- they may still succeed in casting doubt on the true account of events: "When people start to say 'You don't know what to believe' or 'They're all as bad as each other', the disinformers are winning"[1]);
- direct support of Russia's preferred outcome in relation to an overseas election or political issue; and
- general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and 'wedge issues',[2] and by the 'astroturfing'[3] of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West.[4]
30. In terms of the direct threat to elections, we have been informed that the mechanics of the UK's voting system are deemed largely sound: the use of a highly dispersed paper-based voting and counting system makes any significant interference difficult, and we understand that GCHQ has undertaken a great deal of work to help ensure that the online voter registration system is safe.[5] Nonetheless, GCHQ informed us that "***",[6] and the Deputy National Security Adviser noted that "there is a lot of work going on [in relation to electoral mechanics] to map the end-to-end processes … *** and to make sure where we can we are mitigating the risks there".[7] This was reflected in the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) judgement in May 2017 that "the UK paper-based voting process is protected from cyber operations but ***".[8] ***. The Committee will expect an update on this in six months.
31. The UK is clearly a target for Russia's disinformation campaigns and political influence operations[9] and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts. The Agencies have emphasised that they see their role in this as providing secret intelligence[10] as context for other organisations, as part of a wider HMG response:[11] they do not view themselves as
- ↑ The Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation, 2018 (the Integrity Initiative is a project run by the Institute for Statecraft, a UK-based think-tank and charity, aimed at countering Russian disinformation campaigns).
- ↑ 'Wedge issues' are highly divisive subjects which bifurcate a country's population, often (but not always) into socially liberal and socially conservative camps, and which often to at least some degree transcend traditional political party boundaries. Examples of wedge issues include abortion and gun control in the US and Brexit in the UK.
- ↑ 'Astroturfing' is a propaganda technique whereby a viewpoint is falsely presented as belonging to a certain group. In this instance, employees of the Russian state and Russian-controlled bots may masquerade as ordinary British citizens on social media and give the UK's politicians, journalists and other people who may have power and influence the impression – simply via the sheer quantity of posts – that the views espoused are genuinely those of a majority of their country's public.
- ↑ Whilst the purpose of this sort of campaign is sometimes to directly damage Western positions, some of this effort is aimed at ensuring that the nature of Russia's ruling elite is not exposed. In the words of Edward Lucas in his evidence to the Committee: "If you believe that the West is run by hypocritical, incompetent, greedy politicians, then it becomes much harder to take any kind of moral high ground about Russia which really is run by very, very bad people."
- ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** December 2018; oral evidence – NSS, *** February 2019.
- ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** February 2019.
- ↑ Oral evidence – NSS, *** February 2019.
- ↑ JIC(17)053.
- ↑ We note that the formal HMG assessment categorises the UK as a "***" target for political influence operations.
- ↑ In addition to providing secret intelligence, the Agencies may ***.
- ↑ We note that the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) also support the Government security architecture and play a role in protecting the mechanics of elections, including informing improvements to electoral management software and through protective security advice to political parties.
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