EU-HYBNET: Summary of the meeting on hybrid threats

An online meeting entitled “Hybrid threats – countermeasure instruments, initiatives, recommendations” was held on 8 December. The meeting, organized by PPHS, brought together more than 70 people interested in this topic.

The meeting took the form of 20-minutes long presentations of projects and initiatives implemented in Poland, which are aimed to support the fight against hybrid threats. The emphasis was placed on the issues of disinformation and fake news. The meeting was prepared as part of the European project EU-HYBNET.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the scientific community and of public institutions, including uniformed services, non-governmental organizations, and companies.

The speakers discussed the following topics:

1. Päivi Mattila, a EU-HYBNET coordinator from the Finnish University of Applied Sciences Laurea, presented the overall objectives of the project.
2. Rashel Talukder, the Managing Director of the Polish Platform for Homeland Security, presented the mission of PPHS and its activities.
3. Magda Okuniewska presented the EU-HYBNET project and the areas in which PPHS is engagement within the project. The Participants saw a summary of the reports PPHS is working on with partners in Task 4.3, focusing on the following subject-specific areas: fake news and disinformation, resilient society, big data sets, strategic communications, cybersecurity, and critical commodities and raw materials. The reports will soon be available on our website.
4. Kamil Piętak from the Stanisław Staszic AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow talked about the Prosody system used to analyze press articles and Twitter messages.
5. The Bydgoszcz University of Technology was represented by Michał Choraś and Prof. Rafał Kozik who presented a tool for detecting fake news using artificial intelligence methods – the H2020 SocialTruth project.
6. The issues related to proper education were emphasized by Kamil Mikulski of the Kościuszko Institute who presented a practical manual on disinformation for secondary school students (the premiere of the manual is scheduled for 17 December this year).

Representatives of the fact-checking community were also very strongly represented at the meeting. Małgorzata Kilian, the president of Demagog, the largest such non-governmental organization in Poland, shared her experience in fighting disinformation. At the end of the meeting, Wojciech Surmacz, the president of the Polish Press Agency (PAP), talked about #FakeHunter, a social project aimed to verify content published on the Internet, which has been launched by the PAP together with GovTech Polska.

We would like to thank all the speakers and participants for their help in organizing this interdisciplinary event on hybrid threats. We are looking forward to cooperation with individuals and organizations interested in this topic.