Transcripts For CSPAN2 Swedish 20240705 : vimarsana.com

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 Council Digital 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 Laureate Martin 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. We had this idea about a Scientific Method is that we come up with a problem and then we come up with a hypothesis and then we test the hypothesis and then we go to sweden to get our prize. [laughing] is a a very straightforward md that we do that. But i think its a little bit different. Often, we make an observation and that brings a whole set of new questions that we didnt imagine. Green fluorescent protein, theres actually a very good example of this. When someone was trying to understand how jellyfish produce a green light, that one of many organisms that are wildman nesson, they can actually use Chemical Reaction to generate light. It turns out all the different fireflies come close ones come back in so for all differently. Houston. How it works. Hes a very Good Chemistry he worked really hard and he failed all the time. Andke then one night after hold some of failure he has failed again he takes f his prep, hes hungry once go home and have dinner. He throws everything in the sink that had seawater in it, turns off the light. Hes about to leave the room when he looks back at the sink and it is glowing. Something hed never seen before. Before. He wonders about it. Maybe it was something in the seawater. Whats in the seawater . Ive never tested it. He goes back and tries it. One would say thats great. He gets the chemical that generates light, but its the wrong color. Instead of it being green light thats produced, its blue light thats produced, and that causes him to scratch his head a little bit more and say, how could that be . May be, he throws calcium into everything. Nothing else happens. He says maybe theres something that actually converts the blue to green, and so he goes and takes a handheld light and he looks at allat the samples and sure enough in a completely different sample there something that every time he shines blue light on it, it glows green. Thats what fluorescence is, and thats what this protein that he discovered as a result of two accidents. Throwing it inn the sink, and having the wrong color. Something that no one imagined was there. So i think there are different ways of doing science. I think theres also different ways that even if he had done it and he said oh, this is what i have, that would not necessarily mean that he believed it. He would have to do it multiple times. Of the people would do it. As of the people confirmed it, then there would be no issue. Theyre sort of this confirmation that has to be done. Done. Sometimes things dont get confirmed, but maybe its because theyre not important enough to confirm. But when it becomes an important issue, its that repeating the confirmation of this. So you ask me, my part in this was to say, well, lets put this into a small worm or bacteria that are transparent and we can actually see genes turn on. It worked. It was wonderful. And we couldnt keep our mouths shut so we told a lot of people and the tried and they got it to work. Sori it wasnt that people just believe what i said. It was that they did the experiment themselves and said, yes, this works. Now elementary and High School Students do this and have this experiment. Its a visit verification that happens from multiple people i think thats very important. It seems like, and thank you very much for that. Thats a perfect example in building knowledge. Part of thehe responsibility he, part of the challenge here is to protect the process of discovery and verification. Over a time, and a moment, in an era in which we are inundated withon stuff in debate and contrarian is an and all these things how do we protect against the definition of resilience would be protecting the ability to discover new things and prove to more and more people that those things are true. Which foror m us within, its te premise in our work, right . We have a team of researchers all over the world a that loot the online information environment. Four things like human rights abuses or things that are verifiably false and the way that we go about that work whether thats a team thats focus here in d. C. Or whether thats the team that is focused on the war in ukraine right now or the team that is focused on online information environments across asia, the middle east or whatever, its open source. The whole premise of it is transparent methodologies that lead to analysis. A lot of times that analysis we have high confidence in. When we are confident in the findings we will still probably push it anyways and will be honest about theres a lot of questions here. At but the whole point of that is to say heres how we found this thing, and dontg trust us because we are at a fancy organization or an organization that has a name in washington, d. C. Trust us becausese of these results are replicable and toifiable and accessible you, and that Transparency Builds the space for accountability. So when we go back to the role of institutions in this space, how do institutions navigate a moment where that kind of protection of process or of an environment is really difficult . Then i will turn back to magnus lund is because you have team that does this every single day. How do you go about that analysis . I guess more importantly, or as importantly, the communication of that analysis. Well, we analyze what foreign adversaries, authoritarian states are projecting towards sweden when itt comes to information of course. But if think you said the were transparency. Thats what its all about. We need to be transparent to build trust to build legitimacy. Im a historian. Im fascinated by queuing to talk about these proteins and fluorescence and whatever, which i dont get at all. [laughing] but i but i see where you a, and because disinformation is also targeting our history. We can see now Certain Authority in states are