I've been in #Geneva since the beginning of the week to represent the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) at the inaugural United Nations Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the AI For Good Global Summit. While the #GlobalDialogue presented the first opportunity to convene diverse stakeholders for productive conversations on ensuring regulatory and technical interoperability, instituting safeguards, and building trust, the #AI4Good Summit showcased cutting-edge AI innovations across sectors, including development cooperation.

#FIMI operations' effectiveness has so far been an open empirical question, with evidence suggesting their impact might be more limited than initially assumed. That's about to change with malicious #AI swarms. These are AI agents with persistent identities and memory that would come across as a real, diverse crowd of people, and could self-coordinate and infiltrate online communities. The risk is real and imminent. To discuss the effects of AI swarms on electoral integrity, we convened a panel for the DW Global Media Forum #GMF2026, which took place this year at the World Conference Center Bonn.

Last week, I was in #Belfast for the #EPSS2026. I presented our ongoing work with Lucan Way and Steve Levitsky on how resource concentration leads to autocratic durability. We show that there is one common thread across durable #autocratic regimes that are quite diverse in institutions, wealth, and culture: whether resources are concentrated in the hands of the state. When they are, it is difficult for the #opposition to mount an independent challenge against the regime, and easier for the government to divide, demobilize, and co-opt the opposition.

State-sponsored fiction is politically consequential. We should take it seriously. Last week, I was at Queen Mary University of London for the APSG conference, where I presented joint work with Michael Donnelly on how authoritarian state-sponsored fiction shapes public support for security operations abroad. Authoritarian governments invest more and more in producing and controlling entertainment content. It is a deliberate instrument of influence.

Can we track autocratization in real time, at low cost, and in a transparent and reproducible way? Last week, I was at the European University Institute in Florence for an incredible event organized by MetRiSP Standing Group of the Italian Political Science Association SISP on conceptualization and measurement challenges of democracy. I presented our ongoing work with Lucan Way, Steve Levitsky, and Yashar Talebirad. It's a framework for extracting structured autocratization events from sources. The most important contribution is that we implement this framework at low cost and at scale.

On your way to Belfast for #EPSS2026? Need help finding a panel you'd regret missing? I got you! Join us today! @thenoahbuckley.bsky.social @sukaynayk.bsky.social @rikhilb.bsky.social @amjaime.bsky.social @skaaning.bsky.social @epssnet.bsky.social @lucanway.bsky.social @idos-research.bsky.social