In the northern Israeli city of Afula, mornings usually begin with the ordinary soundtrack of small-city life: children lingering over breakfast, drivers honking in light traffic, shopkeepers pulling up metal shutters, and buses wheezing their way through streets that have seen generations pass. But in recent months, that familiar rhythm was repeatedly torn open by the scream of police sirens. On one such morning, a call to the police reported a terrorist spotted near a local kindergarten. The caller was calm and specific, the kind of detail-heavy warning that makes dispatchers sit up and officers move fast. He claimed a…

Hjort, the head of Sweden’s Psychological Defense Agency, has spent years studying how hostile states try to break democratic societies from the inside. His conclusion is deceptively simple: do not take the bait. In his view, the best way to handle coordinated disinformation campaigns is to deny them the oxygen of engagement. “Many of these things you need to ignore,” he said, rather than falling into the Russian “trap.” The whole point of such operations, he explained, is to provoke a reaction. “They want to get you engaged, they want you to get angry, they want to get you excited.…