Alliance4Europe (A4E), founded in late 2018 as a pan-European non-profit, describes its mission as providing “digital intelligence for a stronger democracy.” From a small Brussels staff it runs the Counter Disinformation Network (CDN), a coalition of 40 member organizations and about 200 researchers, fact-checkers and OSINT analysts who share incident data and co-author public reports. CDN’s 2024 work has been financed in part by Poland’s Foreign Ministry under the Public Diplomacy 2024-25 program, which granted 473,900 PLN (≈ €105 000) to an “Information Defense Alliance” monitoring influence operations in seven countries. A4E also partners with the DISARM Foundation to deliver an online Analyst Certificate that teaches participants to tag hostile tactics using the DISARM taxonomy, now recommended by NATO and the EU’s foreign-affairs service (supported by the Alfred Landecker Foundation). Incident briefings on campaigns such as “Russia’s “Doppelgänger” are published on A4E’s site and promoted through webinars and social channels.
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Alliance4Europe (A4E)
European Commission, U.S. Department of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs...See all
European Commission, U.S. Department of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Alfred Landecker Foundation See less
ADAC.io, Ideas4Europe, DISARM
Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE)...See all
Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE) See less
Commentary:
A4E’s model blends start-up rhetoric with volunteer labor. Polish public-diplomacy funds show eastern governments’ appetite for rapid threat scans, but such sponsorship may nudge priorities toward storylines regarding the Kremlin while for instance Turkish or domestic matters receive less notice. DISARM certification spreads a common vocabulary – useful for inter-agency hand-offs – though the syllabus affects a tactical, not overtly political presentation: how to mark a false persona, not why platform design rewards outrage, or how geopolitical priorities of Washington inform the project in the first place. Briefings are clear but appear to be of only temporary relevance, calibrated to short news cycles; any follow-through is left up to readers. Neither audit nor board minutes are published, so strategic choices remain unknown to the public. Collaboration with NATO/EU European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, the EU Cybersecurity Agency, and the EU External Action Service, A4E fits squarely within the new security framework that has increasingly defined European foreign policy since 2016 or so, and which is now moving into overdrive with the large expansion of military spending. A4E may therefore be understood as one more example of civil society efforts blending into military ones – or even the direct militarization of civilian aspects of European life.
A4E’s model blends start-up rhetoric with volunteer labor. Polish public-diplomacy funds show eastern governments’ appetite for rapid threat scans, but such sponsorship may nudge priorities toward storylines regarding the Kremlin while for instance Turkish or domestic matters receive less notice. DISARM certification spreads a common vocabulary – useful for inter-agency hand-offs – though the syllabus affects a tactical, not overtly political presentation: how to mark a false persona, not why platform design rewards outrage, or how geopolitical priorities of Washington inform the project in the first place. Briefings are clear but appear to be of only temporary relevance, calibrated to short news cycles; any follow-through is left up to readers. Neither audit nor board minutes are published, so strategic choices remain unknown to the public. Collaboration with NATO/EU European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, the EU Cybersecurity Agency, and the EU External Action Service, A4E fits squarely within the new security framework that has increasingly defined European foreign policy since 2016 or so, and which is now moving into overdrive with the large expansion of military spending. A4E may therefore be understood as one more example of civil society efforts blending into military ones – or even the direct militarization of civilian aspects of European life.
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