trying to rewrite the story linked leadingd war ii, for instance, saying finland was the culprit in bringing about the attack of the soviet union. Poland really started world war ii because they did this and that, and we can also see that the massacre which is obvious from the start who did it, it was the soviet unionvi killing like 20,000 polish officers in the woods. Its now been said no, it was really the germans. In spite of russia admitting it in 2008 as well, we did it. So by rewriting history you are somewhatat determining how we ae seeing the world today. Its very, research is so vital for our open debate. We need to have transparency. We need to have Free Research so to safeguard freedom for research is really to find the methods. Its vital for psychological defense in sweden. It seems like the ability to protect discovery, learning new things, as well as the ability to a protect them the shared set of facts of what has happened already is really,y, really keyo building up that trust. Theres a baseline. If youre looking at history and use anything is possible, then we probably wont be that resilient. But if youre looking at New Discovery and use anything is possible, and thats a really healthy place for society to be in in terms of innovation and learning new things. That strikes me as as a nice balance for the nobel prize summit in terms of where we go next. Ill ask one question which was generated by the audience, which is in this moment in which all of the universe of things that were talking about is occurring within a moment of hyper polarization, or increasing polarization, and backsliding not only in democracy that basic trust in institutions that weve all worked in and touched and felt and no kind of happy work, whether thats that academia or Civil Society or even media or government or private industry in some shape or form, what does building resilience look like in a moment of polarization in which its actually necessary to protect the dialogue in the debate, but also to decide on a shared set of facts . I will start, we will start on this end and go all the way down on thats question. So one of the things that has come up in the discussions over the last couple of days for the summit has been that people want a feeling of belonging, of being part of a group that they trust. I think in part its this idea of Building Trust. How do you build trust in people . I think its not a onetime event. I think thiss is a continuing thing. I have been very impressed with the group in new york city, young journalists that realized that there was a major omission in new york. That is, there was no one talking to the many immigrant communities that were in new york city, and they decided thats what they were going to cover. Ey and its called documented, a very Impressive Group of people. An was talking to one of the founders and asked them how did things work . How did it work with the pandemic to get information about the pandemic to people . He said, well, what we have done is we have gone and listened to people, learned about their history, what countries that have comee from, what their interests are. We found that and we found that many other people in these communities are essential workers but they didnt have information on how to get the micro grants that will come up during the pandemic. So they set up lists of information. Here is where you can get this information. They provided a service that was reliable and truthful and important for members of that community, and they became involved. So its, one, local. Its involvement. Continual. And as questions came up about thatandemic, members of community got back inha touch wh them and said, can you find out about this problem or that problem, or how we go about doing this . So they built up the trust first, and its not pontificating from on high. Thats not an important thing. I think you have to be a partner and you haveha to be a longterm partner with people. Because were all in this together. We have to be helping one another. Well, i would say the same thing that you just said that Everyone Needs to be a part of the site and that you belong, and also what we know will talk about is the democratic conversation, that anyone has a right to raise their voices and make your voice heard, and a big problem facing that is this censorship and being afraid and being quieted. So i think this is something that is alsohi directed at the political leaders, but also on our level, present persons. So thats a big challenge, and then we have to keep on going. I think a big fundamental is that Everyone Needs to feel a part of society and the community. Many good thoughts, a Cohesive Society and Inclusive Society where we feel like were part of what we building, the same democracy for everyone. Critical thinking was mentioned earlier at a think thats also vital. I mean, we dont have to agree with each other all the time. Democracy is also the right to disagree and to change government every four years if thats what the public wants. All those things are things we need to safeguard, because our future depends on it. As i said earlier democracy is on theem decline and we need to fight back. We need to prove to everybody that democracy is a way forward. System that actually works. It gives us freedom and it gives us well for society which i think is absolutely in the best interest of all. I really appreciate that. I think it t touches on what i will ask as a last question, which is what is the most, what is your personal reason for hope in the seat that you have come up with in academia or in Civil Society or in government . What is the reason fora or it . This topic is a challenge. They can be really, really bleak. Whether youre focused on the foreign influence challenge or the more social kind of detachment from facts or erosion of trust inof institutions and things like that. It can feel, its designedly, it is designed, that set of challenges is designed to make us feel lonely or disempowered, and a big part