The provided source material offers an extensive examination of “narrative conditioning,” defining it as the process through which stories—even fictional ones—shape an audience’s perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors by acting as psychological training. The text synthesizes several core psychological theories, including social learning theory, schema theory, and cognitive dissonance, to explain how repeated narratives create and reinforce mental frameworks, especially through the mechanism of vicarious reinforcement (observing rewards or punishments given to characters). Finally, the sources document how these powerful narrative persuasion techniques are weaponized in covert operations by state actors and foreign entities for cognitive warfare and influence operations, detailing historical and modern examples, along with the legal challenges of using the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to prosecute undisclosed narrative campaigns, particularly those amplified on social media platforms.