Every year, the people who monitor the information battlefield—researchers, journalists, think-tank analysts, academics, and government officials—gather to compare notes about the latest Russian operation, the newest Chinese influence campaign, the troubling algorithm designed to tear a society apart. This week, they gathered in Vilnius for the annual EU DisinfoLab conference, an event that has become a crucial meeting place for the counter-disinformation community. The scene was familiar: conference badges, crowded coffee breaks, panels full of acronyms like FIMI, and posters listing sponsors. But something unusual had happened before the doors opened. The Government of Canada had withdrawn its sponsorship. Lithuania, the host country, had cancelled its participation. The European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic service, had also pulled out, according to participants. The reason was not a sudden loss of faith in the mission. Rather, it was the discovery that some panels at Disinfo2026 proposed to discuss the United States as a source of foreign-information manipulation and interference. For Canada, which is navigating an increasingly delicate relationship with a close ally and largest trading partner, that was one step too far. Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Samantha Lafleur said Ottawa was not comfortable with the framing of some panels and would no longer chair any discussions. Canadian officials would still attend, she said, but they would be keeping a lower profile. It was an awkward moment for a community that prides itself on following the evidence wherever it leads.
The move was, in some ways, about nuance. The conference, organized by Brussels-based non-profit EU DisinfoLab, is not a government event; it attracts researchers, people who work in counter-disinformation, journalists, think tanks, academics, and government officials, and it is respected for its independence. But this year’s programme included a session, scheduled for Thursday, framed as a provocative discussion on “growing evidence that the United States has, in specific Arctic contexts, operated as a FIMI actor.” FIMI is the field’s shorthand for “foreign-information manipulation and interference,” a term that describes co-ordinated and deceptive behaviour by state-backed actors to sway public debate, undermine elections, and destabilize institutions. Traditionally, that category has been applied to countries like Russia, which has sought to influence elections and spread chaos through social-media manipulation. To see the United States in that category was, for many governments, deeply uncomfortable. The specific session was to be chaired by Saliou Babou, director of a Global Affairs Canada unit created years ago to counter state-sponsored disinformation. His unit had been part of Canada’s response to foreign influence operations. But he would no longer take the chair. Global Affairs said it had decided to revise its participation in several sessions “following changes to the framing of several panel discussions.” It added that Canada respects the right of organizers to frame discussions as they see fit and recognizes the independence of civil society actors. Lithuania was blunter. Its foreign ministry said the country had cancelled its participation in Disinfo2026 because several parts of the conference programme differed from the official position of the government. Still, the message was clear: when it comes to an open debate about the United States, Western governments were not willing to put their names on the podium.
The U.S. State Department made its position unmistakable. In an e-mailed statement, it attacked the conference’s premise, saying the organizers appeared to put the United States “in the same bucket as foreign adversaries.” It called that “false equivalence” antithetical to the goals the conference claims to promote, and said it obscures the scale and nature of adversarial interference. The department also took a broader swipe at the entire concept of fighting disinformation, saying that too many governments have exploited the pretext of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation” for politically motivated reasons. It insisted that Washington continues to counter malign foreign propaganda, but added that it recognizes the importance of distinguishing adversarial campaigns from the political opinions and positions of domestic speakers and allied countries. The statement was clearly aimed at the conference’s most provocative titles. One session was called “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back.” Its description said it would address “one of the most uncomfortable questions in the counter-disinformation field today: how did the United States become a FIMI threat for Europe?” Another, titled “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure,” discussed visa restrictions imposed by Washington on five Europeans, including former EU commissioner Thierry Breton and four leaders of groups that combat online disinformation and hate. The panel described those restrictions as an unprecedented escalation in defense of U.S. corporations seeking to avoid regulation and criticism. It also accused the U.S. government of trying to intimidate individuals and organisations who stand in the way of American corporate interests. The State Department declined to say whether it had raised the Disinfo2026 conference specifically with Canada or European countries, but said it regularly and candidly engages with partners on concerns about censorship, free expression, and countering adversaries.
