In his words the National Centre for Information Defence is to counteract:
… 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.[1]
Although the sowing of disinformation and the telling of tall gates has long been the MO of espionage agencies of all states be they the CIA or KGB, particularly during the Cold War and in the course of counter-insurgency campaigns with Col Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations - a standard operating manual during the Mau Mau era in Kenya and later transferred to Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, there is a widespread consensus that the terrain and nature of today’s information conflicts are totally different from the analogue eras.
In this age of super-connectivity and instant messaging, tech savvy bad actors be they hostile, aggrandising states like Russia, China or Iran or networks of conspiracists be they far-right ethno-nationalist influencers; anti-vaccination activists or climate denialists are ahead of the game and are having a corrosive effect on the democratic process and institutions across the Western world. Shocks to liberal democracy such as the vote for Brexit and the first election of Donald Trump as US President have been attributed to the losing side in both to multiple disruptions to the electoral processes by Russian origin “bots” and the nefarious data harvesting operation of the research firm Cambridge Analytica; the rapid spread of false narratives around alleged Muslim of immigrant culpability in events such as the Stockport Taylor Swift child massacre generated Britain’s worst race riots in generation and the lies spread by antivaxxers about the safety of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic and their narratives around lockdown and other virus suppression measures being part of a globalist, Great Reset agenda which had unquantifiable impacts on death and infection rates provide an indisputable rationale to tackle such floods at their source at an institutional level.
Experts in decrying the futility in chasing in a needle in a haystack manner isolated examples of disinformation, identify the “infrastructure” and the “sophisticated ecosystem which exists to exacerbate provokable users for one reason or another” in the words of Sophie Williams-Dunning, cyber analyst at the Royal United Services (Rusi) thinktank” have welcomed going after the networks as a step in the right direction. For Williams-Dunning, this ecosphere encompasses not just the ubiquitous Russian bot but far-right influencers who immediately exploit such social flashpoints as the Stockport and Belfast riots and the protests outside migrants’ accommodation as well as grifters looking to monetise on such conflictual situations by producing captivating content riffing on disruption (sometimes the same person as with Steven Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson). Accompanying Burnham’s measure will be, rightfully so, a debate about free speech and the appropriate levels of governmental intervention. Williams-Dunning forecasts that malign networks will amplify these free-speech concerns, no matter how cynical the methods.
The mission of this centre is thus to mobilise “trusted voices across civil society” to confront the messy reality of how people consume news: fragmented feeds, algorithmic bundles and emergent deepfakes. Deleting and disrupting hostile state activity does sit uneasily at the frontier between national security and freedom of expression; between the democratic imperatives of the state and the often changing and the security necessities, not just in the area of national defence but also food, health and environmental security in an era of science hostile narratives spread by bad actors such as climate change deniers and antivaccination activists who then seek to monetise their lies and misinformation in the manner of the Dirty Dozen wellness woo snake entrepreneurs such as Dr Mercola who the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified as being responsible for up to 85% of disinformation content at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021. So a successful centre must thread that needle; aggressively countering malign influences with protecting civil liberties.[2]
The UK government has not yet published a launch date, budget, location, or complete governance structure. Initial reporting suggests that the centre will bring together intelligence agencies, law enforcement bodies and technology companies including social media platforms to coordinate responses to foreign information attacks. Its proposed remit will include identifying the state or proxy responsible for initiating campaigns using manipulated narratives and then disrupting the digital infrastructures used to spread them.[3]
The initiative followed the National Security (State Threats) Act, 2026 which strengthened the Government’s ability to degrade and disrupt organisations involved in hostile activities on behalf of foreign powers. Official guidance defines state threats as harmful overt or covert actions by foreign governments which fall short of direct armed conflict but beyond peaceful diplomacy. The Government lists espionage, sabotage, disinformation, cyber operations, and political interference, especially in the electoral process. In this context, Andy Burnham did reference alleged Russian interference in the 2019 UK General Election.[4]
Experts in decrying the futility in chasing in a needle in a haystack manner isolated examples of disinformation, identify the “infrastructure” and the “sophisticated ecosystem which exists to exacerbate provokable users for one reason or another” in the words of Sophie Williams-Dunning, cyber analyst at the Royal United Services (Rusi) thinktank” have welcomed going after the networks as a step in the right direction. For Williams-Dunning, this ecosphere encompasses not just the ubiquitous Russian bot but far-right influencers who immediately exploit such social flashpoints as the Stockport and Belfast riots and the protests outside migrants’ accommodation as well as grifters looking to monetise on such conflictual situations by producing captivating content riffing on disruption (sometimes the same person as with Steven Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson). Accompanying Burnham’s measure will be, rightfully so, a debate about free speech and the appropriate levels of governmental intervention. Williams-Dunning forecasts that malign networks will amplify these free-speech concerns, no matter how cynical the methods.
