National Cognitive Infrastructure Protection:  What Can We Learn from the Swedish Psychological Defence Authority? 

In 2019, in what now reads like a strikingly prescient premonition, OODA CTO Bob Gourley penned a two-part series on the neglect of our national Cognitive Infrastructure, which includes the mental capacities of our citizens and the decision-making ability of people, organizations, and our government. It also includes the information channels used to feed our decision-making capabilities and the education and training systems used to prepare people and organizations for critical thinking. In the series, Bob discussed the efforts by the U.S. government in the 1990s to create a framework for “Critical Infrastructure Protection” when talking about manufacturing, dams, the energy sector, nuclear reactors, etc. But what about the protection of our critical cognitive infrastructure, which is threatened in ways few of us ever imagined just a few years ago? The Swedes offer an exemplary agency model.