of feeling like a partner or feeling as part of the society, or that were all in this together is a a feelif agency, individual agency. So how do we build up that as a mechanism of resilience . T individuals, and i guess the other component of that is how does one missing component from the answers is the responsibility that we have in open societies to each other and a broader whole . And so, given the framing of the nobel prize summit of truth, trust, and theres a reason for hope in the space Going Forward. Whats the reason for optimism and action in this space and start with magnus and all the way down. If we dont have hope, what do we have . Theres no other option. We need to work for this. We need to work to make it happen, really. Hope and optimism is the starting point, i think. And mistrust on all levels, we have to put trust on all levels. And i think theres awareness and theres the willingness to do the work. Maybe this is not exactly the right way of saying that i have hope, but weve all lived through three rather horrific years of this pandemic and whereas disinformation, on various things that did not touch our lives has been around for a long time. But this is the case of disinformation that affected all of our lives and in fact, cost lives. And i think that thats given us an urgency, i think the fact that were simply having this summit is an important beginning step or one of the many beginning steps to really come to grips with this, with bad actors disseminating information for whatever reasons theyre doing it. This is not just something thats a policy debate. This affects lives and we, i think so because of the drastic nature of what weve just gone through, i think im optimistic because i think more and more people are taking it as a call to action and i have a lot of hope in that, the ability of people, and frankly, being part of this panel for the last three days has been astonishing to hear all the ideas and the perspectives, and so i have a lot of hope because a lot of people are trying to solve this issue. Thank you for that. Clearly, we have a lot of work to do on the topic and i always somewhat joke when were having the sessions on these, that were going to chip away at it and well do another session at some point. Thank you for joining us. I think in terms of moving from talk to action. Were about to have a workshop and ill introduce that in a moment. In the meantime, thank you to magnus and martin for all the time that youve spent on this issue for your work in particular, and your continued work Going Forward is a call to action. Thank you so much to the house of sweden for having this conversation as we move into the workshop and thank you to ambassador olofsdotter. If you dont feel we have enough vitamin d, we are going to have a workshop and move upstairs in an hour and 45 minutes. At this point thank you so much and i would like to welcome the Senior Analyst and senior training for the agency for an Interactive Workshop, we collectively, not only up on stage, but the audience members in person will go into an Interactive Workshop and encountering influencing activity. Thank you so much. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] so now you can hear me. I work at the swedish psychological agency as a training specialist, so i coordinate a lot of courses and trainings for mainly the swedish audience and also for an International Audience and im very excited for you to be here to take part in this Interactive Workshop that we will conduct now during the coming 55 minutes. I would like you to be able to contribute to this workshop so therefore i will at some occasions during this workshop ask you to discuss with someone next to you and for people attending online to try to find them to discuss with, but you can also do this by only your own thinking and make some notes on your own. You will also use your phones and i will try to see where you are in your learning and we will visualize where you are on the learning on the screens here as well. But i will tell you more on which code youll have or which qr code you can stand with your phones on the screen here. [inaudible conversations] im not sure about the wifi. Im sorry, we have to have some Technical Assistance here with the wifi in that case. Could we have that from the from our host . 2900 capital k lower case guest password 2900 capital k lower case inaudible 2900 capital k lower case street. Everyone got it . Success. Ill continue. When we discuss disinformation, we need to be sure of what we are defending. We need to be make sure that we understand our fundamental values that we would like to defend. It can also record our key values or core values, these have many different names, but i will give you some examples that we use in sweden. The first one is life and health of humans. It can be both physical health, it can be mental health, it can be protection from accidents. It can be protection from diseases. But it can also be including and that we need to protect the healthy life style. It can be also to be protection against violence, both Domestic Violence and violence in society. Democracy, rule of law and human rights are also one of the fundamental values we need to protect. And in this, trust is really a core thing when it comes to trust in democracy and trust in the democratic institutions, but we also have to trust the judicial system and we have to trust and defend the every individuals right to live their own life, including in the human rights. In this, we can all try to also aim to live a life with dignity. When it comes to another value is the environments and the economy. These are put together for this presentation only. We need to be able to protect the eco systems that we have and the services that the eco systems are providing for us. It can also be the physical environment, the biodiversity as such and when it comes to the economy, it will be both private property and public property that needs to be protected and also the value of