The Nordic-Baltic Cognitive Security Network Shaping Up

Following our first internal workshop, Copenhagen Business School and the Alexandra Institute invited key organisations from the Nordic Baltic region to establish a Nordic-Baltic Cognitive Security Network.

The initiative’s overall mission is to defend the NB8 region’s liberal democracies by contributing to increasing its cognitive security and its ability to analyse, understand and react to cognitive threats. To that end, we will also work to create more focus on the cognitive threats it is facing and their seriousness. And, of course, to deliver on our mission, we must work to secure funding for the knowledge development, the research, the ecosystem robustness, the analytic work, the work on disseminating and teaching, and of course, the work on turning the network into an ecosystem of cognitive security work where the whole region learn from each other.

The interest from universities, research institutes and defence institutions was formidable, and more than thirty organisations sat up in their chairs and said, “This we have waited for, this is important, this we want to contribute to”. Some of them were able to come to Copenhagen on very short notice to agree on the first steps in the formation of the network, establish an interim Steering Group, and, in short, get the ball rolling.

The network will connect competence along two axes, the science/research–analysis axis (which to some extent is an axis between universities and military academies) and the STEM–SSHB axis, which means to bring together deep technological competence with equally deep technological social science, humanities and business competence.

Co-Founders Rob Gleasure and Morten Irgens would like to thank Martin Møller and Nicolai Mendgaard-Johannsen, at the Alexandra Institute – and of course a big “thank you!” to the individuals from the following institutions for their enthusiasm and help.

Copenhagen Business School  (CBS), Alexandra Instituttet , Försvarshögskolan - Swedish Defence University  (Försvarshögskolan ), DTU - Technical University of Denmark , Centre for Military Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen  , Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen , National Defence Academy of Latvia, Department for Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College (Forsvarsakademiet), University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands)(HÍ), the Psychological Defence Research Institute at Lund University, Department of Security and Resilience at DBI The Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI), Baltic Defence College, University of Tartu, Swedish Defence Research Agency(FOI), Aarhus University, Kristiania University of Applied Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NTNU Social Research (NTNU Samfunnsforskning),  University of Jyväskylä, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt - FFI), University of Helsinki, the Norwegian Armed Forces Cyber Defence (Cyberforsvaret), Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu – Försvarshögskolan – Finnish National Defence University, Norwegian Defence University College (Forsvarets høgskole (FHS), the Estonian Military Academy, Hanken School of Economics (Hanken), SINTEF Digital, Chr. Michelsen Institute CMI, , UiT- The Arctic University of Norway, Aalto University, and The National Defence Technology Centre (NFC).

Also, see the original LinkedIn article.