It’s Time to Build a National System against Hybrid Attacks
Foreign interference and disinformation undermine democracy, create distrust in institutions, and target vulnerable citizens. The state must build a functional and coordinated mechanism that will detect threats early and respond professionally.
Macedonia is increasingly exposed to hybrid and disinformation influences and if it does not build a functional national system for rapid response and resilience, the country will remain open to manipulations and threats of this type. This assessment concluded the annual conference “Hybrid and Information Threats: From Recognition to a National Systemic Response”, organized by the Institute of Communication Studies in partnership with the British Embassy. The conference laid out a clear picture of the situation – that the state reacts to crises after the fact – and it presented several national models as positive examples of building resilience instead of retroactively gauging the damage.
The event attracted a large number of state representatives, diplomats, experts, representatives of academia, and civil society organizations, with a common goal – opening a public debate and building a national model for dealing with Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI).
Macedonia in the line of hybrid fire
Hybrid threats are a global danger that affects security, public trust and democratic processes. They are an insidious and powerful threat that undermines and destroys democracy and aims to divide society along all possible lines – they breed fear, anxiety and distrust of institutions and attack vulnerable categories of citizens and basic political and individual freedoms and rights. Macedonia, which is at a crossroads where different geopolitical influences overlap, is susceptible to a high degree of vulnerability to this type of influence.
At the conference, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said that the threat today does not appear in uniforms, but “the war is waged with words, manipulations and disinformation campaigns – that is the new battlefield of democracy.” The Prime Minister noted that Macedonia has already begun the process of building a resilience system, but warned that this process must be permanent and strategic, not reactive and temporary.
“Macedonia will build a system, improvisation is not an option. Our vision is clear – a state that will detect early, institutions that will react quickly, officials that will act professionally, citizens that will recognize disinformation, a society that will not be a victim, but resilient. Our task is clear – to restore trust. To build strong institutions and create a system that will not fall at the first strong blow of a disinformation campaign“, Prime Minister Mickoski underlined.
He added that through continuous training of all officials, creation of databases, stronger coordination between institutions, and setting up a national platform for cooperation with research centres, the state will develop stable institutions, capable of reacting quickly and professionally, without improvisation and non-dependent on political developments.
The United Kingdom Ambassador to North Macedonia, Matthew Lawson, said that the fight for truth is one of the most significant challenges of these modern times. In his address, he emphasized that in an era of rapid flow of information across borders, the accuracy of content becomes vital to our democracies and the security of nations.
“Foreign information manipulation and interference are growing threats at a time when our adversaries are increasingly using these tools to counter the narratives that we, as NATO partners and as democracies, stand for,” Ambassador Lawson noted, announcing continued support for strengthening resilience against disinformation attacks.
The annual conference dedicated to hybrid and information threats rounded off efforts to investigate what are the sources of external influence on our everyday lives, their methods and how this is reflected in the decisions made by the state – a topic that was the focus of the Institute of Communication Studies this year as a logical continuation of ICS’s previous research on disinformation and harmful narratives originating from domestic sources.
The Director of the Institute, Zaneta Trajkoska, emphasized in her address that Macedonia, as a country located at the crossroads of various geopolitical interests, must establish an integrated and functional system to respond to such influences, as soon as possible.
“The solution must also be unifying, reflecting society as a whole and incorporating public institutions, the media, academia and civil society. Only in this way can we build a system that is proactive, coordinated and resilient to the real threats that endanger our democracy and state, ” Trajkoska said.
Where are we now: Three possible models of institutional response
The analysis of the state of play points to several systemic weaknesses. The national approach to addressing hybrid threats is fragmented, institutions respond reactively, there is no regular monitoring, forecasting and analysis, and there is a lack of human and technical capacities and a stable budget.
The analysis emerged from the policy paper prepared by the ICS “Institutional Response to Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in North Macedonia: Models and Policy Options”. This is the first such policy paper that gives an integral overview of the situation with FIMI in Macedonia. It was prepared in collaboration with a coordination group of representatives from a dozen key institutions.
Professor Aleksandar Grizhev presented the key findings of the research. He underscored that although the country has established mechanisms, the system for dealing with foreign influence and information manipulation is incomplete and insufficiently coordinated. A particularly important conclusion was the lack of a single institutional centre with clearly defined competencies and a stable model for information exchange.
Three potential models were presented – to form an independent national centre, to establish a coordination mechanism within the Government, or to expand the competencies of the existing Security and Intelligence Community Coordination Council. Each of the models has its advantages and limitations, but for any of them to truly come to life, a clear political will is necessary.
