Latest news with #TheRestofYourLife:FiveStoriesofYourFuture
Euractiv
3 days ago
- Business
- Euractiv
The threat is coordinated, our response is not
Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and author of 'The Rest of Your Life: Five Stories of Your Future.' Russia and China are actively engaging in a new kind of conflict, one that targets infrastructure, information, and influence rather than just territory. Yet most democracies remain caught in outdated frameworks, still approaching security through the Cold War lens of deterrence, and tidy distinctions between war and peace. This battle is for influence and control across every key domain: information, infrastructure, supply chains, cyberspace, and even the human mind. And right now, the West is losing not because our adversaries are stronger, but because we're uncoordinated, reactive, and politically fragile. While Russia's military is bogged down in Ukraine, Moscow has quietly expanded its use of cognitive warfare, now powered by AI and producing a flood of false content. By manipulating narratives, distorting facts, and fueling polarisation, Russia seeks to weaken Western resolve before a shot is even fired. China's strategy is more patient, but no less potent. Through its dominance of global supply chains, Beijing has gained immense economic leverage . Chinese actors have also been caught prepositioning inside Western power grids, probing vulnerabilities to exploit later. We're not only trading with China, we're also entrusting it with the keys to our critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, China and Russia are deepening their military-technical ties, including joint submarine development, heavy-lift helicopters, and the construction of a missile attack warning system. These developments show a deepening of China and Russia's defence and security partnership . Economic sanctions are increasingly ineffective, largely because democracies can't stomach the political costs. As one recent analysis put it, 'The West can't survive the sanctions it needs to deter China.' When gas prices spike or critical imports dry up, public support crumbles and so does our deterrence. China continues supplying Russia with dual-use items like semiconductors and ball bearings, helping Moscow replace components lost to sanctions. This exchange not only fuels Russia's war against Ukraine, it actively undermines the effectiveness of the West's economic levers of power . Beijing and Moscow are playing the long game. They're sanction-proofing their economies while weaponising our openness and indecision. They're also betting on us being too slow, divided, or distracted to respond. Unfortunately, they're often right. Take the current situation in Libya. Italy and Greece have been sounding the alarm about Turkey and Russian-backed destabilisation in North Africa, along with weaponised migration flows and Russian navy repositioning in the Mediterranean. Yet their calls for help have been ignored by their allies. In Europe, we tend to think of Poland and the Baltic regions as frontline states. But Italy, Greece, and others on NATO's southern flank are also frontline states of hybrid warfare, weaponised migration, and maritime competition. When the security concerns of frontline states are not taken seriously, everyone becomes more vulnerable. We can also look at the EU's China strategy. While Brussels may have labelled Beijing a 'systemic rival,' most member states still treat China's expertise as an afterthought. Unlike the US, which created a 'China House' for cross-agency coordination, Europe has no comparable structure – leaving it flat-footed when decisions need to be made fast. By contrast, China and Russia conduct annual strategic security consultations and coordinate via institutionalised five-year military cooperation plans. Though not a formal alliance, their sustained coordination outpaces the ad hoc responses of Western democracies . What should we do? First, we need to stop pretending these are disconnected problems. They are expressions of the same campaign to reshape the global order in favour of authoritarian power. Europe and its allies must build permanent strategic capacities to respond and shape outcomes before crises escalate. Second, we must strengthen our 'asymmetric resilience'. That means diversifying supply chains, investing in local production, and scrubbing our infrastructure for vulnerabilities. Finally, we must prepare for hybrid threats the way we once prepared for nuclear ones: with scenario planning, joint exercises, and rapid-response mechanisms that include both civil and military sectors. From power grids to migration routes, the frontline of conflict has changed. Our defence posture must change with it. There is good news: When democracies act together, they are formidable. We've outmatched authoritarian powers before and not through force alone. We did so by staying flexible, principled, and united. But coordination begins with clarity. We must recognise that these are not isolated incidents but interconnected elements of a deliberate strategy to reshape the global balance of power. Effective response requires more than awareness. It demands institutional reform, strategic foresight, and the political will to act before the next crisis breaks.
