Von Notz challenges outreach Selen on disinformation

Oct 5

Von Notz challenges the gap between the chiefs’ stark Russia warnings and their public impact, citing recent election results and asking how concrete hostile activity can be verified. Selen says Russian information manipulation seeks societal destabilization and finds receptive audiences; he calls for visible defensive capacity and resilience. Pressed on concrete public communication, he acknowledges that established media and agency channels fail to reach some audiences and that social media’s influence was underemphasized, including by his agency. He warns that AI-mediated information gathering may deepen that problem. Asked for transparent regular threat reporting, he says GAZ Hybrid already compiles daily or weekly situational reports; the problem is dissemination, not an absence of information. Von Notz concludes that platform ownership and partisan messages create a further problem for lawmakers. These are their competing assessments of communication and democratic resilience, not a quantified finding that Russian campaigns caused an election result.

At the October hearing Selen says GAZ Hybrid has operated for less than four months, held well over 100 meetings and handled a double-digit number of operational cases, some taken over by federal prosecutors. He presents coordinated detection and disruption as the means of turning intelligence into countermeasures. Asked later about transparent reporting, he says the centre’s situational working group produces daily or weekly reports, while wider public dissemination remains deficient. These figures and judgments are his account; not every case is identified or attributed to Russia.