production of goods and services. Vital societal functions and for an example of this can be Critical Infrastructure is also important to protect. It can be the emergency services, it can be the water supply, the treatment plants, it can be the sewage, transportation, communication, infrastructure at large. And the last part, national sovereignty. That is control over the territory. That is to have a control over the political Decision Making processes. And also, of the supply of needed supplies into the country. Its often seen as a prerequisite for the others, but what i would like to do now is try to see where you are at when it comes to these values because in another country, that is different from sweden, or in an organization, that you would like to protect, the values can be different and therefore, its always important to discuss with your team members or within the nation, what are the values that we need to protect. What are we what do we need to what are we willing to risk our lives for to protect these values . And i would like you to be able to interact with us now with this question. Which fundamental values should be protected by the government . So prepare your phones, please. And here you will have a couple of minutes here to go to answer the code 24207632 or scan this code if you are close enough for this ap i would like now to discuss with someone that sits next to you about these fundamental values, which should be protected by the government and you have a slider here now, so you can put points on these, but i would like you to only use 25 points. Maximum 10 points. If you put half, its 5 points. So, here we can see your own possibility to your contributions on seeing which values are needed to be protected. If there are any differences, if you think all the values are the same, then you can put five on all of them. If you think two are most important, then you put maximum of two. And here we see. We get the results coming in. Interesting. Interact with your neighbors as well because learning is great when you discuss with someone else. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay, thank you very much, thank you very much for your contributions. I will just make a brief note on this one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So i see here that i think democracy rule of law and human rights is one of the values that you collectively think are the most important one to protect by the government. The least one should be national sovereignty. And thats very interesting. Who else should protect that unless the government or the state is doing it . But its just a bases for discussion, this one. So, bear with me, i will not use these in anything else, its just good to visualize you with this when you begin doing this when you discuss the values. Ive never done this in sweden, so but i will do it. I promise, i promise. I see. Okay. Ill continue. Thank you. Well continue with later on, and be prepared for another slide. Okay. Now when we know a little bit more about what needs to be protected. We need also to see that the aggressor are using vulnerabilities, exploiting vulnerabilities when it comes to use disinformation to hurt the values that you stand for. And some of them there are in this example im using three, but the main important vulnerability is lack of trust. Its not really covered here, but i will give you that in the forehand here. In the media system we have a couple of vulnerabilities and its especially these last months, ive seen that rapidly evolving technology might be a vulnerability for truth when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and being able to produce text, for instance. It can also be image generation. One example that im not showing in this workshop is the images that have come up from the popes wedding. Popes wedding. If you can find an article about that, please send it to me i would very much like to read more about that, but thats also done with Artificial Intelligence generation. So its not those are fake, but when you see it you immediately believe that, i dont really understand what im seeing here. This is like, yeah. And i will come to that soon. So, but also changes in the journalistic Business Models when it goes from paper publishing or broadcasting on in realtime to more online publishing and when you can actually also be you can be your own journalist, everyone can become a journalist and have a blog and write things and a knew thing thats challenging the whole system. So some of the traditional techniques that can be used by an aggressor, now enhanced by this technological advances, it can be for photo shopped images and so on that can be used traditionally for this. And exploitation for this can be for many various reasons. It can be for the persons own personal benefit. It can be for political gain or economical gain or just to see if it can be done. There are many different ways to use media vulnerabilities. Another part of vulnerabilities are the Public Opinion vulnerabilities and those are vulnerable to social proving, proofing. I mean, when you begin to discuss with someone else, you can say that my experiences are something that can be valid as a truth. As a truth that you can generallylize from, but thats not always like that, its not always true that your experiences are what is general for the whole society. But theres a part when we interact with others, we like to discuss what we have been a part of. So others can interpret your ideas and your experiences as being correct even if theyre not. Techniques that are used in this way to fake accounts, fake personalities that are writing about these experiences or that you have troll armies that are giving likes to fakes, just to show that there are more people that think the same and try to make you to jump on the band wagon and think the same. Especially when it comes to using emotional emotional language or emotional pictures like this. Okay. The third part. Cognitive vulnerabilities, and this ties into