Australia isn’t prepared for conflict unless it can build and defend the will to fight. The national civil preparedness and resilience inquiry, adopted in July, is an opportunity to begin that conversation.
The inquiry’s terms of reference cover ‘whole-of-nation support for national defence, continuity of government, and the availability of essential goods and services during times of crisis or conflict,’ but the inquiry will likely focus almost entirely on the kinetic and logistical dimensions of war.
But Australians may not support an all-in wartime posture, especially amid geopolitical uncertainty and growing economic pain.
The number of Australians who feel unsafe in the world is at an all-time high. Trust in China is relatively low and most Australians believe that China will pose a military threat within 20 years. Despite strong support for democracy, only half the adult population say they would be willing to fight to defend Australia if physically able.
This disconnect reveals a serious problem: Australians feel threatened but lack the conviction for armed combat. This is not the foundation upon which nations successfully enter into and sustain protracted conflict, no matter how good their infrastructural resilience.
That conviction is the domain of cognitive resilience. And it is where Australia remains unprepared.
Cognitive resilience is not peripheral to the real work of defence. Weapons, platforms and physical training sit alongside psychological components. Thought, belief, will and emotion are central to whether a soldier will use those weapons and whether the public will support and sustain their use.
The kinetic and the cognitive are integrated and mutually reinforcing. But by focusing too narrowly on supply chains and infrastructure, the civil preparedness inquiry risks cementing an outdated framework that treats the physical and psychological as separate. The inquiry ignores the cognitive dimension that determines whether Australians even want to fight, let alone sustain a conflict.
Consider China. It has an economy roughly 10 times larger than Australia’s, a military budget 13 times greater and a population 50 times larger. Australia cannot match Beijing in numbers or resources. If Australia is drawn into a regional security conflict, we are at a numerical and economic disadvantage.
How do we prevail in that scenario? By fighting smarter. That includes being ready to confront an adversary who has already industrialised cognitive warfare at scale.
China’s military doctrine explicitly includes information dominance as a core warfighting domain, and its state-sponsored actors’ sophisticated capability in disinformation and influence operations is well documented.
The 2026 National Defence Strategy acknowledges today’s multi-domain threats. It recognises that ‘authoritarian regimes are becoming more willing and able to disrupt critical infrastructure, conduct cyber intrusions and engage in misinformation and disinformation campaigns.’ The convergence of social media, artificial intelligence and the growing prevalence of disinformation presents both opportunities and challenges for strengthened defences.
Yet the civil preparedness inquiry has not connected this acknowledgment to its own scope. The inquiry examines how to keep the lights on and the food flowing but ignores how to build and defend the will to fight.
In its 2026 inquiry into disinformation, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that ‘disinformation is the new warfare and liberal democracies are sitting ducks.’ It called for the creation of a National Counter Disinformation Centre to combat this risk. Unlike the Australian debate on disinformation, the UK framing wasn’t about communications or media literacy, but about national security, akin to cyber defence.
Meanwhile NATO has been committed to a resilience framework since 2016, covering conventional, irregular, hybrid, terrorist, cyber and information threats. A decade on, the NATO Chief Scientist has declared that it has never been more important to invest in conducting and defending against cognitive warfare. Additionally, a NATO paper published in April argues that cognitive attacks are already going unnoticed, for which the best defensive move is actually a proactive one: building cognitive resilience.
From Estonia, Sweden and Ukraine to Taiwan and South Korea, many countries are embracing what Australia has not yet recognised: 21st century conflict is as much about defending the minds of civilians and soldiers as it is about protecting fuel hubs and energy grids.
As the Deputy Prime Minister has rightly observed, civil preparedness has not received much attention in Australia since the end of WWII. The preparedness inquiry is important and timely, but risks continuing this historical blind spot by focusing on logistics while ignoring cognition.
Australians are facing disinformation and foreign interference overload. They’re scared, they expect conflict and they don’t believe we’re prepared. They want a national conversation and a better understanding of how national security affects their lives, what government agencies are doing to protect them, and what role the community can play in building resilience.
The national civil preparedness and resilience inquiry is an opportunity to begin that conversation. Without a shared understanding of why we would fight, what are we fighting for?
Leave a comment