The need for a "digital shield" to combat disinformation

This working paper starts from the premise that, if algorithms can rewrite democracy as they did in the 2024 and 2025 election season, institutions must be prepared to protect it. In order to combat digital disinformation and hybrid interference, however, we need a clear governance architecture: specific roles, courageous policies and good coordination between institutions. A country project of “digital resilience” and a “digital shield” for Romania are not built in silos, but through solid governance structures. Our model is a “whole-of-government to whole-of-society” one, segmented on three levels: the strategic level (a special department at the Presidential Administration), the operational level (Hub for Digital Resilience and Cognitive Defense at the Government), and the societal level. This material investigates the current situation in Romania and proposes specific solutions, based on a high-performance governance architecture.

Romania, from a case study of digital disinformation to an example of a resilience "handbook"

If there is any trace of consensus in the public space on digital disinformation, it sounds something like this: we do not want to repeat the experience of the canceled elections in 2024. President Nicușor Dan also said it, indirectly, including at the Edge Institute’s Digital Governance Summit in 2025. President Dan also announced the establishment, at the Presidential Administration, of a special department for combating disinformation, a structure that would manage this phenomenon in Romania.

Meanwhile, in the last week, an adjacent topic has captured the public debate: the highly critical report of the US Congressional Judiciary Committee on the 2024-2025 European election season, which had Romania as its primary target. In this report, our country is condemned for the decision to cancel the 2024 presidential elections amid hybrid interference that American lawmakers consider “unproven”. We could say that the evidence is enough. The problem, however, is entirely different: the authorities have not yet brought it together, in the form of a consistent report, a first step in the effort of societal reconciliation after the remarkable experience of the previous election season and of revitalizing Romanian democracy internationally. Romania has had, in the last two years, an uncomfortable revelation: digital transformation is not just about apps, clouds and paperless counters. It is about power. About how algorithms can amplify emotions, how they can polarize public debate, and how they can rewrite, in real time, the way a society projects its future. And when this happens in an election year, we are no longer talking about online “noise”. We are talking about the infrastructure of democracy. To protect the infrastructure of democracy, however, we need institutions with well-defined roles in a functioning ecosystem. We need these institutions to collaborate and work, at the same time, with civil society, academia, the press, and the private sector. In short, we need a governance structure to combat disinformation, and the latest publication by the Edge Institute proposes just such a formula.

Why governance as the "digital shield" of our democracy?

The previous Edge Institute policy paper on digital disinformation clearly states the point: “digital resilience” must become a national project. In this working paper, we advance and deepen this issue: “digital resilience” as a national project needs clear governance structures – institutional actors, platforms, communities and “antibodies” of democracy in the new digital order of our society. Governance is fundamental in any major national project, in any initiative and policy aimed at addressing complex phenomena that a society encounters. Disinformation is, all the more, a pertinent example. Such a sensitive issue, full of nuances and diverse forms of manifestation, cannot be addressed in the absence of clear coordination structures, hierarchies, platforms for reflection and well-coordinated action groups. Romania does not lack roles, responsibilities, strategies and laws. Digital disinformation is a phenomenon that, tangentially, many institutions touch upon in their work. It is targeted by multiple normative acts that we presented during the working paper. This reveals, moreover, the real problem: the governance of the “digital shield” divided into silos, in a fragmented normative and institutional ecosystem, without a coherent framework adapted to the speed of the phenomenon.

What we discovered during the research? Unimplemented strategies and a secret anti-disinformation plan

We discovered dozens of normative references from the European Union, articulated proposals and strategic frameworks from NATO, OSCE and the UN, legislation, policies and institutions that, in Romania, play key roles in defining the “digital shield”. However, we also discovered some surprising elements. Journalists from Context revealed, in February 2025, the existence of a National Anti-Disinformation Plan, written at the Presidential Administration under the auspices of the Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT). What does this plan contain? We do not know. It is a “classified service secret document”. What is not secret, however, is the result of the implementation of this plan. We all know this one all too well. A National Strategy for Strategic Communication and Combating Disinformation was also adopted in 2021. In 16 pages, the document presents, among other things, the idea of “projective discourse” as a counteraction to the wave of information manipulation that seeks to make the state vulnerable. Through the “projective discourse”, Romania was to respond to disinformation in an innovative way, through a broad and mobilizing national narrative. The narrative would have remained isolated somewhere in a drawer. In short: the plan is good, the implementation is killing us. We know the strategy is decent, we have no idea about the plan – it is not accessible to the general public. We also know, however, that the new National Defense Strategy 2025-2030 addresses the phenomenon in its entirety. While we also await the action plan of this strategy, a plan that President Dan promised, our recommendations can be a good pillar of reflection.

Number of mentions of key terms in the National Defense Strategy 2025-2030

How do we build this "digital shield" of democracy? And, more importantly, who governs it?

