“It is for your own good!” says Romania’s hybrid regime

Who better foreshadows Romania’s plummet in the democracy index than General Rog, head of the cyber division of the Romanian intelligence services, boasting of his executive overreach over a year ago?

The situation in Romania is so dire that it requires extraordinary means—like quoting Episode 32, Season 3, from The Amazing World of Gumball, where Gumball's little adopted brother Darwin transforms into a safety dictator "for our own good"! What begins as genuine concern for his entourage's wellbeing ends with surveillance, control, and the cheerful destruction of freedom—all delivered with a sincere smile and absolute moral certainty.

Darwin turns the world into a totalitarian dictatorship in the name of Safety in “The Amazing Wolrd of Gumball”, episode 32, season 3.

In January 2025, The Economist delivered a devastating verdict: Romania had become the European Union's first "hybrid regime", downgraded from its previous "flawed democracy" status in the British newspaper’s yearly Democracy Index. The trigger was Romania's Constitutional Court annulling the first round of presidential elections based on what The Economist described as "murky intelligence reports" with evidence that was "at best, questionable". The supposed Russian influence was never clearly proven, and the ruling party’s own funding of the campaign it decried added a layer of tragic farce. It's the kind of absurd scenario that would fit perfectly in a cartoon—except this isn't animation, it's the systematic destruction of democratic norms by cheerful authoritarians who genuinely believe they're saving everyone.

The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe voiced deep concerns about the lack of solid evidence and transparency when deciding to annul the very cornerstone of democracy: the citizens’ vote. The Economist’s report, published a month after the Venice Commission’s urgent report, described a judiciary increasingly complicit in executive overreach, and an electoral process transformed into a stage-managed affair. Romania, once on the hopeful margins of Europe’s democratic map, now stands as a cautionary tale of how executive ambition can devour the very soul of a constitutional order.

If one considers how the old Securitate structure didn’t truly die during the revolution but instead morphed into business, politics, and control of the judiciary, the natural conclusion is that the separation of powers within the State has become a funny tale in Romania—an occult subversive idea imagined by some fringe conspiracy theorists named John Locke and Montesquieu.

But the three main powers are not all. To maintain control, the Executive needed to conquer the 4th estate—the media—a target achieved through decades of infiltration (read The misery of the Romanian legacy media). Romanian newsrooms have been seeded with intelligence assets, a fact once brazenly confirmed by the intelligence chief himself. Journalists becoming soldiers of a dominant narrative is an old story, perfectly described by Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent, but the Romanian Executive’s push to influence the media seems more like an old-school strategy—one that reminds us how the totalitarian regimes of the last century instrumentalized the press as a simple propaganda tool.

And we’re not in Chomsky’s time anymore either. The internet carried the promise of direct access to information, the possibility to organize ad-hoc, and the chance to develop citizen-journalism—literally bypassing the media when they’re more occupied with lap-dancing for the executive than covering the truth. That’s how the Yellow Vest movement happened in France, and that’s how the political repression against the Yellow Vests under Macron was documented by Amnesty International and journalists like David Dufresnes among others.

And that’s precisely why this revolutionary tool for direct democracy required “revolutionary” means for the Executive powers—not only in Romania. The conquest of the 5th estate—the internet—followed swiftly. This is the most important revelation from the Twitter Files reporting and the subsequent House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in the U.S. The work of Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Lee Fang, and later the contributions of Mike Benz and Andrew Lowenthal, revealed a world where the Executive power used funds from the Department of State to bankroll NGOs around the world—NGOs that either turned into censors, “fact-checkers”, advocates for shady “hate speech” laws, EU Digital Services Act trusted flaggers and recurrently activate on thematic purposes to co-sign open letters, as it happened again recently. As European journalist Thomas Fazi demonstrated it, even the EU joined the dance, funding similar actors to manufacture consent and fight dissent. All of this constitutes the Censhorship-Industrial Complex.

At the end of the day, Christopher Mott’s report, Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism, provides one of the best clues to understanding how these NGOs operate. Considering the implications of the Department of State money and the link between it and the military-industrial complex, we can assume that many of these empty shells living off foreign financing are just long-term cover operations for the military-industrial complex.

