“Stratcom”, the European “task force” to fight against foreign interference and online disinformation

Is Russia waging a war of disinformation against France and the Paris Olympic Games? This is confirmed by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. The digital giant has detected online manipulation to sow fear and dissuade spectators from attending the Olympics. The assertion is denied by Russia, which denounces “Russophobic campaign”. But it’s not just the Olympics that are concerned. The European election campaign is also polluted by disinformation and fake news spread on social networks, sometimes amplified by artificial intelligence. To try to combat this phenomenon, the European Union has therefore mobilized a dedicated team.

It is a “task force” of around forty people called Stratcom and operates within the European External Action Service, a sort of European Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This cell was created in 2015, just after Russia’s annexation of Crimea because from the start, this is where most of the malicious disinformation comes from.

These include, for example, videos which claim that citizens are fleeing the “dictatorship” in Poland and seek refuge in Belarus, that the French army is recruiting 200,000 volunteers to fight in Ukraine, that in Slovakia, the man who shot Prime Minister Robert Fico in mid-May is married to a Ukrainian refugee or again, in another register, that Germany has decriminalized the online sexual exploitation of children. The objective: to sow distrust and conflictualize the debate by flooding the networks with lies as well as defaming European leaders.

The other tactic consists of misleading voters, for example by encouraging them to scribble a percentage on their ballot, a technique supposed to allow double voting. Although it is quite surprising that voters believe it, it is circulating a lot in Germany and Spain. However, it is a question of invalidating ballots, and perhaps of making it possible to then challenge the legitimacy of the vote. Stratcom is a small structure but does not work alone. Its small budget of 15 million euros is not enough, so it works in conjunction with national units, such as Viginum in France. This observation service is responsible for vigilance and protection against foreign digital interference. It employs 42 people and is constantly expanding because the sector is buoyant, boosted in particular by artificial intelligence which improves the quality of fake news by translating and adapting it to the local context.