The State, eroded by disinformation, fragile infrastructures and poorly managed crises

The slow accumulation of vulnerabilities that put essential infrastructures under pressure, the state's ability to communicate credibly and the resilience of society in the face of manipulation and disinformation represent the security risks that the authorities in our country faced in the second half of last year, according to a press release submitted yesterday by the Joint Parliamentary Committee for the Exercise of Control over the Activity of the Romanian Intelligence Service. According to the cited source, the senators and deputies who are members of this commission found that the real risks to national security were not spectacular, but fragmented, cumulative and deeply interconnected.

They show that, from a political point of view, after the end of the electoral cycle, we had a generally stable context, but marked by social tensions generated by measures to reduce the budget deficit, intense debates on taxes, inflation, the decline in purchasing power and economic prospects. This background created, according to the members of the Commission, an information environment dominated by legitimate emotions, but extremely vulnerable to manipulation, in which real grievances quickly became raw material for conspiracy theories and disinformation narratives. The Commission noted that national security was affected not by violence, but by a process of attrition that tested the state's capacity to react coherently and maintain public trust.

In this context, two events seemingly unrelated to national security - the explosion in the Rahova neighborhood and the water crisis in Prahova, associated with the emptying of the Paltinu dam - became inflection points. The cited source shows that these events revealed critical vulnerabilities related to essential national infrastructures, institutional communication and the way in which the public space can be quickly hijacked by coordinated disinformation. The Commission found that these episodes demonstrated how easily technical or administrative problems can be transformed into potentially destabilizing crises, when official information is slow, incomplete or lacking credibility, and the public space is already tense.

The major risk identified was not the incident itself, but the way in which such situations can be exploited in the context of a cognitive war waged mainly in the online environment, including on informal platforms that are difficult to monitor. The Commission noted that the digital environment functioned as an amplifier of fear, confusion and distrust, allowing the aggregation of conspiracy narratives that eroded state authority and affected social cohesion. In this sense, national security was put under pressure not by a lack of resources, but by a lack of control over information flows and public perceptions.

In terms of counterintelligence, the Commission's assessment signaled serious risks generated by the regional context. The arrest of a senior official of the intelligence service of the Republic of Moldova raised questions about the reliability of institutional cooperation and Romania's exposure to indirect vulnerabilities, in a space marked by antagonistic influences. In parallel, the arrest of foreign citizens accused of preparing acts of sabotage on Romanian territory showed how quickly such incidents can be exploited informationally, fueling polarization and conspiracy theories, with a direct impact on public perception of state security.

The SRI Control Commission also drew attention to the risks targeting civil and institutional elites, in the context of warnings regarding espionage attempts directed against parliamentarians, universities and critical infrastructures. The lack of a consolidated security education for these categories was identified as a distinct vulnerability, with the potential to affect public decision-making and the functioning of the state.

The economic dimension of national security was, in turn, an area of major risk. Critical infrastructures - water, gas, energy - were analyzed by the Commission not only from the perspective of technical functioning, but also of social and informational impact, because a local dysfunction, in a climate of distrust, can quickly escalate into a national crisis, especially when accompanied by disinformation and poor communication.

In the area of organized crime, the Commission noted the risks generated by a fraudulent acquisition of Romanian citizenship and identity documents, in a tense regional context and under the regime of international sanctions. These practices were not treated as simple frauds, but as vulnerabilities with direct implications for national security and Romania's credibility abroad.

Domestically, the emergence of parallel structures that mimicked state authority, including the illegal use of SRI insignia, was considered a serious alarm signal. Beyond its atypical nature, this phenomenon indicated the risk of the emergence of alternative forms of authority, capable of exploiting the confusion and lack of information of citizens, with the potential for destabilization.

The conclusion of the Parliamentary Commission is unequivocal: in the second half of 2025, Romania's national security was tested by a combination of vulnerabilities - infrastructural, informational, social and institutional - that did not act in isolation, but fed off each other. The major risk was not a single attack, but the progressive weakening of the state's capacity to manage crises, to communicate credibly and to maintain the balance between security and fundamental rights. In such a context, the Commission stressed that national security can no longer be understood as a state, but as a continuous process, dependent on institutional cooperation, transparency and societal resilience, in an increasingly hostile information environment.