New UK Information Defence Centre faces huge task as hostile states pour billions into disinformation
Andy Burnham has announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence, a new body intended to disrupt disinformation campaigns by states hostile to the UK. The centre will bring together security services, police, technology firms and government departments in an attempt to forge a coordinated response to an increasingly dangerous information environment. Its establishment is a recognition that hostile states no longer rely only on espionage and sabotage but also systematically weaponise information to destabilise democratic societies. The scale of the challenge facing the new agency is immense. State-backed adversaries are supported by massive financial resources; Russia alone is estimated to spend about US$2.15 billion annually on information manipulation, while China is believed to spend up to US$10 billion a year. These sums are not simply for propaganda but fund a sophisticated ecosystem of fake news sites, bot networks, troll farms, covert social media accounts, AI-generated content, and targeted psychological operations designed to exploit social and political fault lines. The task is made still more complicated by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, which allow hostile actors to produce convincing deepfakes and to automate disinformation at unprecedented scale and speed. Russia, China and Iran are conducting simultaneous operations against democratic governments, often coordinating themes and amplifying one another’s narratives. The new centre, therefore, must do more than respond to individual falsehoods; it must understand the strategic intent behind adversarial campaigns, map their networks, expose their methods and build public resilience. To be effective, the centre will need to bridge the traditional silos of government, combining intelligence analysis, diplomatic tools, policing and digital policy. It will also have to partner with big tech companies, while remaining prepared to criticise and regulate those platforms when their algorithms amplify hostile content. The announcement marks an important step in acknowledging that disinformation is a national security threat, not merely a communications issue. But it also raises difficult questions about funding, powers, independence and whether a single centre can keep pace with adversaries that operate across every social platform, in multiple languages, and with near impunity.
The political backdrop to the announcement is significant. In a recent podcast interview, Burnham said there had been clear Russian interference in the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum, and he later repeated the claim in the House of Commons. His comments broke with the official reluctance to confirm Russian involvement in the referendum, although charges of Russian election interference have circulated for years. The Mueller Report into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election concluded that Moscow interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion”, and the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee had earlier criticised the government for failing to properly investigate Russian interference in British politics. Before Burnham’s intervention, no minister or government body had publicly confirmed Russian interference in the EU referendum, despite repeated media allegations. The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, had said that the UK was dealing with more threats from hostile states than during the cold war and described Russia as “aggressor number one”, though he later clarified that Russia had not succeeded in influencing the Brexit result. This carefully worded clarification reflected the difficulty of measuring the effect of disinformation even when its presence is acknowledged. Disinformation itself is as old as the hills: trickery and covert influence have always been instruments of geopolitical conflict. Election interference is also nothing new. But the AI era has changed the game. Modern disinformation operates with unprecedented speed, precision and creativity. It is designed to mislead, to deepen polarisation, and to spread harm through proxies, all while operating in the shadows. It is also specifically calibrated to remain below the threshold for formal war, allowing hostile states to attack democratic societies without triggering a military response. The strategic rationale is simple: why spend billions on weapons if you can destroy an adversary’s morale, trust and cohesion more cheaply with well-targeted lies? A hostile state will happily invest in disinformation if it means avoiding the costs and risks of conventional conflict, and if it is unlikely to be held accountable for the resulting damage. This is the reality the new centre must confront: a permanent, stealthy and evolving campaign against the foundations of democratic governance.
The primary threats to UK democracy come from Russia, China and Iran, and to a lesser extent from North Korea. Russia relies on a strategy known as “reflexive control”, a concept inherited from Soviet military thinking. It involves deliberately shaping a target’s perceptions and decision-making so that the target chooses a course of action favourable to Russia, while believing it has acted on its own initiative. In practice, this has meant manipulating voters, feeding conspiratorial narratives, amplifying social divisions, seeking to paralyse political decision-making, and trying to fracture alliances such as Nato and the EU. Russian operations have targeted elections, referendums, public health messaging and support for Ukraine. China, for its part, approaches information conflict through what it calls the “three warfares” strategy, combining psychological, public opinion and legal domains. Beijing may use these methods to shape global narratives around its policies on trade, Taiwan, the origins of COVID-19, or its claims in the South China Sea. It may deploy digital deception, cyber-espionage and intimidation to win support in disputes and to break resistance without fighting. China’s aim is not necessarily to win every argument quickly, but to create a permissive environment in which its actions are accepted as normal and any criticism is delegitimised. Iran is also highly active, investing heavily in cyber-influence operations that have sought to stoke dissent over Scottish independence, to access and leak information on Iranian dissident journalists, and to attack critical infrastructure such as power plants. These operations are designed to undermine regional stability, radicalise target groups, and manipulate public debate in countries where Iranian interests are contested. North Korea uses similar tactics, but with a greater focus on espionage, disruption and theft. The WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, which disrupted 61 NHS organisations including hospitals, has been attributed to North Korea and illustrates the way state-backed information operations can converge with cyber-criminal methods. Taken together, these adversaries present a complex and overlapping threat: they target political institutions, exploit unresolved social tensions, and use digital technologies to intrude into the private lives and critical systems of their opponents. The new centre’s analysis of these actors must therefore be nuanced, recognising that each state has different motivations, methods and thresholds.
