The concept of “brainwashing” was invented — by a CIA agent posing as a journalist — precisely because Westerners needed a way to reflexively dismiss the phenomenon whereby their own troops were being persuaded of communist ideas during communist captivity:

The idea of “brain-washing” can be credited to Edward Hunter, a CIA-funded writer and editor, who in 1950 started writing articles and books on the subject. His thesis was that Red China and the Soviet Union could control the minds of their respective citizenry — which explained how susceptible Americans captured on foreign soil would be.

This new category, supposedly qualitatively different from normal ideology acquisition, itself turns out to be simply an ideological distinction without a difference.

https://redsails.org/brainwashing/