Most attempts to address cognitive security have focused on disinformation. And then the question becomes one of censorship, often of the lethal variety when dealing with foreign terror groups. But there are at least three immediate problems with decapitating the snake:
- Many terror groups are more like starfish than snakes – they are set up to take losses, even welcome them, and will replace a downed propagandist very quickly. Worse, our lethal hits have, on a few occasions, resulted in the proliferation of violent extremism by feeding directly into the narratives that support it.
- You can’t kill an idea. Ideas can outlive people. A powerful idea will outlive all of us alive at this moment. Whether an idea is good or bad idea, a stabilizing idea or a lethal idea, the factors that make it last and cause it to spread are the same.
- What if the disinformation is coming from a domestic source?
My work looks beyond information toward the psychological assault on the target audience that affects the way they process incoming information. Our military can have the most information, the most recent information, the most accurate vetted information, but if our adversaries can manipulate how an audience processes our information, then that renders our “Information Advantage” impotent.
That’s what Narrative Warfare is. Narrative Warfare is an assault on the identity of the target audience and on the way the target audience processes incoming information. A narrative attack doesn’t just target an audience; it fundamentally changes who the audience is. In a sense, it creates an audience for itself.
This is why the “facts based approach” to domestic extremism hasn’t worked. If our adversaries can control how our facts are understood, they can render our facts mute or worse, they can weaponize our own facts. The facts-based approach does suggest an awareness, shared by many, that disinformation has played a role in everything from radicalization to great power competition. But disinformation should not be mistaken as the start point.
Disinformation does not “work” on everyone. And yet the same factors that make an audience vulnerable to recruitment by ISIS make an audience vulnerable to Chinese influence. We ought to focus on understanding the factors that create cognitive vulnerability in the audience.
The reason we are having trouble getting on top of disinformation is because we are mislabeling and therefore misunderstanding the phenomena. We are not dealing with simply wrong information or intentionally wrong information. We are dealing with weaponized information in story form. If it wasn’t in story form, it wouldn’t be as dangerous.
Stories play a special role in human cognition. Neuroimaging has demonstrated that human brains are much more receptive to information in story form than the same information presented in other forms. We are especially receptive to stories about ourselves, or stories that we can project ourselves into. And we are even more receptive to stories that speak to our preferred identities especially when we feel our identity is under threat and the story gives us a way out – a way to re-frame the threat.
The root cause of vulnerability to disinformation goes much deeper than the degree of exposure to false information. Narrative Identity is what is targeted.
Truth cannot effectively counter disinformation because raw data is not inherently influential. But if raw data (whether true or false) is storified, mythologized, narrated, then it can have influence. That is because stories tell us what we crave – they tell us meaning. Whether the information is true or false – stories tell us the meaning of the information.
When disinformation is well received, that is because the disinformation holds deeper meaning for the audience than the truth.
An influential narrator speaks to two essential things:
- The meaning of the information, and
- The identity of the audience
Then meaning and identity are tied together to produce a story that tells what the information means to the identity audience. A story designed to influence will tell an audience what to make of the information, how to understand it, and how they fit in.
That is the problem we face. The problem is more profound than disinformation. We are dealing with weaponized narrative and a “facts-based approach” is unarmed against it.
Our adversaries understand this concept, have embraced it, and have incorporated strategic narratives across their operations. ISIS, the Taliban, ADF, the Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys effectively disseminate their brand and reinforce their ideologies through broad psychological operations to affect audience identity, determine the meaning of information and therefore determine the action that results.