Amid the manoeuvring, one featured attendee embodied the new political climate. Kimberly Prost, a distinguished Canadian jurist, had been hit with sanctions by U.S. President Donald Trump because of her work on a case at the International Criminal Court involving American troops in Afghanistan. In 2020, Prost and four other judges unanimously authorized an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan forces, and members of the U.S. military and the CIA, which operated secret detention facilities. For that act of judicial independence, she found herself on a U.S. sanctions list—a move that many legal experts saw as an assault on the rule of law. Her presence at Disinfo2026 was a reminder that the conference was not talking about an abstract threat. When the programme referred to the United States as a potential FIMI actor, it was not just about bots and fake news. It was also about powerful governments using their leverage—sanctions, visa restrictions, diplomatic pressure—to punish people who dissent. The Arctic panel, in particular, was loaded with significance for Canada. A 2019 photograph from Frobisher Bay in Iqaluit showed ships framed by pieces of melting sea ice, a striking symbol of a region where Canada’s sovereignty over the Northwest Passage is contested and where climate change is opening the door to new resources and new great-power rivalries. The idea that the United States might try to shape public debate in the Arctic is not far-fetched to many researchers. But for the Canadian government, publicly endorsing that idea would be a direct challenge to its relationship with Washington. The decision to quietly step back from chairing the session, rather than defend its legitimacy, was a measure of how difficult that challenge has become.
The withdrawals were visible in the conference itself. Benjamin Shultz, a lead researcher at the American Sunlight Project and a participant, said posters at the conference listing sponsors now had white stickers covering the logos of Canada, Lithuania, and the EU. That was a small detail, but a powerful symbol of the political pressure descending on an event designed to study political pressure. Shultz also challenged the Canadian government’s explanation that panel subjects had been “reframed.” He said the descriptions were unchanged from a June, 2026 version of the programme. If he is right, then Canada’s withdrawal was not about a change in framing, but about the willingness to stand behind a conference that dared to put an ally in the same analytical frame as adversaries. The conference organizers declined to comment, perhaps reluctant to add fuel to the fire. But their discomfort was understandable. EU DisinfoLab is a non-profit that has earned credibility by treating disinformation as a global phenomenon, not as a partisan cudgel. Its mission is to expose manipulation, whether it comes from Moscow or Washington. Yet this year, the organization found itself under attack from a different direction. U.S. officials accused the conference of false equivalence; some members of the counter-disinformation community accused governments of cowardice; others worried that drawing too much attention to U.S. behaviour would make it easier for authoritarian regimes to deny their own interference. The debate reflected a growing fracture within the field. For years, the counter-disinformation community had a clear enemy: Russia, with China and Iran as secondary concerns. But the Trump administration’s hostility toward European regulators and its willingness to punish researchers with visas and sanctions has blurred the line. Some researchers now quietly describe the United States as a disinformation threat, not because the U.S. government uses the same tactics as Russia, but because its political leaders have shown they will use the machinery of office to attack democratic institutions and independent voices. Others say that comparing the United States to Russia is a mistake that serves no one. The conference was caught in the middle.
Canada’s withdrawal from sponsorship should not be read as an abandonment of the fight against disinformation. The federal government remains committed to the cause; indeed, Global Affairs said so explicitly. But the episode raises a deeper question about what that commitment means in practice. The Globe and Mail has argued that Canada’s best defence against foreign influence is an informed public. An informed public, however, requires more than just access to facts. It requires institutions and leaders who are willing to speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable, and to support researchers who follow the evidence even when it points at powerful friends. The U.S. State Department’s criticism of the conference was itself a form of influence. It was not a covert operation, but it was an attempt by a foreign government to shape the terms of a public debate in another country. That is exactly the kind of behaviour FIMI researchers are supposed to study. The fact that the Canadian government responded by pulling its sponsorship may have been diplomatically wise, but it was also a sign of how hard it has become to maintain an independent information ecosystem in an era of intense geopolitical pressure. The white stickers on the sponsor posters were a small but telling representation of that pressure. The question now is whether the counter-disinformation community can continue to do its work without being captured by the political forces it seeks to understand. Some have argued that the conference should never have given its critics such an easy target. Others believe that the real betrayal would be to censor themselves to please the U.S. government. In the end, Disinfo2026 will likely be remembered not for any particular panel or finding, but for the way it forced the community to confront the limits of its own values. It was a conference about disinformation, and it ended up becoming a case study in how difficult it is to define disinformation when everyone, including the people studying it, has a stake in who controls the story. That is a lesson worth remembering, especially for a country like Canada, where the Arctic ice is melting, global powers are circling, and the distinction between ally and adversary has never been less clear.