What is coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) in a commercial context?

Coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) in commercial contexts includes fake review networks, coordinated competitor suppression, synthetic product ratings, app store manipulation, and astroturfed brand campaigns. The same mechanics used in political disinformation campaigns are used extensively in commercial reputation manipulation. For businesses, the risk is to reputation, search rankings, trust signals, and revenue.

Do you need a cybersecurity background for influence operations consulting?

No. Influence operations red teaming focuses on behavioral manipulation, coordinated deception, and the exploitation of platform trust systems — not technical exploits or network infrastructure. A background in digital marketing, AI automation, and content strategy provides more relevant expertise for this type of work than traditional cybersecurity credentials.

How does AI automation relate to influence operations?

The same AI automation tools used to grow legitimate businesses — bulk content scheduling, AI voice generation, automated engagement — are being weaponized to run coordinated inauthentic behavior campaigns at scale. An analyst who has actually built AI automation systems for businesses understands these threats from the inside, not just in theory.

Influence Operations Red Teaming | Narrative Warfare & Platform Integrity

Q: What is influence operations red teaming?

Influence operations red teaming is the adversarial simulation of narrative and behavioral manipulation campaigns against your platform, brand, or organization. It is not penetration testing and requires no coding or cybersecurity background. It models how a sophisticated adversary would use coordinated inauthentic behavior, AI-powered automation, and synthetic amplification to manipulate your audience or narrative — before they actually do.

Q: What is the difference between narrative warfare and disinformation?

Disinformation is the deliberate spread of false information. Narrative warfare is broader — it includes the strategic use of true information, selectively timed and framed, to shape the information environment in adversarial ways. A competitor seeding factually accurate but strategically devastating news at a critical moment is narrative warfare, not disinformation. Defending against it requires understanding the information ecosystem around your brand, not just fact-checking your content.

// What Is This, Exactly

What Is Influence Operations Red Teaming?

It is the adversarial simulation of narrative and behavioral manipulation campaigns against your platform, brand, or organization. It is not penetration testing. It does not require reverse-engineering code or exploiting network infrastructure. There are no firewalls involved.

It asks a more dangerous question: If a sophisticated adversary wanted to manipulate your audience, hijack your narrative, or undermine trust in your platform using AI-powered behavioral tools, coordinated fake accounts, and synthetic engagement — could they? How? And would you even know?

"Traditional security protects the pipes. Influence operations red teaming protects what flows through them — and what it means to the people on the other end."

// Why It Matters Now

AI Made This Everyone's Problem.

The same AI automation tools I teach small businesses to use for legitimate growth — bulk content scheduling, AI voice generation, automated engagement — are now available to anyone who wants to run coordinated inauthentic behavior campaigns at scale.

Platforms and enterprises have invested heavily in technical security. The human behavioral layer — narrative, trust, perception, and platform integrity — remains largely undefended. That gap is where I work. And I know exactly how to map it because I know exactly how the tools work.

CIB

Primary Focus

Firewalls Needed

360°

Multisurface

// The Threat Landscape

What Influence Operations Red Teaming Actually Tests

Most of these threats have nothing to do with code, firewalls, or zero-days. They exploit the human behavioral layer — the part your IT team isn't watching.

// 01

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB)

Networks of accounts acting in concert to simulate organic behavior — amplifying narratives, burying competitors, or manufacturing social consensus without disclosing coordination. A primary vector for both political and commercial manipulation at scale.

CIBSockpuppetsAstroturfing

// 02

Narrative Warfare

The strategic deployment of information — true, false, or selectively framed — to shape public perception at scale. Unlike disinformation, narrative warfare often uses factual content at adversarial timing to achieve outcomes the target never anticipated.

Narrative WarfareFramingStrategic Comms

// 03

AI-Assisted Synthetic Amplification

The same AI automation tools used to grow legitimate businesses — bulk scheduling, AI voice generation, engagement automation — redeployed to manufacture false consensus and manipulate algorithmic distribution at machine scale.

AI AutomationSynthetic MediaBot Networks

// 04

Platform Integrity Exploitation

Exploiting platform trust systems — review ratings, trending signals, ad auction logic, recommendation algorithms — to extract commercial advantage or suppress legitimate voices through behavioral manipulation rather than code exploits.

Platform IntegrityReview BombingAlgorithm Gaming

// 05

Social Engineering at Scale

Not one-on-one phishing. The social engineering of 2025 targets entire communities and movements — building manufactured credibility across multiple platforms before deploying the actual manipulation payload.

