Cyfluence Research Center

This week, the Cyfluence Research Center, in collaboration with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Australia and the Pacific, is conducting the Tonga Influence Defense Training as part of the Asia-Pacific Influence Defense Training Series.

The four-day training brings together participants from CERT Tonga to explore practical approaches to identifying, understanding, and responding to foreign influence, information manipulation, and emerging digital threats.

We’re pleased to have Florian Frank and Shay Laufer leading the training and engaging with participants in Tonga.

Strengthening influence defense requires not only awareness of emerging threats, but also building the knowledge, skills, and institutional capacity to respond to them.

Building resilience in an increasingly complex information environment.

This August and September, Cyfluence Research Center (CRC) will host the Asia-Pacific Influence Defense Training Series in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Apia, Samoa. This training series led by Florian Frank and Shay L.

It designed for students, journalists, and public sector professionals, the training series explores digital influence, information manipulation, and hostile influence operations. Participants will gain practical knowledge and tools to strengthen critical thinking, identify emerging influence tactics, and build resilience within their communities and institutions.

We look forward to welcoming participants from across the Asia-Pacific.

During the last week, we observed, collected, and analyzed key developments related to cyber-based hostile influence campaigns (including Cyfluence attacks).

Highlighted Developments:
🔍 DFRLab mapped Storm-1516's full interference infrastructure against Armenia's May 2026 parliamentary elections, 45 campaigns, 149.5 million views, 450 accounts, two false-front website clusters, GRU Unit 29155, while France's Viginum attributed to the same network the first documented Storm-1516 campaign against a declared presidential candidate: fabricated health claims against Edouard Philippe, declared 2027 contender, one of 205 operations Viginum has attributed to Storm-1516 since August 2023.
🎭 Storm-1516 deployed a fake BBC video digitally inserting a stolen Lalique pendant on Ukraine's First Lady, Olena Zelenska, to generate 3.27 million views across 13,700 posts. At the same time, Ukraine's Foreign Minister revealed Russia had published more than 1,500 articles exploiting Spain's Ceuta migration crisis to spread anti-Ukraine narratives across European audiences.
🌎 Graphika's Ore Else report documented Spamouflage deploying 62 inauthentic accounts across four platforms to target six named Chilean journalists covering copper smuggling, marking a documented operational shift from geopolitical influence objectives to economic-sector information control.
⚖️ On August 2nd, 2026, the EU AI Act's transparency requirements entered formal enforcement: chatbots must disclose AI status at first contact, deepfakes must be labelled, and AI-generated content must carry machine-readable marks, with more than 180 organisations signed to the Code of Practice and penalties of up to EUR 15 million or 3% of global turnover.

📌 The CRC Weekly Report is a summary of what we regard as the main events in the information environment.
Read full article here: https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/cyber-based-influence-campaigns-27th-july-2nd-august-2026-report

Not every hostile influence campaign begins with outrage.

Some begin with something far quieter: a memory of a "better time."
What looks like harmless nostalgia can become a powerful cognitive tool, subtly reshaping how people judge the present, trust institutions, and imagine the future.
In our latest research, we explore how nostalgia is weaponized across very different geopolitical contexts, revealing how emotionally resonant narratives can quietly shape perceptions and influence societies over time.
For researchers, policymakers, and cognitive security practitioners, this is a reminder that not every cognitive threat is loud. Some of the most effective influence operations work precisely because they feel familiar, comforting, and deeply personal.

Sometimes, the most powerful weapon isn't fear.

It's nostalgia.

Read the full research to discover how seemingly ordinary memories can become strategic tools of hostile influence.

https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/the-weaponization-of-nostalgia-conceptual-framework-and-case-studies

The whole world followed last week’s events in Ceuta.

What started as a border crisis rapidly evolved into something else entirely, a live case study in how real-world instability is exploited and weaponized in the digital information environment.

Using narrative intelligence tools, our team mapped online discourse and tracked how Russian-aligned messaging and conspiratorial narratives emerged and were amplified in near real time.
The observed velocity is precisely what makes this case worth studying closely...

For threat researchers, policymakers, and cognitive security stakeholders, cases like this are a stark reminder that the information environment is not a side mirror of events, but a target for hostile actors and their messaging.