the others a little bit like this. Its actually when it comes to informational warfare, it is the brain that is the battle space that we are battling within. Its when you see objective facts there can be so many objective facts that you cannot really comprehend it. Our minds cannot really take in all the facts that appear and we also have a lot of beliefs and we tend to like to see what actually confirms our beliefs. Thats much more easier to take in. And what we actually see are somewhere in the middle here, in the greenspan there. Somewhere about the objective facts and also what confirms our beliefs, but the world is bigger than that. The objective facts can be more than the things that confirms your beliefs. So information influence activities can actually exploit our thought patterns through this, by knowledge of this and also, by knowledge of your behavior online, what you have done online creates traces that someone else can use to target the information towards you. What you get from when you scroll, using the social media flow is depending what youve seen before and what someone else has programed the app or the web page to show for you. And it gives those technical aspects some kind of influence over your perceptions, over your thoughts and also, and then by over your Decision Making. Okay. One other important issue here are the difference between information influence and opinion information. And this is really a key thing when we discuss this in our training in sweden. Its of crucial value because what we are taught to do is to protect the opinion information from illicit information influence. And i will give you this called mid to help you identify false information. First thing m, its that the information is misleading or deceiving in some part. Its intentional, its created by someone that would like to have an effect on you. Its disruptive because it actually hurts our fundamental values. So, all of these needs to be fulfilled in one way or another, and this is a discussion of how these are fulfilled when you begin to discuss, its not the clearcut case in all cases, a very well made information influence campaign are using some parts of this and mixing it with truth. And that makes it more difficult to actually identify it. And i will give you now a swedish example. This can be different from others, but we look only at when the misleading and personal and destructive information is against sweden. Were not taught to look at all of this information that we see. We should not follow disinformation that originates within sweden. Were only following the disinformation that originates from hostile actor and we are using the definition that the Swedish Security Services are using. So, we are not having any other definitions in our agency, rather than what the Swedish Security Services are having. Okay. Opinion information. Its when a good opinion information is when information is transparent and verified. When you can check the sources. You can fact check what has been done here. Its also that it strengthens democracy, even if we have different opinions, that is a part of democracy. We have to confirm that that a good democracy can have a lot of opinions and it can be quite a nasty debate sometimes. It can be harsh, emotional, but this is the part that we need to protect. If everyone is agreeing then were not really having a solid, solid democracy. We need to be able to have these small differences or large differences in ideologies. It strengthens also a constructive debate between the opinions. It should not be a destructive debate when youre actually hurting an individual. You have to separate the arguments from the individual because then you have the good opinion information process. And we are trying to protect information and opinions that are created by swedish citizens while in sweden so thats where we are at. It could be like this. The earth is flat, thats a part of the opinion information to say that. We have to protect the citizens right to be wrong and sometimes, also, the right to be, to lie, even if it is illicit. Its bad behavior to lie, but its not a crime. Its not a crime to lie because we are not the agency that will tell what is the truth within the society. We can only say when someone is lying and doing it intentionally from another country and thats when we can speak out. Okay. Some foster distrust. Here is a qr code and where ive used that ive used as a source for this, these narratives. Because you need to put information within a Wider Perspective inside a narrative because that gives it more strength because thats creating something that confirms peoples beliefs, if the information are put into a bigger system. What people are already thinking that the world looks like. And some narratives can foster distrust that there is an elite thats against the people. And forms in many different ways, in many different cultures, it can be about stress and values, the certain values are threatened. Often, it is conservative family values that are threatened by liberals values. It can be much lost sovereignty or threat to National Identity that a country has had a great past, but now it is under threat. And the identity of a country can be on the threat. Its also about some narratives that societys on an imminent collapse and this has been used by some antagonists by sweden for at least 100 years saying that europe is about to fall, that europe is about to end up in a civil war, societies are crumbling. And then we have the narrative when youre actually trying to put things and calling it a big joke, to say that its not really true, its just, you cant think about. Its so uncertain, this thing, that you need to see it as someone that is trying to pull a string on you. So, all of those narratives can be used to foster distrust on this information and fit this narrative. Well now test this on a piece of information, that were directed against sweden. So this is a poster on a bus ban in moscow. And it says in russian if