On a damp October morning in Vilnius, a conference hall filled with researchers, diplomats, and civil society activists for the annual #Disinfo2026 gathering. For years, this meeting had been a place where Europe tried to understand how foreign powers use lies, manipulated videos, and stolen identities to weaken democratic societies. The agenda was crowded with familiar targets: Russian troll farms, Chinese influence operations, and the changing tactics of authoritarian regimes. But this year, the organizers had added something more uncomfortable. One panel was titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back,” and another featured legal experts examining the…

Imagine a researcher who has spent years tracking foreign influence campaigns, building databases of suspicious accounts, testifying before parliaments, and warning the public about the dangers of manipulated information. For most of the last decade, that person would have been focused on Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran. But this week, in a hotel conference hall in Vilnius, Lithuania, the spotlight turned in a startling new direction: toward Washington. At a two-day gathering called Disinfo 2026, hosted by the EU-funded nongovernmental organization EU Disinfolab, the United States government was not just criticized on policy grounds. It was framed as an active source…