From Evidence to Action: Closing Europes Hybrid Defence Gap
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Distinguished colleagues,
I will start with saying few words about what we are doing and what we are still not doing in the European Commission in relation with our defence and security.
For well known reasons, in Europe we are now building up our defence independence and defence readiness.
This our strategic priority. And my mission.
When we are talking about defence readiness, I always repeat, that defence readiness has three pillars:
- Material defence readiness - weapons, industry, finances;
- Institutional defence readiness - how we are organizing our defence, when the US is shifting to the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere; how we are building European pillar of NATO;
- And political defence readiness - its about our political will to use the weapons we are producing to defend ourselves and if need be - to fight.
Russia uses a wide variety of hybrid warfare elements exactly to undermine our political will to fight. Russia knows that it is easier to occupy hearts and minds of our people, than it is to occupy territory. It is cheaper to mobilise algorithms than mobilise armies.
Thats the essence of the famous Gerasimov Doctrine. The constant hybrid war, with the West.
Until now as European Commission we were concentrating ourselves on the first pillar of defence readiness, - on material defence readiness. Also we are starting to discuss the second pillar of institutional defence readiness, - how to organize ourselves.
But up till now we were very passive on the third pillar of political defence readiness - how to defend our political will.
And we know all the recent stories - elections in Romania, Moldova.
Or the recent campaign against Lithuanias plans to build a big new military training ground, near the Polish border and the Suwalki Gap. Immediately a big protest started online, with 80% fake accounts from Latin America or Africa.
Now after this introduction, let me turn to the Report. I am grateful to all those, who made such a valuable investigation, especially to Mykolas Katkus, whos various talents are well known in Lithuania.
You have just seen the data of the Report. Impressive.
What I would like to do now is step back from the charts, the platforms, and the percentages - and focus on what this evidence means for Europes security posture.
Because the most important conclusion of this study is not about TikTok, Telegram, or any single country.
It is about how Europe currently conceptualises security - and where that conception no longer matches reality.
Information Power Has Outpaced Our Institutions
European defence thinking remains largely platform-centric, reactive, and regulatory when it comes to hybrid information threats.
But what this study demonstrates is that the decisive factor is not content, but coordination; not virality, but timing; not speech, but systems.
Narratives do not succeed because they are persuasive. They succeed because they are synchronised, reinforced, and algorithmically advantaged.
This is why focusing on individual posts, keywords, or takedowns is structurally insufficient. By the time content is visible at scale, the strategic effect has already occurred.
The Strategic Insight Europe Cannot Ignore
The single most important takeaway from this research is the existence of a predictable link between coordination and impact.
From a security perspective, that changes everything. It means information operations are not just a noise.
They have signatures, trajectories, and lead indicators — just like cyber intrusions or missile launches.
And yet, unlike cyber or air defence, Europe has no standing capability to monitor this battle space continuously, across languages and platforms, with decision-making authority attached to make proper decisions and counter-actions.
This is not a technological failure. It is an institutional one.
Why Regulation Alone Will Not Solve This
Europe has invested enormous political capital in regulating platforms. This matters. But regulation addresses compliance, not contest.
Hybrid information operations are adaptive. They shift platforms, formats, symbols, and communities faster than regulatory cycles can respond.
The uncomfortable truth is this: even perfectly enforced regulation would still leave Europe vulnerable if adversarial narratives can move, coordinate, and amplify faster than institutions can detect and respond.
Security requires operational capabilities, not only rules.
A Useful Comparison: Taiwan
This is where the experience of Taiwan becomes instructive. I visited Taiwan several years ago, with the special delegation of European Parliament, to study how Taiwan is defending its democracy against permanent Chinese hybrid information warfare. Taiwans experience is valuable, not because Europe and Taiwan are identical, but because Taiwan made an early conceptual decision Europe has not fully made yet.
Taiwan treats information operations as:
- continuous, not episodic
- strategic, not reputational
- and inseparable from national security
As a result, detection, attribution, and response are built into governance, not improvised during crises. That allows government to react immediately and to be effective in defence of hearts and minds of the people.
Speed matters more than perfection.
Denial of momentum in such a defence matters more than takedowns.
And societal resilience is treated as a defence asset, not a by-product.
These are policy choices, not cultural ones.
What Needs to Change at EU Level
If Europe is serious about closing this gap, five shifts are required.
First, the EU must formally treat coordinated information operations in algorithmic media as a hybrid threat, not a problem of online safety or public communication.
Second, Europe needs a permanent, cross-platform narrative monitoring capability, designed for early detection of coordination — not post-hoc analysis.
Third, detection must be linked to authority. And its actions. Early warning without predefined response options produces insight, not security.
Fourth, elections must be protected not only procedurally, but informationally — with standing rapid-response mechanisms during pre-electoral periods.
Finally, Europe should deepen operational learning with partners who have lived under persistent hybrid information pressure — including Taiwan — as part of democratic defence cooperation.
A Final Thought
Europe would never accept a situation where hostile aircraft could enter its airspace undetected for days.
Yet today, coordinated narrative operations can move through our information environment, shape perceptions, and influence political outcomes without triggering any comparable alert or response.
The study you have seen today makes one thing clear: The information battle space is no longer invisible.
What remains undecided is whether Europe chooses to defend it seriously.
Thank you.