Here’s my latest piece that went up on Foreign Policy on January 18, 2017. This one looks at the NATO-EU center in Helsinki tasked with the far-reaching mission of “counter hybrid threats.” Find an excerpt below and read the whole article –> here.
“Located in an unassuming office building filled with boardrooms, lecture halls, and projectors in the Finnish capital, a new entity under the joint auspices of the European Union and NATO was founded with a herculean mission. Tasked with a 1.5 million euro budget, the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats was created to find new ways to defend against hybrid warfare: the blending of diplomacy, politics, media, cyberspace, and military force to destabilize and undermine an opponent’s government.
But four months after its prestigious launch in October 2017, the center is still striving to come close to the lofty expectations that have been set out for it. The nature of its activities remains ambiguous, raising questions about what it brings to the table as Western policymakers grasp with how to push back against a growing array of cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, military saber rattling, and economic pressure that blurs the lines between wartime and peacetime.”
Keep reading.