Editorial: Disinformation Countermeasures and Artificial Intelligence

Ludmilla Huntsman^1,2*

• ¹Cognitive Security Alliance, Alexandria, United States
• ²Cognitive Security Alliance, USA, Alexandria, United States

Why does this research topic matter? Its significance emerges from a stark reality: the stakes of synthetic disinformation-systematically coordinated, AI-powered and amplified by bad actorsare not only epistemic or political. They are human, material, and often lethal. As I write this editorial, Russian soldiers launch missiles, drones, and guided bombs on Ukrainian cities for the fourth consecutive year. Russian state media justifies these war crimes domestically through narratives rooted in persistently distorted facts, heavily manipulated language and beliefs cultivated and reinforced by long-running state-directed disinformation campaigns. The tragedy illustrates an ugly truth: biased beliefs are algorithmically engineered and deployed at national scale can precipitate genocide and crimes against humanity. Disinformation kills, carries massive human suffering, and is an imminent threat to global security. It provokes and exacerbates conflict, erodes social cohesion, undermines trust in democratic institutions, and weakens societal resilience. The Disinformation Countermeasures and AI topic collection illustrates that while CogSec has become a critical domain, further research is needed to devise effective strategies on how to contain malign influence in the rapidly changing world.When we began developing this research topic collection, the global information environment was already showing signs of destabilization. Yet during the span of its completion, the landscape has transformed more profoundly than anticipated. The acceleration of generative AI has altered not only the scale but the texture of disinformation, with interactive agents customizing and mimicking authenticity with increasing precision. Moreover, major geopolitical actors have escalated their use of information operations as instruments of statecraft. Meanwhile, the United States responded to this rapidly evolving threat with what experts described as unilateral disarmament and even surrender. After the closure of the U.S. government's main vehicle for countering foreign disinformation (GEC), along with the U.S. Agency for Global Media and other institutions, the global information sphere became even more vulnerable to malign influence operations and asymmetrically contested. With adversaries deliberately targeting cognitive, social, and institutional fault lines, this widening imbalance underscores why new research, new alliances, and new countermeasures are indispensable.Our eBook will expand your understanding of the large, interdisciplinary spectrum of the topics within the field. Deepest thanks to my co-editors George Cybenko, Alexander Makarenko, and Paul Vines for their insight, leadership, and commitment to advancing this field. We extend our gratitude to all authors from Ukraine, Germany, France, United States, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland who contributed to this research topic, to the reviewers whose expertise strengthened the scholarly quality of the collection, and to the editorial staff at Together, these contributions converge on a clear conclusion: effective counter-disinformation demands a whole-of-society approach, in which information integrity is achieved through advanced AI methods, attribution, public-private partnerships for cognitive resilience building, and adaptive democratic governance.The challenge before us is not merely to develop more sophisticated classifiers or improved detection algorithms. It is to create cross-sector alliances to weave technology, education, societal values, and institutional frameworks into a trustworthy ecosystem. Researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and platform designers must work together to share best practices, develop transparent evaluation standards, and build open datasets and multimodal benchmarks. The work gathered in this collection underscores the complexity of this challenge while pointing to pathways for technological, cognitive, and institutional innovation.Our hope is that this eBook not only offers rigorous scholarship but also serves as a foundation for collective action and a catalyst for global collaboration. In a world where the integrity of information is continually tested, strengthening our cognitive and societal resilience is not merely an academic endeavor-it is a moral and strategic imperative.