Russian Cognitive Warfare

Jessikka Aro

Journalist and Author

Jessikka Aro is an award-winning investigative reporter with the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Aro specializes in Russia, extremism and information warfare. In 2014 she started to investigate pro-Kremlin social media troll techniques and influence on public debates outside of Russias borders; now, her reporting is widely quoted and used in international troll investigations. Due to her work, she became the target of a severe and ongoing international propaganda and hate speech campaign. In 2019, Aro published a best-selling investigative book about Kremlins information warfare in Finnish, which has been translated to several languages. Aro is also lobbying for better legislation to counter hybrid threats and protect citizens from state-sponsored online security threats, and has testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs at a hearing on Russian Disinformation Attacks on Elections: Lessons from Europe. In 2019, the US State Department awarded her with the International Women of Courage Award, but the award was mysteriously rescinded by the Trump administration allegedly due to Aros social media criticism of President Trump.

Edward Lucas

Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

Edward Lucas is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He was formerly a senior editor at The Economist. Lucas has covered Central and Eastern European affairs since 1986, writing, broadcasting, and speaking on the politics, economics, and security of the region. A graduate of the London School of Economics and long-serving foreign correspondent in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, and the Baltic states, he is an internationally recognized expert on espionage, subversion, the use and abuse of history, energy security and information warfare. He is the author of four books: The New Cold War (2008, newly revised and republished); Deception (2011); The Snowden Operation (2014), and Cyberphobia (2015). His website is edwardlucas.com and he tweets as @edwardlucas.

Keir Giles

Senior Consulting Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House

Keir Giles is a Senior Consulting Fellow with Chatham Houses Russia and Eurasia Programme. He also works with the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC), a group of subject matter experts in the wide range of security threats emanating from Russia.

After acquiring a wide range of experience in other fields in Europe and the former Soviet Union, Keir originally joined CSRC at the UK Defence Academy (UKDA) as a specialist in human factors influencing Russian security policy. While with UKDA, Keir wrote and advised for UK and international government customers on Russian military, defence and security issues, Russian strategy and doctrine, the Russian view of cyber and information security, and Russias relations with its neighbours in Northern Europe.

When the Defence Academys research and assessment programmes covering Russia were closed down in 2010, Keir brought key team members into the private sector to re-establish CSRC as an independent provider of expertise. Keir now oversees the research and publications programme there while pursuing his own specialist research area of Russian approaches to cyber and information warfare.

Keir Giles is the author of Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West (Brookings, January 2019), an examination of the persistent factors causing relations with Russia to fall into crisis.

LCol Yves Desbiens

Canadian Army; NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence

Marcus Kolga

DisinfoWatch.org; MacDonald Laurier Institute

Marcus Kolga is an international award winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, digital communications strategist, and a leading Canadian expert on Russian and Central and Eastern European issues. Marcus has a focus on communications and media strategies as tools of foreign policy and defence, and continues to write commentary for national and international media including the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. He is the co-founder and publisher of UpNorth.eu, an online magazine that features analysis and political and cultural news from the Nordic and Baltic region. He frequently comments on Russian, Eastern and Central European issues on North American radio and television and at foreign policy conferences. Marcus is involved with international human rights organizations and national political organizations. In 2008 he spearheaded an effort to make August 23rd, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a Canadian national day of remembrance for the European victims of Nazism and communism - Black Ribbon Day - by drafting a parliamentary resolution that was introduced and passed by Hon. Bob Rae. In 2015, Marcus was awarded the Estonian Order of the White Star by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.