In the grand scheme of the Western world and democratic societies, misinformation has become all but a fact of life. The World Economic Forum has ranked it as the foremost threat the world is facing. Despite this focus, there is still an overly generalized view of offensive influence operations, leaving a distinct gap in understanding for defensive information warfare, or narrative defense. This paper will synthesize a framework for understanding cognitive vulnerabilities by analyzing six historic offensive influence operations, focusing on their tactics, techniques, targets, and procedures. By targeting the flaws these operations exploit, this paper will propose the Narrative Access and Maneuver Denial (NAM-D) strategy for ethical and effective narrative defense.

The author, Jayden LaVecchia, is a Junior from Post Falls, ID pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Studies and War and Peace with minors in Chinese, Information Warfare, and Intelligence and Crime Analysis. He is currently contracted with the Army, pursuing later work in Information Warfare and Narrative Security. As a Richard S. Schultz ’60 Symposium Fellow, Cadet LaVecchia’s research analyzed patterns in historical information operations and established a new Cognitive Vulnerability framework and Heuristic Narrative Security program for cognitive security.