GERMANY Introduction With an internet penetration rate of 94% in 2019 (Eurostat - Internet Use, 2020), and welldeveloped networks and ICTs the Freedom on the Net report by Freedom House (2019) places Germany above EU average. Generally, the internet is considered free, though a law which passed the Bundestag in June 2017 and came into full effect in January 2018 is viewed by some as an infringement on freedom of speech and could lead to improper censorship of online content posted by private individuals. The law, called the Network Enforcement Act, compels social media platforms with more than 2 million registered users (excluding messenger and chat app users) in Germany to establish ways to report unconstitutional speech (e.g. hate speech, defamation, libel, or slender) and delete such language within twenty-four hours of being reported (e.g. by other users) and remove content which appears to be illegal hate speech within seven days (Freedom House, 2019). In relation to misinformation campaigns and elections, an inquiry showed that no such campaign seemed to have significantly influenced election results for the federal elections in 2017. A similar conclusion has been reached the 2019 election for the European Parliament (Freedom House, 2019; Marchal et al., 2019). Nonetheless, fake news and conspiracy stories were shared throughout both campaign seasons, and commercial botnets were found to actively promote such material (Freedom House, 2019; F-Secure Deutschland, 2017). However, microtargeting or dark advertising on social media is not as common in Germany due to electoral and data protection laws (Dachwitz, 2017). Additionally, rising political tensions with regards to the continued popularity of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have also fuelled the spread of misinformation, oftentimes facilitated by the AfD’s social media channels. This has been particularly significant as right-wing sentiments are infiltrating the military and police (Der Spiegel, 2020a, 2020b), and fostering hate crimes, such as the shooting in Hanau in early 2020, which killed eleven people, the majority of whom were of Kurdish descent (BBC, 2020; Sheftalovich, 2020). In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany has also been struggling with conspiracy theories and increasing resistance against preventative measures (Naumann et al., 2020). The analytic firm NewsGuard was reportedly able to track a majority of misinformation and conspiracies around the virus to the Facebook page of COMPACT Magazine (c. 94,700 followers on 01/06/2020), which has also been sharing content for the AfD (Holroyd, 2020), though there is no proof of a direct connection between the two. Nevertheless, the AfD has been the only larger party actively politicising the pandemic by criticising the government, blaming them for the current situation, supporting the partially violent protests (Kamann, 2020), and spreading conspiracies through their social media (e.g. Figure 1) (Asmann, 2020). Additionally, the Twitter accounts RT Deutsch (formerly Russia Today), has also been highly involved in sharing conspiracies, as well as two other accounts with about 20,000 followers that do not seem to have any political affiliation (Holzki, 2020). An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity in Germany Organizational Form In general, it seems that the focus of the Cyber and Information Space structure within German intelligence and military is more on classic cyber security issues like network security or counterintelligence and less on information warfare and citizen surveillance (Freedom House, 2019). However, there are growing concerns that the state may try to expand its legal ability to 145