Workshop: Foreign interference in the digital domain

EUISS Senior analysts Nad’a Kovalčíková and Patryk Pawlak led a workshop on 5 April 2022 on foreign interference in the digital domain. 

The study of foreign interference has received substantial attention over the past years. It has become particularly relevant for two research communities working in parallel but rarely venturing into each other’s domains: cybersecurity and information manipulation.

This separation line was partly drawn by Russia in 1998 by bringing the issue of the use of ICTs for international security to the UN first committee, attempting to set the tone for the discussions about cybersecurity in terms of information security. This premise was quickly rejected by the West who considered the move an attempt to introduce state-sanctions, information control and censorship that could undermine open and free nature of cyberspace. But the increasing use of digital tools for information manipulation has gradually eroded this viewpoint and demands that experts in cyber diplomacy and information manipulation examine the overlapping issues across the two areas.

The purpose of this workshop was to identify the junctions between the two fields in order to better understand the underpinning challenges for the policymakers and propose potential solutions.