Field Notes after Riga StratCom 2026

By Dr Andrei Stoiciu

For several days in Riga, the discussion about modern conflict moved well beyond the familiar language of tanks, missiles and front lines. The central themes were trust, fatigue, resilience, public consent, artificial intelligence, institutional speed, humour, deterrence and the capacity of democratic societies to remain coherent under pressure.

The Riga StratCom Dialogue, organised by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Latvia, has become one of the key international platforms where governments, security experts, NATO decision makers, military leaders, journalists, researchers, civil society actors and technology specialists examine the evolution of the strategic information environment. Its importance lies precisely in the fact that strategic communication is no longer treated as a decorative layer added after policy decisions have been made. It is increasingly understood as part of deterrence, resilience and democratic security itself.

Concepts such as hybrid threats, foreign information manipulation, cognitive resilience, prebunking, preparedness and information integrity are now part of the mainstream security conversation. Intelligence services communicate more proactively. Governments are more aware of adversarial influence operations. Preparedness campaigns are no longer automatically seen as alarmist, but as part of a broader culture of resilience.

That is progress. But it also creates a new risk: institutions may confuse alignment around the right concepts with actual effectiveness among the publics they need to reach.

The central question after Riga is therefore not whether we now understand that the information domain matters. They do. The harder question is whether their communication systems are evolving fast enough across four interconnected layers: technology, policy, governance and influence.

The technological layer: speed without judgment

The most visible transformation is technological. Artificial intelligence is accelerating the production, translation, targeting and amplification of content. It lowers the cost of manipulation and increases the volume of noise. It allows hostile actors to test messages, imitate voices, generate visuals, localise narratives and flood information spaces at a speed that traditional institutions struggle to match.

But the danger is not only deepfakes or fabricated content. That is the obvious part of the problem. A more subtle challenge is the use of AI to intensify ridicule, emotional compression and cultural resonance. A meme, a joke or an absurd visual can travel further than a formal statement because it does not ask the audience to study an argument. It asks them to feel something instantly.

This matters because many influence operations are not trying to persuade people of a fully formed lie. They are trying to exhaust their ability to distinguish truth from noise. They are trying to make institutions appear slow, rigid, humourless or disconnected from the emotional tempo of the audience.

Technology can help detect patterns, map networks and support early warning. But it cannot solve the deeper problem alone. There is no AI-only fix for a trust problem. Detection is not interpretation. Speed is not strategy. Data is not legitimacy.

The technological layer is essential, but it cannot replace human judgment, political credibility or cultural intelligence.

The policy layer: clarity under pressure

The second layer is policy. We are now facing a long confrontation in which publics are asked to support difficult choices over time: military assistance, sanctions, defence spending, energy adjustments, economic costs and political risk.

This requires more than moral clarity. It requires policy clarity.

Citizens need to understand not only what governments oppose, but what they are trying to achieve. They need to understand what is at stake, what the realistic options are, what costs are expected, and why endurance remains necessary. If this explanation is weak, adversaries do not need to invent everything from zero. They can exploit the uncertainty already present in the system.

One of the recurring points in Riga was that domestic audiences matter. People grow weary of war and permanent crisis language. They may support Ukraine and still fear escalation and distrust their own political class. They may believe in deterrence and still wonder whether anyone has explained the end state.

This is where public consent becomes strategic. In democratic societies, resilience cannot be commanded indefinitely from above. It has to be renewed through explanation, credibility and trust.

A policy that is strategically sound but poorly explained becomes vulnerable. A narrative that is morally correct but detached from public anxiety becomes fragile. A message that works among experts may fail among passive, tired or sceptical audiences.

The policy layer therefore requires a harder discipline: explaining complexity without hiding uncertainty, showing resolve without pretending that costs do not exist, and maintaining public support without reducing communication to slogans. In my work I call this frame management of expectations.

The governance layer: coherence and decision speed

The third layer is governance. In the information environment, institutions are often punished less for lacking information than for lacking coordination.

Adversarial actors exploit gaps: the gap between ministries, the gap between allies, the gap between political statements and military assessments, the gap between national and international messaging, the gap between what is said publicly and what citizens perceive privately.

These gaps become exploitable surfaces.

A delay can be framed as weakness. A contradiction can be framed as deception. A cautious statement can be framed as fear. Over-certainty can later be turned into proof of incompetence if events evolve differently. Silence can become a narrative before institutions have even decided how to respond.

