这项研究揭示了生成式AI如何从根本上改变认知战的运作方式——从简单的放大转向复杂的合成，安全从业者和政策制定者需要理解这种新威胁模式，建议点开看看具体的数据对比。
该研究对比了2016年和2024年美国总统大选期间X平台上的行为与语言协调模式，发现2024年的数据呈现出与2016年截然不同的特征：原创内容从59%飙升至93%，转发几乎消失；词汇重叠度从平均Jaccard分数0.99骤降至0.27，帖子围绕同一主题但用词显著不同；时间协调从普遍的跨语义同步转向叙事集中的共现。这些模式指向一种以主动内容生成和叙事特定目标为特征的运作逻辑，与生成式AI的参与一致。研究为未来调查生成式AI在认知战中的作用提供了实证基线，并为安全从业者开发适应后生成式AI威胁环境的检测框架提供了实用参考。
Amplification to Synthesis: A Comparative Analysis of Cognitive Operations Before and After Generative AI
Cognitive operations are a rising concern in the geopolitical sphere, a quiet yet rigorous fight for public perception and decision making. While such operations have been extensively studied in the context of bot-driven amplification, the emergence of generative AI introduces a new set of capabilities that may have fundamentally altered how these operations are designed and executed. The possible evolution of cognitive operation via generative AI puts nation states vulnerable without proper mitigation strategies. To address this, we compared behavioral and linguistic coordination patterns in X (formerly Twitter) datasets from the 2016 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Utilizing a combined corpus of over 133,000 posts, we applied post-type distribution, semantic clustering, temporal synchrony analysis, and Jaccard-based lexical overlap measures. Findings suggest that the 2024 corpus exhibits a distinct pattern from 2016. Original content rose from 59% to 93% with retweets virtually disappeared; lexical overlap collapsed from a mean Jaccard score of 0.99 to 0.27, with posts converging on the same subject matter expressed in markedly different words; and temporal coordination shifted from pervasive cross-semantic synchrony to narratively concentrated co-occurrence. Taken together, these patterns point toward an operational logic organized around active content generation and narrative-specific targeting - characteristics consistent with generative AI involvement. These findings offer an empirical baseline for future research investigating generative AI's role in the cognitive operation pipeline, and as a practical reference point for security practitioners developing detection frameworks calibrated to the post-generative AI threat environment.