War with Iran marks the first truly AI-native information environment in warfare where the human brain is both the target and the weapon, and the battlefield is your phone.

In this episode, producer and host Heather Bakken is joined by two experts in the field of cognitive and gray zone warfare.

Jennifer Irish is a principal at Pendulum Geopolitical Advisory Group and leader of the Information Integrity Practice. She's also a former Canadian diplomat and security executive.

Elizabeth Anderson is a former senior advisor to Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and a fellow at the Montreal Institute for Global Security. Her research specializes in cognitive warfare and democratic resilience.

The 2026 threat environment has our adversaries working at machine speed against our human-paced institutions.

From deep fakes to cheap fakes and video cartoons, AI is industrializing information manipulation at warp speed. Identity can be cloned, platforms can be mimicked and content can be mass-produced.

Have we crossed a threshold where we cannot guarantee what truth is anymore?

Tune in to find out.

This episode host Heather Bakken is joined by Pendulum colleagues Jennifer Irish and Yaroslav Baran to discuss how the seemingly unplanned aspects of U.S. strategy in Iran are actually playing out geopolitically and what impact it has on Canada.

The trio unpacks what the war reveals about great power dynamics and the consequences that reach well beyond the Strait of Hormuz.

Irish argues this conflict is an example of what warfare is going to become in the hybrid warfare space, which involves multiple fronts, and the implications for Canada. She notes the yawning gap in cognitive warfare readiness as Iran deploys AI-generated disinformation at unprecedented scale.

Baran raises the stakes by arguing Canada needs to get serious about energy sovereignty and that while Trump keeps score on who shows up to help and who doesn't, the NATO military alliance underpinning Canadian security for 76 years may be more fragile than Ottawa wants to admit.

It`s time to make hard calls on Arctic sovereignty, energy infrastructure, and the information integrity that holds a democracy together.

This week marks four years since the most recent unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Ukrainians have been at war for 12 years and have spent the last four shedding blood, tears, and the stability they once enjoyed to defend the freedoms and values of their democracy. It was – and continues to be – a cruel and unjustified assault on a sovereign country. It goes against international law and defies human decency.

This episode Pendulum host and co-founding partner, Heather Bakken, is joined by Valeriy Kostyuk, Executive Director of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, and Pendulum co-founding partner, Yaroslav Baran.

They discuss how Canadians have opened their hearts and their wallets to provide humanitarian assistance for Ukrainians while Putin pummels civilian infrastructure. Hear about what's at stake, who is impacted, and why it's in Canada's interest to prevent Moscow from winning its war of ethnocide.