These are the questions that guided our research effort. To investigate models of anti-hybrid governance, we assessed the measures and institutions that fulfill this role in 12 states. France, for example, has an executive structure under the tutelage of the prime minister, VIGINUM, an entity with an operational role that, by the way, wrote an extensive report in February 2025, even about the annulment of our elections. Our report is still draining. Sweden, meanwhile, has developed a Psychological Defense Agency. Closer to home, however, Moldova impresses globally with its democratic resilience. President Maia Sandu was even nominated by a Norwegian MP for the Nobel Peace Prize, precisely in light of this model of democratic resilience. They have both a “Patriot” Center for strategic communication and extensive forums for managing the phenomenon, which have accomplished impressive tasks: from identifying cryptocurrency financing schemes for hybrid interference to internationalizing the effort to protect Moldovan democracy. As Maia Sandu stated just last week, “Freedom of expression is for people, not for fake accounts, not for bots.” How, however, do we enhance people’s freedom of expression online, while combating the ability of bots to drain democratic processes? We believe, in this regard, in Romania’s current institutional logic and given the complexity of the phenomenon, that three levels of governance for combating disinformation are essential.

1) Strategic level: the “brain” of digital resilience

At the presidential level, the paper starts from the window of opportunity created by the intention to establish a department dedicated to combating disinformation. Its role is clear: a “strategic brain” to chart the direction, ensure coherence in the action of institutions and carry Romania’s position in international forums.

In short: if we react only “in pieces”, we lose. If we have a strategic compass, we gain time, coordination and credibility. Among its specific tasks would be the following:

Developing and updating a Strategy dedicated to combating hybrid interference and strengthening information resilience, based on the National Defense Strategy 2025-2030;
Placing the department as a point of expertise of the CSAT in the spectrum of hybrid threat, foreign interference and information manipulation (FIMI);
Ensuring strategic coherence between the institution of the President, the Government of Romania, regulatory authorities and societal actors;
Formulating and supporting, in specialized international forums, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other representative structures, Romania’s position on issues aimed at countering disinformation, hybrid threats and malign interference.

2) Operational level: RDAC Hub – the “shield” that really works

If the President delivers a strategic direction and supports it to the world, the Government gives it coherence and feasibility. That is why we support the creation, under the Prime Minister, of a Hub for Digital Resilience and Cognitive Defense (Hub RDAC) as an inter-institutional platform for coordinating the national response to FIMI, disinformation and hybrid interference.

Proposed organizational chart for the RDAC Hub

The proposed mandate is very “hands-on”: from incident detection and centralization, to inter-institutional response coordination, defining common policies, monitoring interference financing schemes, cooperation with the EU and platforms, conducting exercises and simulations, training programs, and the list goes on.

The Hub would operate on two components: a Coordination Council, formed by key institutions (SGG, PM Chancellery, MAI, MApN, MAE, ANCOM, DNSC, AEP, CNA), with normative power and coordinated by a deputy prime minister or state advisor to the prime minister, respectively an RDAC Cell, as a technical secretariat with approximately 5–10 positions, within the SGG. It would have four major areas of action:

analysis and early warning,
strategic communication and rapid reaction (including “French Response” models),
policies and public relations (EU/platforms),
education, research and relations with civil society.

3) Societal level: antibodies to democracy

The paper recognizes something that Romania has experienced firsthand: civil society, independent press and civic initiatives have already acted and, although with limited resources, they have acted impeccably; the problem is that the state has not yet transformed the reactions into institutions and policies that can keep up. In the logic of a “whole-of-society” approach, resilience is not only achieved with press releases. It is achieved with education, verification capacity, civic reflexes and real partnerships. We propose, in this regard, a multitude of policies.

Visual representation of the “chain of command” in the governance of countering disinformation

Beyond danger, a message of hope

If Romania has become the textbook example of altering democratic life through algorithms, there is only one thing left for us to do: to become the textbook example of the digital resilience of democracy. Perhaps even more, together with Moldova, we could seek to become the “digital shield” of the European project and democratic societies. For this, however, we need governance like air, so that institutions and the legitimate vote of citizens, not lines of code, initial the democratic life of Romania.

In the immediate plan, multiple priorities await us: the development of a department within the Presidential Administration to combat disinformation, the launch of an action plan for the National Defense Strategy 2025-2030 and, of course, the need for national reconciliation on this issue. Through flexible institutions, coordination, and innovative policies, we can ensure that we have learned our lessons by 2028. Our recommendations set just such a framework for reflection, so that Romania, in 2028, can be an example not of how algorithms alter a democracy, but of how a democracy can be repaired in a digital environment full of threats to it.

The need for a “digital shield” to combat disinformation

Abstract

Summary