Speakers 2025

    Olena Tregub is the Secretary General and Executive Director of NAKO (the Independent Defense Anti-Corruption Commission), leading efforts to promote transparency, good governance, and anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine’s defense and security sectors.     Under her leadership, NAKO has played a key role in addressing corruption risks, strengthening export controls, and exposing the flow of Western components to Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. She serves on the Anti-Corruption Council of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, ensuring oversight of wartime defense spending, and coordinates the Public Council on Sanctions under the President’s Office, working to refine Ukraine’s sanctions policies. Additionally, she is a Steering Committee member of B4Ukraine, …

Marcus Welsch studied philosophy, literature, history and directing in Berlin, Toronto and Constance.       He works as a documentary film director and journalist, most recently together with Serhij Zhadan on his book “Himmel über Charkiw” (Suhrkamp 2022). His film work focuses on history and the culture of remembrance. He is also involved in OSINT journalism and data analysis. Since 2014, he has been working intensively on Russia’s war in Ukraine, especially on the military and foreign policy background, as well as the discourse in Germany about it. In 2021, he led a series of workshops in Ukraine on journalism and film research techniques in the areas of disinformation, …

Pat Mächler has a M.Sc. in Computer Science, but occupies themselves with other scientific topics such as epidemiology deep down to Google scholar searches for meta reviews and studies. Partially just out of training, part of simple curiosity. Pat was also active in ramping up the data analytics in the Swiss contact tracing against COVID-19 in Basel-Stadt in 2020 and 2021. Pat has in the past fostered the international cooperation among pirate parties, such as co-founding and actively supporting the international umbrella organizations Pirate Parties International and Pirates Without Borders.

Philippe Burger, aka “Pipo”, is the Vice President of the Swiss Pirate Party. He has been campaigning for freedom and security in the information age for many years. He is Co-Vice President of the Pirate Party Switzerland, President of the Pirate Party Zurich and host of the weekly format http://cyberstammtisch.ch

Dietmar Pichler is a freelance media literacy trainer and disinformation analyst from Vienna, Austria. He is Vice President of the Vienna-based NGO “Vienna Goes Europe” and founder of the initiative “Disinfo Resilience Network”, which aims to connect experts from different fields to analyze, expose and uncover disinformation and propaganda activities. His work focuses on foreign interference by autocratic regimes, in particular the Russian Federation. Since 2011, he has regularly traveled to Ukraine to monitor Russian propaganda targeting Western societies, especially since the annexation of Crimea and the covert invasion of Donbass in 2014. In 2024, he published the policy paper “Disinformation and Foreign Interference: A Challenge for the EU and …

Stephen Douglas is a Cultural Archaeologist whose nom de guerre is Decoding Trolls. Stephen worked as an OSCE diplomat monitoring Russia’s violations of its Minsk ceasefire obligations in eastern Ukraine between 2015 and 2022. During a spell working a bridge (2015-2018) connecting Russia-occupied Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine, Stephen discovered Russia was using Disinfolklore (stories that affect our emotions in negatively manipulative ways) to transform the identities of those subjected to this hyper-modern form of cognitive warfare / War Magic. In February 2023, Stephen started writing publicly about his discovery of Disinfolklore. At Disinfolklore.net, Stephen publishes regularly on how to combat Russian, MAGA, and other forms of subtle brainwashing …

  Theresa Fallon is the founder and director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies (CREAS) in Brussels.     She is concurrently a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, a member of the CEPS Task Force on AI and Cybersecurity, a member of the Loisach Group on transatlantic relations, and a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Theresa’s current research is on EU-Asia relations, maritime security, global governance, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and great power competition. She has testified …