translated, dont become toys in foreign hands and you see a picture of uncle sam pulling the strings of pippy long stocking and mumie. And this is, yeah, you have the source here as well and if you find it, it might be in a different language so you might use Translation Service to be able to read it in english. Lets see, it ends up in a finnish website in swedish. What id like you to try to see is which narrative is used to foster distrust with this. And you need to discuss a little bit. You have to know a little bit about pippy long stocking here and mumine, which countries originated in and i can say one are from sweden and its like trying to pull the strings on another country, from another country, but why is this in moscow . There are so many questions. There are so many questions, but it puts it to america here. Could it be within one of these narratives . And you will have some minutes here to discuss this with your neighbor. [inaudible conversations] and youre able to put the vote here on which narrative you can put the vote in. [inaudible conversations] anyone disagreeing . You dont have to jump on the band wagon because everyone else is voting like this. Oh, interesting, thank you. [inaudible conversations] okay. Thank you very much for your contributions. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to comment, please, may i . Thank you. Okay. Most of the individuals that have voted thinks it has to do with the narrative lost and i will explain it. Russians might think that uncle sam are pulling the strings. Finland and sweden. This poster came up when finland and sweden were about to discuss an n. A. T. O. Application because of the invasion of ukraine one year ago. So thats why they wanted to see how these were actually could they do something with this . But and this showed up. This poster showed up in some different location. So, its really very difficult to understand why it ended up in those occasions and what were the intents behind this. You have contributed now to analyze this a little bit here, what this was about. And what kind of values that are behind this. And then you can begin to discuss who is a target audience, what is the effects of this, but we leave that behind because now we have just practiced a little bit about using narratives. Okay. Yeah, question. Was this outside of tourist spots, like museums and historical sites where finnish or swedish tourists might have come . No, it was outside of the consulate in feinish consulate in st. Petersburg, i think, and some more locations in moscow. Some might show up and see it and go what is that . Yeah, it has a long story, but i would like to continue so we can take that discussion a bit later. Okay. Here we go. Okay. So now capability, countering abilities. I would like to have a couple to discuss capabilities. Youve seen one example that ended up here and youve seen the information peace and seen what kind of narrative it is, but you need to do something else, if you would like to build capability and counter influencing activities and suggestions on this. You need to be able to identify malign information and differentiate this from opinions. I show you before, it should be misleading, intentional and disruptive to some of your fundamental values and thats and you have to know from where it is directed, also, and to know your own mandates about what you are supposed to do within your organization because this can be different, in Different Countries and different in different organizations. Analyze and that is to understand how the techniques are using vulnerabilities within the target audience to produce an effect. And this you need to be able to discuss this with others. Its difficult to do analysis on your own. The best part is when you have done some kind of homework on your own and then discussed it with someone else. Like you have done now here twice, you need to have colleagues that are maybe they should not be trained in the same way as you, they should be a little different and then produce the best results when you do analysis like that. You need to be able to counter the disinformation. You need to assess and be able to inform the target audiences that you would like to reach with the correct information and you can do that in many different ways. And also, advocate your values, what you stand for, but you can also defend by blocking accounts, if you have that possibility or also, exposing the actor behind because you might not always know everything behind and its very difficult to attribute on the Information Campaign to a specific aggressor against you. You need to be very careful if you choose to go that far. Report and that is a little bit about reporting within your own organization so that your colleagues become aware of what is happening, happened in the Information Space, but it can also be reporting within a governmental system or within an organization if you think about the corporation, but its mainly about showing to others what you have experienced. And then support. Others might be affected as well and you need to be able to share that information with others, you need to support others messages if they are affected. You can prepare and come together like we have done in sweden. We try to build this total defense that everyone is defending together both on the individuals, the citizens, the local level, the regional level, the national level, Everyone Needs to be able to support each other. Because thats when we have good resilience. Were not strong on our own. Were strong together. Okay. The four degrees of response and then we go into another discussion exercise. So when we train the swedish communicators on national, regional and local level. We try to show them these four degrees. The first one is to assess the situation and that is something that you build from the beginning, if you have good tools to assess the environment, to see what is happening there. But it can also be a neutral action to show that youre actually aware of whats