# Disinfo2026 Conference **#Disinfo2026** was the annual conference of EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit that studies disinformation, held in Vilnius, Lithuania on **October 7–8, 2026**. It became a diplomatic incident before it opened. The program included a session on whether the **United States** should itself be treated as a source of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) in Europe. The [[Department of State]] responded by contacting European governments about their support for the event. Three sponsors — [[Canada]], [[Lithuania]] and the EU's diplomatic service — had their names taken off it. ## What happened | Date | Event | |---|---| | October 5, 2026 (Mon) | Canada and Lithuania ask organizers to remove their ministries' logos from conference materials. | | October 6, 2026 (Tue) | The European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic service, does the same. | | October 7, 2026 (Wed) | Conference opens. Canadian, Lithuanian and EU logos are taped over on banners and printed materials. One of the first panels takes up the US-as-FIMI question. | | October 7–8, 2026 | The *Guardian*, Politico, LRT/BNS and Tech Policy Press report the US role. | According to Politico (as reported by LRT and BNN), the State Department asked US embassies in several European countries, and the EU delegation, to convey Washington's concerns and find out whether governments agreed with describing the US as a FIMI actor. A US official said the department urged "some countries—though not all—to reconsider their participation." **The State Department's statement:** it could not discuss diplomatic communications, but "it should not be a surprise that countries would disaffiliate from this conference upon learning that it labeled the U.S. a 'FIMI threat.'" **The EEAS:** "We have decided to have the EEAS logo removed from the material associated with the conference." EEAS researchers still presented their work there. Lithuania's foreign ministry and the EEAS said parts of the program "did not correspond with their official positions." **France** stayed on as the only government sponsor and publicly reaffirmed its support. No speakers withdrew. [[Nina Jankowicz]], speaking at the conference, told Tech Policy Press: "States, and state-affiliated agencies, shouldn't have control over the program." > [!warning] Single-source details > - The *Guardian* reported internal State Department documents thanking Lithuania for "taking US concerns seriously" and calling the panel's framing "reprehensible and surprising," and, citing one source, that communications came from the office of Under Secretary [[Sarah Rogers]]. > - Marcy Wheeler, who attended, gives the panel's title as "USA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back," and says the conference had already "largely pulled its punches" on US disinformation. > Not independently confirmed as of 2026-10-09. ## Context The pressure came ten months after the State Department barred five European tech regulators and disinformation researchers from the United States, accusing them of censoring American speech (see [[Sarah Rogers]]). A separate Vilnius panel covered those sanctions. Tech Policy Press noted that it was unclear whether the three governments withdrew money or only their names. ## Analysis **The free-speech argument, turned around.** The administration's case against European platform regulation is that governments should not pressure private parties to suppress speech. In Vilnius the US government pressed other governments to stop sponsoring a private conference because of what one panel would say about the US. The administration's own stated test for censorship fits its own conduct here. **Allies did the dropping.** No one canceled the panel, and no speaker withdrew. What the pressure produced was distance: three sponsors decided, after hearing from Washington, that being seen next to the question was a cost. That is the vault's recurring pattern, *the state doesn't need to censor when the institution will do it itself*, carried into diplomacy. The effect lands on future programs, which will now weigh whether a session on US information operations is worth losing sponsors over. ## See also - [[Sarah Rogers]] · [[Department of State]] · [[Marco Rubio]] - [[Disinformation]] · [[Censorship]] · [[Free Speech]] - [[Lithuania]] · [[European Union]] · [[Nina Jankowicz]]