Paper 2025/1389

Verification Cost Asymmetry in Cognitive Warfare: A Complexity-Theoretic Framework

Abstract

Human verification under adversarial information flow operates as a cost-bounded decision procedure constrained by working memory limits and cognitive biases. We introduce the Verification Cost Asymmetry (VCA) coefficient, formalizing it as the ratio of expected verification work between populations under identical claim distributions. Drawing on probabilistically checkable proofs (PCP) and parameterized complexity theory, we construct dissemination protocols that reduce verification for trusted audiences to constant human effort while imposing superlinear costs on adversarial populations lacking cryptographic infrastructure. We prove theoretical guarantees for this asymmetry, validate the framework through controlled user studies measuring verification effort with and without spot-checkable provenance, and demonstrate practical encoding of real-world information campaigns. The results establish complexity-theoretic foundations for engineering democratic advantage in cognitive warfare, with immediate applications to content authentication, platform governance, and information operations doctrine. We are concerned not with verifying ground truth, but with verifying provenance—the integrity of the chain of custody from source to receiver. Our protocols allow a user to efficiently check that a bundle of information is authentic and has not been tampered with, even though the underlying claims may still be right or wrong in substance.

Note: Major revision based on valuable feedback from the editorial review process. The framework has been clarified to distinguish provenance verification from ground-truth verification, and the strategic posture has been made explicit.