happening. You can begin to discuss that youre actually having a way of seeing things because that might also being something to deflect or prevent the aggressor from using you when they know that you are actually watching. It can be about mapping situations. It can be about fact checking, it can be about making transparency investigations and then the second level. Comes up to inform. One of the first things, if you see that youre a target from Information Campaign or a specific information piece is that you inform your target audience that youre actually working on it. Youve seen it, you are working on it, you will get back soon with new information. So thats the first statement that you can do. You can then, when you had more fact. Describe the facts. Case, what is actually going on. You can correct if something is misunderstood and you can also emphasize your values. What you stand for. The third part is advocate, and that is a little bit more forward leaning. Youre going to dialog with your target audiences. You open up to discuss your values. You can help your target audience to argue and debate. You can show them that this information piece fits into a bigger narrative. You can choose to cooperate together with others and you can also package the information and show that this is actually tied into other events that takes a little bit more time to advocate what is going on in the Information Space if youre subject for information. The last part is defense. Its about defending the organization and target specific actions against the aggressor. It can be reporting, it can be blocking accounts, and it can be about exposing. The most useful part in this is actually by ignoring the disinformation happening. That is usually the best defense. Dont do anything, just monitor, assess, because if youre beginning to inform and you are repeating the false information. The false information gets traction, it gets the spread that the aggressor would like to get. If you are in the same way spreading it. So when i showed you the picture before of uncle sam and mumen and pippy and im spreading disinformation that youre in a safe environment and discuss with someone else and youll be able to see where it fits into different narratives, that its a part of a campaign, its a part of a narrative of a world view that they would like to expose and get to you. Okay. Moving on. I will give you an example and then you will discuss. 3rd of may last year this thing happened outside the Swedish Embassy in moscow. So there were some posters put up. The posters read we are against nazis, they are not. And its about one of our kings of sweden, its about the author of pippy long stocking, its about ingmar, the director and alexander and the seven seal one of the characters plays chess, and then we have also the founder of ikea. And here, theyre doing some real terrible things. You need to know that this is about when sweden were discussing about n. A. T. O. This is the same time and they are using the swedish colors, but also the colors of another country in europe that they have just recently invaded with the same arguments. The russians invaded ukraine because they wanted to denaziphy ukraine. And theyre saying, you also might be nazis. Think of it. Okay. How to counter this disinformation and you will help us out now. Be prepared. What would you like to do in this case . Would you like to assess the effects . Would you like to inform one of your target audiences. Educate your values, or defend by exposing. Please discuss. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay. Thank you very much. Please look at me and please, ill continue. Okay. Well see yeah, thank you. Assessing the effects. Yeah, thats just what we did. Yeah. So in order to prevent the spread of the disinformation, we were monitoring it. The spread of this actually happens when the Embassy Staff took a picture of it and they sent it to journalists in sweden and you can mitigate the effects by disinformation if you do good journalistic work of course. Journalists are not really a part of the aggressor scheme, but thats how you can get traction in the system by not doing anything. This costs like 20 to put up these ones and were discussing it in the audience and i think, still, its a good example of showing how easy it is to do things and how you can spread it through journalists. But you can also mitigate it with good journalists in this way. This really had nothing to do with the russian view, because she is really famous and well seen in russia, especially by another character called carlson on the roof, yeah, so its not really its using here in a bigger one. They took a line from her diary and said that, yeah, she was more afraid of the soviet union invading sweden rather than the nazis and they say, yeah, of course, shes a nazi then. Its like pulling some information pieces and trying to put it together here, but its so much information packed in this and you can discuss it for length about whats actually going on and what is behind the different statements in this. And thats there. Thank you for your contribution. So some conclusions of this now are the four pieces of the conclusions that i would like you to bring with you from this. The first one is this, build trust. Build trust among citizens, amongst institutions, from the citizens towards the government, but also, from the government to trust your citizens, so theyre actually doing the right thing and that they can be helping out by being informed and being able to resist this disinformation. Strategic narratives. Use your own strategic narratives. Use counter narratives and use your own stories, explain why you would like to defend your values, what your values are. Why would you like to risk your life if there is a war coming to your country . What is really worthwhile within yourself to fight for . Why would you risk your life still going to work doing more time instead of fleeing . Understand your target audiences. Whom are you actually trying