About a year ago, on Thursday, March 28, viewers of Baby TV channel witnessed something I shall call "the sophistication of falsehood". It was the instant when my two- and five-year-old cousins, together with countless other children and infants across Europe, found their programme abruptly supplanted by Russian propaganda.

First, the cartoon soundtrack fell silent. Then the picture yielded to the visage of Putin, a Russian flag, animated footage of a bridge under construction, dams, foundries, a train, a church and a map of the nation.

According to the NL Times, this assault is the first on record to tamper with encrypted satellite-television content. In probing what had in fact transpired, I realised that the act ignited another kind of conflict: a hybrid war waged not merely to conquer, but to mould minds, to seed mistrust in the very fabric of reality. The provenance of this incident remains uncertain even a year later, much like so many others that draw us ever deeper into this growing sophistication of deceit.

2025 Rodrigo Gomes