The UK’s vulnerability lies at the heart of the problem. The country’s main adversaries target the democratic process itself, viewing elections, referendums and political institutions as a nation’s “centre of gravity”. The logic is simple: if you can shake public confidence in the integrity of democracy, you can destabilise the country without ever firing a shot. Disrupting the electoral process threatens the very stability of a democratic state and can produce consequences that last for years. The UK’s exposure was laid bare in a 2021 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which revealed that Russian interference in British politics had been widespread. The report listed social media manipulation, illicit financial flows and cyber-operations as the principal tactics used by Moscow. It also concluded that the UK had seriously underestimated the Russian threat. Perhaps most strikingly, the intelligence services were accused of failing to investigate credible allegations of foreign interference during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote. That reluctance to scrutinise foreign meddling had created a space for hostile adversaries to exploit, and it allowed suspicion to flourish. Since the UK became a vocal supporter of Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the threat has worsened. Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts has warned that the UK now faces the possibility of cyber-attacks on its banking systems, energy infrastructure or water supplies as the Kremlin seeks to undermine public support for Ukraine and punish Britain for its leadership role. This escalation is part of a broader pattern: as the UK hardens its defences in some areas, adversaries adapt and search for new vulnerabilities. The new Centre for Information Defence must therefore be seen not as a standalone fix but as part of a wider strategic response. It needs to protect not just the next election but also the everyday information environment, including public health, financial services, critical national infrastructure and social cohesion. It will need to work with local authorities, health bodies, schools, media organisations and civil society, because disinformation often takes hold at local level and spreads through trusted communities.
What should the new centre actually do? The announcement suggests that it will have to do more than simply rebut disinformation after it has appeared. Rebuttal is often too slow and too reactive; by the time a claim is debunked, it may have already shaped attitudes or been viewed by millions. The centre therefore needs to expose target audiences to the common manipulation tactics used by hostile state actors, including the phenomenon of deepfakes. Familiarity with techniques of media manipulation can make citizens more sceptical and better able to identify fake content before they share it. Public awareness campaigns modelled on existing projects such as Project Servator, the police counter-terrorism initiative, and the rail network’s “See It, Say It, Sorted” slogan, might point the way. These campaigns succeeded by turning members of the public into partners in security rather than passive audiences. But resilience requires more than public messaging. It requires stronger media ecosystems and digital platforms that do not reward the most inflammatory content. Social media companies need to enforce stricter rules over their algorithms, to remove fake accounts more quickly, and to be transparent about the origin of political advertising and coordinated campaigns. Without changes to the business models of these platforms, any public awareness campaign will be swimming against a tide of algorithmic amplification. Enforcement is equally important. Sanctions against individual perpetrators could include naming and shaming, freezing assets, or imposing travel bans. The 2023 National Security Act criminalised covert foreign interference, but the legislation needs to be enforced more robustly if it is to serve as an effective deterrent. Fines could encourage digital platforms to comply with UK standards, and governments must also be willing to freeze hostile states out of diplomatic relations, expel intelligence officers, and coordinate public condemnation through alliances such as Nato, the EU and the G7. The aim should be to raise the cost of disinformation for adversary states, making it clear that they will face consequences for attacking British democracy. In this sense, the centre’s work is not merely defensive; it is part of a wider effort to shift the risk calculus of hostile powers.
Given the rapid evolution of AI and the blurring of boundaries between peace and war, a hesitant response is not enough. The new Centre for Information Defence must be well resourced if it is to have any chance of success. That means not just adequate funding, but also the right capabilities, human resources and freedom to operate. It will need data scientists, linguists, intelligence analysts, behavioural psychologists, digital investigators and communications specialists, working side by side. It will need authority to access relevant intelligence and to direct other agencies to act. It will need to move quickly, sometimes in cooperation with allies, sometimes unilaterally. Crucially, it should also focus on offence as well as defence. Boxers do not simply parry their opponents’ punches; they must land their own blows. The centre should therefore have a proactive mandate to disrupt hostile influence networks, expose enemy operations, and launch counter-narratives that undermine the credibility of state-backed disinformation. This could include declassifying and publicising evidence of foreign interference, naming agents and cut-outs, working with social media platforms to dismantle coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and collaborating with allied agencies to target the financial flows that sustain these operations. It should also help build partnerships with democratic governments around the world, because information threats do not respect national borders. The creation of the National Centre for Information Defence is a welcome recognition of the seriousness of the threat, but it is only the beginning. The real test will be whether it is given the money, powers and political backing to do the job properly. If it is underfunded, slow-moving or constrained by bureaucratic caution, it will fail. If it is agile, creative and robust, it can help protect the UK from a generation of covert attacks designed to destroy the trust on which democracy depends. The threat may be unprecedented, but so too must be the response. The centre’s success will depend less on its name or its structure than on its ability to adapt quickly to an adversary that is constantly changing tactics, and to take the fight to them rather than waiting for the next attack.