Britain becoming ‘soft target’ for Russian propaganda, says security expert

Britain is becoming a soft target for Russian and other state propaganda because the UK is not prepared to educate people on how to deal with information warfare, according to a former White House adviser and security expert. Fiona Hill told a parliamentary committee that she feared the UK had become “extraordinarily vulnerable” to online manipulation feeding into the electoral system because there was a lack of discussion about civil defence. “I think part of the problem is also on the societal level: that the UK increasingly looks like a soft target rather than a hard target, because modern war, as we all know, is fought with so many different methods now, including propaganda,” Hill said. She contrasted the UK with Sweden, which has an idea of “psychological defence”. It is about “training people to think about how you deal with all kinds of information warfare, so people can recognise when they’re being manipulated”. The concept dates back to the cold war, but after a hiatus Sweden set up a psychological defence agency in 2022, which tries to work with the public and highlight online disinformation. Four years ago, the unit highlighted that false narratives were being spread, originally from sources in Egypt, that Swedish social services were kidnapping Muslim children for corrupt purposes. The disinformation was for a time picked up and believed, particularly in immigrant communities, until it was called out and quashed. …