I want to emphasize that the Ministry of Defense perceives threats such as natural threats, hybrid wars and disinformation and climate change. I will try to explain the disinformation as a threat, said Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandar Iliev from the Ministry of Defense at the panel discussion of CIVIL on “The highway with facts, responsibility and determination against the relentlessness of dangerous disinformation.”
Disinformation is associated with multiple threats to national security and has a negative effect on government, the division of citizens and has power over the will of citizens to possible aggression. The Internet as an artificial intelligence allows disinformation to be a global threat, to act quickly and to have high intensity. The Ministry of Defense has the task of ensuring national and state security. The Ministry of Defense prepares classified information for all that misinformation that is spread.
In carrying out such tasks, the Ministry of Defense uses experience from previous and learned lessons, lessons that say that people are subject to disinformation regardless of the level of education. Denying disinformation alone is not an effective method, repeating disinformation is counterproductive. Positive results that can be achieved by creating critical thinking ability and manipulation methods. The media is a key tool in the fight against disinformation. Hate speech is a form of censorship and it is an obstacle to the free expression of different opinions.