Good morning, everyone. My name is karin olofsdotter. I the great honor of serving as swedens ambassador to the united states. You might wonder why youre in a black room. Its no coincidence. I first thought the architect had run out of ideas and money, but it is to show you how dark it is in scandinavia in the wintertime. [laughing] but dont let that put you off your to come and visit our wonderful country. T its great for you americans right now, traveling with your currency to our currency, some more than welcome. Well, its wonderful to see so many of you here today, both here in the room and, of course, joiningg us online from all ovr the world. I also want to thank Atlantic CouncilDigital Forensic research lab for cohosting this event with us. And to the Nobel Foundation and the National Academy of sciences. They are partners and supporting organizations. Well, todays event is part of the nobel prize summit. It is a testament to the enduring legacy of one of the most famous swedes of all time. What we do here is celebrate his vision for a world shaped by knowledge, peace and progress. The theme of this years nobel prize summit is truth, trust and hope. How can we be have trust and truth, fact and Scientific Evidence and we can create a hopeful future for all of us. And that is of course an extremelyy important question on days like this. Todays discussion on fighting this information cannot be more relevant. In our digitalized and connected world with access to an abundance of information in forensic activities are a serious and persistent threat. We of course now unfortunately are experiencing increased tensions and conflicts around the world. We see influence campaigns to continue to exploit our vulnerabilities. They are gaining traction as well, and spread throughout our societies. This development is challenging the values that are fundamental to our way of life, such as democracy, rule of law, and human rights. Alfred nobel was convinced that ideas, fact and scientific discovery are at the heart of Human Progress towards a better world. We are hosting this event here in house of sweden today as freedom of speech and freedom of expression are two core values for the swedish government. But more often disinformation is threatening these ideals. This issue is not only a matter of truth butnl a matter of trust and the open and free dialogue which are democracies rely on. This threat is global. It requires global response. We need widespread cooperation, understanding and determination to effectively counteract its development and appalled democratic values. Scientific solutions that really work, we must listen to the experts. We are super excited to have today to have with us today the Nobel LaureateMartin Chalfie who will shares insight into the scientific aspect of this issue. We are also joined by magnus hjort, directorgeneral of the Swedish Agency for psychological defense whose understanding of operational aspects of k this issue is key in finding solutions. We also have to welcome doctor rebecca trumpist director for the marks and policy at georgetown university. , sorry, George Washington university. East in this town to mix them up, excuse me. Doctor trumbull has deep knowledge of these issues based on her own research on political communication, digital research, pathology and research ethics. So with this excellent and i am certain that this panel will provide important insights and knowledge. We all need to learn to identify,en understand and counteract information activities in our daily lives. It isar really our shared responsibility. Directly after the spam we would get some of the necessary tools to tackle disinformation as our colleagues from the Swedish Agency for psychological defense will lead us in an education workshop. This is exactly the kind of tools we need to foster resilience, define counter strategies and strength andr trust. Only together we can face this challenge, safeguardic a democratic values, and to the freedom of speech and democratic discourse are upheld. I really look forward to todays thoughtprovoking and insights for discussion. And with this i would like to welcome and hand over to graham brookie. Thank you so much for being with us today. [applause]e] thank you so muca member asked her. Its madame ambassador. Its wonderful experience the amount of either darkness or sunlight depending on what season youre in, in this building. If you want it to feel like winter, come down here. If want it to feel like prolonged summer in alltime daylight, you go upstairs. Depending on what your mood is, i want to do housekeeping on that front. In the spirit of building true trust, there is one slight inundation to our agenda for this morning. Dr. Trumbull had a family emergency and is not able to join us. So, were really excited to be joined by katrina, who runs the Capacity Building programs Educational Programs within the Swedish Agency we work with. Really looking forward to the conversation. I think, madame ambassador, opened it up very well. I do not have my phd. Ill be using a number of notes, as opposed to my astute colleagues appear. Up here. What we will be talking about today is not only miss and disinformation, but what we do about it. My hope for this conversation is not just to navel gaze on a big problem we know as a societal challenge, but to get in the weeds about our understanding and what we go do about it. Which, i think this group is going to be particularly well placed to do. The first question last bit of housekeeping, well talk for 30 minutes, then we will turn over to audience q a for about 15 minutes before going to the workshop. If you have burning questions for any of us, be thinking about those. The first question we had a chance to connect before this conversation. And one of the things that came up in terms of how we look at this field, as a scientific field, was this concept that was popularized at the onset of the pandemic in which we face the moment where