Disinformation is not a new phenomenon, however, digital communications have changed the speed at which information travels. The easiness with which false information can be spread has made the European Union (EU) vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the EU has taken steps to respond to these challenges.
Allied foreign ministers met in Brussels on 6 -7 April 2022 and approved the Charter of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic or DIANA. DIANA will bring industry, start-up companies and academia together to research new dual-use technologies to solve critical defence and security challenges. The alliance has also announced additions to the technology list DIANA will focus on what NATO has identified as priorities, including artificial intelligence, big-data processing, quantum-enabled technologies, autonomy, biotechnology, novel materials and space. (NATO website, 2022).
The dawn of the new century seemed to promise an impending revolution in modern warfare in which unmanned, weaponised systems could augment the capabilities or even replace human elements from the battlefield. The use of unmanned systems in parallel or in lieu of human units factors would not only diversify and augment current military capabilities but also reduce the human risks of operating in hostile environments, even allowing to act in otherwise inaccessible scenarios.
With the recognition of cyberspace as a domain of operation, conducting covert cyber espionage and cyber interference has become more accessible, threatening public institutions and global companies. Hence, cyberspace plays a part in modern warfare. It offers many opportunities but also brings great challenges for national security.
From 2023 Latvia will rely again on conscription, after abandoning it in 2007, when the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The decision was taken to strengthen army forces, that now rely only on 7,500 active soldiers and national guardsmen (Euronews, 2022). The Russian invasion of Ukraine created the need to reinforce the army potential, and conscription – the mandatory enlistment of people in the national armed forces of their citizenship country – helps to reach this goal by increasing the number of reservists. The Latvian Ministry of Defence plans to recruit some 500 young men aged 18-27 twice a year; Riga hopes the quotas will initially be filled by volunteers, with the compulsoriness becoming effective only at a later stage (Balčiūnas, 2022).
Quartier Reine Elisabeth
Rue d’Evere 1 – box 44
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Phone: +32 (0)470 66 24 90
Email: info@finabel.org
