When advancing national security, there are two fatal misjudgments an actor can make: underestimating your adversary or overestimating your own strength. These two errors, according to NATO, are a consequence of organizational complacency.
Such blind spots in an organization’s understanding of the threat landscape have seismic ramifications – from making a nation or region vulnerable, to misspending budgets as a result of markedly misinterpreting the threat landscape in which they currently operate. So, what can be done? NATO believes the antidote is “cognitive superiority,” which at Moody’s we refer to as cognitive preparedness.
Terminology aside, this approach involves building a deeper, more reflective understanding of the operating environment, the adversary, and one’s own capabilities. By fostering this preparedness, decision-makers can anticipate threats, respond proactively, and maintain a decisive edge over adversaries.
A better understanding of an adversary, and the threat posed, can be built across three interconnected dimensions:
Step one: build situational awareness
It begins with building a situational awareness. This is the process of collecting and exploiting intelligence regarding an adversary’s posturing, strength, disposition, its key partnerships, and the influence of both non-governmental and governmental organizations within its sphere. Achieving this requires highly curated, verified, and mission-relevant data—Moody’s leverages hundreds of analysts constantly refining data rather than relying on scraping technologies. This means decision-makers are equipped with reliable insights that support rapid and consistent decision-making across interconnected domains.
Step two: enhance situational understanding
In this second phase, awareness is further augmented by building an understanding of the adversary’s vision, operational culture, and methods. This step requires looking beyond surface-level data to make sense of the national security threat landscape and how the adversary thinks.
Step three: gain a cognitive advantage
The final step is transforming situational awareness into a decisive cognitive advantage in defense operations. This involves not only deeper insights but also operational agility—making timely and strategic decisions faster than adversaries.
In today’s interconnected battlespace, cognitive advantage must extend across all domains: land, air, sea, cyber, space, and information. Both NATO’s Command and Control (C2) framework and the US’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative emphasize the need for seamless synchronization across these domains. By integrating cognitive superiority into these environments, decision-makers can out-think and out-act adversaries in increasingly complex operational landscapes.
In this effort, Moody’s can provide support across four critical areas:
Moody’s data has been used to identify thousands of entities across NATO territories in industries such as air transportation, telecommunications, and information services that have links to adversarial nations. Among these entities are state-owned companies, sanctioned organizations, and others subject to enforcement actions.
In an age marked by increasingly sophisticated threats, complacency is not an option. Governments, agencies, and organizations must embrace cognitive preparedness to stay ahead of adversaries.
This means “thinking five deep”— or seeing the operational picture across land, air, sea, cyber, space, and information domains and seamlessly integrating decision-making processes across these silos. To this end, Moody’s advanced intelligence capabilities, built upon highly curated data and AI-driven insights, combined with cognitive preparedness, can equip decision-makers with actionable national security risk assessments—allowing them to better gauge threats before operational budget is spent on more costly countermeasures.
The stakes are high and the risks exponential. But, with the right tools and wherewithal to address the challenges, security and defense professionals can be better equipped to not only meet the challenges head-on, but to find ways to transform today’s risks into opportunities to protect people, assets, and interests.
If you would like to learn more about Moody’s Investigations platform, please get in touch—we would love to hear from you.