Euractiv
06-08-2025
- Politics
- Euractiv
The future demands trailblazers, not gatekeepers
Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and author of 'The Rest of Your Life: Five Stories of Your Future.' When times are stable and the path is clear and well-paved, conventional thinkers thrive. They know the terrain, the tools, and the rules. Their expertise brings efficiency and stability – qualities that matter deeply in times of order. But we're no longer living in such times. The old order is crumbling and a new order is being born; one defined by what we understand, what we value, and what we are willing to defend. Authoritarian resurgence, climate change, collapsing biodiversity, disruptive technologies, and trade wars are erasing the old maps we've relied on. When the road disappears into uncertainty, it's the divergent thinkers and polymaths who become indispensable. They're the ones who see new trails where others see only trees. They reframe the problem, question inherited assumptions and bring together knowledge from across various disciplines. In times of systemic shocks, it's not expertise in one field that saves us but the ability to connect the dots across many. This is the kind of competence needed in the 21 st century because everything is linked and disruption moves fast. This isn't to diminish conventional thinkers. Their depth is critical, especially when systems stabilise again. But right now, we are not managing stability. We are navigating flux and chaos. Too often, conventional thinkers become gatekeepers, keeping polymaths and divergent thinkers on the sidelines. In the era we are living through today, that's a grave mistake. This is especially true in Brussels, where siloed thinking still dominates institutions caught between converging storms, from a changing security environment to implementing the Green Deal, to digital sovereignty. These times call for integrators and improvisers, the ones who can hold paradox and possibility in the same breath. In seemingly stable eras, society often treats divergent thinkers as threats. Giordano Bruno , a 16th-century philosopher and mystic, dared to surmise the twinkling lights in the night sky were distant suns with their own planets, an idea that was scientifically prophetic and spiritually radical. For this and other heresies, he was burned at the stake. Bruno's fate reminds us how institutions often crush the minds that glimpse the future first. Yet when systems begin to falter, it is precisely these outsiders whose perspectives become essential. Their unconventional ideas, once labelled dangerous or absurd, offer new maps when the old ones fail. A resilient society doesn't just tolerate such thinkers; it protects them, recognising that today's heresy may hold the key to tomorrow's survival. That means managing dissent not as a threat, but as a vital sign of health, and building a culture where outliers are not only protected but valued. In a volatile world, adaptability is the new intelligence and divergent thinkers, when grounded, are among the most adaptable minds we have. Not because they ignore structure, but because they know how to rebuild it when it breaks. As Darwin suggested, it's not the strongest or the smartest who survive, but those most responsive to change. If we want to build a future that reflects our values not just functionally, but ethically and imaginatively, we must stop sidelining divergent thinkers. They are not outliers. They are the scouts, integrators, and architects of what comes next. In an era of collapsing certainties, there is no clear path to follow. We must learn to walk without one and to do that, we need those who can see what isn't yet visible and connect what no longer fits. We won't flourish in this century by gatekeeping divergent ideas, but by carving new paths through the wilderness, together.
Euractiv
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Euractiv
Whack-a-mole warfare: Europe's battle against AI-fuelled Kremlin lies
Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and author of 'The Rest of Your Life: Five Stories of Your Future.' Since June 2024, the Kremlin-driven Operation Overload has become Europe's most sustained disinformation blitz against the fact-checking community. According to a newly released report by CheckFirst and Reset Tech, Operation Overload's AI-driven narrative variants are popping up faster than fact-checkers can knock them down, turning Europe's information space into a perpetual game of disinformation whack-a-mole. If Brussels doesn't harness the full force of the Digital Services Act now, demanding real-time platform accountability and enabling cross-border threat-sharing, the next wave of state-sponsored fakes could reshape our public discourse before we even spot the first lie. The question is, can Brussels and the platforms it seeks to regulate keep pace with a campaign that adapts as quickly as the neural networks powering it? Since September 2024, the Russian-backed operation (also known as Matryoshka) has more than doubled its email attacks, overwhelming media and fact-checking communities with an average of 2.6 fabricated pitches per day – more than doubling since the campaign began. In the same way that waves of drones or missiles can overwhelm air defences, this operation seeks to do the same to journalists and fact-checkers. Fake emails are only the tip of the iceberg for this coordinated propaganda machine. According to the Overload report this includes 11,000 crypto-themed 'reposter' bots on Twitter/X and thousands of deepfake videos. AI-driven content creation has become the operation's backbone. Deepfake audio, AI-generated images and 'magazine cover' forgeries now churn out at scale, each twisted around a 'kernel of truth'. To evade detection they include isolated reports, such as Ukrainian call-centre irregularities, or decontextualise verifiable details of events. This perpetual 'whack-a-mole' exhausts journalistic resources and fragments the fact-checking ecosystem. For example, CheckFirst logged 180 debunks, yet fewer than half were framed within the larger Operation Overload context. But all these numbers still undersell the operation's enormity. In February 2025, the American Sunlight Project found that Kremlin-aligned networks were already producing over three million AI-forged articles per year – a tsunami of disinformation now poisoning AIs like ChatGPT and Gemini, eating away at our digital discourse from within. For example, across France, Poland and Moldova, Overload adapted its four pillars of anti-Ukrainian vitriol, election scares, identity smears and calls to violence to local flashpoints (e.g. Macron, historical grievances, Sandu's legitimacy). Such targeted campaigns require equally tailored counter-messaging since one-size-fits-all rebuttals leave gaps for the next hostile narrative. Most revealing is who amplifies these lies. High-profile Kremlin-aligned 'amplifier' accounts on Twitter/X whose synchronized behaviour lends the campaign mainstream reach, grants Operation Overload an aura of mainstream credibility. While the direct link between these influencers and Russian state agencies remains opaque, their synchronised behaviour and consistent prioritisation by platform algorithms indicate an operation that transcends mere grassroots trolling. Under the EU's Digital Services Act , Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) must swiftly mitigate systemic risks such as election interference and incitement to violence. Yet over 70% of flagged content lingered online for months, and platforms missed reactivated accounts and paid-for authentication abuse. If the EU allows this to persist by eschewing public audits, fines or mandated transparency, the DSA risks becoming little more than window dressing, ill-suited to protect against state-sponsored disinformation. A four-pillar defence Europe can't treat each Overload hit as an oddity. Instead, it must tackle AI-enabled disinformation with four coordinated efforts: Real-time, multi-platform threat sharing: Set up a shared dashboard with encrypted feeds so that the moment one fact-checking group or platform spots a new fake image, bot network or edited video, it automatically alerts everyone else so they can all block it before it spreads. Scalable AI-detection investment: Invest in AI systems that can automatically scan millions of videos, images and posts every hour, flagging deepfakes and bulk-generated disinformation so platforms and fact-checkers can remove them before they go viral. Give the DSA teeth: Publicly name and sanction non-compliant VLOPs, demand rapid takedowns under Articles 34–35, and require quarterly transparency reports on coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Narrative literacy campaigns: Launch public-awareness campaigns that go beyond debunking individual lies to teaching people how to spot when a misleading story is built around a 'kernel of truth' or artificially bulk-produced, so everyone can challenge and report fakes, not just fact-checkers.' Operation Overload is an AI-fuelled, multi-vector threat crafted by Kremlin-aligned actors. The Overload 2 report maps this danger. It's now up to national capitals to forge a robust cognitive defence for Europe's democracy.
