Frederick Fooy: How Sweden fights disinformation

Mr Fooy, the Swedish Ministry of Justice created the Psychological Defense Agency (PDA) in 2022 to combat foreign false information. What was the reason for setting up this new agency?

In 2014, right before Russia's annexation of Crimea, we noticed an increase in new forms of disinformation and propaganda. This made restarting a psychological defense capability more urgent. In 2019, the government announced the creation of a new agency for psychological defense. We can think of it as part of Sweden's broader defense against hybrid threats.

The Swedish government pointed out that Russia, China, and Iran are countries known for disinformation campaigns targeting Sweden. What makes their approaches unique or particularly concerning?

I would say that broadly speaking, Russia has the most experience in reinforcing polarization and segmentation within society. China, of course, has the most significant resources to target vulnerabilities. And Iran is somewhat of a late bloomer. We recently had a very serious campaign against our Child protective services. Various groups in the Middle East, which are not directly state-affiliated, claim that the Swedish protective services were abducting Muslim children and trying to turn them into Christians or turn them over to be raised by homosexual parents. We and others handled this very well, but it could have led to dire consequences.

What does your authority's work look like when confronted with such "foreign malign information influence" attacks, as you call them?

First of all: We are not an intelligence agency. We work entirely with open sources and provide reports on an operational basis to our government. Much of our work is aimed at building confidence within the Swedish population. A lot of our efforts focus on building public trust, educating people, and collaborating with social services, religious organizations, and other key institutions. However, we don't aim to counter every piece of disinformation from Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran. That would be a superhuman effort and sometimes even counterproductive.

What challenges do you face especially when it comes to China?

We have to keep in mind that in authoritarian regimes, most information influence activities target the local population at home. That being said, however, China has vast manpower to become active on a global scale. The Chinese state media has an incredible reach. They are published in dozens of languages and are often incredibly professionally produced. I've seen cases where reputable outlets like the BBC unknowingly cite Chinese state media sources. Their influence is growing, especially in the Global South. For example, a Chinese publisher bought publishing rights to most of the in-flight magazines in Africa.

How does that affect Western democracies like Sweden?

As mentioned, China's influence activities increasingly target topics beyond its borders. After the Israel-Hamas war broke out, we noticed anti-Semitic narratives in Chinese state media, for example. It's peculiar, as anti-Semitism isn't a common sentiment among Chinese citizens. However, these media reports can be read by Arabic speakers across the Middle East, North Africa, and also Europe, mainly without the readers realizing the source is Chinese. The same thing happens with Russian sources, and many people consuming this content might not question its origin. We want to change that.

Sometimes, it feels like China and Russia are coordinating their disinformation campaigns.

No, I wouldn't say they coordinate. They do have agreements, like journalist exchange programs, and they amplify each other's messaging at times. For example, narratives in Russian media may appear in Chinese outlets and vice versa. But calling it "coordination" would be an overstatement. Both are united by the perception of shared external enemies, but their operations are not fully collaborative in the Western sense.

How do you balance protecting Sweden from disinformation while maintaining freedom of speech, especially when Swedish citizens might inadvertently spread false information?

Freedom of speech is critical, and we don't engage in censorship or fact-checking. That's for the media and fact-checking organizations to handle. However, we focus on media literacy, ensuring that the public can critically evaluate what they're reading and understand the intent behind certain narratives. We work with educational institutions to include media literacy in school curricula and have trained over 20,000 individuals on how to identify and counter foreign disinformation.

The PDA also prepares Sweden for the possibility of war. How would the agency support the government during a national security crisis?

While I can't discuss wartime planning in detail, I can confirm that our mandate includes preparing for all scenarios, from crises to full-scale war. We're part of Sweden's total defense strategy.

I'm sure there's much to learn from the situation in Ukraine and the Russian disinformation there.

Yes, absolutely. The situation in Ukraine is of paramount importance here, as well, because it is of great concern to our government and the Swedish population. And when it comes to figuring out how Chinese information flows works, we also look at Taiwan. But every democracy has a piece of the puzzle to help us understand how these state actors operate.

What challenges do you foresee in the future, for example, due to the advent of new technologies?

AI and deepfakes will be significant challenges, especially in terms of how much information can be flooded into the system. But we do have some advantages – Chinese disinformation, for example, is often constrained by the CCP's rigid doctrines. Russia, on the other hand, was more imaginative during Crimea's annexation than in its current full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The quality of disinformation varies depending on the topic and who's behind it.

So, does that mean the quality differs significantly, even if it comes from the same state actor?

Most state actors do not have one agency dealing with information influence activities. There might be certain think tanks and security services that are part of the armed forces. There's also a market for disinformation campaigns in China where regular nonaffiliated nationalists all of a sudden get very upset about some trope or narrative in the media space, and they do not necessarily follow the will of the country. So my greatest concern here is that somebody or a number of people in one of the authoritarian states starts being really imaginative and gets lots of resources from their governments. Such an entity could create activities that target vulnerabilities in our society that we aren't even aware of yet.

Frederick Fooy has been working against information influence activities from various antagonistic actors for more than a decade. He has previous experience from the Swedish Armed Forces dating back to 1989, including deployments to the Balkans. Frederick has a B.A. in Byzantinology from New York University and an M.A. in Urban Policy from Brooklyn College.