Social EngineeringTrust ExploitationIO

// 06

Traffic & Payments Fraud Campaigns

Coordinated behavioral manipulation that bleeds into financial fraud — click fraud, affiliate manipulation, synthetic traffic, bot-driven payments abuse. Often runs in parallel with reputation attacks as a dual-pressure campaign against brand trust and revenue.

Click FraudTraffic FraudPayments Abuse

// Why Not a Cybersecurity Firm

The Threat You Can't Patch.

The most damaging attacks on brands, platforms, and institutions in recent years did not come through firewalls. They came through feeds — coordinated, behavioral, operating entirely within the rules of the platforms they exploited.

Cybersecurity firms approach threat modeling from the technical layer. I model the human behavioral layer — the one that precedes and often circumvents technical controls entirely. My background isn't cybersecurity. It's digital marketing, AI automation, and content strategy. That's precisely what makes this credible.

I've built the same AI automation systems that bad actors are now weaponizing. I know exactly what they can do because I've done it — for legitimate businesses, at scale, from the inside.

What Cybersecurity Firms Test

Network intrusion and firewall penetration
Code-level vulnerabilities and zero-days
Credential theft and phishing simulations
Technical access to protected infrastructure
Data exfiltration through system exploits

What Influence Operations Red Teaming Tests

Behavioral manipulation of platform trust systems
Coordinated narrative campaigns across social surfaces
AI-amplified synthetic consensus manufacturing
Cross-platform coordinated inauthentic behavior
Human-layer social engineering at campaign scale

// Consulting Services

What I Do For Clients

Five distinct engagements. Zero firewalls. Each one designed to expose the behavioral and narrative vulnerabilities your current security posture can't see.

01 / FLAGSHIP

Influence Operations Red Team Engagement

The flagship service. I simulate the full operational arc of a coordinated influence campaign targeting your organization — from initial narrative reconnaissance through platform deployment and amplification. I map the exact pathways an adversary would exploit, the behavioral signatures they'd use to avoid detection, and the systemic vulnerabilities in your monitoring posture.

This is not a technical penetration test. There is no code. The deliverable is a structured threat model: how an adversary would move, where your defenses are blind, and what a realistic attack on your narrative layer actually looks like.

Ideal for: enterprise brands, political campaigns, major platforms, financial institutions, and any organization whose trust is a core asset.

Influence Operations Red TeamingCIB SimulationNarrative Threat ModelingCampaign Reconstruction

02

Narrative Warfare Assessment

A strategic audit of your organization's current narrative posture: what stories are being told about you, by whom, on which surfaces, and with what level of coordination. I identify active or potential narrative warfare campaigns, assess the amplification infrastructure behind them, and produce a risk-ranked threat brief your executive team can act on immediately.

This is often the starting point for organizations who suspect something is wrong — traffic anomalies, sentiment shifts, review bombing, coordinated criticism — but don't have the context to understand what they're looking at.

Narrative WarfareSentiment IntelligenceThreat AttributionExecutive Briefing

03

Platform Integrity Consulting

For platforms, marketplaces, and media properties. Platform integrity is the operational challenge of ensuring that behavioral signals on your platform reflect genuine human intent — not coordinated manipulation. I consult on detection frameworks, policy design, and enforcement logic from the adversary's perspective.

What would a sophisticated actor do to stay under your detection threshold? What does that tell you about where to build defenses? I model the human behavioral layer that precedes and often circumvents technical controls entirely.

Platform IntegrityDetection FrameworksPolicy DesignAdversary Modeling

04

Multisurface Manipulation Campaign Research

Influence operations rarely stay on one platform. Sophisticated campaigns span social media, review platforms, search, earned media, and often payments and affiliate systems — coordinated across surfaces to create the appearance of organic consensus that no single platform can detect in isolation.

I specialize in mapping these cross-platform campaign structures: how they're built, how they propagate, and how organizations can develop the situational awareness to catch them early — even without technical security infrastructure.

Multisurface ManipulationCross-Platform IntelCampaign Attribution

05 / FOUNDATION

AI Automation Consulting For Growth-Stage Businesses

The foundation of the entire practice. I've built and deployed AI automation systems for small businesses, solopreneurs, and growth-stage companies — which is precisely why I understand how those same tools get repurposed for manipulation campaigns. Working both sides of the AI automation equation is what makes the threat intelligence work credible.

If you're here to grow your business with AI, this is where we start. If you're here because a competitor may be using AI against you — this background is why my threat assessments are different from anyone else's.

