Brandwatch and Blackbird.AI Selected by NATO to Deliver Narrative Intelligence

Quick Answers

• What did NATO select Brandwatch and Blackbird.AI to deliver? NATO chose Brandwatch, a Cision company, and Blackbird.AI to deliver a new Information Environment Assessment Capability that provides AI-enabled tools to monitor, analyze, and interpret narrative threats across public and commercially available data sources.
• What is the Information Environment Assessment Capability? It is an enterprise-wide social intelligence solution that combines media monitoring, sentiment analysis, and trend detection to help NATO assess and respond to the spread of disinformation and harmful narratives across complex digital ecosystems.
• Who else is part of the partnership? The capability draws on specialized tools from across Cision’s portfolio, including Trajaan, whose search intelligence technology reveals emerging trends and intent signals across global audiences. Specialist partners Osavul and Converseon further strengthen the offering.
• Why does narrative intelligence matter for global security? Nation-state actors, extremist groups, and coordinated influence networks weaponize narratives to destabilize alliances, erode public trust, and undermine democratic institutions. Blackbird.AI’s platform identifies and prioritizes harmful narratives by risk score, the threat actors behind them, the networks they spread across, the bot behavior that amplifies them, and the communities that connect them.

Narrative attacks targeting NATO member nations are accelerating in scale, sophistication, and speed. To counter these threats, NATO has selected Brandwatch, a Cision company, and Blackbird.AI to deliver a new Information Environment Assessment Capability (IEAC) that will provide the Alliance with AI-enabled tools to monitor, analyze, and interpret narrative threats across public and commercially available data sources.

The IEAC will serve as an enterprise-wide social intelligence solution, combining media monitoring, sentiment analysis, and trend detection to help NATO assess and respond to the spread of disinformation and harmful narratives across complex digital ecosystems.

Building on Years of Strategic Collaboration

This selection builds on Blackbird.AI’s strategic collaboration with NATO over the past several years, during which the company has provided critical analysis on harmful narratives impacting NATO’s operations. The IEAC represents a significant expansion of that partnership, bringing together complementary technology and expertise to address one of the most pressing challenges facing the Alliance.

“Blackbird.AI’s strategic collaboration with NATO over the past several years has provided critical analysis on harmful narratives impacting their operations,” said Wasim Khaled, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackbird.AI. “We are excited to partner with Brandwatch to provide even more actionable insight to NATO in their pursuit of safeguarding the freedom and security of all its members.”

Chris Riley, Head of Plans and Insights in the Office of Strategic Communications at NATO Headquarters, emphasized the operational value of the capability: “Understanding the information environment is essential for effective planning and decision-making across the Alliance. This integrated Brandwatch and Blackbird.AI solution significantly enhances our ability to deliver data-driven insights at scale.”

READ: The RAV3N Report: 2026 State of Disinformation Narrative Intelligence

A Partnership Built for Mission-Ready Intelligence

The partnership brings together specialized capabilities from across Cision’s portfolio, including Trajaan, whose search intelligence technology reveals emerging trends and intent signals across global audiences. Specialist partners Osavul and Converseon further strengthen the offering. Together, these capabilities will help NATO strengthen strategic communications, enhance situational awareness, and enable faster, more informed decision-making.

The capability is designed to integrate extensive data coverage with additional enrichments and support strategic communicators within NATO’s Information Environment Assessment community. It will enable more efficient planning and analysis in a fast, fragmented, and contested environment.

Why Narrative Intelligence Matters for Global Security

Nation-state actors, extremist groups, and coordinated influence networks increasingly weaponize narratives to destabilize alliances, erode public trust, and undermine democratic institutions. For an organization like NATO, the ability to detect, analyze, and respond to these threats at scale is essential to maintaining operational readiness and strategic advantage.

Blackbird.AI’s Narrative Intelligence Platform identifies harmful narrative attacks and prioritizes them based on risk score, the threat actors behind them, the networks they spread across, the anomalous bot behavior that amplifies them, and the cohorts and communities that connect them. This intelligence enables organizations to make better strategic decisions and proactively reduce risk.

The NATO IEAC selection underscores a growing recognition across organizational, geopolitical, and enterprise sectors that narrative intelligence is a critical component of security infrastructure.