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#40 Erica Mitchell on Jack Voltaic

The Cognitive Crucible

Release Date: 04/27/2021

#228 Torvald Ask on the UnCODE System show art #228 Torvald Ask on the UnCODE System

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Torvald Ask discusses his 2023 co-authored paper: The UnCODE System: A Neurocentric Systems Approach for Classifying the Goals and Methods of Cognitive Warfare. The UnCODE System is an accessible and a practical tool for understanding and addressing cognitive warfare goals....

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#227 Matthew Canham on Agentic AI and the Cognitive Security Institute show art #227 Matthew Canham on Agentic AI and the Cognitive Security Institute

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Matthew Canham discusses agentic AI's potential to boost productivity by automating tasks and its anticipated influence on user interfaces, potentially creating new security vulnerabilities and opportunities for user manipulation. Matthew emphasized the importance of robust security...

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#226 James Giordano on Neurotechnology and Future Warfare show art #226 James Giordano on Neurotechnology and Future Warfare

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Dr. James Giordano discusses a broad range of topics related to national security from biopsychology to complexity to neurotechnology to enactivism. Recording Date: 25 Jun 2025 Research Question: James Giordano suggests an interested student or researcher examine: “How might the...

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#225 Austin Branch, Dave Pitts, and Joe Miller on Cognitive Warfare and the Gray Zone show art #225 Austin Branch, Dave Pitts, and Joe Miller on Cognitive Warfare and the Gray Zone

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Austin Branch, Dave Pitts, and Joe Miller discuss cognitive warfare, the gray zone, and intensifying great power competition. The ultimate goal is to compete by gaining and maintaining information advantage without kinetic fighting. Recording Date: 28 Apr  2025 Research...

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#224 Jake Bebber on Cognitive Warfare show art #224 Jake Bebber on Cognitive Warfare

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Jake Bebber discusses his work related to the concept, challenges, and potential responses to cognitive warfare. Jake explains how cognitive warfare uses technology to manipulate cognition and behavior, emphasizing its distinction from traditional information warfare and its...

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#223 Paul Buvarp on the Demand-side of Disinformation show art #223 Paul Buvarp on the Demand-side of Disinformation

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Paul Buvarp contrasts disinformation as a human demand-side problem with the typical supply-side perspective. Additional discussion threads include thinking about online and real-world environments as differently as forests and tropical environments are different, how young people...

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#222 JD Maddox on Emerging IO Opportunities show art #222 JD Maddox on Emerging IO Opportunities

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, JD Maddox discusses new influence opportunities borne out of necessity. JD suggests that listeners consider radical-sounding concepts for, such as letters of marque, indemnification, task-based organization, public-private operations, and new authorities as viable influence pathways...

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#221 Carrick Longley on Influence Automation show art #221 Carrick Longley on Influence Automation

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Carrick Longley discusses Large Language Models (LLM) and influence. Key topics include: LLM 101 Usage and changes in prompt engineering Improving influence resonance and speed The recent DeepSeek model controversy Bias in foundational models and Software development Recording...

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#220 Tom Kent on US International Broadcasting and Soft Power show art #220 Tom Kent on US International Broadcasting and Soft Power

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Tom Kent returns to the Cognitive Crucible to share his concerns related to the United States recent withdrawal from international broadcasting. Topics include: US soft power, abandoning pro-democracy initiatives, impact on international relations, international broadcasting...

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#219 Dr. Josh Segal on Are We Losing the War? Lethality, Deterrence, and Information show art #219 Dr. Josh Segal on Are We Losing the War? Lethality, Deterrence, and Information

The Cognitive Crucible

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Dr. Josh “Bugsy” Segal asks the provocative question: Are We Losing the War? Josh discusses the importance of understanding the impact of the nation's investments in soft power assets and programs, emphasizing the need for a strategic approach and a broader national security...

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During this episode, LTC Erica Mitchell discusses the Army Cyber Institute’s Jack Voltaic (JV) project, which studies response gaps alongside assembled partners to identify interdependencies among critical infrastructure sectors, provide recommendations, and prevent strategic surprise. JV provides an innovative, bottom‐up approach to critical infrastructure resilience in two unique ways. Whereas most federal efforts to improve resiliency focus on regional or multistate emergency response, JV focuses on cities and municipalities where critical infrastructure and populations are most heavily populated. Furthermore, JV deviates from other cybersecurity and national preparedness exercises in that it builds around areas of interest nominated by the participants. Although JV events include national-level capabilities and resources, they are conceptually driven by the concerns of the cities and their infrastructure partners. Through this approach, the Department of Defense is able to harvest insights about potential roles, dependencies, partners, and support requests, while cities are able to discover potential capability gaps and expand their critical infrastructure information-sharing networks before a potential disaster strikes. The flexible JV platform is capable of including information operations scenarios, as well. Link to full show notes and resources

Bio: Lieutenant Colonel Erica Mitchell is the Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR) Research Group Chief for the Army Cyber Institute and Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point. She graduated from West Point with a B.S. in American Legal Systems, was commissioned as a Signal Corps officer, and later transitioned to an Information Systems Management Officer (FA26B). She attended Syracuse University, where she earned an M.S. in Information Systems Management, C.A.S. in Information Security Management, and PhD in Information Science and Technology. Her military service includes serving at increasing levels of responsibility starting at the tactical level as a platoon leader, up to and including project management on DoD-level enterprise technology programs. She has authored and co-authored several conference papers and a journal article. Her main research focus at ACI is critical infrastructure resilience. She is a member of ACM and ISC2 and maintains the CISSP certification.

IPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn.