When it comes to psychological warfare, where words are weapons and minds are battlegrounds, NATO has a long history of "inoculating" the public against what it deems "misinformation."
During the Cold War, NATO conducted psychological operations (psyops) to counter Soviet propaganda, including initiatives like Operation Mockingbird-style programs, where disinformation campaigns were used to influence public perception and undermine communist narratives. These efforts involved disseminating materials to shape attitudes in allied and neutral countries, often in collaboration with intelligence agencies like the CIA.
Since the Cold War, the era of psychological operations has evolved into modern "hybrid warfare defense” (disinformation countermeasures) but its underlying agenda continues: control the narrative.
Today, NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE), headquartered in Riga, Latvia, upholds this legacy under the guise of "strategic communications." The centre is funded by sponsoring nations like the U.S., UK, and Germany, with project-specific funding from NATO.
According to its website, StratCom COE “conducts research in response to the needs of the Alliance and participating Nations, develops training, designs programs to advance the development of NATO military doctrine, and provides comprehensive analysis and practical support for NATO decision-makers. The subject areas covered by its remit includes Strategic Communications and all its core communication capabilities and functions, such as: Information Operations, Psychological Operations, Public Diplomacy, and (Military) Public Affairs.”
StratCom COE also hosts events like the annual Riga StratCom Dialogue, where military brass rub shoulders with Silicon Valley execs.
Striking examples of NATO-backed psyops are outlined in a November 2021 technical report, published by StratCom COE during the peak of the COVID vaccine rollout, titled ‘Inoculation Theory and Misinformation.’
The paper was authored by Dr. Jon Roozenbeek and Professor Sander van der Linden, the latter of whom heads Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab (SDML) since its founding in 2016. The lab’s name is fitting, given its focus on nudge theory—a subtle form of behavioural influence often likened to mind control.
Notably, Van der Linden’s lab boasts an impressive roster of governmental and private partners, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subagency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notorious for its involvement in censorship activities, Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas but later rebranded as Google’s counter terrorism arm—otherwise known as its ”regime change” unit), WhatsApp (Facebook) Research Team, the UK’s Cabinet Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Behavioural Insights Team—often called the “Nudge Unit,” which played a key role in deploying fear-based tactics to boost public adherence to COVID restrictions in the UK.
The report explores “the role that psychology and behavioural science can play in the mitigation of online misinformation.” Drawing on the analogy of a vaccine priming the body against a virus, the authors discuss the concept of a psychological "vaccine" that could arm citizens against fake news by building “psychological resilience against misinformation.”
The authors warn against the “harmful consequences” of misinformation and/or disinformation and identify its primary spreaders: "anti-vax groups" and "climate deniers." An excerpt from the report states:
“The spread of false and misleading information both online and offline poses a threat to the well-being of individuals, democratic institutions, and societies around the world. The harmful consequences of the spread of false and/or misleading information can be seen in the proliferation of anti-vax groups on Facebook, lack of confidence in the science of climate change, acts of vandalism committed on the basis of false conspiracy theories about COVID-19.”
According to the authors, “inoculation strategies” against the “threat to the well-being of individuals” are justified. The report's core thesis borrows from inoculation theory, first explored in the 1960s by psychologist William McGuire amid fears of North Vietnamese "brainwashing" during the Vietnam War. McGuire likened persuasion to infection: expose subjects to a "weakened dose" of an argument, paired with a refutation, and they develop resistance.
However, the inoculation model doesn’t persuade with evidence; it conditions aversion. Roozenbeek and van der Linden “inoculate” against claims of COVID vaccine risks by framing them as manipulative and misleading. For instance, The Chicago Tribune headline they cite—a real story of a healthy doctor’s post-COVID vaccine death, is downplayed without context. Ironically, they go on to admit, “the challenge with this and similar news items is that none of the information in the headline is factually incorrect; rather, it is the implicit message… that makes the headline misleading.”
The report makes light of the J&J/Janssen COVID vaccine’s adverse event, TTS (thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome), citing 38 confirmed cases out of 12.8 million doses by July 2021 (~1 in 337,000). It is framed as a “minor risk” compared to everyday hazards like car accidents, heavily understating the severity and foreshadowed consequences: TTS led to the vaccine’s eventual removal from the U.S. market in May 2023.
Roozenbeek and van der Linden adapt inoculation theory for the digital age. They critique traditional fact-checking as reactive and ineffective—citing the "continued influence effect," where debunked myths “may linger in our memory networks even after they were shown to be false."
Their proposed solution? Pre-emptive debunks or "prebunks” that build “resilience to misinformation before exposure.” Essentially, preparing people to recognize and resist false narratives, conspiracy theories, or propaganda before they take root.
According to the authors, the optimal method to “neutralise” dangerous ideas before they spread (creating an infodemic) are “technique-based inoculation games and videos.” In particular, “games are a promising medium for inoculation interventions because of their potential entertainment value and volume of voluntary uptake.”
The free browser-based “games” highlighted in their report are Bad News and Go Viral! Bad News, launched in February 2018, focuses on players role-playing as fake news tycoons, learning to spot tactics like “emotional manipulation or conspiracy-mongering.”
Launched in October 2020, Go Viral!’s main aim is for players to "go viral" by spreading COVID-19 disinformation. Both were developed by Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab, DROG (a Dutch-based nonprofit organization dedicated to combating disinformation), and the design agency, Gusmanson.
Notably, Go Viral! also received funding from the UK Cabinet Office and the World Heath Organization (WHO).
The screenshot below is taken from Cambridge University’s website, proudly showcasing the “game.”
In the Inoculation Theory and Misinformation report, Roozenbeek and van der Linden present both their interactive “games” and supporting studies, asserting that these interventions can lower susceptibility to misinformation by 20-30% across diverse cultures, ranging from Sweden to Greece.
However, they conspicuously avoid the all-important question: who determines what qualifies as “misinformation”?
They overlook the reality that these “games” touted as “educational,” essentially function as gamified propaganda. Players score points for "credibility" by mimicking disinformation tactics, then learn to spot them—implicitly trusting the game's curators (i.e., NATO-linked academics, the UK Government, and the WHO). They pathologize critical thinking, by reframing dissent (evaluating evidence and challenging established narratives) as a symptom of a disease to be vaccinated against—undermining the vital process of democratic discourse. We’ve seen this playbook before: during lockdowns, where skeptics were “inoculated” i.e., deplatformed and censored.
Not so long ago, phrases like “ivermectin works” were branded as disinformation by Big Pharma-aligned fact-checkers, despite solid evidence from independent trials. Those promoting the Nobel Prize-winning drug as a treatment for COVID were deplatformed. In particular, doctors endured significant professional and personal consequences.
Egregiously, injuries and deaths caused by the experimental COVID shots, were systematically dismissed, with anyone sounding the alarms bells branded as “anti-vaxx.”
The BBC (leader of the Trusted News Initiative—set up on March 16, 2020, just five days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, to counter “disinformation”) infamously collaborated with Facebook to take down the accounts of COVID vaccine-injured groups, by drawing attention to the fact that certain “anti-vaxx” groups used carrot emojis to circumvent Big Tech censors.
The UK Government has played an integral role in “inoculating” against dissent, not only by financing “games” like Go Viral! but also through its direct involvement in censorship. The secretive, Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), set up within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office, was active throughout the COVID pandemic in challenging alleged “false and misleading narratives” around lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
Furthermore, a Freedom of Information disclosure revealed that a clandestine British Army unit, the 77th Brigade, was deployed under Operation RESCRIPT to combat COVID-related disinformation in the UK, with whistleblower accounts claiming the unit spied on UK citizens’ social media, including journalists and public figures.
Another flaw in inoculation theory that Roozenbeek and van der Linden have adapted, assumes a neutral arbiter of truth, but in practice, it's always been wielded by those in power.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that the StratCom COE’s report was funded by certain powerful groups with vested interests—mostly at the UK taxpayer’s expense. While disclaiming NATO endorsement, it was still published under its banner. Acknowledgments to other funders include, the IRIS Coalition (also known as the IRIS Academic Research Group). This UK taxpayer-funded group was launched by the UK Government “to address global challenges related to vaccine confidence and misinformation.”
IRIS has influenced UK policy on online safety, for instance, the Online Safety Act—a brazen power grab by the UK Government to increase censorship, masquerading as a noble crusade to “protect” users from “illegal and harmful material.” The report’s authors also received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, another UK taxpayer-funded organization.
Other funders acknowledged for their support were Jigsaw (Google's censorship arm that conducts “research on online extremism and inoculation”), referenced earlier, and the EU Horizon 2020’s JITSUVAX (Joint Initiative on Tailored Strategies for Vaccine Uptake) project—set up to address “vaccine hesitancy.”
It is noteworthy that Pfizer, in collaboration with BioNTech, immensely benefited from Horizon 2020 funding for the development and scaling of the mRNA-based COVID vaccine (Comirnaty/BNT162b2). The European Commission allocated €2.15 billion for advance purchase agreements under Horizon 2020’s Emergency Support Instrument, supporting manufacturing and supply for the vaccine.
On September 23, 2025, Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube) admitted to Jim Jordan, Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, that “The Biden Administration pressured Google to censor Americans and remove content that did not violate YouTube’s policies.”
However, in a May 8, 2023, letter to Alphabet’s legal counsel, Jordan noted that “Alphabet has not produced an appreciable volume of such documents in the custody of Mandiant, Jigsaw, and other subsidiaries.” As of now, no public evidence exists showing Alphabet has submitted any Jigsaw-held documents in response to the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena.
In the end, NATO’s inoculation “games” reveal a chilling evolution of psyops: from Cold War leaflets to digital nudges that condition us to reject dissent before it even forms. As the Jordan investigation exposes Jigsaw’s role in this web, one thing is clear—the battle for truth isn’t about vaccines or elections; it’s about who gets to define reality. If we let “resilience” become code for compliance, democracy’s not just at risk, it’s steadily being inoculated against.
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It's not the virus that's the problem - it's the critical thinkers
Excellent work, thank you
You are amazing, Sonia.