The mission of this centre is thus to mobilise “trusted voices across civil society” to confront the messy reality of how people consume news: fragmented feeds, algorithmic bundles and emergent deepfakes. Deleting and disrupting hostile state activity does sit uneasily at the frontier between national security and freedom of expression; between the democratic imperatives of the state and the often changing and the security necessities, not just in the area of national defence but also food, health and environmental security in an era of science hostile narratives spread by bad actors such as climate change deniers and antivaccination activists who then seek to monetise their lies and misinformation in the manner of the Dirty Dozen wellness woo snake entrepreneurs such as Dr Mercola who the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified as being responsible for up to 85% of disinformation content at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021. So a successful centre must thread that needle; aggressively countering malign influences with protecting civil liberties.[2]
The UK government has not yet published a launch date, budget, location, or complete governance structure. Initial reporting suggests that the centre will bring together intelligence agencies, law enforcement bodies and technology companies including social media platforms to coordinate responses to foreign information attacks. Its proposed remit will include identifying the state or proxy responsible for initiating campaigns using manipulated narratives and then disrupting the digital infrastructures used to spread them.[3]
The initiative followed the National Security (State Threats) Act, 2026 which strengthened the Government’s ability to degrade and disrupt organisations involved in hostile activities on behalf of foreign powers. Official guidance defines state threats as harmful overt or covert actions by foreign governments which fall short of direct armed conflict but beyond peaceful diplomacy. The Government lists espionage, sabotage, disinformation, cyber operations, and political interference, especially in the electoral process. In this context, Andy Burnham did reference alleged Russian interference in the 2019 UK General Election.[4]
The legislation introduced proscription style powers against state linked organisations and offences concerning support for designated bodies. The new centre is intended to address the information and coordination side of the threat rather than replacing those criminal powers. Further government announcements will be needed to establish which department will be acceptable for the centre; how intelligence will be shared with technology companies and what independent oversight will apply.[5]
For now the PM has set the objectives and has tasked security chiefs to develop the organisation. He has stated his desire for Britain to use its presidency of the G20 in 2027 to pursue common international principles and standards for advanced AI unlike the dangerously laissez-fair approach of Donald Trump with whom Britain will nevertheless deepen their practical defence and AI partnership proving that the two governments can cooperate on military technology (for now maybe) while disagreeing about wider international regulation.[6]
The Right to Truth and the NCID
As has already been alluded to, the design and implementation of this new body has to balance national security needs and the integrity of democratic processes with safeguarding an overarching principle of liberal democracies, freedom of expression and from arbitrary acts of censorship. The NCID must be undergirded by a “right to truth” which should supersede what has traditionally been the unquestioned liberal norm – free speech. In formulating his right to truth principles, Geoff Mulgan starts out by critiquing how the liberal tradition of freedom of expression or speech has prioritised that value over the right to truth. He starts out by pointing out how this approach to speech assumes that free and fair competition in the “marketplace of ideas” will ensure that truth triumphs over lies. However just as other liberal nostrums over the neutrality of markets have been shown to have feet of clay due to the emergence of aggrandising monopolies and oligopolies, so Gresham’s Law which says that bad money drives out good money out of circulation (crypto currency may well be a contemporary example), so “flooding the zone with shit” as propounded by Alt-Right guru Steve Bannon makes it harder to distinguish fact from falsehood and so perverting the entire raison d’etre of free speech.[7]
The 17th century French mathematician Blaize Pascal wrote “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” Fast forward to the first two decades of the 21st century, and we find the very idea of the universality of truth hollowed out by tech behemoths such as Meta and X; the long reach of falsehood factories such as Russia’ s Internet Research Agency; the “anything goes” literary dogmas of postmodernism and poststructuralism and the amplification of conspiracy theories through cyberspace which would have been laughed out of court in the analogue age. For truth is dependent on a never- ending process of discovery bolstered by laws and institutions. All other civil liberties implicitly rely on some right to truth. Mulgan cites the example the right to a fair trial by jury having little meaning unless judges ensure that juries have the best possible information.[8]
