Episode Details

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.