Violent Non-State actors, driven by nationalist, ethnic, and/or religious ideologies, will continue to threaten US national security interests in the future operating environment. Due to the proliferation of technology, VNSAs will acquire advanced warfighting capabilities and reduce the US Army's ability to generate overmatch. Thus, friendly forces must look towards non-material solutions as means of creating positions of relative advantage. A VNSA's ideology offer friendly forces the opportunity to create opportunities for exploitation on the battlefield. Understanding a VNSA's ideology allows friendly forces to generate ambiguity-decreasing deception, whereby a VNSA's preconceptions about themselves and the OE cause the VNSA to place itself in positions of relative disadvantage. This monograph will explore the relationship between VNSAs ideologies, social psychology, and current military deception doctrine to asses VNSA's vulnerability to "cognitive exploitation," and recommends friendly forces first seek to understand how a VNSA thinks, rather than merely analyzing capabilities, when developing tactical solutions.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)