to reach with your story . But you need also to understand your adversaries. What are the values . Why do they attack your values . If youre a country, you can go to World Value Survey and you can see where your country is mapped into different value systems, im using that in my trainings to try to help swedish communicate through some resilience coordinators and why are we a threat . Were a swedish people. We are not extremists, but we are, according to world value service, were the most country in the world, more liberal ones when it comes to values and you dont see yourselves. And other conservative cultures might see us like that and see that as a threat. Then you need also to understand that this disinformation that we are working with and the Swedish Defense agency are coming from a foreign aggressor. Its not we dont see that as something domestic. We are a Defense Agency and Defense Agency on the armed forces are not allowed to be used against swedish citizens and that comes from the 30s when we had a crisis, when the military were used against citizens and the Police Called for help and there was a shooting and people died. After that, the swedish military are not allowed to be used within sweden if they come into a position where they use force against the civilians and they can use help for crisis, but not when theyre using armed force. And the last part here, share best practices. Learn from each other. When you have experienced something, when you have a good story to tell, tell it to others. Build your own networks. We base our work on research. Some of these research are here. Were updating this now with a new countering information and state of the art, a knew round of new round and you can read one from 2017 on the qr code and use that for handling for communicators and you can have that on the other qr code as well. Most of my presentations are coming from this handbook. Its also about to be updated, i promise you, because its a couple of years old and there are ways, and experiences and we learn how to how this has been received by our target audiences when we train people. So we have some good ideas on it, but we need to base this on research. And questions and comments on this are welcomed. So if you have any questions and comments feel free to type them in here. I will soon remove this, but if you have any questions and comments i will be able to read them later on when we have done this and on that note you will have that in this in your phone and if i remove it like this, im finished. And here we have the qr code for our agencies, english web page and you can conduct us through that web page and youll have an email address there if you need to discuss some things, you can reach me or magnus or through that. Thank you very much for your contributions, i hope you have learned something. [applause] ill be brief. And upstairs, i hope that this has been useful in terms of the discussion as well as the presentation. It is really, really hard to grapple with real examples, its easy to sit up on a panel and say, look, this is disinformation. This seems hard we should grapple with these ideas. Its a lot harder to look at a poster or a real world example, here is the tradeoffs, the balances, things that we can actually do about this and many times none of those answers are particularly thorough or comprehensive. They start to chip away at building resilience. So, as we talk about this, building into getting away from threatbased frame works, something that we talked about a lot without calling them that during the panel, but threatbased frameworks. There is something in the information environment that were against as opposed to resilience framework that protects the frameworks, from threatbased frameworks to civilianbased frameworks imperative for all of us to build more resilience and encouraging and protecting the actual debate, the ability to grapple with as martin said during the panel, new discoveries or new information that we depend on Going Forward into the future. So really, really thank you for the presentation. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you all for grappling with these issues at the root of trust and truth and hope, and thank you to our host at the embassy of sweden. Thank you to martin and katrien, and well see you for the next version of the conversation we talk about, the shared facts as well as the shared responsibility that we have for protecting an open information environment. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. [inaudible conversations] today security concerns ahead of the 2024 president ial election cycle with testimony from election assistance commissioners, live at 3 30 p. M. Eastern before the senate rules in Administration Committee on cspan 3. Cspan now, our free mobile video app and online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government who are funded by these Television Companies and more, including sparklight. The greatest town on earth is the place you call home. At sparklight its our home, too, and right now were all facing our greatest challenge. Thats why sparklight is working around the clock to keep you connected. Were doing our part so its a little easier to do yours. Sparklight supports cspan as a Public Service along with other television providers, getting you a front row seat to democracy. Watch video on demand anytime online at cspan. Org and try our points of interest feature, a timeline tool that uses markers for interesting highlights of our key coverage. Use points of interest anytime online at cspan. Org. And the u. S. Senate gavelling in to work on more of president bidens executive and judicial nominations. Today senators are expected to continue work on the nomination of david crane to be undersecretary of energy for infrastructure. Members will also consider the nomination of dale ho to be a u. S. District judge for new york. And later senate is expected to go to party lunches. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer