When it comes to disinformation, one of the main vulnerabilities in North Macedonia is the EU integration process – Tapio Pyysalo, Hybrid CoE | Photo: Meta.mk
The Head of International relations at the Hybrid CoE, Tapio Pyysalo talks about the scope of their work, the vulnerabilities of the Western Balkan countries connected with inter-ethnic tensions, the whole-of-society approach that the governments should take and the importance of the cooperation between all EU and NATO members in tackling the challenges ahead.
Disinformation and psychological interference, cyber-attacks, emerging disruptive technologies, sabotage, election interference, economic interference, instrumentalization of migration – these are just part of the issues the Hybrid Center of Excellence at countering hybrid threats is dealing with. The Head of International relations at the Hybrid CoE, Tapio Pyysalo talks about the scope of their work, the vulnerabilities of the Western Balkan countries connected with inter-ethnic tensions, the whole-of-society approach that the governments should take and the importance of the cooperation between all EU and NATO members in tackling the challenges ahead. According to their analysis, what Russia really wants is to maintain its sphere of influence in the Western Balkans region and the EU integration of the countries would undermine that overall Russian objective.
Pyysalo points out that one of the main concerns of the center recently is the use of generative AI in spreading disinformation and how it can actually be used to counter it. Additionally, he talks about the Finnish experience in successfully dealing with Foreign information manipulation and interference. Recently Mr. Pyysalo visited North Macedonia where he had several discussions with representatives of the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the civil society and the media. He claims that the new government in Skopje is very serious in their intent to deal with the hybrid threats and implement a whole-of-society approach.
Since you are coming from Finland, and Finland is considered one of the most resilient countries to disinformation, maybe you can explain in short how do you do it. Is there a magic formula that can be shared and reused?
– Well, thank you so much. It’s a very good question, but first let me emphasize that although I’m Finn, I’m basically here as a representative of the Center of excellence at countering hybrid threats which is an international organization covering 36 countries in Europe and America.
But of course, I’ll be happy to say a few words about my finish experience as well. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a magic formula. It’s really a complex background for everything that builds resilience against disinformation. But, I will be happy to raise a few points and maybe some of those best practice that might be useful for other countries as well.
I want to raise four main points and those are basically media literacy, freedom and diversity of the media environment, then the language and finally trust within the society. And first of all, on that media literacy which is really sort of a celebrated element of the Finnish resilience.
It really is a decade’s long history of media education in the country and that’s why it might be a bit difficult to replicate. It’s not only taught in the schools but also the civil society is engaging in part in media education of the youth and it’s very difficult to copy or build overnight. At least in the long term some of those elements could of course be brought to other countries as well.
I understand that North Macedonia is building some media education for schools for example and that’s a great first step and it will take a long time but it’s really important to start building it early.
I want to raise a point on the on the free and diverse media environment. Finland has a very strong freedom of press protected actually by a self-regulation body. I hear you have a similar here in North Macedonia. Although the media is being slightly consolidated, at the same time, it has not really been politically biased and that is an important part. Finland also has its national public media called Finnish Broadcasting Company modeled on the BBC’s example. It actually has quite a big role in a trustworthy media and is considered very objective in the society.
I think that is one key element. I also think that Finland is, at least to some extent, being protected by the language. Finnish is part of a very small feno-hungarian language family that has only about 20 million speakers, so it’s very small and it has very complex grammar. I think that at least so far it has been very difficult for machines to create fluent translations into Finnish, which is making it very difficult for foreign actors to represent Finnish language in the media and social media. That has maybe been a barrier to disinformation in Finland as well.
Finally, the high level of trust among the population is really important. Up to 50% of Fins trust their government, even 85% actually trust the national media, the Finish Broadcasting Company, so it’s a very high level of trust in the society and that trust also helps tackle some of these disinformation narratives.
I think a good example of this is that when the Baltic connector, the pipeline was disrupted in the Baltic Sea close to Finland. The government gave a press briefing and it immediately cut all the wings off the rumors and disinformation because everybody trusts the government enough to believe that narrative.
This probably is one of the most difficult things to copy. Building that trust in the society is probably a very important element of countering disinformation. But, I do have to say I’m also slightly concerned that even the Finish resilience might be more and more challenged especially by the development of artificial intelligence and all these sophisticated language models.
