Interrupting the Chain: Human Perception of AI-Generated Disinformation Through a Kill Chain Lens
This study addresses the challenge that generative AI enables the scalable production of customized disinformation, while existing defenses remain largely reactive and lack a systematic understanding of the cognitive attack lifecycle. By adapting the cybersecurity kill chain model to the domain of cognitive security, this work conducts an empirical experiment with 504 participants to systematically analyze human perception and detection mechanisms regarding AI-generated disinformation. The research reveals a "perception-accuracy gap" and asymmetric cognitive fatigue effects, demonstrating that sustained exposure significantly reduces fake news detection rates by 10.2%. These findings precisely identify intervention points for proactive defense, providing critical theoretical and empirical foundations for constructing forward-looking, systematic cognitive security defense frameworks.