30 June 2026
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
Irish Tech CEO Appointed to Electoral Commission
Ross Frenett, Founder and CEO of Moonshot, has been appointed as a Member of An Coimisiún
Toghcháin, Ireland’s Electoral Commission, by the President of Ireland, following resolutions passed
by both Houses of the Oireachtas.
A native of Cork and graduate of University College Cork, Frenett founded Moonshot in 2015. The
company uses artificial intelligence to counter electoral disinformation and online manipulation,
operating across more than 55 countries.
He joins a Commission chaired by Justice Marie Baker. An Coimisiún Toghcháin is a statutory,
independent body, established on 9 February 2023 with responsibility for a broad range of electoral
functions set out in the Electoral Reform Act 2022.
An Coimisiún Toghcháin has wide ranging responsibilities, including for the investigation and
monitoring of online disinformation, online misinformation and manipulative or inauthentic
behaviour online during election campaign periods, as well as functions to prevent manipulative or
inauthentic behaviours online.
The appointment comes at a moment of growing urgency for electoral institutions worldwide, as
AI-generated disinformation, coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and hostile state information
operations pose an accelerating threat to democratic processes.
“I’m proud to be appointed, and clear-eyed about the scale of the challenge. The next four years will
decide how Irish democracy holds up against threats that didn’t exist a decade ago: AI-generated lies
at scale, hostile state information operations, hard choices about the rules of our elections. None of it
is hypothetical and none of it is slowing down”, says Frenett. “For almost twenty years I’ve worked
alongside people who understand these threats better than almost anyone, my team at Moonshot,
and a wider network of researchers and practitioners. My job here is to be a bridge: to carry what they
know into the rooms where decisions about Irish democracy actually get made.”
About Ross Frenett
Ross Frenett is Founder and CEO of Moonshot. He began his career in counter-extremism, leading
programmes on terrorist recruitment and radicalisation before applying those skills to disinformation,
electoral integrity, and AI governance. His work has spanned more than 55 countries, including a
wartime disinformation resilience programme in Ukraine and, with Google, a prebunking campaign
reaching over 120 million citizens ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections. From 2020 to
2024, he co-chaired a European Commission working group on countering extremist narratives and
online recruitment. He holds a BA in Politics from University College Cork and an MA in Security and
Society from King’s College London.
About Moonshot
Moonshot is the global leader in online safety, empowering people to thrive online. We deliver
initiatives to empower the public to keep themselves safe from online threats, reaching over 300
million people across the globe. This work is delivered to the highest data privacy standards, and
always protects the civil liberties of online audiences. Our work is rooted in the fundamental belief
that change is possible. Moonshot operates globally from four offices: Dublin, London, Toronto, and
Washington D.C.