Few stories grip the public imagination quite like the idea of foreign spies tipping a national vote. When Andy Burnham spoke about Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, and when Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, immediately warned against exaggerating its impact, they set the terms of a familiar and dramatic debate. We are invited to picture Kremlin agents in dark rooms, manipulating social media, pushing memes and messages into the feeds of ordinary voters. That picture is alarming, and it deserves our attention. But in all the heat and smoke, something more obvious and equally troubling has been left…

Paragraph 1 There’s something quietly reassuring about watching South Africa’s democracy gear up for another big moment, especially when the machinery behind it is working overtime to keep things fair, honest, and transparent. In Pretoria, the Electoral Commission of South Africa, better known as the IEC, has made a significant move by teaming up with some of the biggest names in global technology — Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and Moxii Africa — all in a deliberate and forward-thinking effort to tackle fake news head-on before the country heads to the polls on 4 November for the Local Government Elections. This…