The European Union is financing a conference, #Disinfo2026, that delivers an extraordinary rebuke to the Trump administration by claiming the US is engaged in “foreign information manipulation and interference” (FIMI). EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels nonprofit, is holding its annual conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, which began yesterday and continues today. Its program lists a session titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back,” and billed three Americans as speakers: Adam Fivenson of American University, the former CIA officer who writes as Alex Finley, and Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
The session description asked, “how did the United States become a FIMI threat for Europe?” A second session, on the Arctic, went further than a question. It promised a discussion of “growing evidence that the United States has, in specific Arctic contexts, operated as a FIMI actor.” Finley and Brooking did not respond to requests for comment.
The EU has given EU DisinfoLab about €1.1 million in research grants on disinformation since 2018. The group received €250,000 from a project called WeVerify that ran from 2018 to 2021. It received €327,500 from vera.ai, a project funded under a call titled “AI to fight disinformation,” and took another €212,500 from a project called ATHENA that runs through October 2026. A fourth grant, of more than €308,000, began in June 2026 and runs to 2029.
The attack on the Trump administration by EU DisinfoLab appears to be part of a larger EU effort to censor social media platforms in general and Elon Musk’s X in particular. The EU has fined X €120 million, about $140 million, under its Digital Services Act. X is appealing the fine.
The United States State Department denounced the conference’s organizers for attacking the United States, which protects most of Europe under the NATO treaty. “We reject that characterization,” a State Department spokesman told Public of the charge that the US is a FIMI threat. “For too long, governments have exploited the pretext of combatting ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ for politically motivated reasons.”
The State Department noted that it has denied visas to Europeans it accuses of censoring Americans. “On December 23, 2025, the Secretary imposed visa restrictions that generally bar five individuals from entering the United States,” the spokesman said. “The Department does not preview potential actions, but the policy announced on May 28, 2025, is global and enforceable wherever the facts warrant.”