This brings us to the most revealing window into how Romania's hybrid regime actually operates—let’s go back to the Executive power’s direct action.

General Rog’s Revelations: The Social Engineering State

To better understand how the system operates, listen to General Anton Rog, head of Romania's National Cyberint Center, whose interview with famous podcaster Vlad Mercori provides a rare glimpse into the operational methods of Romania's hybrid regime. Like a cheerful technician describing his favorite tools, Rog explains their psychological manipulation capabilities:

“We can make you, through a link, SMS, visit, phone call, do an action that we want you to do against your will... to make you do something you normally wouldn't want to do, and how should I say, to do it with pleasure and to desire to do that thing. That's the beauty of it.”

He boasts of perfect results:

“I have an application that gave me a 100% success rate... there hasn't been a case where that person didn't access the link.”

This isn't theoretical research—it's operational doctrine deployed against Romanian citizens. Rog even tested these techniques on his own superior, offering a fake Ferrari tour to extract personal information. When the superior realized he’d been tricked, he said: “You guys aren’t right in the head.”

The whole part is chilling, with the podcaster, Vlad Mercori, even half-jokingly mentioning the leading sovereigntist party as a reason for the intelligence services to override the democratic debate and the flow of information, and meddle with elections.

Vlad Mercori: If a party uses… The name doesn’t matter, let’s say X or AUR, X, whatever.
General Anton Rog: Now I can’t answer questions anymore. We’re not allowed to do politics.
Vlad Mercori: X, then.
General Anton Rog: So we stick with X?
Vlad Mercori: Yes, yes, yes.
General Anton Rog: Rev, rev, rev, delete, X.
Vlad Mercori: Yes, exactly. We’ll cut it from the edit anyway, [to the audience] you guys only heard X. So it used social media in 2020 [n.t.: that’s when AUR entered in the Parliamant] […] If there are arguments, evidence that someone actively participating in an electoral process is funded, has consultancy, anything related to someone who by default is seen as a potential enemy, and uses that information on social media… There was the whole story that the “steamroller” came on social media. What’s the mandate—maybe it’s not called a mandate, I don’t know what it’s called—
General Anton Rog: Well, it’s good, “mandate” is right.
Vlad Mercori: What is Cyberint’s mandate in such a case? I mean, if you clearly see that some things are happening… […]
General Anton Rog: Good. The mandate is simple. There’s Law 51 from 1991, which regulates national security. Until Valentine’s Day this year, we didn’t have this threat explicitly listed in it. On March 14th… After it was challenged at the Constitutional Court, the Cyber Security and Defense Law was still—The Constitutional Court is a court that now I see stands with Romania, no longer with other interests—so it declared the law constitutional in its entirety. It’s legal jargon, but I don’t know how else to put it. So we have Law no. 58 from 2023, which regulates cyber security and defense. I don’t remember which article of this law, but this law also modified Law 51 about National Security. And in Article 3, three letters were added: N, O, P, I think. Letter N says that cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and government are a threat to national security.

Letter O says that actions, inactions, facts, phenomena that lead to the disabling of systems or their compromise represent a threat to national security. And letter P, which interests us tonight, is the letter that refers to hybrid actions, to disinformation, but only those that change the constitutional order. And if we’re talking about elections, we’re in that situation. So starting March 14th, we have a law that obliges us and gives us responsibility—it gives us the authority to act. What does the National Cyberint Center do in this situation? Well, if that campaign is a disinformation campaign, an influence campaign, a hybrid attack on the constitutional order—meaning it influences elections, influencing elections means that the will of the electorate, which is part of the Constitution, the right to vote and to be elected, is changed—meaning the vote is no longer cast in accordance with the individual’s will, but there’s influence that leads to different results, changes the constitutional order, then we use all the means and force we have in the intelligence service to eliminate that threat. What does that mean? It means we counter the campaign online. It means that if we’re talking about an intelligence agency or websites and so on, we take them down, we shut them down. Not alone— with help from ANCOM, with help from the National Cyber Security Directorate. In many cases, it’s not even known that we’re behind it, that we did all the work, yes? We go to the institutions that have the legal authority to shut down, to take down, and so on—we provide them with all the information, and they use it and take those measures. If we get to individuals that we know for sure are doing it—it’s indisputable—then we get a National Security warrant signed by the director, approved by a prosecutor from the General Prosecutor’s Office, signed by the Prosecutor General, approved by an assistant judge from the High Court, authorized by a special judge from the High Court, and based on it we…

Vlad Mercori: But the elections will be over by the time you get all that.

