Centre For Disinformation Studies

Democracy and Disinformation, Part 3: The Cost of Comfort

Canada has the institutions, the reports, and the warnings about disinformation. What it lacks is a population that feels the threat. In this article, Dominique Arseneau-Bruneau looks at how Canada’s lack of urgency affects its response to disinformation through the lens of legality, legitimacy, and speed, and what the cost of that comfort may ultimately be.

Centre For Disinformation Studies

The New Front: Russian Disinformation and Europe’s Youth

As social media becomes the primary source of political information for younger generations, Russian disinformation campaigns increasingly exploit digital platforms to undermine trust, fuel polarization, and discourage democratic participation. By examining today’s younger generation as a strategic target of information warfare, this article explores how disinformation has evolved into a growing challenge for democratic resilience and NATO’s collective security.

Centre For Disinformation Studies

Democracy and Disinformation, Part 2: The European Case

The European Union has come to treat disinformation not as a problem of false information, but as a threat to democracy itself. In this article, Dominique Arseneau-Bruneau examines how legality, legitimacy, and speed shape the EU’s response to information confrontation and what its experience reveals about the limits of democratic defence.

NATO and Canada

Ukraine’s Victory Paradox: Preventing Defeat Without Defining Victory

How will the war in Ukraine end? While NATO allies have been effective in preventing Ukraine’s defeat, defining a political end-state has proven much more complicated. In this piece, Jonah Moffatt examines the “victory paradox” between Moscow and Kyiv, and the implications of this stalemate on Canadian national interests. With peace talks on the back burner and shifting geopolitical priorities, the relationship between peace and victory becomes increasingly unclear.

Society, Culture, and Security

Culture and Security at the Venice Biennale

Countries from around the world are invited to represent themselves through national pavilions at the Venice Biennale, an international cultural exhibition with a focus on art in Venice, Italy. In 2026, 100 nations participate in the festival. It provides a unique platform for cultural diplomacy, the projection of soft power, and for countries to showcase Read More…

Centre For Disinformation Studies

Weaponizing Post-COVID Trauma in the New Hantavirus Outbreak

How does a pathogen with little pandemic potential threaten international security and defence? What happens when adversaries create and reuse conspiracies against a traumatized public? Ji Young Kim explores the current hantavirus outbreak, illustrating how hostile actors weaponize institutional betrayal and post-COVID trauma to disrupt NATO logistics and outline the urgent next steps required.

Cyber Security and Emerging Threats

From Trenches to Algorithms: Integrating Unmanned Ground Vehicles into NATO’s Cyber-Resilient Structure

How can NATO integrate Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) into the Cyber Defence Framework? In this article, Christopher Macartney highlights the developments and capabilities of UGVs during the Russia-Ukraine War and strengthening UGV network defences as a strategic asset for NATO in the future of warfare.

Cyber Security and Emerging Threats

Delegating Destruction: AI and the Ethics of Warfare

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in modern warfare, it is reshaping how states conduct war and raising urgent questions of ethics and accountability regarding the potential absence of human judgment in lethal decisions. If machines can decide when force is used, who ultimately remains accountable for the decision to take a human life in war?

Security, Trade and the Economy

Trade Law and the Coordination of Security-Based Trade Measures

As economic security becomes increasingly central to international policymaking, trade law is being reshaped by sanctions, export controls, and other security-based economic measures. In this article, Hassan Ahmed examines how the WTO’s national security exception has evolved from a narrow safeguard into a more routine justification for strategic economic action, and how allied states increasingly coordinate such measures through informal alignment rather than unified legal frameworks. Using examples ranging from semiconductor export controls to sanctions coordination following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the article explores the growing intersection of trade law, strategic competition, and alliance politics, including the implications for middle powers such as Canada.

Centre For Disinformation Studies

Special Report: Iran, Russia, & Hybrid Warfare Influence Operations

In this special report, Soha Sarfraz examines how Iran and Russia use influence operations and information warfare to weaken democratic cohesion across NATO societies. Particularly by targeting key institutions through digital disruption, narrative manipulation, and the covert exploitation of grassroots mobilization. She argues that these campaigns threaten not only institutions themselves, but also the social trust, political consensus, and informational resilience that sustain collective defence, underscoring the need for stronger democratic resilience and alliance-wide responses to hybrid threats.