Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
Burnham puts social media companies inside the UK's information defence structure
The National Centre for Information Defence is meant to detect, attribute and disrupt foreign information attacks. The evidence Burnham cited includes Russian forgery of the branding of 28 British organisations.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Andy Burnham announced a National Centre for Information Defence in a speech to the UN in New York on Tuesday night, saying security chiefs would set it up to counter hostile-state disinformation and deepfakes.
- The centre will bring the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies into one structure, and is also tasked with helping communities identify and combat disinformation.
- Trump said at the UN that Starmer had been "too tough" towards Moscow and that London "needs to be a little bit careful", and Downing Street replied that Russia's threats were "egregious and unacceptable".
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint A state body whose job includes attribution constrains when a targeted company can speak: its own account of a forgery will sit alongside, or behind, an official attribution it does not control.
- decision Any UK organisation with a recognisable brand has to decide now whether a forged masthead is owned by comms, security or legal, because the forgery is public before the company has picked an owner.
- exposure With the US president telling London to be careful about Moscow, a multinational that names Russia in its own incident statement takes on political exposure a UK-only employer does not.
Putting social media companies in the same structure as the intelligence agencies and law enforcement is the part of this announcement with consequences outside government [2]. The Guardian's report sets out what the centre will do and who will be in it; it gives no launch date, no budget and no legal basis [19]. Whether a platform joins voluntarily or under obligation decides what a takedown inside that structure is, and platform lawyers will want that settled before the first request arrives.
Burnham put the Kremlin's spending on manipulating information at around £1.3bn a year [5]. Spread evenly, that is roughly £3.6m a day [6]. He described the methods this way: "Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people's fears. They've used bots and fake websites. Falsified newspaper articles," he said [7].
One item in that list is aimed squarely at employers. Burnham said Russian agencies had "Forged the branding of 28 British organisations - including universities and the BBC" [8]. A counterfeit masthead borrows an institution's credibility to reach its audience. It leaves the institution's systems alone. Burnham also said "we have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 general election" [9].
Burnham raised AI next and put no number on it. "On top of that, we have seen cyber-attacks on our companies and institutions. We know that AI will multiply the threat. We have tiptoed around this for too long," Burnham said [10]. He said the government had a duty to "stem the poisonous tide" from damaging British interests [20].
The speech put economic conditions inside the threat model, in what the Guardian called eye-catching remarks [12]. "If you're struggling with the cost of living and your life is not improving - or if you're a young person not in employment, education or training - then you are going to be much more vulnerable to this kind of influence," Burnham said [13].
Trump and Downing Street said opposite things about naming Russia. The speech followed Trump saying, at a UN press conference with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that Keir Starmer's rhetoric had been "too tough" towards Moscow and that London "needs to be a little bit careful" [14]. Downing Street pushed back, saying every UK prime minister up to and including Burnham had held that Russia's threats were "egregious and unacceptable" [15]. "The UK is united with our allies on the importance of defending ourselves, and Russia's aggression will not deter us from supporting Ukraine," the prime minister's official spokesperson said [16].
Burnham framed the work as a posture for the next decade, saying the country would face it "with our eyes wide open" [18]. The near-term change is smaller: a named body has been announced, and an organisation whose branding is forged has somewhere in government to take it once the centre is running [1]. The UK has already supported Moldova in protecting its elections, and plans to share its experience of being on the receiving end of information attack with other countries [17].
What to watch
- Whether the centre's founding terms make social media participation voluntary or compulsory, and who inside it can ask for a takedown.
- Whether the centre appears in legislation or a funding line, which would show whether it is a new body or existing units renamed.
- Whether the UK publishes the list of the 28 forged British organisations, so employers can tell whether they are on it.