General Anton Rog: We can get such a warrant in less than an hour.

This interview took place a year before Georgescu’s surprise TikTok blitzkrieg in November 2024.

Besides the almighty powers this interview reveals, one of the most damaging aspects is the near-admission of direct electoral interference, justified as countering “influenced” votes. In a context of fierce debate about sovereigntism, few people realized how the very idea of personal sovereignty—free will—has become obsolete for those who decide to annul elections and interfere in social media. What is left of democracy if citizens are reduced to nothing more than actionable tools, and the executive power acts accordingly?

This wasn’t a conspiracy theory—it was the state of affairs, described openly by the man who ran a major part of the system.

Now back to the “civil society”—if we understand it as a part of Western Military-Industrial Complex, it’s alignment with Mr Rog’s speech makes a lot of sense. The Romanian hybrid model does operate through networks of organizations masquerading as independent civil society while serving executive interests and military-industrial complex’s agendas. On February 12, 2025—the same day Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Rupa Subramanya testified before U.S. Congress about the "Censorship-Industrial Complex"—Romanian NGOs launched their own expansion of this system ahead of the election. Led by "Expert Forum", they sent an open letter to the European Commission, urgently seeking expanded "expert" access to social media data.

These NGOs don’t seem to act as watchdogs, actors resisting the abuse of the Executive—they rather look like leashed combat dogs of the same master. They function as the civilian face of information warfare, providing democratic legitimacy to authoritarian methods. When General Rog shuts down websites, these NGOs provide the intellectual framework justifying censorship as democracy protection.

In the end, Mr. Rog isn't some dark villain from a Bond movie. He's Darwin from The Amazing World of Gumball episod named “The Safety”—cheerful, sincere, absolutely certain he's saving everyone, while turning Romania into a techno-prison.

Like Darwin’s safety obsession that transforms him into a dictator, Rog’s security mandate is a symptom of executive power consuming democratic norms. Both characters share that dangerous combination: absolute power wielded with absolute moral certainty and a disarmingly seductive personality. Darwin believed safety justified any measure; Rog seems to believe security does the same.

The parallel is almost perfect. Darwin begins with genuine concern for his entourage's wellbeing and ends up subjugating the world through surveillance and control—all while maintaining his cheerful demeanor and sincere belief that he's helping everyone. What’s more similar than Rog's enthusiastic description of psychological manipulation as "beautiful", the casual joking about political interference, the proud boasting of 100% success rates in controlling human behavior?

He'd look great in a cape. Let’s give him one—but can the rest of us get rid of the surveillance and manipulation in exchange?

Romania's tragedy is that this isn't a cartoon—it's democracy dying while smiling. The hybrid regime operates through institutions that maintain democratic appearances while serving authoritarian functions. Citizens are manipulated "for their own good", elections are canceled to "protect democracy", and dissent is silenced… to "preserve free speech"?¹

As much as I love Ben Bocquelet's Amazing World of Gumball, living in such an episode is quite a bitter comedy. Liberty traded for safety is still liberty lost.

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu warned us that any kind of regime can descend into despotism. Who knows where Romania will fall next year in The Economist’s ranking?

1. My X account @sfglucon is still suspended. It was taken down minutes after sharing a YouTube video from an interview with the new Romanian president and some legacy media cheerleaders, published two days after he was elected—a video actually “debunking” a major propaganda theme of the fear campaign that took over Romania. Please feel free to share this story—and this other one too—and to ask X or Elon Musk to reinstate my account and provide actual information about who made the call to take it down.