The UK is to set up a centre to fight an “insidious campaign” of disinformation from Russia and other hostile states, UK prime minister Andy Burnham has said.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Burnham said he had tasked security chiefs to begin work on the centre to fight hostile information warfare.
The National Centre for Information Defence will detect, attribute and disrupt hostile state information attacks to “defend and support democracy”, he said.
Burnham said the UK and its allies had faced “an industrial-scale assault” of false and misleading information put out by hostile states.
He singled out Russia, which spends around £1.3bn each year on manipulating information.
“Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears,” said Burnham.
This includes using bots, fake websites, falsified newspaper articles and forging the brands of 28 organisations, including universities and the BBC.
Interference with general election
Russia had tried to interfere with the 2019 UK general election, had “amplified far-right narratives” and tried to “stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events”, he said.
“We’re talking about an insidious campaign that reaches into people’s homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community – creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair,” said Burnham.
He added that the UK would put in place an architecture to stem a “poisonous tide” of disinformation as part of a 10-year plan for Britain, to be announced before the end of the year.
The UK will share its understanding of how hostile actors work and how to respond to them with other countries, “because this is vital for our collective security and resilience”, he said.
“As more elections approach across Europe, more nations are grappling with these issues – some for the first time,” said Burnham.
The UK has previously supported Moldova to protect its elections from Russian interference.
Frontier AI will be at ‘heart of UK G20’
Burnham said that following the meeting convened by King Charles with artificial intelligence (AI) leaders last week, the UK would put frontier AI at “the heart” of the UK’s presidency of the G20 group of countries next year.
“We will work towards agreeing a single set of global principles and standards to ensure the transparency and access we need to increase our preparedness – and to ensure that AI development is safe,” he said.
Burnham highlighted the UK’s AI Security Institute, which he said was working with the US and the leading labs on AI safety.
Frontier AI is the key to economic growth and a route to transforming education. AI is speeding up cancer diagnosis in the UK, and has the potential to prevent and treat cancer.
But, he said, fundamental decisions on the technology “must be taken by elected governments who serve working people”, rather than left to chance.
The UK would do whatever is necessary to protect the British people, including bringing forward new laws, if needed.
There is a lesson from the first industrial revolution in which “incredible technological progress” brought huge suffering and exploitation for workers.
Burnham said that this time, the UK “needed to get it right”, but was “more than equal to the task”.
The UK was also developing an AI defence partnership with the US, he said.
Commenting on Burnham’s proposals, Sophie Williams-Dunning, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence and security think tank, said the UK had a legal basis for countering foreign intelligence under the National Security Act 2023.
However, the UK’s response has been lacking compared with those of countries such as France, Sweden, Ukraine and Taiwan, which already have dedicated agencies or centres for information defence.
Williams-Dunning said the announcement will lead to debate about free speech and raise questions about the right level of government intervention. “Burnham and his advisers will need to emphasise the legal basis and justification for this centre,” she added.
