jeopardises our democracy, and even our security. Given this convergence, will the proposed European Democracy Shield actually shield democracy? While in theory the Commission’s democracy package complements the EU’s internal security strategy, defence strategy and preparedness strategy – aiming to form a co­herent ecosystem of efforts to strengthen and sustain our democratic resilience – in practice the Democracy Shield falls short of what its name suggests it will do. First, there is a gap between the serious threats and the limited operational measures that are proposed: voluntary coordination rather than firm obligations or enforcement tools. Second, the Shield overemphasises external threats, allow­ing it to sidestep uncomfortable issues within the EU itself. This limits its ability to address the full spectrum of vul­nerabilities. Third, the Shield fails to confront the systemic risks posed by platform algorithms and digital business models. It pro­poses no new obligations for platforms – despite the pos­sibility of enforcing risk mitigation measures under EU digital legislation. Never let a good crisis go to waste Sadly, we must conclude that the EU is still doing too little to defend our democracies against foreign interference, to prevent further polarisation and erosion of democracy“at home” and to protect our democracies from technological challenges. Worse, it doesn’t seem to acknowledge that these threats are interconnected and are now converging. The writing has been on the wall for more than a decade. Now that Putin, Trump and“tech bros” seem to share sim­ilar goals, how many more wake-up calls do we need? Are we going to“wait and see” until, one by one, all European democracies are captured? Or will we heed the frog’s warning that we must jump out of the warming water be­fore we are boiled alive? Yesterday’s war Neither does the Shield link its diagnosis to the“strategic autonomy” and“tech sovereignty” that top the EU’s political agenda these days. Why doesn’t the package connect the dots of the EU’s stated priorities of democracy, security and sovereignty? Is it lobby power from the Big Tech companies, or even(un)diplomatic pressure from the United States? Democracies should have shifted their focus from content moderation to the governance of digital platform design years ago. And as soon as Elon Musk bought Twitter(in October 2022), they should have known and acted on the risk of hostile ownership of critical infrastructure for our democracy and security. As social media platforms have started their terminal decline, our battle can no longer be against their content, nor only against their design, but for what comes next: the transition from our information eco­system being dominated by social media platforms to one dominated by artificial intelligence. Instead, the Shield is still fighting yesterday’s war with soft measures like factchecking, media literacy and more coordi­nation. While these may be useful, they are insufficient to counter systemic drivers of“old” information manipulation and are wholly unprepared to tackle AI. So let’s not pretend that the Shield, nor its proposed“European Centre for Dem­ocratic Resilience” will protect us from Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference(FIMI), let alone from hybrid threats. And they certainly won’t shield democracy from the three converging trends that threaten its existence.