The seventh edition of the PSSI Perspectives brings cyber security into focus. Moreover, it is written by our partners from a leading Estonian cyber security company Cybexer Technologies who delivered a table-top exercise that concluded this intensive week-long educational course. This PSSI Perspective takes a look at four challenges that decision makers face during every major cyber security crisis.

As an educational, research and analytical public policy Institution, PSSI is committed to enriching – and shaping – the Transatlantic security policy debate, especially in more underdeveloped issue portfolios, like the Economic and Financial (E&F) Threat Domain and Space Security, areas in which PSSI enjoys a global leadership position in the NGO community. The Institute also has a long history of tracking several regional security issues.

The Prague Security Studies Institute’s next PSSI Perspective looks at the nexus of disinformation and online advertising.

In a previous study PSSI researchers outlined how disinformation works as a lucrative business for various media platforms. One of their most significant sources of revenue is online advertisement. Fortunately, PR agencies and private companies are increasingly aware of this problem.

This new addition to the PSSI perspectives reacts to the suspension of Jack Ma’s Ant Financial Group on the Chinese Stock Exchanges, on November 3rd, 2020. Drawing on groundbreaking research conducted by our partner RWR Advisory Group, this perspective provides unique insights into the motivations behind the suspension, and, beyond, it offers a forensic analysis which exposes Ant Group’s reprehensible character.

This study brings a new perspective into how domestic and foreign actors’ propaganda methods for disinformation can be used on a social media platform – Twitter. On a case study of North Macedonia during a period close to the 2020 parliamentary election, the author applies original botnet identification techniques to identify a large network of users created in the run-up to the election and sympathetic to VMRO-DPMNE (the country’s right-wing party) and opposed to N. Macedonia’s NATO and EU integration.

A new PSSI study based on data gathered from the research project “Voices of Central and Eastern Europe” aims to describe profiles, attitudes and values of those Czech citizens who believe in conspiracy theories.

Disinformation continues to be one of the greatest challenges the Western democracies currently face, testing their integrity, cohesion and resilience. With social networks representing an important medium when it comes to their spreading, it is important to understand how exactly disinformation manifests itself  when it comes to the way it circulates on the network and influences its users.

This paper explores the “East vs. West” debate in North Macedonia and challenges the often shared notion that the majority of North Macedonians are united in favoring the country's Euro-Atlantic integration. By analyzing survey data, the study shows that ethnic Macedonians are significantly split on the geopolitical direction their country should take, and that partisanship is an important factor in this divide. This polarization is at least in part attributable to cueing from party elites, despite the claim by all major parties that they are pro-Western.

This new addition to the PSSI Perspectives goes over the 5G technology supplier selection in Germany. Unlike many other European countries, Germany has not yet decided whether it would allow Chinese companies to build the 5G networks. It is a pressing issue dividing the government coalition that should be resolved this month of November. This Perspective presents the current regulation, key actors and their standing on the issue.