Research
In the contemporary geopolitical arena, information is a central battlefield. The newly released report, Frontiers of Influence: Counter Measures to Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in the Grey Zone, explores the rise of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI).
While information warfare isn’t new, the digital age has fundamentally altered its scale. With over 67% of the global population now online, societies are more exposed than ever to automated bot farms and AI-driven campaigns. This report moves beyond the idea of FIMI as a purely digital threat, illustrating how these operations bridge the gap into the physical domain—inciting protests, swaying elections, and undermining social cohesion.
Rather than a traditional linear study, Frontiers of Influence functions as a comparative volume of national experiences across Europe’s Eastern borders. It categorizes states into three distinct models:
- High-Capacity and Whole-of-Society Security (Baltic and Nordic staes): Employs “whole-of-society” defenses where government, tech sectors, and citizens collaborate.
- Medium-Capacity and Escalation Driven (Ukraine and Border Region): Features established structures that often activate episodically during high-risk events like elections.
- Low-Capacity/Fragmented and Civil-Society Driven (Western Balkans): Where the burden of defense often falls on under-resourced NGOs and civil society.
The primary goal is two-fold. First, to showcase what is possible across countries with varying levels of resilience, from high-capacity states like Estonia to localised NGO-driven efforts like in North Macedonia. Second, due to offensive actors tailoring their FIMI campaigns to exploit country-specific vulnerabilities and achieve context-specific goals, analysing a wide spectrum of target countries helps with understanding the diverse and adaptive nature of the threat. This also enables an assessment of how different countermeasures work under varying contexts. Understanding these diverse modalities allows for the development of a proactive, layered defence rather than a reactive, one-size-fits-all approach.
The report concludes that effective countermeasures require a shift from reactive “whack-a-mole” tactics to a proactive, layered defense. Success is not found in a one-size-fits-all solution but in the integration of:
- Situational Awareness: Permanent monitoring and rapid response units.
- Societal Resilience: Long-term investment in media literacy and institutional trust.
- Regulatory Disruption: Enforceable legal frameworks that hold digital platforms accountable.
As lead author Laura Jasper notes:
“Influence is no longer a by-product of power; it has become a domain of competition in its own right.”
Authors: Laura Jasper, Fiona de Cuyper, Sofia Romansky
Contributors: Lennart Cramer and Emma Genovesi
Quality Assurance: Paul Sinning
Cover photo: AI generated
The research for and production of this report has been conducted within the PROGRESS research framework agreement. Responsibility for the contents and for the opinions expressed, rests solely with the authors and does not constitute, not should be construed as, an endorsement by the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence.
© The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced and/ or published in any form by print, photo print, microfilm or any other means without prior written permission from HCSS. All images are subject to the licenses of their respective owners.
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