DR. BRIAN L. STEED
The Cavalry Officer Turned Narrative Warrior
Critical Cognitive Infrastructure
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired), US Army, 28 years of service
Associate Professor of Military History, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth (confirm current title vs. NDU affiliation)
Senior Fellow, Narrative Strategies
Middle East Foreign Area Officer, 8.5 years living and working in the region, including a posting with the Jordanian Armed Forces and as liaison officer to the Israel Defense Forces
Author or editor of ten books on cross-cultural influence and Middle East conflict, including "Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict"
PhD, Political Science and History, University of Missouri-Kansas City
2018 Military Educator of the Year, US Army Command and General Staff College
Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict
Brian Steed spent his career at the sharp end of American military power: nearly 29 years in uniform, including deployments to Iraq and a posting embedded directly within the Jordanian Armed Forces. But it was 9/11, and later his role helping plan the Battle of Mosul against ISIS, that convinced him the wars that matter most today aren't won with tanks or artillery. They're won with narrative.
In this talk, Steed unpacks the six central ideas behind narrative war, the strategy and critical questions required to actually understand, conduct, and win it. He draws a sharp distinction from the military's own vocabulary: what defense officials call "cognitive warfare," Steed calls "narrative war," and argues the difference is not semantic but strategic. He'll bring the framework into the present, connecting it to live and recent events, including the Iran conflict and political campaigns, and will make the case that platforms like TikTok function as deliberate instruments of narrative warfare, not neutral technology caught in the crossfire.
For a room full of security and defense professionals fluent in cognitive warfare as a technical or psychological problem, Steed offers something rarer: the view from three decades on the ground, where narrative isn't a battlefield metaphor, but the battlefield itself.
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Brian L. Steed served more than twenty-eight years in the US Army in artillery and cavalry units, and later as a Middle East Foreign Area Officer, a role that placed him inside the Jordanian Armed Forces and as a liaison officer to the Israel Defense Forces, giving him rare firsthand experience on both banks of the Jordan River. He deployed repeatedly to Iraq, served at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, and traveled extensively across the Middle East and North Africa over eight and a half consecutive years in the region.
Steed has authored or edited ten books on cross-cultural influence and Middle East conflict and history, including his latest, "Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict," which grew directly out of his experiences with 9/11, his service alongside Arab armies, and his role planning the Battle of Mosul to defeat ISIS. He earned his PhD in Political Science and History from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was named the 2018 Military Educator of the Year at the US Army Command and General Staff College, and serves as a Senior Fellow at Narrative Strategies.
He argues that the most consequential battles of the modern era are increasingly fought without a single shot fired, and that narrative war, not cognitive warfare, is the more precise term for the fight now underway across information platforms, political campaigns, and public life.