Ricardo has co-written an article for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15 November) with Thorsten Benner of the Global Public Policy Institute, entitled ‘Facing up to authoritarian influence-peddling’.
The piece argues that Russian hacking and propaganda are just the tip of the iceberg of authoritarian influence in liberal democracies. According to Ricardo, authoritarians skilfully exploit the self-inflicted weaknesses of open societies: the complicity of Western professional classes serving as willing enablers as well as negligence in protecting critical infrastructure of liberal democracies. He suggests that it is time for open societies to fight back through a comprehensive strategy to limit and counter authoritarian influence.
It was also reproduced in the Financial Times
