Thirty years ago, on September 26, 1996, students of the Quran marched into Afghanistan's capital for the first time. At that time, their misogynistic politics ensured that their regime became an outcast in the world. The Taliban besieged Kabul for a year and a half. But then everything moved very quickly: In a lightning offensive in September 1996, the Islamist militia first captured Jalalabad city and then drove government units ahead of Kabul. Defenders of the city under Ahmad Shah Massoud were surprised by the rapid advance. On September 26, 1996, students of the Quran moved into the capital city. Just two years after their founding they controlled Afghanistan's political and economic center. Current dynamics in international relations are characterized primarily by a transformation of geopolitical conflicts and an exchange between traditional diplomacy and people-to-people diplomatic transactions. Under conditions where direct confrontation between nuclear powers is doctrinally practically excluded, confrontations move into the information space and cognitive realm of anthropological warfare.

The fourth International Forum Dialog on False Things 4.0 (in an unauthorized translation by the author of this contribution) took place on September 22, 2026 in Moscow and was organized by Dialogue Regions with participation from the Global Fact-Checking Network – GFCN (founded in Russia in 2024). The geographical coverage of the forum included more than 2 thousand delegates from 80 countries, including expert groups from China, India, Iran, Brazil, South Africa and Egypt. Therefore it can be claimed that the thesis about digital isolation of Russia, Eurasian and African countries is not valid.

Crisis of trust, or how diplomacy is being destroyed

Although there was no considered withdrawal by the author of this contribution via internet, similarly to what happened with Mr. Lukyanov's participation in a conference organized by Svatojpluk association at Prague hotel Duo focused on relations between Central European countries and BRICS states, it can be said with probability bordering certainty that primarily Western strategic communication shows systemic crisis of trust. Why? Because verifiable facts are replaced by media illusions.

At the opening plenary session of the forum Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov presented a detailed analysis of this algorithm: The entire meaning of Western information policy is to quickly invent false evidence, blow it up into universal catastrophe within one day, two or three days and then block access to alternative assessments and information.

In the report by Russia's foreign minister this mechanism was illustrated with specific examples of diplomatic and geo-economic demarches. The West uses them for sabotage and introduction of new sanction packages even after closing down diplomatic missions and cultural centers. In this context quick fraud ceases to be an element of propaganda but becomes a trigger for the disintegration of international relations, replaces international legal procedures and anchors illusion of knowledge.

Fakes (not only in form of same-named American film from 2022), false things and media fakes serve as basis for geo-economic pressure. Information aggression is almost always aimed at limiting competitiveness of majority of world states and access to international capital. Today it even affects investment climate before introduction of formal restrictions. Banks close accounts not after UN resolution but after series of publications in so-called information generators (for example Bloomberg and Reuters), or even upon request from uncertain jurisdiction, or politically incorrect persons. Mechanism for fighting against financial strangulation and starvation cannot be described more closely at present time and published primarily in politically correct Western press.

The information warfare schema operates on the principle of end-to-end destructive influence.

Such a schema requires the creation of a wave of publications about instability, technological uncertainty, or disruption in the financial sector of the target country with the aim of providing discrediting content and using pre-existing media coverage as a legal basis. It doesn't matter whether it's for freezing assets, blocking bank correspondence accounts, and disconnecting them from critical interbank infrastructure.

The principle is based on so-called market blackmail, exerting pressure on third countries through the use of secondary sanctions.

These manufactured "alternative facts" destroy user trust and cause damage to countries without their own information sovereignty, which are attacked with information that undermines the principles of state sovereignty.

Key Forum Block

This block represents an analysis of a case for protecting national electoral systems. This is a relevant topic even for the Czech Republic and, in essence, for the entire EU and West. The analysis prompted forum participants to discuss crisis management. I don't know who deals with this in the Czech Republic and has practical experience with it. However, I know that autumn campaigns for elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation and (supposedly) autonomous attacks by so-called artificial intelligence, according to President Trump, super-intelligence (for example, on the government in Australia), may serve as an example. Even if there is a possibility of high-level involvement by the authors and owners of so-called artificial intelligence (which, according to the author of the post, is undoubtedly a multidimensional approach) or people associated with Mr. Gates.

In Russia, the extent of external digital influence on elections has been demonstrated. According to official data announced at the forum, the state's IT infrastructure was subjected to a coordinated cyberattack: more than 4,000 waves of high-intensity DDoS attacks were recorded, aimed at discrediting the elections and paralyzing the operation of the electronic voting system. The high technological intensity of the attacks suggests cooperation between external organizational and technical support, which is typical for specialized government agencies. From my analysis of attacks on the website of the Czech Left Institute, I know that the vast majority of attacks originate in the United States.

