Resilience Building in Selected Countries

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Resilience Building in Selected Countries EUROPE VERSUS DISINFORMATION: RESILIENCE BUILDING IN SELECTED COUNTRIES AUTHORS: IZABELA ALBRYCHT, FAUSTINE FELICI, MICHAŁ KRAWCZYK, KAMIL MIKULSKI, TOMASZ PIEKARZ, JAKUB TUSZYŃSKI, ANASTAZJA WIŚNIEWSKA AUTHORS: Izabela Albrycht Introduction, Recommendations Kamil Mikulski European Union Tomasz Piekarz Poland Anastazja Wiśniewska Germany Faustine Felici France Michał Krawczyk United Kingdom Jakub Tuszyński Three Seas states EDITORS: Izabela Albrycht, Michał Krawczyk, Kamil Mikulski GRAPHIC DESIGN AND DTP: Joanna Świerad-Solińska TRANSLATION: Adam Ladziński The report was financed with the support of the Open Information Partnership The present report is a publication by The Kosciuszko Institute. At the same time, the views expressed herein are individual authors’ assessments and should not be confounded with the standpoint of The Kosciuszko Institute and publication partners. The publication is a contribution to the public debate. Individual authors are responsible solely for their opinions and their viewpoints cannot be confounded with those of other report authors. The Kosciuszko Institute ul. Feldmana 4/9-10 31-130 Krakow, Poland +48 12 632 97 24 www.ik.org.pl © The Kosciuszko Institute [email protected] Krakow 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 5 European Union.................................................................................................................................... 10 Poland ........................................................................................................................................................ 21 Germany ................................................................................................................................................... 34 France ........................................................................................................................................................ 42 United Kingdom ................................................................................................................................... 51 Three Seas states ................................................................................................................................. 62 Recommendations ............................................................................................................................. 72 EUROPE VERSUS DISINFORMATION: RESILIENCE BUILDING IN SELECTED COUNTRIES 4 EUROPE VERSUS DISINFORMATION: RESILIENCE BUILDING IN SELECTED COUNTRIES Izabela Albrycht that drew the eyes of researchers, services, and politicians in 2016,2 that is the one done in con- Introduction nection with the US presidential election,3 to the activities in Georgia and Moldova, recently “Resilience must reside within identified.4 Propaganda and disinformation as societies as well as the state” wielded by Russia are also instruments in hybrid warfare, which the war in Ukraine provides exam- Despite there being many past examples of lever- ples of. In this case, disinformation became part aging propaganda, disinformation, or information and parcel of information warfare, which has warfare in military and civilian actions, not until its origins in the Russian notion of “new-gener- the digital age were these activities possible on ation war”. Presented as early as 2013 by Gen. such an unprecedented scale with a low finan- Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of cial and organisational entry threshold. Moreover, the Russian Federation Armed Forces, the concept it is already plain to see that similar actions are pictured info ops as a fixture of warfare to be con- going to increasingly challenge the security of ducted in times of both conflict and peace – and democratic states and impact the geopolitical as the strategy was updated in 2019, the impor- rivalry which has intensified in the late 2010s. tance of hybrid activities was clearly underscored.5 Advanced information threats are notoriously General Gerasimov said that combining a small piling up, which is tied up mostly with techno- expeditionary force with information opera- logical progress. Collecting more data on each tions had proved that they could be expanded to of us and on our proclivities makes it possible to “defend and advance national interests beyond create content that better targets its user, while the borders of Russia”.6 Across Europe, Russia- the development of artificial intelligence and originated information operations in cyberspace machine learning technologies causes the prop- have in recent years become an important ele- agation of deepfakes, which are yet another ment of Moscow’s foreign policy, often aimed not arrow in the fake news quiver. The last process is only to pursue political and economic interests an instance of information disorder, with the ava- but also to polarise societies. Russian disinforma- lanche of doctored or fake (but indistinguishable tion surged in the aftermath of Malaysian MH17 from real) multimedia only set to grow. As they plane being shot down over Ukrainian territory respond to the threat, democratic states will and in the wake of Sergei Skripal assassination need to strike a balance between the freedom of attempt in the United Kingdom, highlighting that expression as the principle and the need to regu- any European country can find itself the target of late the information space. They will also need to similar information-related actions. take a look at the level of responsibility shown by the internet platforms when addressing the prob- State services are raising the alarm that more and lem – the spaces which thanks to digital infra- more often democratic countries are becoming structure and applied algorithms are the main the targets for China’s info ops. Beijing uses media in the contemporary world. Crucially, pro-Chinese narratives or manipulations to further actions will need to be harmonised through inter- its political and economic agenda that aims at tech- national cooperation, bilateral and multilateral nological and economic domination. Many experts alike, including regional formats.1 also point out that the strategy has its second, less rhetorically aggressive facet, whose essence is to Information operations and propaganda are try to silence open public debate, as is happening, methods of influence and power projection that e.g. now in Estonia, where the Chinese embassy Russia (but also China and Iran) regularly uses, has expressed its dissatisfaction with Estonian de facto all over the world: from the campaign foreign intelligence service findings, accusing it of 5 EUROPE VERSUS DISINFORMATION: RESILIENCE BUILDING IN SELECTED COUNTRIES “unprofessional style” and “ideological prejudice”.7 and individual members of both these organisa- China acts, then, to render the information space tions have tried to meet this challenge. COVID- silent on issues that Beijing finds uncomfortable,8 19 seems to have left no doubts as to the exist- including the topics of COVID-19 or political influ- ence of the problem, yet an effective systemic ence of the Chinese Communist Party on tech response to it has not been formulated so far. companies, e.g. Huawei, which are engaged in dig- We can, however, expect the challenge to remain itally transforming the world.9 near the top of the democratic states’ politi- cal agenda. In the so-called Reflection Group It is worth noting that both China and Russia regard report for NATO we read that “NATO populations information operations, disinfo included, as a nor- expect to be protected against new threats such mal peacetime activity. And although the two use as cyber and disinformation and expect their gov- different methods and tools for it, they lever- ernments, supported by NATO, to develop tools age the operations to quell social unrest or dis- for attribution and deterrence. Resilience must satisfaction within their borders and to control reside within societies as well as the state.”14 in the longer term what the citizens think. Yet, in terms of European security, what seems important The ability to spread fake news with no limits is chiefly that “digital authoritarianism” models are imposed by geography or technology and with exported by China and Russia and used to play pol- exceedingly low costs has emerged alongside itics abroad – which clearly sets these states apart the development of the internet and social net- from Western democracies that tend to self-limit working platforms. The latter are playing a key the activities of this sort to warfare only.10 role as a tool for reaching millions of addressees, profiting from the content presented, or conduct- However, the disinformation problem is also spill- ing info ops. Their unregulated character and lack ing over the frame of international rivalry and of transparent disinformation-related legislation conflicts or information operations. For it also cause controlling the content on these portals to affects the lives of ordinary people, as has been be very difficult. The global character of the plat- highlighted in the COVID-19 pandemic, which is forms, geographically unbridled data flow tak- visibly accompanied with a disinformation epi- ing place on them, and being active in a realm demic on an unprecedented scale that many are that is still very much unregulated all make them calling infodemic.11 In this case, fake news may seek to follow a universal policy towards their impact people’s
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