On April 17th, Stockholm Free World Forum and Tiden a seminar titled Tampering with the Swedish elections? Media and Foreign Information Operations. Participating experts were Laura Rosenberger, Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and Senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and Richard Ledgett, former Deputy Director at the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. Also participating were Patrik Oksanen, political editor at Hela Hälsingland and Mikael Tofvesson, acting deputy head of Coordination and Operations department at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB). The seminar was moderated by Minou Sadeghpour, board member of the Swedish Defence Associaton.
Some of the topics discussed were foreign and domestic attempts to influence democratic processes, if Russia and other foreign actors will try to influence this years election in Sweden, and what measures that Sweden and the U.S. can take in order to be better prepared?
Richard Ledgett described Russian electioninfluence as: ”Russia’s information operations are similar to money laundering. Instead of laundering money, they launder information”.
Laura Rosenberger said that it is ”Time to think about democracy as a national security issue”.
The seminar can be seen here.
