at the opening of conference “The Riga StratCom Dialogue 2019” in the National Library of Latvia on 11 June 2019.
The President of Latvia has stated that in particular, we see the digital threat to our critical infrastructure as particularly dangerous. “However, I would suggest that the threat is to a more vital part of our critical infrastructure than even our electricity or water supplies – it is to our minds through information operations. Coordinated inauthentic behaviour can have a profound effect on democratic societies. In non-democratic ones, what has been called digital authoritarianism is spreading,” noted Raimonds Vējonis.
In his address, the President of Latvia has admitted that new trends in hybrid warfare are intended to take target nations by surprise with a combination of new and old tools to undermine the country, its identity, and resilience. Techniques primarily used in the marketing world are adapted for use in other areas. Vulnerable groups are targeted, monetarised and then weaponised for political purposes.
The recent studies by the STRATCOM Centre of Excellence “Responding to Cognitive Security Challenges” and “Black Market of Social Media Manipulations” demonstrate the increasing vulnerability of wider societies to data-based cognitive attacks.
“These risks will increase with the development of artificial intelligence and big data gathering techniques. Democracies need to invest in countering these new challenges to mitigate potential future risks and improve cognitive resilience,” emphasised Raimonds Vējonis.
As potential measures to mitigate those risks, the President of Latvia has mentioned the need to conduct regular risk assessments on digital security to expose and mitigate emerging vulnerabilities in the early stages, conduct gap analysis assessing if and how the existing work can contribute to addressing these vulnerabilities, and to develop technical tools that enable detecting cognitive attacks in the digital domain.
“Most of all we should concentrate on increasing digital security risk awareness in our general populations and especially in our political leaders. This must start with our education systems and aim at an overall improvement in our critical thinking. If we do not respond to these emerging challenges, then we will face serious consequences for our nations, our international structures and for our democratic systems,” outlined President of Latvia Raimonds Vējonis at the conclusion of his address.