Historically the right to truth is expressed in human rights discourse as the right of victims of war crimes or state repressions and other gross violations of human rights to the truth of how loved ones died and to appropriate recompense. Mulgan reframes this right not to be lied to or knowingly misled by powerful and influential organisations. He advocates that the right should be added as a protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and should balance the US Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. He stresses that there must be a high bar for invoking this right, to account for differences of opinion and should be enforced by courts, not governments or “Ministries of Truth” (which certain media outlets like the Daily Mail are styling the NCID as).[9]
The right to truth should be grounded on the perennial precept of treating others as one would like to be treated by them. Mulgan identifies four areas of public life which should be guided by it. The first is the law, consumer protection laws which prohibit misleading and false claims in advertising and marketing should be extended to political communications. The industrial scale of Donald Trump’s lies and the egregiously false claims peddled by the Brexit camp during the EU referendum such as the weekly £350m sum allegedly paid to Brussels to be then used to fund the NHS; the claim that 75 million Turks would be able to come to the UK in the event of an impossible Turkish accession to the EU and Nigel Farage’s Breaking Point anti-refugee poster would be punished under this remit.[10]
Second, media non-profit news outlets and public service broadcasting providers which full the role of commitment to truth must be strengthened. Thirdly regulation could force powerful information providers to become purveyors of truth. As examples of good practice, in June 2024, the European Commission released a preliminary finding that Elon Musk’s X platform deceives users by letting anyone pay for a verified account and was therefore in breach of the Digital Services Act. As a result, X could face fines of up to 6% of global revenue. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act of 2017 requires platforms with more than two million users to remove “clearly illegal” content.
Fourth, independent electoral commissions need powers to fact- check and correct false claims and block the most damaging misinformation and deepfakes in the run-up to elections when the vulnerability of truth to the risk of interference is at its most acute and the stakes for democracy are at their highest. Lastly, tech pioneers such as Factiverse and Fullfact in the UK are developing new tools combining artificial and collective intelligence to spot and access misinformation.[11]
Although, the proposal for an NICD is in its infancy, there can be doubt about the “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies that Barack Obama warned of in November 2020 and which has heightened since then.[12] A possible vision for Burnham’s proposed information resilience department would be a multi-agency integration of the elements sketched out above by Geoff Mulgan into a stand-alone body with specified executive functions. First in its crosshairs should be the power and influence of Elon Musk who as the world’s richest person and owner of X has been the greatest superspreader of hate speech relating to immigration, multiculturalism and open support for far-right parties like Restore UK and the German AfD; the latter designated by German intelligence services as a threat to democracy and national security. For it is the truth that sets one free and protects one’s freedom.
[1] Dan Milmo and Robert Booth Attacks on information PM’s plan to stem tide of falsehoods The Guardian 24 September 2026 p10.
[2] Defending Democracy Britain’s National Centre for Information Defence against AI-driven Disinformation 23 September 2026
[3] Charlotte Mercer Burnham announces new UK centre to combat hostile state disinformation. Ayes to the Right 23 September 2026
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Geoff Mulgan Right to Truth Project Syndicate 14 August 2024
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Russian disinformation. A strategy of resilience has to recognise the complicity of domestic extremists. The Guardian Editorial 24 September 2026
For now the PM has set the objectives and has tasked security chiefs to develop the organisation. He has stated his desire for Britain to use its presidency of the G20 in 2027 to pursue common international principles and standards for advanced AI unlike the dangerously laissez-fair approach of Donald Trump with whom Britain will nevertheless deepen their practical defence and AI partnership proving that the two governments can cooperate on military technology (for now maybe) while disagreeing about wider international regulation.[6]
The Right to Truth and the NCID
As has already been alluded to, the design and implementation of this new body has to balance national security needs and the integrity of democratic processes with safeguarding an overarching principle of liberal democracies, freedom of expression and from arbitrary acts of censorship. The NCID must be undergirded by a “right to truth” which should supersede what has traditionally been the unquestioned liberal norm – free speech. In formulating his right to truth principles, Geoff Mulgan starts out by critiquing how the liberal tradition of freedom of expression or speech has prioritised that value over the right to truth. He starts out by pointing out how this approach to speech assumes that free and fair competition in the “marketplace of ideas” will ensure that truth triumphs over lies. However just as other liberal nostrums over the neutrality of markets have been shown to have feet of clay due to the emergence of aggrandising monopolies and oligopolies, so Gresham’s Law which says that bad money drives out good money out of circulation (crypto currency may well be a contemporary example), so “flooding the zone with shit” as propounded by Alt-Right guru Steve Bannon makes it harder to distinguish fact from falsehood and so perverting the entire raison d’etre of free speech.[7]