Euractiv
07-07-2025
- Euractiv
An engineered descent: How AI is pulling us into a new Dark Age
Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and author of 'The Rest of Your Life: Five Stories of Your Future.' Carl Sagan once warned of a future in which citizens, detached from science and reason, would become passive consumers of comforting illusions. He feared a society 'unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true,' adrift in superstition while clutching crystals and horoscopes. But what Sagan envisioned as a slow civilizational decay now seems to be accelerating not despite technological progress, but because of how it's being weaponised. Across fringe platforms and encrypted channels, artificial intelligence models are being trained not to inform, but to affirm. They are optimised for ideological purity, fine-tuned to echo the user's worldview, and deployed to coach belief systems rather than challenge us to think. These systems don't hallucinate at random. Instead, they deliver a narrative with conviction, fluency, and feedback loops that mimic intimacy while eroding independent thought. We are moving from an age of disinformation into one of engineered delusion. Consider Neo-LLM, a chatbot trained on over 100,000 conspiracy articles from Natural News, one of the five worst spreaders of disinformation during the recent pandemic. It helps users draft anti-vaccine petitions, debunk science with pseudoscience, and build community through shared distrust. It doesn't correct or ask questions. It just agrees, eloquently and relentlessly. Alex Jones' Infowars has built a similar AI trained on its own discredited media outputs. What began with networks of interlinked websites in the late 2010s is evolving into a cognitive architecture that feels personal. What we're witnessing is the industrial scaling of Sagan's nightmare, except the crystals now speak back, fluently and persuasively. This descent didn't begin with algorithms. It began with alienation, economic precarity, institutional failure, and social fragmentation. People disengaged from civic life and feeling abandoned by public systems often go searching for answers. Now they're finding it in machines that mirror their anxieties and sharpen them into ideology. AI isn't the problem itself but rather the final link in a weaponised chain that began with website clusters and ends with systems designed for cognitive capture. In many ways, this resembles the way some experts warn that the metaverse can be weaponised to challenge cognitive self-determination. But in this case, it's a metaverse without virtual reality goggles, a cognitive enclosure where belief is engineered not through immersion, but affirmation. As recent studies tell us, when people no longer feel responsible for thinking, they become vulnerable to whatever (or whoever) thinks for them. The solution won't come from regulation alone. While legal safeguards like an updated AI Act may help at the margins, the real work lies in cultural renewal, starting by reviving the habits of inquiry. In teaching people once again how to dwell in uncertainty without surrendering to conspiracy. In building the muscle memory to ask: 'How do I know this? What am I not seeing? What if I'm wrong?' We must rebuild shared mental resilience not just to resist manipulation, but to remain present with complexity. This means learning to tolerate ambiguity, to honour nuance, and to engage in disagreement without becoming unmoored from reality. Sagan called this the candle in the dark, a way of thinking grounded in evidence, scepticism, and humility. Right now, our digital landscape rewards certainty, outrage, and emotional intensity . But as citizens, we must begin rewarding something else – the courage to consider and revise our views, the patience to examine conflicting information, and the strength to admit when we don't know something. None of this is easy. But if we treat this moment as merely a technological disruption, we risk missing the deeper danger: the erosion of our will to think freely. The machines aren't taking that away. We're giving it away one click at a time. T he Enlightenment gave us the tools to think freely, and our challenge today is remembering how to use them. We've built machines that can outpace our cognition but not our conscience. What's needed now isn't better prompts or faster models. It's a cultural reawakening: a renewed commitment to discernment, dialogue, and the slow, messy work of seeking truth together.
