“The level of threats of foreign interference is at a high stage in a tense and uninhibited international context,” estimate the authors of the report. If the intelligence services can use “various means of obstruction to thwart foreign interference”, these tools are not “sufficient on their own in the long term”, they decide.
To strengthen their arsenal, the parliamentarians propose the establishment of an “ad hoc legislative system for the prevention of foreign interference on the model of American law”, the use of the procedure of freezing assets “to any person or structure engaging in actions detrimental to the maintenance of national cohesion or intended to promote the interests of a foreign power.
They also suggest “a European response” and believe that these different measures could be grouped “in a bill dedicated to the fight against foreign interference”.
The delegation notes that this threat has taken on “a new magnitude in recent years, primarily due to a “radical change in the geopolitical context”. “We have suddenly moved from a world of competition to a world of confrontation with “authoritarian regimes on one side and Western democracies on the other,” write the authors of the report.
“This divide between the West and the rest of the world emerges,” according to them, “as the dominant marker of the current period.” Added to this is the digital revolution with cyberspace, “which has become a privileged field of confrontation and competition between States”, and the policies of influence and espionage which constitute “hybrid threats”.
“Information warfare”
The delegation points to “large-scale information manipulation campaigns”, a “new form of foreign interference” which has taken, according to it, “an unprecedented scale”.
“Fake news is the weapon of a war against the West,” insist the authors of the report. They cite the 2016 American presidential election or the British referendum on Brexit, which were “the subject of foreign digital interference campaigns on social networks and media”, and in France the “Macron Leaks” affair. before the second round of the 2017 presidential election.
The authors cite Russia as an important actor and describe “its signature”, its operating methods. Among them are infiltration, the appointment to the boards of directors of large Russian groups of former European leaders, such as former Prime Minister François Fillon or former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and the manipulation of information.
On this last point, the delegation notes that the closure in France of the Russia Today and Sputnik media has “helped reduce the scope of Russia’s information war”. China, another active actor, has as its operational mode “the united front”, a “political strategy and a network of public and private institutions and key individuals, placed under the control of the Chinese Communist Party”.
Turkey’s role
The Chinese diaspora (600,000 people in France) plays an important role. Turkey also has inclinations to interfere, according to the delegation, with the objective “of controlling the Turkish diaspora as a relay of the ideas of Ankara’s power, that is to say hostile to the Kurds and the Armenians” .
She also highlights “religious practice”, “a powerful lever for promoting a political ideology”. In this regard, she mentions the financing of places of worship in France and the secondment of imams to French mosques, previously authorized, which “allowed Turkey to influence Islam in France”.
Another modus operandi of Turkey, according to the delegation, “entry into politics via participation in local and national elections”, an active presence on social networks to disseminate messages hostile to a legal text, such as that relating to separatism .
The delegation deplores the “naivety” of elected officials, senior civil servants, businesses and academic circles in the face of foreign interference. During his hearing in February, the Director General of Internal Security (DGSI), Nicolas Lerner, warned deputies and senators against attempts to approach foreign intelligence agents, particularly Russian ones under diplomatic cover, for operations espionage or interference.