This is why the future cognitive battlespace will reward not only those who detect threats early, but those who can decide and coordinate quickly. Institutional speed is not simply about posting faster. It is about authority, mandates, escalation lines, trust between agencies, prepared scenarios and the ability to adapt without losing coherence.

Many systems still operate with industrial-age approval chains inside a digital-age influence environment. The result is predictable: by the time a statement is cleared, the emotional meaning of the event may already have been shaped by others.

The key question is whether institutions can maintain coherence while readjusting decision-making and processes faster than technological, social and political change can destabilise them.

The influence layer: from message delivery to belief architecture

The fourth layer is influence. This is where the real difficulty begins.

For years, communication has often been organised around message delivery: define the message, identify the audience, distribute the content, correct falsehoods, measure reach. That model is no longer sufficient.

The problem is not only that people receive different information. It is that they live inside different interpretive worlds. Their reactions are shaped by identity, trust, resentment, fatigue, fear, economic pressure, social belonging and previous disappointments with institutions.

In such an environment, the decisive question is not simply: “Did the message reach the audience?” The more important question is: “What wall of belief did it hit?”

Some audiences do not reject a message because they have not seen enough evidence. They reject it because accepting it would threaten their identity, confirm a fear, contradict their group narrative or require trust in institutions they already perceive as illegitimate.

This is why fact-checking, while necessary, is not enough. Debunking may correct a false claim without changing the emotional structure that made the false claim attractive. Prebunking may prepare audiences for manipulation, but only if it is adapted to the specific anxieties and belief barriers of those audiences.

Influence in this context it should mean the disciplined work of connecting truth to trust, policy to public meaning, and resilience to lived experience.

That requires mapping not only demographics, but belief structures. Who is already convinced? Who is passive? Who is tired? Who is fearful? Who feels ignored? Who is vulnerable to ridicule, fatalism or anti-elite narratives? Who does not oppose the policy directly, but no longer feels emotionally invested in it?

The key finding from Riga

The strongest conclusion from Riga is that the strategic cognitive domain matters.

But the adversarial environment is also evolving.

It is faster technologically, more fragmented socially, more contested politically and more sophisticated emotionally. Hostile actors do not only attack facts; they attack confidence. They do not only promote alternative narratives; they exploit hesitation, contradiction and fatigue. They do not only seek belief; they seek exhaustion.

This means that the next stage of democratic resilience cannot be limited to narrative alignment. Alignment is necessary, but it is only the beginning. The next stage is narrative stress-testing.

Before messages are deployed, institutions need to ask harder questions. How will this be distorted? (because as a NATO official said, the adversary also gets a vote). Which audiences will resist it? Does it rely on trust that no longer exists? Does it speak only to the already convinced? What happens if events on the ground change? What ambiguity will adversaries exploit? What fear does this message fail to answer? What contradiction exists between institutions that should be speaking coherently?

Beyond slogans

Democracies do not need to imitate the methods of their adversaries. They should not abandon ethical standards, manipulate their own publics or reduce everything to emotional warfare. That would weaken the very systems they claim to defend and this was clearly stated in Riga.

But they do need to become more adaptive.

They need technology that supports judgment rather than replacing it. They need policy communication that explains trade-offs honestly. They need governance systems that can coordinate faster. And they need influence strategies that understand how belief, trust and fatigue actually work.

The future information environment will not be won by those who simply produce more content. It will be shaped by those who can maintain coherence under pressure, explain policy with credibility, understand audiences beyond the converted, and respond at the speed of

Democratic resilience requires tested, adaptive and behaviourally credible communication — communication that connects technology with judgment, policy with public consent, governance with speed, and influence with trust.

About the Author

Dr. Andrei Stoiciu is a senior expert in strategic communication, currently serving as Team Leader for Strategic Communication & Multilateral Public Diplomacy within the Global Gateway Strateg.. He is a long-term observer with the OSCE/ODIHR, an evaluator for European Commission People-to-People programs, author of „Influence- Architects 52 Human blueprints. Dr. Stoiciu holds a PhD in Behavioral Sciences and works as a licensed profiler and associated researcher on FIMI and information warfare, with a focus on mapping social trends, persuasion dynamics, and disruptive social games. He has also served as a trainer for law enforcement officials and prosecutors in interrogation and intelligence gathering.

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