Narrative Intelligence: How Adversaries Weaponize Stories with Joe Stradinger
Show notes
Narrative intelligence is emerging as one of the intelligence community's most important new disciplines — and few people understand it better than Joe Stradinger.
In this episode of Intel at the Edge, Joe Stradinger — founder of Edge Theory and creator of the National Center for Narrative Intelligence in Oxford, Mississippi — joins Chip to break down what narrative intelligence actually is, how it differs from traditional social media monitoring, and why he believes it's become a central front in modern cognitive warfare.
They cover:
• Joe's path from CPA to early internet entrepreneur to national security advisor
• What "narrative intelligence" means and how it's detected, classified, and measured
• The concept of "intercontinental ballistic narratives" and how adversary messaging spreads over time
• How China, Russia, and other actors exploit real-world events to sow division
• Washington's growing (but still unsettled) response to cognitive warfare
• Why storytelling — from Joe's Mississippi Delta roots to America's own national narrative — may be the most powerful (and underused) tool in this fight
Whether you work in national security, business, or just want to better understand how information shapes belief and behavior, this conversation offers a rare look inside a discipline that's quietly reshaping how the U.S. thinks about influence, deterrence, and truth.
00:00 Intro
00:44 Joe's background & how he got into this space
03:12 Mississippi, storytelling, and why fiction is a weapon
05:04 What is narrative intelligence?
09:06 Tracking narratives over time (the CCP example)
13:21 Case study: the data center narrative war
17:29 How AI has collapsed the influence chain
18:40 Case study: Iran's Hollywood-style war narratives
21:14 Attribution: tracing a narrative back to its source
24:22 Federal vs. commercial — why U.S. citizens are never targeted
26:53 Real-world exploits: Baltimore Bridge, Silicon Valley Bank
27:41 The new NSC role & "putting the I back in DIME"
30:20 Why America needs to tell its own story
34:00 Educating the next generation
36:34 The National Center for Narrative Intelligence
Intel at the Edge Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.