AI Automation ConsultingWorkflow DesignSmall Business AISolopreneur Systems

// Ideal Clients

Who Hires an Influence Operations Red Team Researcher

Enterprise Brands

Organizations whose reputation is a material asset, facing narrative attacks, coordinated review manipulation, or synthetic sentiment campaigns that erode customer trust faster than PR can respond.

Platform & Marketplace Teams

Trust & Safety, Policy, and Integrity teams at social platforms, app stores, and marketplaces who need adversarial perspective on how bad actors exploit behavioral systems at scale.

Security & Intelligence Firms

Consulting practices with deep technical expertise that lack the behavioral and marketing layer needed to model the full influence operations threat surface. A complementary engagement, not a competitive one.

Political & Advocacy Organizations

Campaigns, PACs, and civil society organizations in high-adversarial-attention environments who need to understand how coordinated inauthentic behavior is being used against their narratives.

Risk & Compliance Functions

Legal, risk, and compliance teams at financial institutions adding social media manipulation, synthetic behavior, and platform abuse to their threat and vendor risk frameworks.

Defense-Adjacent Research

Think tanks, research institutions, and government contractors working on information environment analysis, influence operations attribution, and strategic communication threats.

// How an Engagement Works

The Red Team Research Process

Five phases. Plain-language deliverables at every stage. Designed for executive decision-makers, communications teams, and policy functions — not engineers.

Threat Surface Scoping

We define the scope: which platforms, which narratives, which adversary profiles are most relevant. I map the organization's current public-facing behavioral and informational surface — exactly what a sophisticated influence operator would see when they run reconnaissance against you.

Adversary Modeling

I construct realistic adversary profiles — motivated by competitive, political, financial, or reputational objectives — and model the specific tactics, techniques, and platforms they would use. Informed by documented real-world CIB campaigns, published platform transparency reports, and primary influence operation research.

Campaign Architecture Simulation

I model the operational architecture of a campaign targeting your organization: how it would be seeded, amplified, and made to appear organic. I identify the behavioral signatures that would be used to avoid detection and the platform mechanisms that would be exploited to maximize reach and minimize attribution risk.

Vulnerability & Gap Assessment

I evaluate your current monitoring posture, communication strategy, and platform presence for structural vulnerabilities — the gaps an adversary would target first. This includes narrative gaps, platform-specific policy blind spots, and behavioral detection limitations that technical security tools cannot surface.

Threat Intelligence Briefing

The engagement concludes with a structured threat brief: a plain-language executive summary, detailed findings, risk-ranked vulnerabilities, and a prioritized set of defensive recommendations. Designed for security, communications, and policy decision-makers — not engineers. No jargon without definition. No recommendation without rationale.

// Reference Glossary

Key Terms in Influence Operations & Narrative Warfare

These terms are used across the field by platform integrity teams, intelligence analysts, and threat researchers. Fluency with this vocabulary distinguishes strategic threat analysts from generalist security consultants — and signals to sophisticated buyers that you're serious.

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB): The use of multiple accounts or assets acting in concert to artificially manipulate public discourse while concealing the true nature of the coordination. Term formally codified by Meta; now standard across platform integrity research globally.
Influence Operations: Organized efforts to manipulate political, social, or commercial discourse using deceptive tactics including fake accounts, sockpuppets, synthetic media, and coordinated amplification. Distinct from legitimate advocacy in the deliberate concealment of origin and coordination.
Narrative Warfare: The strategic deployment of information — including truthful, selectively framed content — to shape the information environment in adversarial ways. Operates on a longer timeline than disinformation and is harder to attribute or counter through fact-checking alone.
Platform Integrity: The operational function at social platforms and marketplaces responsible for ensuring behavioral signals reflect genuine human intent — enforcing against coordinated manipulation, synthetic engagement, and trust system exploitation at scale.
Information Operations (IO): A broader category encompassing influence operations, psychological operations, and strategic communication campaigns. Used primarily in government, defense, and intelligence contexts. Overlaps significantly with influence operations in commercial threat modeling.
Sockpuppet: A fake online identity used to deceive about the origin, volume, or organic nature of support for a position, brand, or narrative. A core building block of CIB campaigns. Typically managed in coordinated networks rather than as isolated individual accounts.
Astroturfing: The artificial simulation of grassroots support, sentiment, or advocacy, designed to appear organic while concealing centralized coordination or funding. Common in commercial reputation manipulation, political campaigns, and product review ecosystems.
Multisurface Manipulation: Coordinated manipulation campaigns that operate across multiple digital surfaces — social media, review platforms, search, ad networks, and payment systems — simultaneously to create cross-platform consensus that no single platform can detect or counter in isolation.
Red Teaming: Adversarial simulation: adopting the perspective and methods of an attacker to identify vulnerabilities before a real adversary does. In influence operations, this means simulating manipulation campaigns against an organization's own narrative and platform presence to reveal structural exposures.
Threat Intelligence Analyst: A practitioner who gathers, analyzes, and contextualizes intelligence about adversaries and attack methodologies to inform defensive strategy. In the influence operations context, requires deep understanding of behavioral manipulation, platform mechanics, campaign attribution, and the information environment.

