Insights from our meetup with Alexey Sidorenko, Director of Teplitsa.

When we talk about national security, the conversation usually turns to hardware: tanks, defense budgets, and cyber-warfare capabilities. But at our recent event with Alexey Sidorenko, the director of Teplitsa (Technologies for Social Good), a different, more human kind of defense took center stage: social resilience.

Alexey, whose organization has spent over a decade supporting civil society in Eastern Europe, recently led Teplitsa through a major transformation. Now an independent, pro-democracy organization, Teplitsa is tackling digital authoritarianism head-on.

Alexey's core message to us was a powerful paradigm shift: In the age of hybrid warfare, the ability of a society to trust one another and self-organize isn't just a "nice to have"—it is a critical component of national security. In the following we have highlighted his central points of view.

Digital Authoritarianism as a "Membrane"

To understand why resilience matters, we first have to understand the environment it operates in. Alexey described modern censorship not as a simple wall, but as a "membrane."

In closed societies, information flows through the censorship membrane from 2 sides – from the Supply (media) and Demand (readers/viewers) sides:

• On the Demand side, readers or viewers are trying to "get through the firewall" using VPNs and obfuscation tools to find the independent sources of information.
• On the Supply side, independent media (often in exile) are constantly inventing new ways—mirror sites, apps with built-in proxies—to get reporting back into the country.

When addressing this issue Alexey described the user experience in these regimes as following "breadcrumbs." People see trails of information—mentions of a topic that doesn't add up—but these trails often hit a sudden wall – “website unavailable” or other message masked as a regular technical error. It takes digital tools, and often a network of trusted peers, to break through that wall and find the full story.

Social Resilience: The Human Defense Layer

The most striking part of the presentation was the comparison of societal reactions to crisis. Alexey referenced the work of Gregory Asmolov (King's College London) to illustrate how horizontal networks serve as a defense layer.

When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the difference in social resilience was stark:

• In Ukraine, society mobilized instantly. Horizontal networks of volunteers organized logistics, evacuations. Network-driven initiatives inspired highly effective innovative "drone brigades." This ability to self-organize was a decisive factor in their defense.
• In Russia, during the same period – horizontal networks facilitated through technology didn’t prevent the war or stop authoritarianism but still had an important effect. Full scale invasion to Ukraine, triggered a massive wave of emigration (as a form of anti-war protest) that couldn’t have happened under other conditions. From 1 to 1.5 million people left, voting with their feet because they lacked the infrastructure to resist effectively at home. 

For a European audience, the lesson is clear. The high levels of trust and association we see in countries like Denmark are not just cultural quirks; they are defense assets. If a crisis hits—whether it’s a wildfire, a pandemic, or a security threat—it is the strength of these horizontal connections that determines whether a society holds together or fractures.

Fighting Fire with Fire: AI & Disinformation

Resilience also means protecting the truth. We are currently facing FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference) at a scale that human fact-checkers simply cannot handle.

"We cannot rely simply on human fact-checkers," Alexey noted. "We need to fight fire with fire."

Teplitsa has been developing tools like Factbutcher.com, which utilizes Large Language Models (AI) to identify propaganda narratives and emotional manipulation in text. However, there is a significant barrier: Cost.

Analyzing the flood of synthetic content with AI is expensive. Independent journalists and activists risk going broke trying to keep up. Alexey’s proposal for Europe is practical: we need to subsidize these resources. European journalists and civil society need access to enterprise-grade AI tools to monitor and counter manipulation systematically.

The Platform Dilemma: Security vs. Discovery

Finally, the discussion touched on the catch-22 of modern communication platforms:

• Telegram offers incredible reach and usability (1 billion users), but its architecture is "contradictory" and potentially unsafe for activists in high-risk zones.
• Signal offers gold-standard security, but it lacks "discovery"—you can’t easily find new communities or information.

We are currently stuck between insecure platforms that allow us to organize broadly and secure platforms that isolate us. Building resilience in the future will mean solving this design challenge: creating spaces that allow for safe discovery without compromising users to surveillance.

Conclusion: What Gives Us Hope?

Despite the dystopian challenges of digital authoritarianism, Alexey ended on a hopeful note rooted in good design.

He reminded us of the early days of PGP encryption—powerful but nearly impossible for normal people to use. Today, encryption is often invisible and automatic. "Good design gives me hope," Alexey said. "As soon as something is well designed, there is a higher probability that people will use it."

Whether it’s through better tech, stronger trust networks, or AI-assisted truth-telling, the path forward isn't just about government policy. It's about building a society that is connected enough to weather the storm.

A big thank you to Alexey Sidorenko for joining us. You can learn more about Teplitsa’s work at te-st.org (requires translation).

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