📖 Read the full blog: https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/ceuta-and-melilla-russian-aligned-narrative-exploitation-of-the-border-crisis

During the last week, we observed, collected, and analyzed key developments related to cyber-based hostile influence campaigns (including Cyfluence attacks).
Highlighted Developments:
⛓️Russia launched a coordinated cognitive warfare campaign against the Poland-Ukraine alliance, deploying GRU-linked operations to pay Ukrainian refugees to hold destabilising protests in Poland, FSB-released purported archival documents amplifying historical grievances, and coordinated Google Maps vandalism, prompting Poland's Foreign Minister to state Moscow was waging a full-scale cognitive war against Poland.
📱The European Commission published binding AI Act transparency guidelines requiring disclosure of AI-generated content and deepfakes from August 2nd 2026, and issued preliminary DSA findings that TikTok violated platform safety obligations by setting minor accounts to publicly visible by default and recommending minor-generated content to a global audience.
🧩Beijing is systematically weaponising Taiwan's political divisions through Mazu religious temple networks, subsidised mainland visits, and targeted digital campaigns to erode Taiwanese trust in the United States, with electoral data confirming CCP influence operations have already shifted voting patterns in key districts.
📱A NewsGuard audit found that leading AI chatbots reproduce pro-China false claims at significantly higher rates when prompted in Mandarin than in English, creating a language-dependent vulnerability that exposes Chinese-language users to disproportionate levels of CCP-aligned disinformation through mainstream AI tools.

📌 The CRC Weekly Report is a summary of what we regard as the main events in the information environment.
Read full article here: https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/cyber-based-influence-campaigns-20th-26th-july-2026-report

Discover the experts behind Chapter 3: Urban Governance, Social Condition and Public Trust of our Urban Cyfluence Blueprint Series, Volume 1: Asia.

This chapter brings together five leading researchers whose expertise spans digital governance, information disorder, urban planning, agricultural systems, and geospatial analysis — Dr. Eka Nugraha Putra, Dr. Kritika Sha, Dr. Nimas Maninggar, Dr. Kusnandar, Galuh Syahbana Indraprahasta, Ph.D., and Nugroho Purwono, M.URP.

Their collective work bridges policy, technology, and society offering a grounded, multidisciplinary lens on how Asian cities govern, trust, and evolve.

During the last week, we observed, collected, and analyzed key developments related to cyber-based hostile influence campaigns (including Cyfluence attacks).

Highlighted Developments:
🛡️ NATO issued a formal condemnation on July 13th, 2026, of Russia's persistent malicious cyber activities targeting member states and partners, coinciding with EU sanctions on entities supporting information manipulation, signalling a coordinated Western escalatory response to Russian hybrid operations.
💰 The Jamestown Foundation exposed the dual-funding mechanism behind pro-Russian influencer Alexandra Jost: RT's parent TV-Novosti paid approximately EUR 1,840 monthly while the Kremlin-linked Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives channelled additional grants, demonstrating the systematic financial architecture behind Moscow's English-language information operations.
🕵️ Graphika documented Chinese state-linked operation Spamouflage deploying a novel tactic on July 13th, 2026, distributing manipulated event flyers to disrupt anti-CCP gatherings in the US and Europe organised by Safeguard Defenders and pro-Tibet and Uyghur groups, marking an escalation toward direct transnational repression via coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
🎥 NewsGuard's Reality Check confirmed that pro-Iran accounts posted an AI-generated video falsely depicting missiles striking a US Navy aircraft carrier, with multiple visual inconsistencies exposing the content as synthetically manufactured, a documented escalation in Iran's use of generative AI for false military triumph claims.
📌 The CRC Weekly Report is a summary of what we regard as the main events in the information environment.
Read full article here: https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/cyber-based-influence-campaigns-13th-%E2%80%93-19th-july-2026-report

The world has entered an era of intensifying geopolitical contestation. Southeast Asia, with its strategic location, rapidly growing economies, critical maritime trade routes, and abundant natural resources, has fast become a battleground for influence among the world's major powers.

In this highly competitive environment, seemingly domestic issues, such as the June 2026 demonstrations in Jakarta, are hijacked by threat actors seeking to insert narratives that serve a larger geopolitical agenda.

Our latest research, "Coloring the Protest: PRC-Aligned Narratives and Indonesia's June 2026 Protest Wave," maps how a small cluster of pro-PRC influencer accounts worked to reframe Indonesia's domestically rooted demonstrations as a U.S.-backed destabilization effort.

Read the full report to understand how information operations are shaping the narrative around Southeast Asia's political landscape: https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/coloring-the-protest-prc-aligned-narratives-and-indonesia-s-june-2026-protest-wave