Every era has its weapons, and one of the most dangerous today is not a bomb or a missile but a well-crafted lie, repeated often enough to look like the truth. In the digital age, hostile states have learned how to slip into people’s phones and homes, using fake news stories, imitation websites, forged newspaper pages, and armies of automated bots. The United Kingdom has decided to meet that threat head-on. In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Andy Burnham announced the creation of a new National Centre for Information Defence, a dedicated body designed to detect, attribute, and disrupt hostile state information attacks. He called it a way to “defend and support democracy” against an “insidious campaign” being orchestrated by Russia and other hostile states. The language he used was strikingly urgent. This was not a small or occasional nuisance, he argued, but an “industrial-scale assault” on public understanding. Russia, he noted, spends around £1.3bn each year on manipulating information. That money does not simply buy advertisements; it buys tools for deception—fake websites, bots, and even the forged brands of twenty-eight reputable organisations, including universities and the BBC. When a person sees a familiar university logo or the BBC masthead, they naturally assume the content is trustworthy. That trust is exactly what these operations exploit. By posing as reliable sources, hostile actors blur the line between fact and fiction. They can produce a false story that looks indistinguishable from real journalism, push it across social media platforms, and wait for it to be shared by real people, creating momentum that is very hard to stop. The damage goes beyond confusion; it teaches people to distrust all information. Burnham argued that the new centre would give the UK a way to identify who is behind these attacks, expose them, and make it harder for them to operate. It is an admission that modern warfare happens as much through narrative as through tanks, and that defending a country means defending its information space.
Burnham was blunt about how far Russian meddling has already gone. He said Britain had experienced direct interference in its 2019 general election. He described Russia as having amplified far-right narratives and trying to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events. That last point matters enormously. In moments of tragedy, when fear and grief are running high, false stories spread faster than facts. After a terrorist attack or a terrible accident, fabricated claims often appear online, blaming a particular community or sowing panic and suspicion. Burnham’s phrase for the overall strategy was an “insidious campaign” that reaches into people’s homes and twists how they feel about their own country and community. It is, he said, a way of creating a narrative of decline, stoking division, and sowing despair. These words were chosen carefully. The goal of information warfare is not just to change minds on one policy; it is to undermine confidence that anything is true, that government can solve problems, and that democracy itself is meaningful. To fight this, the UK will put in place an architecture to stem what Burnham called a poisonous tide. That architecture will include the new information defence centre, but it will also form part of a broader ten-year plan for Britain, due to be announced before the end of the year. The message was that this is not a short-term public relations exercise or a toolkit that can be switched on and off. It is a long-term effort to build the muscle memory that a democratic society needs to survive in a hostile digital environment. It is also a recognition that ordinary people are the primary targets in this conflict, and that their confidence in institutions, facts, and each other is exactly what is being attacked.
Burnham was also clear that no country can fight this battle alone. The UK will share its understanding of how hostile actors work and how to respond to them with other democracies, because collective security and resilience depend on learning from one another. He noted that as more elections approach across Europe, more countries are being forced to confront these tactics for the first time. Some are better prepared than others. Britain has previously helped Moldova protect its elections from Russian interference, a small example of the kind of cooperation that will now need to become routine. But while the ambition was welcomed by experts, there were also questions. Sophie Williams-Dunning, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a leading defence and security think tank, pointed out that the UK already has a legal basis for countering foreign intelligence under the National Security Act 2023. Even so, she said, Britain’s response has been lacking when compared with countries like France, Sweden, Ukraine, and Taiwan, which have already set up dedicated agencies or centres for information defence. This matters. It suggests the UK is not pioneering a brand-new idea, but finally bringing itself up to speed in a field where others have been operating for years. It also raises a difficult, inevitable question: how can a democratic state defend against disinformation without crossing into censorship? Any centre with the power to identify, disrupt, or remove false information will face accusations of eroding free speech. Williams-Dunning said the announcement will lead to debate about free speech and raise questions about the right level of government intervention. She added that Burnham and his advisers will need to emphasise the legal basis and justification for the centre. That is probably the most important test ahead. A body created to protect democracy will only be trusted if it is transparent, accountable, and legally rigorous. Otherwise, it risks becoming another weapon in the very culture war it is trying to calm.
