IHEDN Mondays are now available in audio format!
Click below to listen:
France is currently one of the countries most targeted by disinformation, and this is becoming increasingly so with each passing day. Two telling figures illustrate this: throughout 2025, VIGINUM had detected 432 instances of foreign digital interference. By mid-July 2026, the government agency responsible for monitoring and protecting against foreign digital interference had already detected 430 such instances.
NewsGuard, an American start-up specialising in news source analysis, has just published a report on the impersonation of professional media outlets by Russian campaigns: of the 15 media outlets most frequently imitated worldwide between March 2023 and September 2026 to spread disinformation, 8 are French.
«The threat has become constant, widespread and multifaceted,» he observes Anne-Sophie Dhiver, Deputy Head of Department at VIGINUM:
«These operations may be carried out by state actors, but also by private service providers or operators driven by economic interests. We are thus witnessing the emergence of a veritable economy based on the manipulation of information. New operators, particularly in South-East Asia and West Africa, are mass-producing content aimed at French audiences, not necessarily to serve the interests of a state, but to generate advertising revenue.»
The deputy head of this government technical and operational service – established in 2021 and attached to the General Secretariat for Defence and National Security (SGDSN) – lists the four criteria that must be met for an act to be characterised as foreign digital interference: «The involvement of a foreign actor; a method of artificially or automatically disseminating, on a massive and deliberate scale, content that is manifestly inaccurate or misleading; and, finally, an activity likely to undermine the nation’s fundamental interests.»
Once these criteria have been established, Anne-Sophie Dhiver continues, «our teams seek to piece together the operation: its digital infrastructure, its distribution channels, the parties involved and the objectives it pursues». For the government department, which, together with the entire SGDSN, is the driving force behind the National Strategy to Combat Information Manipulation 2026–2030 Unveiled in February, this requirement is «fundamental»:
«VIGINUM is not a company that fact-checking, and its role is not to tell citizens what is true or false. A political or controversial opinion, even a particularly virulent one, clearly does not constitute foreign interference. Our work focuses on manipulation techniques, not on the opinions expressed.»
· Read the full interview with Anne-Sophie Dhiver
Another public body involved in the fight against disinformation, the Defence Innovation Agency In 2022, the AID, with the support of the National Research Agency (ANR), launched a call for proposals on cognitive warfare. Then, in July 2025, the «Résistance» call for proposals was launched; the eight projects selected under this call have just got underway, explains Guillaume Chillet, head of the humanities and social sciences division at the AID:
«The call for proposals covered eight themes, ranging from the cognitive mechanisms of influence to measurement and evaluation, including psychological inoculation, the dissemination of narratives and collective resilience. In it, we pose three questions to researchers: what factors can increase an individual’s resistance to disinformation, what tools can be used to activate them, and how can we measure whether these tools are working? The third question is the one that is most often overlooked.»
The AID, which also funds nearly 115 PhD theses a year, takes a «deliberately multidisciplinary» approach, adds Guillaume Chillet, «because no defence issue can any longer be confined to a single discipline: a decision-support system is as much about algorithms as it is about the attention and trust of the user, and a disinformation campaign is as much about networks as it is about psychology».
In the current climate, Guillaume Chillet believes that «the human mind is now described as a battlefield, a zone of conflict»:
«In our view, this is the last piece of critical infrastructure that has not yet been protected, and an agency responsible for anticipating threats could not afford to overlook it.»
· Read the full interview with Guillaume Chillet
The massive expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) is fuelling the spread of disinformation. «The actors, techniques and methods used to manipulate information are evolving and becoming more sophisticated very rapidly,» notes Chloé Debiève, a speaker and consultant specialising in information-related issues and the fight against information manipulation, and former head of the influence and information warfare division at the Joint Centre for Concepts, Doctrines and Experimentation (CICDE) of the Armed Forces General Staff.
The expert emphasises the concept of time, which is of paramount importance in this field:
«Beyond the tools themselves, it seems to me that the main disconnect between awareness of information risks and the ability to take action in the face of them lies in the temporal asymmetry. Indeed, developing a sustainable response, raising awareness and training staff, setting up monitoring and response mechanisms, developing policy, and getting to grips with the tools all require a significant amount of time.»
In light of this, Chloé Debiève advocates ‘information hygiene’, which she summarises in three key words: time, nuance and trust:
«The weather as a first instinct, to escape the constant noise, the reign of instant gratification, information overload and the imposed pace of life.
The caveat is to bear in mind that if a piece of information seems, for example, too good to be true, too shocking or too simple – or even simplistic – to be true, then it probably is.
Trust: in »an information environment that leads us to doubt everything, whilst forcing us, on the contrary, to hold on to points of reference we can trust, whilst continuing to develop our critical thinking (rather than simply being critical).’
· Read the full interview with Chloé Debiève
Antoine Marie, a postdoctoral researcher at CEVIPOF, a political psychologist and specialist in cognitive science, political polarisation and disinformation, notes that new information captures people’s attention «as long as it is intuitive»:
«A message that runs completely counter to people’s underlying beliefs – to what they are already inclined to believe – would not work and would not be remembered. Russian or Chinese agencies, for example, always seek to exploit vulnerabilities within French society, such as deeply entrenched feelings of political mistrust. This is the most important point of all: to borrow a phrase from the sociologist Gérald Bronner, their aim is to ride the natural slopes of the mind.»
Like the other experts interviewed for this article, the psychologist and political scientist calls for «teaching the rules, methods and principles that determine whether a statement is reliable or less reliable»:
«Why is journalistic content more reliable than what the average influencer posts on social media? Because behind it are professionals who scrutinise each other’s work and stake their reputations on the information they publish, and who have a great deal to lose if they disseminate fake news.
»These professionals contradict one another and, as a result, can counteract their own biases or personal ideological agendas. In this way, a reliable and rational discourse emerges from collective processes, contradictory discussions, the correction of individual biases, and vigilance regarding one’s reputation…’
· Read the full interview with Antoine Marie
At NewsGuard, which describes itself as the «world leader in the reliability of information», the multinational team is made up of professional journalists. As Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice-President for Partnerships, Europe and Canada, Chine Labbé calls on the media to «embrace transparency, raise their standards, and question themselves… »It’s not easy to win the trust of the public these days, and that’s a great challenge for the profession.”.
In its latest report, published on 28 September, the US start-up shows that, in its disinformation campaigns, Russia is increasingly impersonating media brands considered to be credible:
«This tactic is now used in virtually all Russian disinformation campaigns. Why is that? Because it’s very effective; it makes fake news more credible, and has the potential to deceive more people and fool AI chatbots.»
The report thus mentions a fake article in *Le Point* that managed to fool Google’s AI preview. According to Chine Labbé, «if no one takes the trouble to show that a news story is false, there is a risk that this narrative will end up in the answers provided to users of the chatbots »AI':
«This is very worrying, because we know that internet users are making increasing use of AI, particularly to look up information about the presidential candidates.»
«Through this channel,» the journalist continues, «just because a piece of fake news doesn’t go viral organically doesn’t mean it can’t reach users.» As for highly viral campaigns, they always present “a risk of infiltrating genuine discourse, with the potential to influence an election campaign”.
· Read the full interview with Chine Labbé
FURTHER READING
· The National Strategy to Combat Information Manipulation 2026–2030
· Our interview with Anne-Sophie Dhiver (VIGINUM)
· Our interview with Guillaume Chillet (Defence Innovation Agency)
· Our interview with Chloé Debiève (consultant)
French 
English