The United States pressured several allies to distance themselves from a European counter-disinformation conference after organizers included a panel examining whether Washington itself could constitute a foreign information manipulation threat to Europe.
The dispute unfolded around the #Disinfo2026 conference in Vilnius on October 7–8, organized by the Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab.
Reuters reported that US State Department officials spent several days contacting counterparts in Lithuania, Canada and France over a panel titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back.” FIMI stands for foreign information manipulation and interference, a term European institutions frequently use when discussing influence operations attributed to states such as Russia and China.
The conference programme had been public since at least early September. EU DisinfoLab itself advertised the event as addressing “the US as a growing FIMI threat,” alongside Russian information operations, platform regulation, artificial intelligence and other issues.
According to Reuters, American diplomats persuaded the Canadian and Lithuanian foreign ministries, previously listed among the event's main supporters, to distance themselves from the conference. The European External Action Service, the EU's diplomatic arm, also disappeared from the sponsor list, although Reuters could not establish whether Washington had directly pressured the EEAS.
France remained listed as a principal supporter.
Lithuania said it withdrew because several parts of the conference programme differed from the government's official position. Canada said it had revised its participation after changes to the framing of several discussions, while its officials continued attending the event.
Washington defended its intervention.
The State Department said describing the United States as a FIMI threat — terminology normally associated with hostile influence operations — undermined common objectives and should concern governments participating in the conference.
The result was unusual: a conference devoted to studying foreign attempts to influence information environments lost several government sponsors after one foreign government objected to being subjected to that scrutiny.
Whether the United States should be classified alongside Russia or China as a FIMI actor is debatable. The scale, targets and methods of different countries' operations vary considerably.
But the suggestion that US-linked actors have never conducted covert information operations is contradicted by the public record.
In 2022, Meta removed 39 Facebook accounts, 16 pages, two groups and 26 Instagram accounts involved in what the company classified as coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
The network targeted audiences in countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Syria, Kazakhstan and Yemen. Meta said the operators attempted to conceal their identities and coordination but that its investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military.
The finding is notable because Meta applies the same coordinated-inauthentic-behaviour framework to networks originating in Russia, China, Iran and other states. The US-linked operation was substantially smaller than some Russian networks Meta has dismantled, but its existence makes scrutiny of American information operations a legitimate subject rather than an inherently hostile accusation.
There is also a longer historical record.
A bipartisan-majority US Senate Intelligence Committee report published in 2008 concluded that several senior Bush administration statements before the Iraq War were not supported by available intelligence. Claims suggesting an operational partnership between Saddam Hussein's government and Al-Qaeda were not substantiated, while assertions that Iraq was prepared to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations were contradicted by available intelligence.
That investigation concerned government statements rather than a covert social-media operation, and the committee did not establish that every inaccurate claim amounted to deliberate disinformation. It nevertheless demonstrates why information manipulation cannot be treated purely as a practice of Washington's geopolitical rivals.
The organization hosting the Vilnius conference has itself previously faced scrutiny over its methods.
Belgium's Data Protection Authority fined EU DisinfoLab €2,700 in 2022 and researcher Nicolas Vanderbiest €1,200 over a study of approximately 55,000 Twitter accounts discussing France's 2018 Benalla affair.
The regulator found violations involving political profiling and publication of raw data that included sensitive personal information. It stressed that investigating disinformation was legitimate but said the research had failed to adequately protect the rights of the people whose accounts were analyzed.
That ruling did not establish that EU DisinfoLab fabricated its research, nor does it invalidate the Vilnius conference. It does show why organizations tasked with identifying manipulation and classifying political networks require scrutiny themselves.
The immediate issue in Vilnius, however, is narrower.
EU DisinfoLab planned an openly advertised discussion about American influence. The US government objected. American diplomats contacted allied governments, and several institutions subsequently removed or reduced their association with the conference.
None of that proves that Washington constitutes the same type or scale of information threat European institutions attribute to Russia.
But the documented existence of US covert influence operations makes examining American conduct a legitimate part of any system that claims to classify information manipulation according to behaviour rather than geopolitical alignment.
The dispute therefore leaves the European counter-disinformation community with a question that extends beyond one conference panel: whether its standards apply equally when the country under examination is an ally.