// For Solopreneurs & Small Businesses

Still Need AI Automation Consulting?

The same expertise that makes the influence operations practice credible started here: building real AI automation systems for small businesses, solopreneurs, and growth-stage operators who want to scale lean without the corporate drag.

If you're looking to implement AI automation for content creation, lead generation, customer service, or operations — this is still a core offering. You bring the proven offer. I bring the AI gasoline. And because I understand how this technology works as a weapon, I build systems that are resilient to the same manipulation tactics I research.

Book a Consultation

"Understanding how AI automation works for legitimate business growth is exactly what makes me credible when it gets weaponized. I've built both sides. I know what's possible because I've done it."

James Jernigan

Influence Operations Red Team Researcher

// Frequently Asked Questions

What People Ask Before Engaging for Influence Operations Work

Do I need a cybersecurity background to work with you or benefit from this service?

No — and that's by design on both sides. I don't have a traditional cybersecurity or programming background, and for this type of work, that's an asset. The threats I model don't come through technical exploits. They come through behavioral manipulation, coordinated deception, and the exploitation of platform trust systems. My background in digital marketing, AI automation, and content strategy gives me ground-level understanding of how these systems work — and how they get abused. The clients I serve are executives, communications teams, policy functions, and Trust & Safety professionals, not engineers.

What is the difference between influence operations red teaming and traditional red teaming?

Traditional red teaming simulates cyberattacks — network intrusion, credential theft, exploiting software vulnerabilities. Influence operations red teaming simulates behavioral and narrative attacks — coordinated inauthentic behavior, synthetic amplification, narrative warfare campaigns, and platform integrity exploitation. Both use adversarial simulation to find gaps before real attackers do, but the threat surface, required skillset, and deliverables are entirely different. One protects the technical infrastructure. The other protects the human layer.

What does coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) mean in a commercial context?

CIB is most publicly associated with political disinformation campaigns, but the same mechanics — coordinated fake accounts amplifying content, suppressing competitors, manufacturing false consensus — are used extensively in commercial contexts. Fake review networks, coordinated competitor suppression, synthetic product ratings, app store manipulation, and astroturfed brand campaigns are all CIB. For businesses, the risk is to reputation, search rankings, trust signals, and revenue. For platforms, it's to the integrity of every trust signal their product is built on.

What is narrative warfare, and is it the same as disinformation?

They overlap but are distinct. Disinformation is the deliberate spread of false information. Narrative warfare is broader — it includes the strategic use of true information, selectively timed and framed, to shape the information environment in adversarial ways. A competitor seeding factually accurate but strategically devastating news at a critical moment is narrative warfare, not disinformation. Defending against it requires understanding the entire information ecosystem around your brand, not just fact-checking your own content.

How does AI automation consulting relate to influence operations research?

Directly. The AI automation tools that help legitimate businesses scale content, manage outreach, and streamline operations are the same tools being used to run coordinated inauthentic behavior campaigns at scale. Having built AI automation systems for businesses, I understand exactly what these tools can do — which is what makes the threat modeling credible. An influence operations analyst who has never built an automated content and engagement system is modeling threats from the outside. I'm modeling them from the inside.

What makes this different from hiring a traditional PR or reputation management firm?

PR and reputation management firms respond to public narrative problems after they surface. Influence operations red teaming is proactive adversarial simulation — finding the gaps before they're exploited. A reputation firm tells you how to respond to a crisis. This practice tells you how the crisis was architected, what behavioral infrastructure made it possible, and what structural changes make your organization harder to target in the first place. The two approaches are complementary, not substitutes.

Can influence operations red teaming be conducted remotely?

Yes, entirely. The research surface — social platforms, review ecosystems, content networks, behavioral patterns — is digital and publicly observable. Engagements are conducted remotely and deliverables are produced in a format suitable for executive briefing, policy review, or integration into a broader threat intelligence function. Remote delivery is the standard model, and clients span jurisdictions globally.

The Threat Isn't Coming Through the Firewall.