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

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.

Significance Statement

Democratic discourse depends on citizens’ ability to verify information, yet this capacity is under systematic attack. We introduce Verification Cost Asymmetry (VCA)—a mathematical framework quantifying how much harder it is for different populations to check the same claims. Using complexity theory and cryptographic techniques, we show how to engineer ”spot-checkable” information bundles that trusted audiences can verify in constant time while adversaries face combinatorial verification costs. This provides the first rigorous foundation for designing information systems that structurally favor truth over disinformation. The approach transforms cognitive security from intuitive defense to mathematical engineering, with immediate applications to platform design, content authentication, and democratic resilience.