Professor Vesna Poposka said that the liberal perimeter – the space between freedom and security – is increasingly narrowing under the influence of modern security risks. She stated that with the development of technology, hybrid threats are becoming increasingly dominant and more difficult to recognize and counter. “The response to threats can only be more democracy, not restrictions on freedoms,” Poposka stressed, calling for increasing the resilience of states, institutions and citizens.
The Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski noted that the new cyber strategy, the ICT strategy, as well as the first Law on Networks and Information Systems Security, aligned with the European NIS2 Directive, have already been adopted. The next step, he said, is the substantive implementation: adoption of over 20 by-laws, certification of cyber professionals and standards related to procurement in cybersecurity, as well as gradual expansion of obligations towards the private sector, especially in energy, telecommunications, banking and other critical industries. The Minister pointed out that in parallel with systemic reforms, the state is also working on the protection of the most vulnerable categories – children and youth. The Safer Internet Centre (MkSafeNet) is in the final phase of formation, and a National Committee for the Protection of Children on the Internet has already been constituted.
“We have to think about the model. Let’s choose that model and see if we can implement it. Because we need real-time data exchange, trained staff in all sectors that are important to us, and what is the institutional response in times of crisis. Of course, I do not exclude media literacy, educational programs, training for all stakeholders – journalists, institutions, associations,” Minister Andonovski said.
International experiences and regional vulnerability
Experts from the region and Europe have warned that the Western Balkans is a zone of strong influences, division, and weak institutions, which facilitates the spread of disinformation.
Miroslav Sazdovski, Senior Analyst at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) in Helsinki, Finland, emphasized that the strongest protective mechanism against disinformation is a comprehensive approach.
“Hybrid threats are constantly evolving. They operate below the threshold of detection, which means that responding to and countering those threats is a truly complex and difficult process,” Sazdovski noted.
According to him, the concept of “comprehensive security”, which is the basis of the Finnish model, implies that security is not only a task of the state, but also includes the private sector, the media, academia and civil society.
Macedonia under hybrid attack at the Western Balkans Digital Summit
The Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski said that during the Western Balkans Digital Summit, which took place in Skopje in September, there was a hybrid attack that was carried out by domestic actors, although it was presented as foreign interference. Emails were sent to all media outlets claiming that the country was exposed to attacks and that the weakness of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Government would be further demonstrated during the summit.
“So called passwords were sent to institutions – dozens, hundreds of them, but we found that 98% of them were fake. But by having a threat happen one day before the summit, the aim was to show the inability of the state and the government to deal with this type of threat. We monitored traffic during the summit more intensively; nothing happened during those two days. The fact that there was a threat, that it was presented as coming from a neighbouring country and referred to some conflicts from the more distant past of 25 years ago, indicates that there is an attempt to use these cyber security narratives, but to supplement them with a broader security threat,” Minister Andonovski said.
Croatian researcher Miran Čoklo emphasized that each hybrid threat is an individual problem, but the right response is to locate and address the source, not just the consequences. He stated that the long-term resilience of states hinges on two things: international cooperation and national capacities, which countries need to develop systematically and continuously.
Regional context: Western Balkans as a zone of high vulnerability
The Western Balkan region is particularly vulnerable to hybrid and information threats due to geopolitical, societal and institutional factors.
“The regional geopolitical scene is complex: on one hand, there are the European Union and NATO, which are striving to integrate the region, and on the other, there are Russia, China, Turkey and the countries of the Middle East, which are increasing their influence,” Professor Kire Babanoski from the Faculty of Security noted.
He explained that these external factors are further accentuated by weak institutions and political instability in the Western Balkan countries. According to him, disinformation is spread through foreign interference, information manipulation, cyber operations and psychological influences. Another significant factor is the linguistic proximity of the Western Balkan countries, which allows for the rapid spillover of propaganda content between countries.
The professor pointed to the “Pravda” network, in which a large number of web portals appeared, all over the world, but also in the countries of the Western Balkans, starting with Serbia, and which used automated systems to quickly distribute news from Telegram profiles to web portals throughout the region. The average time interval for the transmission of content was 8 to 10 minutes, which allowed for the effective spread of disinformation.
Discussions among experts, professors, representatives of institutions and international partners confirmed that foreign information manipulation and interference are not just a theoretical danger, but an everyday occurrence, and this is something that’s been present for a while now. They are not introduced with fanfare, but quietly erode the democratic system through suspicion, mistrust and divisions. Therefore, the question that remains after the conference is essential: will the state build an integrated and efficient system or will it continue to be an easy target? That will depend on the choice and pace at which the resilience model will be established. Any delays would be a de facto choice in favour of disinformation actors.
This content was created by the Institute of Communication Studies.
Journalist: Sonja Petrushevska Popovska
Cinematographer: Ivan Popovic
Editing: Risto Dushkovski