The same speech also looked to the future and to artificial intelligence. Burnham argued that frontier AI will be at the heart of the UK’s presidency of the G20 next year, following a meeting convened by King Charles with AI leaders the previous week. The UK will push for agreement on a single set of global principles and standards to ensure transparency and access, with the aim of increasing preparedness and guaranteeing that AI development is safe. This might sound like one more diplomatic talking point, but it is actually deeply connected to the issue of disinformation. AI now makes it possible to generate fake images, fake voices, and fake articles in seconds, and at almost no cost. The same technology that can help doctors diagnose cancer more quickly can also create a perfect video of a political leader saying something they never said. The UK has already established an AI Security Institute, which Burnham says is working with the United States and the leading labs on AI safety. The goal is to understand the risks before they spin out of control. At the same time, Burnham made the economic and social case for AI. He described frontier AI as a key to economic growth and a route to transforming education. He pointed to the UK’s experience with AI speeding up cancer diagnosis, and to its potential to prevent and treat cancer. These are not abstract promises. For someone waiting for a diagnosis, or for a teacher trying to give every student the same chance, AI could be life-changing. The challenge is to harness those benefits without allowing the same technology to be used as a tool for manipulation.
Given the history of technological revolutions, Burnham insisted that the decisions surrounding AI must not be left to chance or to the private sector alone. Fundamental decisions, he said, must be taken by elected governments who serve working people. He said the UK would do whatever is necessary to protect the British public, including bringing forward new laws if needed. To make the point, he reached back to the first industrial revolution. That earlier period produced incredible technological progress, but it also brought huge suffering and exploitation for workers. Cities grew, factories opened, and wealth was created, yet ordinary people were often left in overcrowded housing, dangerous jobs, and political irrelevance. Burnham’s implicit argument was that technology is never neutral. If society does not actively shape the way innovations are used, the benefits will flow unfairly and the harms will fall on the vulnerable. This time, he said, the UK needed to get it right, and he insisted that the country was more than equal to the task. He also mentioned that the UK was developing an AI defence partnership with the United States, a sign that this area of policy is increasingly being treated as central to national security rather than as a niche technical matter. It is a reminder that the same digital infrastructure that enables hostile states to spread lies also underpins the economies and military alliances of democratic nations. Protecting an advanced technological society requires more than firewalls; it requires an honest conversation about values and power. The promise of AI is immense, but so is the potential for abuse. Burnham’s speech suggested that the UK is determined to be on the right side of that equation, learning from the mistakes of previous eras rather than repeating them.
In the end, Burnham’s speech was less about any single piece of technology or government agency than about the resilience of democracy itself. Information warfare is not a problem that can be solved with one centre or one law. It will keep changing shape, moving from fake websites to deepfakes, from social media bots to AI-generated news networks. The defensive architecture the UK is building must therefore be flexible and humble. It needs to be able to share intelligence with allies, and it needs to be able to learn from its own mistakes. It also needs to be anchored in the very values it is meant to protect: openness, truthfulness, and public accountability. The warning embedded in Burnham’s speech was that many people already feel lost in a fog of information. If they cannot tell what is real, they become easy prey for cynicism. Democracies are especially vulnerable because they allow open debate; that openness is their strength, but also their vulnerability. A state-sponsored lie campaign can exploit the fact that democratic societies are reluctant to silence speech. That is why the UK’s proposed centre will have to be careful, legal, and transparent. The debate around it will be healthy, provided it is serious. Burnham said that the UK was more than equal to the task of getting the AI revolution right, and the same confidence applies to the fight against disinformation. The next few years will reveal whether it is possible to defend truth without damaging the freedom that makes truth possible. What is no longer possible is pretending that the threat does not exist.