Europe is spending €300 billion to free itself from undemocratic control of its digital infrastructure. It has not yet considered what happens when the authoritarian is European. by Chris Kremidas-Courtney, Senior Advisor to Defend Democracy Europe’s digital dependency is no longer just an annoyance; it’s a strategic vulnerability. In May 2025, following a White House…
AI is already shaping how we think. About the political choice that could determine whether democracy can survive the age of AI. by Chris Kremidas-Courtney, Senior Advisor to Defend Democracy Today, Big Tech is shaping the environment in which human choices are made by defining the menu of ideas and information available to citizens. This…
Shortly after our 6th anniversary, Defend Democracy is excited to launch a new phase. Six years of our mission about hybrid threats and technological threats to democracy brought much awareness, action and collaboration. Although successful, it was not enough for our governments to stop these trends, which now converge and accelerate. Our work significantly contributed to…
Defend Democracy founder Alice Stollmeyer examines how converging foreign, domestic, and technological threats test the EU’s democratic resilience – and its policy choices. Like the climate crisis, the democracy crisis didn’t happen overnight. Rather than a single tipping point, democracy dies by a thousand cuts. And until recently, European institutions and democracies stood by and…
Is Europe ready for the era of hybrid warfare? To defend against hybrid attacks, we must urgently build civil preparedness and societal resilience. When updating security assets, we must not only invest in hardware and software but also in ‘wetware’. When Defend Democracy started, ‘hybrid threats’ was still a niche concept. Today, you only need…
The Dutch-language version of the pro-Kremlin “news site” Pravda mentions Forum for Democracy (FvD) by far the most often of all the parties participating in the 29 October 2025 parliamentary elections of the Netherlands. In more than 3,000 Pravda articles focusing on Dutch domestic news, over a third of the 303 pieces about political parties…
To protect our children and our democracies, we have to stop fighting the wrong battles. The best defence isn’t being better parents or being better voters. It’s governing the platforms designed to exploit and divide us for profit. by Suzanne Nam, Advisor to Defend Democracy STOP BLAMING OURSELVES Nearly every parent I know struggles to…
The battle for Europe is also being fought online. Russia wants to weaken EU cohesion, NATO coordination and support for Ukraine; the Netherlands’ parliamentary elections are an obvious target. On social media, this manifests itself in polarising narratives and coordinated amplification: identical slogans, “response sprints” and suspicious followers who tip the balance of visibility. Last…
“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to [American and Chinese] social networks, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.” From a speech by President Macron on the occasion of German Unity Day, 3 October 2025 “Finally, it is up to us Europeans to take…
Since the end of 2024, YouTube has been offering a new feature that automatically translates and dubs videos using artificial intelligence. With a single click, this innovation makes videos accessible to millions of English-language viewers. But in election season, the technology also raises questions: who decides whether party politics should suddenly be presented in another…
