On-Demand Webinar: The Narrative Attack Influence Operation Playbook

Quick answers

• Which sectors are most frequently targeted by narrative attacks? Any sector where public perception directly affects customer behavior or national security. Technology and AI companies, cybersecurity, energy, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, and financial services are all examples of frequently targeted sectors. The same tactics nation-states have used against governments and alliances for decades are now being redeployed against corporate reputations.
• What does successful narrative attack detection look like? Detection at the seeding stage, before a narrative reaches mainstream amplification. Organizations that catch attacks early, prepare stakeholders, and engage third-party validators before media framing solidifies can prevent a narrative from breaking through entirely. A win is often invisible: nobody outside the response team knows it happened.

In partnership with PRWeek, Blackbird.AI hosted a live webinar titled “The Narrative Attack Influence Operation Playbook: What Comms, Public and Government Affairs Leaders Must Know.” The session brought together Franky Saegerman, retired NATO Head of Digital Insights and Social Media; Larysa Lacko, Director of National Security at Blackbird.AI; and Eileen Sheil, Assistant Vice Provost of Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs at Weill Cornell Medicine, moderated by Gideon Fidler, VP of Haymarket Studios and Editorial Director of Custom at PRWeek.

The influence operation playbook, once used primarily against governments, elections, and military alliances, is now being redeployed against corporations. For communications, public affairs, and government affairs leaders, the window to act is before a narrative reaches mainstream amplification.

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

What is a narrative attack, and why does it require a different response than a communications crisis?

Blackbird.AI’s Lacko defined a narrative attack as the manipulation of public perception and the resulting harm. Misinformation and fake news, she explained, are lower-level tactics that can be used as part of a narrative attack. The attack itself is broader.

Lacko outlined three distinctions that matter. Information does not have to be false to be harmful. “We see this all the time,” she said, “kernels of truth taken out of context and used to manipulate audiences. It lends just enough credibility to make a narrative more sticky. It doesn’t have to be disinformation to be malicious.” The target is human decision-making: confirmation bias and fear are prioritized over winning a factual argument, which is why fact-checking so often falls short. And the damage can move beyond communications. “When trust is intentionally weaponized against a corporation, the damage isn’t just a bad news cycle,” Lacko said. “It could be financial, it could be operational. Narrative attacks go much broader, much deeper, and defending against this type of threat requires a different approach.”

When did the line between geopolitical influence operations and corporate reputation risk disappear?

Franky Saegerman, retired NATO Head of Digital Insights and Social Media, described the shift as gradual. “The line didn’t disappear all at once,” he said. “It sort of faded over time.”

Twenty years ago, state actors mainly targeted elections, political movements, and military conflicts. Companies were more likely to be collateral damage. As social media became more central to public life, technology platforms became managers of information flows, and threat actors adapted.

“Trust became the new battlefield,” Saegerman said. “It was easier to attack trust and belief than systems.” A narrative could be launched at scale through social networks without first passing through mainstream media.

By the COVID and post-COVID period, Saegerman said, the same networks, amplification mechanisms, and audience segmentation were being used against governments, institutions, universities, and individuals. “Today’s influence campaigns often produce both threats simultaneously,” he said.

Lacko added that nation-states also have economic goals. Private companies can become targets, especially in sectors that nation-states deem important, including AI and energy.

How does a narrative attack actually unfold before most organizations know they’re being targeted?

A narrative attack lifecycle can be mapped out as a narrative kill chain. The full kill chain has about ten steps, but the webinar focused on three core phases: reconnaissance, seeding, and dissemination and amplification.

The earliest stages of an attack can seem invisible to an organization.

1. Reconnaissance: the planning stage.
   Threat actors collect information about target audiences, identify their vulnerabilities, and craft narratives that resonate.
2. Seeding: where narratives are planted and tested.
   Narratives are planted and actively tested among key audiences. A lot of this happens away from the mainstream, on fringe platforms, to understand which storylines are gaining traction. Lacko pointed to a 2021 pandemic-era example involving NATO, when adversaries planted fake documents on local Baltic blogs claiming that newly rotated NATO soldiers were heavily infected with COVID and would spread it to local communities. They took the kernel of truth, the routine rotation of troops, and wrapped a narrative around it that would stick. NATO teams caught it at the seeding stage, Lacko said. They exposed the fake documents and neutralized the story before the adversary could fully activate its infrastructure.
3. Dissemination and amplification: where many organizations detect a campaign.
   Threat actors use their information ecosystem, infrastructure, and networks to disseminate those narratives. This is where many organizations traditionally detect a campaign after it has already had an impact.