it was pronounced, in which people all over the world were inundated with information. The term that became more popularized for that phenomenon that was happening in parallel to the pandemic was infodemic. I will turn to martin. How do you feel about infodemic and is it something that grows rapidly or is it a drip, drip, drip . Does it have a Snowball Effect . What does it do in terms of diminishing trust . Is it immediate, revolutionary, or somewhat revolutionary over time . It can work in many ways. The basic idea, as he pointed out, is to have a lot of noise. If you have a lot of noise, you cant tell what is the truth, whats made up, its just youre overwhelmed with information. Youre overwhelmed with statements that muddy your understanding. And w having to and having to wade through that is the difficult part. Its this idea that the infodem ic, not only is there misinformation or disinformation, purposeful falsehoods, but rather that theres so much of it around, that it obscures what is happening. I would say there is another aspect to this. I would call false equivalence. That there are two points of view. They are both equal. When in fact, 97 of People Climate change, it is talked about a lot, 97 of all scientists had opinions, 3 were another. You never saw television percent where there were 97 people on one side, you saw one in one it made a false equivalence. That is another way of flooding and that is another way of letting the airwaves with information that just blocks out what has already been a consensus. The way that we think about this moment in our daytoday work is two coinciding factors that are global. One is we as a human to raise have more access to information, whether it is true or false or whether it is debated or whatever in this moment in history. There has never been a moment where you can pull out any number of the devices that we have on our person regularly and google it or search for the answer to the question. And then, number two, there has never been a moment and she would history it where we are is connected or have the opportunity to be as connected as we are right now, so that is an accelerant for sure. I guess my followup question on infodemic, do you think the inundation of information somewhat illogically leads to less space for debate or discovery of a shared set of facts among the population . I think it can. I am not entirely sure. I am sure we will come up with other people here, which is how does one develop Critical Thinking and where most important of these three words for this summit i think is trust. How do you learn what to trust, who to trust . And that cuts down on the other problems. I think that it is the building of trust in glorified science that is a critical thing we need to do in the future. So we will go back to Critical Thinking in just a moment, but in the meantime, we have the pleasure and responsibility of sitting in a democracy at this point. All of us that are on the stage, and a big part of building that trust is the role of government into democracy, a government that is for people and by people. And, magnus, you are in government right now with a storied career in academia as well as Public Service. So i guessed my basic question with a long followup is what is the role and responsibility of government in this space of building that trust and engaging with populations on this issue in particular . And i guess the point of context for this group is that we are sitting in washington, d. C. , and in the swedish system it makes sense that the agency you run is the psychological Defense Agency, and there is a long story history and culture of that in sweden, so what does that look like and how do you think about the role of government given your spacing government and how you engage with populations and do your work . Thank you. [laughter] yes, a real government agency, psychological defense could sound a bit scary to for eight years that are not used to this kind of swedish concept that is also spread to other countries. I think estonia also use the term psychological defense. It was established in sweden in the early 1940s as a term of establishing a counter work again psychological warfare, and it only makes sense. If you must have psychological warfare, must have psychological defense. What we said back then is psychological defense is just as important as airplanes. We stood in front of enemies like nazi germany a declared war on the rest of the world more or less and we tried to develop a total defense to combat our task is to safeguard democracy, safeguard free speech, freedom of opinion. Swedens freedom and independence, so that is the basis for what we try to do. And i like to say that psychological defense in sweden rests on three pillars. The first is free, independent media. That is totally vital. Independent journalism is extremely important for what we call psychological defense. The other is a informed and well educated population, which is something that we are trying to build within our education system, of course, but also through our free media. And the third pillar is trust, trust between people, trust in institutions, trust in the media. Without those three, you will have a lapse of psychological defense. We do operations, we monitor for an information influences. We do not monitor domestic misinformation or disinformation. Only foreign. Should we go in the domestic scene that would infringe on free speech in sweden. We only look abroad. That is very important. And that we do capability or Capacity Building, which cuts in and we can tell you more about, and we also tried to prepare for a possible wartime situation in the future. There is a major war going on in europe, as you all know, and this has completely changed the situation for many countries in europe, for ukraine of course, but also for sweden. We have made an application for membership in nato. The situation as deteriorated, and also democracy it has declined. There are quite