WIREDGOV

We live in an age where information is a battlefield and our adversaries are already fighting on it. To defend the UK's 'cognitive resilience', we must replicate the institutional foresight that led to the creation of the NCSC a decade ago.

In 2015, the UK made the bold decision to establish a dedicated public-facing National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), bringing a fragmented response together under one single, empowered organization. This was a radical but necessary step, and now the 2025 Strategic Defence Review has identified a new top-tier threat: disinformation, a core part of state-sponsored hybrid warfare that requires the same ‘whole-of-society’ institutional response, which – as of yet – is absent.

The Threat Reality: Scale and Fragmentation

Russia and China view the cognitive domain as integral battlefields, embedding information warfare into their national security strategies far more deeply than does the West. For these nation-states, subversion is not a side show, it is the main event, as OpenAI's June 2025 threat intelligence report revealed.

State actors primarily misused AI platforms to support information operations rather than traditional cyber attacks. The report documents operations from China, Russia and Iran using AI to generate social media content and fake personas at unprecedented scale. One Chinese operation alone generated hundreds of coordinated comments, while Russian actors used AI to support German election interference through the ‘Portal Kombat’ network.

Modern disinformation campaigns succeed primarily through manipulation of authentic information – threat actors amplify real but carefully selected content to distort public perception and exploit algorithmic systems to create false impressions of public sentiment. These operations far exceed what traditional media regulation or intelligence agencies can address. Russia alone has reportedly invested over $1 billion in ongoing disinformation campaigns aimed at diminishing Western support for Ukraine.

Yet responsibility for addressing these campaigns remains fragmented across government departments, civil society and the private sector. The UK Cabinet Office's recent Chronic Risks Analysis identified information warfare as a systemic threat to national stability, but despite this recognition, the institutional response creates vulnerabilities that nation-state actors actively exploit.

The 2024 Southport attacks and Summer Race Riots, amplified by foreign interference, demonstrated this fragmentation. False information sparked nationwide riots within hours of three young girls being killed, while key regulators could not enforce effective actions. While one department focuses on platform regulation, another handles public messaging, with intelligence agencies or military tracking the specific threat actor – resulting in no single entity with the mandate, resources, or authority to coordinate a comprehensive response in real-time.

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