PM Andy Burnham stood before the UN General Assembly delivering a promise to quash hostile states including Russia that threaten further warfare with AI-enabled information attacks and disinformation.
Being the pinnacle of leadership in a world transforming at pace is important, his speech indicated. Britain wants “to trade with the world and work together to solve the shared problems we face”.
“We need to work harder to fight the forces of division and instability which threaten”. AI sows soft division within our society which needs to be addressed to rebalance power in the world. Whilst society should harness the incredible power of technology to enhance people’s lives, it can create turbelance. Burnham conveyed in his speech that a key objective for Britain is to show true resilience through national security amid AI attacks and the context of real warfare playing out in the world.
Industrial-scale assault has been committed by adversaries on the information environment in the UK in recent years. Now, the UK government will assemble intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies to establish a new National Centre for Information Defence.
The centre will have a remit to detect attribute and disrupt foreign information attacks, while helping communities build resilience to disinformation.
Andy Burnham singled out Russia, citing the use of bots, fake websites, falsified newspaper articles and forged branding from British organisations as examples of tactics used to spread disinformation. He also warned that AI will significantly increase the scale of the threat.
Andrew Bud, Founder and CEO of iProov, commented: “The new National Centre for Information Defence will have an important role to play, but its success will depend on how quickly it can move from identifying threats to actually disrupting them.”
“Deepfakes are becoming too sophisticated and too scalable for the government to rely on individuals or platforms simply spotting fake content after the fact. The Centre should be looking at the infrastructure behind these attacks, including how we verify that the people, accounts and communications we interact with online are genuine.”
“There is also a clear opportunity to connect this work with the UK’s emerging cyber resilience framework. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill recognises the need to protect the authenticity and integrity of data as part of securing essential services and this same principle needs to extend to the authenticity of the people and digital interactions those services rely on.”
“That means bringing identity verification and deepfake detection into the centre of the UK’s defensive strategy, alongside intelligence sharing and public education. If AI is industrialising deception, our response needs to be able to tell genuine from synthetic.”
Elizabeth Anderson, CEO of the Digital Poverty Alliance, said: “The Prime Minister’s recognition that inequality can leave people more vulnerable to foreign influence is an important one, but we need to be careful not to frame this simply as a problem of individual susceptibility. If people lack reliable connectivity, the right devices, the skills to navigate online information safely, or the confidence to know what they can trust, they are being asked to participate in an increasingly complex digital world without the tools to do so safely.
As the Government develops new agencies and legislation to strengthen the UK’s resilience, digital inclusion needs to be built into that infrastructure from the outset. That means investing not only in connectivity and devices, but in digital skills, media literacy and trusted support, alongside clear governance to ensure these protections reach the people most at risk of being left behind.
A resilient digital society cannot just be one that protects its institutions from disinformation; it must also equip every citizen to participate safely within it. If we build new systems without addressing the digital inequalities that already exist, we risk creating resilience for some while leaving others exposed.”
The new AI defence partnership with the US will protect critical national infrastructure whilst His Majesty King Charles even weighed in on the enormous task before society to ensure that AI “remains firmly in the service of humanity.”