a few organizations trying to measure democracy in the world globally, and they are all unanimous in saying democracy has pushed back. You could almost say that democracy is under siege, and this is something that we need to change really, because democracy is vital for us all, for the security of everybody, so i think there is a great deal to do, and we need all to engage in that i think to safeguard democracy. It seems like the conceptual way to put that is protecting the parameters of debate within swedish democracy, from things like foreign manipulation, but also protecting speech, number one, and the ability to keep it is like putting not necessarily a border but protecting the parameters of an open information environment, which in many ways is the greatest strength of free and open systems or democracies. And in addition to that is sometimes a major vulnerability landscape that we have to look at and say how do we make this more resilient . Which is a good segue to something martin mentioned in the very first question on how do we build more Critical Thinking in the space or how do we engage with public and it build up that trust over time . Because it is not something that happens overnight. It is not like a flip of the switch where they are trustworthy on monday and not choice within the next day. So within the role of government , how do you think about the Capacity Building and the training or the educational aspect of engaging with the publics on this issue . What does the program look like, but more importantly, what is the first step . Well, thank you for that. As already said were trying to reach all of society and we are doing this by, for example, building on capacity, contributing on the strength of the populations resilience by spreading knowledge and contribute tokn the population d relevant actors from all levels for their preparedness, psychological defense. And it starts early. It starts by learning kids and youth in schools about fact checking, as we said, and also by Building Trust for the institutions. But we also support government of, government level, support on all governmental levels from national to regional and local level. That is on how to identify disinformation and that it is directed how it approaches different levels. Theres a big interest from the schools but its also on municipality level. For example, earlier this year we met with over 100 municipality officials in sweden, and one step that weve learned is very efficient is were using a Red Team Blue team workshop. So first they start off by being the antagonist aiming on their vulnerabilities. Thank you. And aiming on those threats. After that they switch and the same group is the blue team, and trying to counter this disinformation. This is the work we see also they can bring for their resilience work on all levels, and also their preparedness planning. Thats one of t the first steps that we are using, its been very successful. I have 1 million questions on this because we engage with Civil Society all the time entering Capacity Building, so how do youy look at the online information environment and prove a thing in a major way . Whether that is for our team human rights abuses of any place in the world, so security related research, or looking at overarching narratives and that impact the population. Itsd scientific, right . We are not calling them all strikes. Publicly about the nuts and bolts of an information environment work and how humans interact within an information five. Within our Capacity Building i really want toca talk shop with you. In your experience to students prefer to be on the red team or the blue team . This is for the government officials. We havent done it in the the schools but i can say that the red team workshop, everyone is really, like, its all, theres so many things come up and they have really fun time doing it. And then it gets harder and when you are countering it. Te how do you do that and youre special, and you dont have the economy may be to counter everything. Its a really nice way of listing the problem and also bringing together all thesegi actors from different levels, how they can learn from each other, and also as i said, bring this disinformation and psychological defense into the total defense planning. We want toch be a part of in sweden. My hypothesis on this, given we are talking about a field of research, is the red team with foster more creativity. Yes. And a little bit more energy whereas the blue team would foster more, oh, man, what going to do about this . Its harder to build resilience as opposed to poke holes in the things. Or to build things as opposed to tear things down. Its not every day that i share a stage with somebody who won a nobel prize, just as a moment of reference. But in terms of the Scientific Method of building knowledge, i guess, and this is not a planned question so bear with me here. How does a detachment from fact, whether thats the unintentional spread of false information or the intentional spread of false information, or just the inundation were talking about at so much information that its hard to parse through, how does that impact the work of the scientific field, which has a very deliberate method . I guess the more pointed question, way to ask that question is, and how can you prove to me that green fluorescent protein is a biological marker . So if i was at the thanksgiving table, then how does that conversation work in Building Trust in something that is genuinely, and by definition, breakthrough knowledge or information . So i think theres a lot of elements to this. I think the first part is, i dont think there is a Scientific Method. I think we teach a Scientific Method to Elementary School students,ma but theres many was of making discoveries. If you look at the nobel prize biographies you will be astonished to find how many people say, i was doing this, and then by mistake this happened, and i noticed it and i went on to work on that.