Many of them coming up in Finnish as well and the sort of exponential dominance of artificially created information in the media and information space. This will definitely require more effective monitoring of the media environment, better counter measures against disinformation and maybe also more efficient utilization of artificial intelligence for countering disinformation and identifying facts behind the lies.
It’s something that has continued to develop throughout the years, it hasn’t stopped and waited for us to react let’s say in a way?
– I think it definitely has developed quite a bit. One evidence of this was that during the European elections this year. Russia was spreading up to 40 million reactions to different kinds of narratives in the media space, that really gives a good picture of the extent of the challenge, and many of those are certainly created by artificial intelligence.
Tapio Pyysalo, Head of International Relations at Hybrid CoE | Photo: Meta.mk
Remaining below the threshold of war
As you mentioned you are the head of international relations at the Hybrid center of excellence, it’s an international network of 36 countries including all NATO member states and all EU member states and what they do is pursue this whole of society approach towards countering hybrid threats. Can you explain what has been the focus of your work recently and why is this important? What kind of threats are we talking about?
– Indeed, we are really happy for reaching that milestone of universal participation by all EU members all NATO members. I want to emphasize that there are many NATO centers of excellence but the Hybrid CoE is unique in bringing the EU and NATO together. That’s actually one of the main objectives of our work: putting the EU and NATO to work together against hybrid threats and our main aim in our work is to strengthen the capacities of our participating states for countering hybrid threats.
What we mean by hybrid threats is basically fourfold strategic actions by hostile state or non-state actors sometimes non-state actors that are working on behalf of state actors as proxies.
We see that hybrid threats are systematically targeting vulnerabilities in our societies. They’re using a wide range of different synchronized means like avoiding identification and attribution and remaining below the threshold of war. Basically, our work is not only about the whole-of-society approach or the comprehensive model of security, but it definitely is one of the good practices and it applies to many different domains and many different ways of countering hybrid threats.
The point is that unlike military threats, hybrid threats challenge many parts of our societies and therefore identifying those hybrid threats and especially countering them requires a whole-of-society approach across the government also involving the civil society, involving the private sector and so on. Some of the threats that we are focused on include disinformation and psychological interference, cyber-attacks, emerging disruptive technologies, sabotage both in the physical domain but also in the cyber domain, election interference, economic interference, instrumentalization of migration, etc.
It is actually a very broad list of different kinds of threats and we are looking specifically at some of the main hybrid threat actors, looking at hybrid threats in different regions including the Western Balkans and so on. There really are many different scopes.
Photo: Meta.mk
Wreaking havoc in societies
About two years ago here in North Macedonia dozens of schools, most of them in the capital of Skopje, received on their email addresses these false bomb threats. This was ongoing for about six months, there were hundreds of false threats and the schools had to be evacuated very frequently, the parents were scared, the whole society was on alert because of this. And the media used this as a driver for government criticism and lowering the trust in the state institutions. Additionally, about the same time, in February 2023 the Macedonian Health Insurance Fund was hacked through a ransomware attack putting in jeopardy the data of every citizen, his health data basically. Could you say that these two examples are part of the hybrid threats that you’re working to prevent?
– This sounds like a very concrete example of hybrid threats and I’m really happy you brought it up. Because it really gives the local context to what we’re talking about here. What really makes it a hybrid threat in my point of view is that it seems to be a strategic attack by a foreign actor targeting societal vulnerabilities and those are some of the sort of main attributes of hybrid threats in our point of view.
It really also shows how much havoc some of these hybrid threats can wreak in a society disrupting in this case education, scaring the population, dividing public opinion and also undermining trust in the government which we just discussed.
It’s a really important factor in countering some of these threats and it’s probably no coincidence that these events happened soon after North Macedonia closed its airspace to Russia’s foreign minister and sent lethal military aid to Ukraine. These events might incur such hybrid threats and we do say that undermining support to Ukraine really seems to be one of Russia’s immediate goals and objectives in its use of hybrid threats. These are exactly the kinds of threats that we are supporting our participating states to counter. And, while North Macedonia was not yet participating state of the Hybrid Coe at the time, I understood that NATO offered its support in that case.
This actually is also a really important element of countering hybrid threats. International cooperation, cooperation among allies is crucial when countering hybrid threats. That’s a great symbol of NATO coming together in your support.