As Lacko put it, “You can’t defend a perimeter that you can’t see.”

Which tactics are being redeployed against corporations?

Saegerman identified three tactics being redeployed against corporate targets. The first is the amplification of existing divisions, in which threat actors identify opposing communities and intensify conflict through narratives built around a kernel of truth. The second involves leaked or fabricated documents released selectively and amplified through coordinated media activity, where the manipulation comes from context, timing, and selective disclosure.

The third is what Saegerman called narrative laundering: claims seeded through anonymous accounts, validated by fringe outlets, amplified by influencers, and sometimes picked up by mainstream media. “These attempts are rarely standalone posts,” Saegerman said. “They are done over a very long period of time — months and even years. Threat actors know that changing behavior is not done overnight.”

What does this look like from inside a targeted organization?

Sheil gave the webinar’s clearest real-world example: a bad actor stole the identity of a Weill Cornell Medicine physician, copied her image, title, employee badge, and the organization’s logo, then used the fake account to sell supplements to vulnerable patients for about $800 per patient.

When that version was under control, the actors shifted to fake AI-generated doctors with fabricated names and specialties, still using the Weill Cornell Medicine brand.

For Sheil, the harm was direct: people were defrauded, patient trust was threatened, and the institution’s reputation was affected. “The credibility is lost even when what they experienced was false,” she said.

How do you measure narrative risk in a way that moves boards and executive leadership?

“Boards don’t actually care about disinformation,” Saegerman said. “They only care about the consequences: revenue risk, operational risk, or reputational risk. The mistake many organizations make is only measuring the information environment instead of measuring the business impact of the information environment.” Executives don’t need to know there are 20,000 negative mentions across ten platforms in 24 hours, he said. “The response will be ‘So what?’ What they actually need to know is how likely this narrative will impact or alter the behavior of investors, customers, employees, or partners in the next 30 or 90 days.”

Saegerman identified three dimensions to track in real time: narrative penetration, where the critical metric is the movement of a narrative between different audiences rather than raw volume; narrative velocity, because fast-growing narratives can matter more than large ones given how algorithms favor them; and who is spreading the narrative, since risk increases as a narrative travels from fringe accounts to influential accounts to mainstream media. “All of these metrics can no longer be measured with traditional media monitoring or social listening tools,” he said.

Lacko added that for threat intelligence to be actionable for senior leaders, it must be relevant, timely, and measurable. “Analyst teams often produce reporting that doesn’t answer the right questions that leaders want to know,” she said. “It’s important to understand better what decisions senior leadership is going to make, what tools they have in their toolkit, and how the analyst’s work can support that.”

How do we measure success in narrative defense?

Saegerman said measuring success in narrative defense is difficult because many organizations use the wrong scorecard.

They may count debunked claims, corrected misinformation, reduced negative sentiment, or arguments won. But those are not always the right indicators of whether the operation failed.

“But influence operations are rarely defeated by proving something is false,” Saegerman said. “They’re defeated by preventing the desired behavioral outcome.”

The better outcome is earlier detection. If the same narrative is caught during the seeding stage, stakeholders can be prepared, third-party validators can engage, media framing may never solidify, and the story may never break through.

“Nobody outside the response team will ever know it happened,” Saegerman said. “The audience rarely sees the most important wins.”

The Way Forward: Key Takeaways for Leaders

As the webinar closed, three takeaways stood out for communications, public affairs, and government affairs leaders.

• Prepare before the crisis, not during it: “Map your vulnerabilities, understand how those vulnerabilities might be exploited or targeted by bad actors, and put together a process and a response plan,” Lacko said. “When a crisis happens, everyone needs their marching orders. At that stage, it’s a bit late to start figuring out what to do.”
• Build a cross-functional team to protect from narrative risk: “It really is a huge team effort that requires many perspectives and areas of expertise,” Sheil said. “We include security, legal, IT, compliance, and patient privacy. Having not just a playbook but really practicing as a team means when we see the same situation happen again, we can identify it faster and resolve it quicker.”
• Invest in the capability to see threats before they land: “The tools for detecting and fighting narratives are getting better,” Saegerman said. “When companies work together,r and organizations share information, it’ll get better.” As Lacko closed the session, “You can’t defend against the threats that you don’t see. Invest in a capability that allows you to have situational awareness so that you can protect your organization.”

Lacko closed with the session’s core warning: “You can’t defend against the threats that you don’t see.” The organizations best positioned to respond will be the ones that can detect narrative risk early, understand who is carrying it, and act before harmful perception becomes measurable business impact.