The 17th century French mathematician Blaize Pascal wrote “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” Fast forward to the first two decades of the 21st century, and we find the very idea of the universality of truth hollowed out by tech behemoths such as Meta and X; the long reach of falsehood factories such as Russia’ s Internet Research Agency; the “anything goes” literary dogmas of postmodernism and poststructuralism and the amplification of conspiracy theories through cyberspace which would have been laughed out of court in the analogue age. For truth is dependent on a never- ending process of discovery bolstered by laws and institutions. All other civil liberties implicitly rely on some right to truth. Mulgan cites the example the right to a fair trial by jury having little meaning unless judges ensure that juries have the best possible information.[8]
Historically the right to truth is expressed in human rights discourse as the right of victims of war crimes or state repressions and other gross violations of human rights to the truth of how loved ones died and to appropriate recompense. Mulgan reframes this right not to be lied to or knowingly misled by powerful and influential organisations. He advocates that the right should be added as a protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and should balance the US Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. He stresses that there must be a high bar for invoking this right, to account for differences of opinion and should be enforced by courts, not governments or “Ministries of Truth” (which certain media outlets like the Daily Mail are styling the NCID as).[9]
The right to truth should be grounded on the perennial precept of treating others as one would like to be treated by them. Mulgan identifies four areas of public life which should be guided by it. The first is the law, consumer protection laws which prohibit misleading and false claims in advertising and marketing should be extended to political communications. The industrial scale of Donald Trump’s lies and the egregiously false claims peddled by the Brexit camp during the EU referendum such as the weekly £350m sum allegedly paid to Brussels to be then used to fund the NHS; the claim that 75 million Turks would be able to come to the UK in the event of an impossible Turkish accession to the EU and Nigel Farage’s Breaking Point anti-refugee poster would be punished under this remit.[10]
Second, media non-profit news outlets and public service broadcasting providers which full the role of commitment to truth must be strengthened. Thirdly regulation could force powerful information providers to become purveyors of truth. As examples of good practice, in June 2024, the European Commission released a preliminary finding that Elon Musk’s X platform deceives users by letting anyone pay for a verified account and was therefore in breach of the Digital Services Act. As a result, X could face fines of up to 6% of global revenue. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act of 2017 requires platforms with more than two million users to remove “clearly illegal” content.
Fourth, independent electoral commissions need powers to fact- check and correct false claims and block the most damaging misinformation and deepfakes in the run-up to elections when the vulnerability of truth to the risk of interference is at its most acute and the stakes for democracy are at their highest. Lastly, tech pioneers such as Factiverse and Fullfact in the UK are developing new tools combining artificial and collective intelligence to spot and access misinformation.[11]
Although, the proposal for an NICD is in its infancy, there can be doubt about the “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies that Barack Obama warned of in November 2020 and which has heightened since then.[12] A possible vision for Burnham’s proposed information resilience department would be a multi-agency integration of the elements sketched out above by Geoff Mulgan into a stand-alone body with specified executive functions. First in its crosshairs should be the power and influence of Elon Musk who as the world’s richest person and owner of X has been the greatest superspreader of hate speech relating to immigration, multiculturalism and open support for far-right parties like Restore UK and the German AfD; the latter designated by German intelligence services as a threat to democracy and national security. For it is the truth that sets one free and protects one’s freedom.
[1] Dan Milmo and Robert Booth Attacks on information PM’s plan to stem tide of falsehoods The Guardian 24 September 2026 p10.
[2] Defending Democracy Britain’s National Centre for Information Defence against AI-driven Disinformation 23 September 2026
[3] Charlotte Mercer Burnham announces new UK centre to combat hostile state disinformation. Ayes to the Right 23 September 2026
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Geoff Mulgan Right to Truth Project Syndicate 14 August 2024
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Russian disinformation. A strategy of resilience has to recognise the complicity of domestic extremists. The Guardian Editorial 24 September 2026
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
No comments