North Macedonia is a member of the Hybrid Center of Excellence for about one year if I’m not mistaken, but it seems like even before that not many steps were taken in regards of countering foreign information manipulation and interference at least not publicly. Where do you see the role of small countries such as North Macedonia in this global effort?
– Indeed, like you mentioned North Macedonia joined Hybrid CoE in October ’23 so we’ve been working closely together ever since for about a year now. I think countering foreign information manipulation and interference is a challenge to most of our participating states with the quick development of AI tools. For example, the stream of disinformation is exponentially increasing if I can say so, there are some very good practices on how to counter disinformation but it also takes a lot of time and money. It really takes a lot of resources and I know that many countries are ramping up their capabilities for monitoring their media environment, monitoring their information spaces in some cases including using some of those AI tools to map the media environment, to better identify the threats and the disinformation narratives in the information space.
I think cooperation with social media companies is also really important because they control such large parts of the media space and they have a responsibility to counter disinformation too. They should also have their internal policies in place, they should cooperate with government in identifying disinformation and counter that disinformation for example by closing accounts.
In the case of North Macedonia, we have had lot of discussions with the current, the new government, they do seem to take the threat very seriously, and they are building up defenses against disinformation and foreign interference, information manipulation.
I think they do seem to have a good concept of the threat and they do seem to be working a lot in order to counter it.
Tapio Pyysalo, Head of International Relations at Hybrid CoE | Photo: Meta.mk
Whole-of-society approach in North Macedonia
It seems that the civil society here in North Macedonia has been most active in terms of countering disinformation. We as Metamorphosis Foundation we have proposed to the previous government a similar whole of society approach in countering disinformation. It included various recommendations for different stakeholders that are involved and they accepted the proposal formally but nothing much else has happened around it. It’s really strange because Finland is the first on the Global media literacy index and North Macedonia is the last country on that index.
– It’s a good question but indeed, like I mentioned, it seems that they do have a strong approach on countering disinformation, they do seem to have a strong interest in applying the whole-of-society approach to countering disinformation and I think this is work that will very soon begin.
I see that civil society organizations have a really important role in the society in initiating public debate, bringing up issues, taking them to the government and raising awareness on issues like in this case, countering disinformation but I also feel like the initiative in the end has to come from the government itself.
Because building up this whole of society approach, it does take a lot of cooperation and coordination involving the civil society organizations, finding the right ways for them to be represented for example in this coordination and also in some cases, for example, security certificates to be able to access information.
It is a lot of work and I think the government has to have the lead in that work but I do feel like initiatives like yours are really useful for the government to give them at least an idea of what the civil society expects of them and how the civil society would like to engage.
In a report that we are about to publish these days, we conclude that there is an ongoing effort to disturb the inter-ethnic relations in the country through foreign influence. Could you explain why certain topics are more prone to be misused by foreign malign actors than others. What is the goal of these efforts?
– Well, this really goes back to what we discussed about how we see hybrid threats and how we define them. One of the elements in hybrid threats is typically intentionally targeting vulnerabilities in societies. In the case of North Macedonia and in the wider Western Balkans region these inter-ethnic tensions are certainly one of the key vulnerabilities that can be abused by foreign actors.
While in the case of North Macedonia the Ohrid Framework Agreement has been very robust, of course another one of those key vulnerabilities is the EU integration process that is targeted by different kinds of anti-western narratives across the region and creates a vulnerability in the society that can be abused by some foreign actors.
I feel that the reason why hybrid threat actors are attacking these topics is that they’re easy targets for stoking disagreement in the society, dividing the public opinion and really sort of undermining national unity. It serves all the purposes of hybrid threat actors including, like I mentioned, challenging decision making, diminishing support to Ukraine, diminishing support for the EU integration process and these are all targets for hybrid actors.
In our analysis, what Russia really wants is to maintain its sphere of influence in the Western Balkans region and of course, EU integration would undermine that sort of overall objective of Russia. This is one reason why we feel that we should do our best to raise awareness of hybrid threats and their objectives among the wider public as well, so that people would be aware of the threat and be responsive to react to some of these disinformation narratives.
We feel that responding to these threats, it really requires broad awareness in the public, it requires national unity that is very strong, it requires strong resilience in the society, it requires support to the government for actions against some of these threats but also good coordination and cooperation. Your initiative is a good example of that and strong international partnerships, strong alliances and these are certainly some of the topics that we are trying to support our participating states’ governments to tackle and to build resilience with.