The experience of Russia, which managed to maintain digital stability, has therefore become a basic case study for BRICS+ partners. Representatives of China, Iran, and Brazil emphasized during panel discussions that protecting electoral sovereignty today is not possible without their own sovereign algorithms for filtering traffic, the availability of national independent AI models capable of verifying election conditions and deepfakes in real time, as well as the importance of international coordination of efforts in this direction in accordance with the development of information sovereignty of BRICS+ countries.

Example from Malaysia

In Malaysia, we launched our own fact-checking initiative – labeling content, but that is only part of the solution. But we need citizens who critically evaluate sources, do not spread potential forgeries, and understand what they are sharing," said Nur-your Afida Kamaludin, CEO of the Malaysian National News Agency Bernama. I want to emphasize the role of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA). My agency is a member of its executive board, and in the 1990s and 2000s, we chaired the organization twice. Decades of cooperation have shown that direct interaction between agencies is essential. Today, we must take it to a new level in practice," summarized Ms. Nur-your Afida Kamaludin, who was also the representative of the OANA media community at the time.

Decolonization of the Global Information Space

According to Vladimir Tabak, head of GFCN and CEO of Dialog Regions, the decolonization process should begin with the opening of an international branch of the association in Dubai (UAE). The creation of a verification center in the Middle East is a direct response to the monopoly held by NATO and the European Union.

The UAE, as a new member of BRICS+, provides an optimal platform for developing universal fact-checking standards without political requirements. Of course, Russia is the foundation of this project, but because we are presenting it as international, we wanted it to have another attraction for representatives from different countries, different media outlets, and projects," said Vladimir Tabak.

Digital Safety for Children

One of the most compelling and conceptually new arguments presented at the forum was the work with young people and children. Within the sections dedicated to digital safety for children (with the participation of Alexey Goreslavsky, CEO of the Internet Development Institute), the latest trends were announced:

  1. The increase in involvement of adolescents and minors in cybercrime and online fraud has exceeded 100%.
  2. Transnational criminal syndicates are using resources from Western IT platforms, gamification, attacks with neural networks, and psychological manipulation. They use these methods to involve young people in financial scams and malware distribution, as well as the spread of destructive and extremist content, and even sabotage activities.
  3. Protecting children from digital criminals is increasingly becoming a cornerstone of geopolitical dialogue. Every sovereign state, regardless of its ideology, has an interest in preserving the mental health of young people. This applies even to states with conditional or non-existent sovereignty, one of which is the Czech Republic. This is indicated by statements not only from the Prime Minister but also by relatively strict standards for verifying and filtering traffic, although more on paper than in practice.
  4. Standards for verifying and filtering traffic should be viewed as a fundamental social obligation of the state, not as an attack on the digital freedom of citizens.

Chinese Expert Report: Analysis of the American Strategy for Colonizing Minds

The results of the fourth forum allow us to describe the breakdown of the paradigm regarding the placement of Russia and its BRICS+ partners in the media sphere in several areas at once.

  • The phase of reactive diplomacy has ended. According to the author of the presentation, this happened late, but nevertheless. Russia is increasingly turning to the West for verification, rather than justifying itself within a framework imposed on it after Perestroika.
  • The strategy of proving one's own correctness has been replaced by a strategy of ignoring the Western monopoly and currently creating its own institutions, as evidenced by the establishment of a GFCN branch in Dubai.
  • There has been a transition from the concept of information warfare to the concept of cognitive sovereignty. While the former involved symmetrical exchange of information attacks, the latter focuses on creating closed, protected national systems resistant to external influence.
  • A new outline of so-called verification diplomacy is emerging. This integrates the reality represented by the geopolitical heterogeneity of BRICS+. This heterogeneity is neutralized by the presence of a common threat: cross-border fraud, cyberattacks on electoral systems, and AI disinformation from the West, as well as proven myths and manipulations, similar to the statement by the Israeli Prime Minister that Israel's actions in Gaza are not governed by God and his laws, but by international law.

Conclusion

Based on the currently only superficially studied results of reports and discussions in the "Dialogue about False Things," it is highly likely, even without personal interviews with participants or at least one who contacted me some time ago, that the world has entered an era where a state's sovereignty is not determined solely by its military or economic potential, but also by its ability to protect the awareness of its citizens and the stability of its institutions from external cognitive programming.

The Moscow forum showed that the foundations of a new dimension of a multipolar world (described by the author of the post in an old-fashioned, politically correct, but inaccurate way) have already been laid. The foundations were laid for a multinodal global system. That is, a multi-node system, a term used in medicine (thyroid gland, nodes including lymphatic), transportation and logistics (transport hubs), and of course, IT (computer or server connections).

In the context of a deep crisis of traditional post-war international institutions, including the UN and IAEA, whose bureaucracy simply sabotages objective investigations, the right to question and demand verifiable evidence is becoming an integral part of state sovereignty. The Czech Republic, under the leadership of democratic elites, has a long road ahead to this realization. Imagine the silence if people only said what they knew! No agreement is needed.

Jan Campbell