WIREDGOV

Canada has dedicated considerable time and resource to the challenge. Europe could learn a lot from across the Atlantic.

For most of the past decade, discussion of political interference in Western democracies has focused overwhelmingly on information operations involving bots, trolls, on- and offline disinformation campaigns and cyber-enabled manipulation. Yet much of this activity is underpinned by a less visible and less understood, and thus less addressed issue, namely finance.

The financing of political interference, whether through covert donations, opaque influence networks, pressure on diaspora communities, front organisations, think tanks, media outlets or commercial proxies, is emerging as a fundamental national security challenge facing democracies. While attention in Europe has largely centred on Russian influence operations, Canada has spent recent years developing a broader and more mature understanding of the problem, particularly in relation to China, Iran and India. In doing so, it has begun to confront this less visible threat, boosting understanding and developing defences to confront the financial dimension of the threat political interference poses to the nation’s democracy.

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