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Czech domestic intelligence head warns the country is facing a hybrid war, purveyors of disinformation will target elections to the lower house

17 January 2025
3 minute read
Michal Koudelka, ředitel Bezpečnostní informační služby (FOTO: Bezpečnostní informační služba)
Michal Koudelka, director of the Security Information Services (Bezpečnostní informační služba) in the Czech Republic (PHOTO: Bezpečnostní informační služba)
The head of the Czech Republic's Security Information Service (BIS), Michal Koudelka, believes the elections to Parliament will become the main subject and target of interest for the platforms purveying disinformation as well as the groups and web pages on social media spreading disinformation. Koudelka gave that opinion during a seminar in the lower house on the issue of foreign interference with the electoral process.

Although the number of consumers of content that counts as disinformation is relatively limited in the Czech Republic, new technologies, artificial intelligence above all, have the potential to spread some narratives in particular during the runup to the elections, including among a distinctly wider audience, Koudelka believes. The domestic intelligence chief said that ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, a domestic disinformation scene has established itself in the Czech Republic that is characterized, among other things, by a pragmatic approach to expanding its content to include any new subjects sparking public reaction.

Attacks and lies spread by the purveyors of disinformation can be expected during the campaign, when the elections will become the subject of their interest, Koudelka predicts. Elections to the Chamber of Deputies will be held in the fall.

The seminar concentrated on the subject of foreign interference in recent elections in Moldova and Romania and aimed to define the risks to the electoral process in the Czech Republic and opportunities for its protection. Moldova has repeatedly accused Russia of waging a hybrid war against Chisinau, interfering with local elections and waging an extensive disinformation campaign as part of its endeavor to topple the Government and spoil the country’s accession to the European Union.

Last November in Romania the first round of the presidential elections ended with the unexpected victory of the ultra-right candidate Calin Georgescu. The Constitutional Court overturned those results at the start of December because information surfaced that the campaign had been influenced by a “foreign state”, by all accounts, Russia.

The Romanian Constitutional Court ordered the elections to be re-held. Koudelka said that the scenarios faced by Moldova and Romania are not absolutely, unequivocally applicable in the Czech environment as it prepares for its elections to the lower house.

However, according to the domestic intelligence chief, it is appropriate to discuss the question of what kind of specific warnings the Czech Republic should take from the experiences of those countries. “There is absolutely no question that just like Romania and Moldova, the Czech Republic is included among the states which are targeted as a matter of priority for subversive influencing as well as for informational and cybernetic operations led and coordinated by Russian state power,” Koudelka said.

According to the BIS chief, the most significant takeaway from the Romanian experience with foreign influence in elections is the principle that once a foreign actor achieves even partial influence over political competition, it may already be too late to counter it by the time it is detected. “That is because the damage will already have been done to the public’s trust in the regularity of the elections and more generally to their trust in the proper functioning of state institutions,” he said.

According to Koudelka, efforts need to be made to promote more consistent compliance with the European Union’s internal regulation of digital communication platform operators, including the TikTok network. “Pressure those operators to be more transparent so it will be possible to detect the inauthentic spread of content through those platforms in an easier, faster way,” he said.

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