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KUALA LUMPUR - Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin has warned that Malaysia faces a new breed of hybrid security threats, chief among them what he called cognitive warfare aimed at reshaping how Malaysians think and act.
Delivering his winding-up speech at the 2026 Umno general assembly, Khaled said national security threats were no longer confined to conventional or traditional forms.
"Today's defence threats are hybrid in nature. They combine conventional and unconventional threats, and this includes cognitive warfare," Khaled said.
The Defence Minister described cognitive warfare as a calculated strategy to influence how people think, assess information, make decisions and act, carried out systematically through disinformation, hoaxes, digital propaganda, algorithm exploitation and psychological operations.
"This means there are already systematic efforts to use the sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI)to determine how our society thinks and acts," he said, adding that the goal was to create social instability and trigger polarisation, division and disharmony.
Khaled said the threat was severe enough to erode Malay identity and spark serious religious and racial conflict, prompting the defence ministry to develop an integrated strategy in response.
"The ministry is very concerned about this and is working hard to develop an integrated strategy to face this extraordinary threat," he said.
He said the ministry's focus was on building "the people's resilience", describing it as a form of credible deterrence and a strong shield for the nation against threats, and pointed to Iran and Ukraine as examples of countries not easily shaken or divided when attacked.
Khaled vowed that Umno would not allow cognitive threats to undermine the identity, mindset and actions of the Malay race and Malaysian society.
"We will ensure that this colonisation of the mind does not happen and we will exhaust every effort to fight it. As defence minister, it is my responsibility to ensure that all threats, in whatever form, will be neutralised, Insya Allah," he said.
He said Umno, as a political party, also had a role to play in national defence and building the people's resilience, giving an assurance that the party would practise mature, rational politics that was neither emotional nor extreme.
"Every Umno leader is a leader of the community. We live and face the community every day. We must play our part," he said.
Khaled said the people's resilience ultimately came down to unity, resistance to divisive propaganda, patriotism and a willingness to help the country when needed, and gave an assurance to the armed forces (ATM) that Umno would help build that resilience.
He said this was why Umno needed to dominate Malaysian politics, as only then could the party carry out its patriotic duty to defend the country from all forms of threat.
