influence campaign involving social media influencers, conservative media personalities, and millions of AI-assisted text messages.
Clock Tower X, the company associated with the text messaging component of the campaign, is registered under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), meaning its relationship with the Israeli government exists at the formal legal level. That disclosure, however, appears in regulatory filings—not necessarily at the moment recipients receive the message.
Recipients received text messages from individuals with names such as Emma or Sarah, purportedly representing an organization called Friends for Peace. Yet this local branding did not necessarily create credibility. According to the reporting, many recipients did not understand who was contacting them or why. One recipient, a student from Indiana, believed he was simply exchanging messages with an individual Israeli.
Herein lies the failure. Rather than cultivating a messenger whom the target audience recognizes as credible, the campaign created an identity designed to appear local, while the communication itself was presented as personal but often came across as automated or scripted. Once that manufactured identity is exposed, the tool can undermine the very trust it was intended to build.
The publicly available data measure inputs: money spent, messages sent, content produced, and audience exposure. They do not demonstrate a change in attitudes, let alone a change in behavior. The relevant question is whether Israel has acquired the ability to influence a defined audience—or merely built a system capable of generating millions of outreach attempts.
The problem is not the use of multiple tools. The problem is the absence of a coherent strategy connecting them. A locally branded identity, overt media purchases, and formal legal registration can all be part of the same campaign—but only if it is clear who the target audience is, what level of transparency is appropriate at each stage, and what success is ultimately supposed to look like.
What Does Genuine Expertise in Cognitive Influence Require?
To understand what is missing, one need only ask what genuine expertise in cognitive influence actually requires. It begins long before the message itself—with rigorous research into the target audience: the language they genuinely speak rather than the language we translate for ourselves; their identity; their fears; the authorities they trust; and the internal divisions that may shape or influence their behavior.
It also requires studying the adversary and understanding how they think—not merely what they say. Only then come the definition of the behavior one seeks to change, the selection of a messenger capable of delivering the message without undermining it through his or her own identity, the long-term cultivation of trusted assets rather than the purchase of temporary exposure, and the ability to measure genuine changes in perception and behavior rather than simply volume and visibility.
One distinction is missing from Israeli discourse more than any other. In covert operations, professionals know when to remain silent because non-attribution is an operational requirement. In public diplomacy, their role is to speak. In deterrence, they must ensure that the adversary hears the message. In defending against foreign interference, they must identify and expose hostile activity.
Expertise is neither silence nor speech. Expertise is knowing what each arena requires and not confusing one discipline with another. Anyone who speaks about all of these fields as though they were a single profession is not an expert in cognitive influence; they are an expert in their own field who has wandered into one that is not.
Therefore, before appointing another task force director, commissioning another campaign, or sending another “expert” to a television studio, it is worth asking four simple questions: Which audience did you research? What specific behavior were you trying to change? Who was the messenger? What actually changed?
Someone who cannot answer these questions is not necessarily an incompetent professional. They are simply a professional in a different field.
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran began with the behavior it wanted to produce and then aligned power, credible threat, and messaging to achieve it. In Israel, the process too often begins with the message itself. That is not merely a procedural error. It is the difference between talking about cognitive influence and actually exercising it.
