National Security Policies

🗞️ 🇬🇧 Lessons from the latest « Disinformation Diplomacy » report by the UK House of Commons : ▶️Democracies must move from fragmented, defensive counter-disinformation to coordinated, strategic use of information power. 🇬🇧 National recommendations : 1. Create a National Counter-Disinformation Centre A centralised structure to coordinate response across government. • Inspired by models in Sweden, Ukraine and France • Aim: faster detection, attribution and response= a shift toward a “fusion centre” model for the information space. 2. Significantly increase funding for information defence Focus areas: FCDO Hybrid Threats Directorate & BBC World Service as key strategic asset ▶️ greater investment needed to prevent authoritarian narratives from gaining ground globally. ▶️ recognition of information power as a hard power multiplier. 3. Scale up support to allies and vulnerable regions 🔹Priority regions: Black Sea, Western Balkans, Africa 🔹Focus on strengthening independent media and civil society resilience. 4. Address legal gaps on foreign interference 🔹current threshold to prove foreign attribution deemed too high, limiting enforcement & enabling plausible deniability 🔹 urgent legislative review needed to enable faster and more effective action. 5. Introduce algorithmic transparency for platforms 🔹Amend the Online Safety Act to require: • Greater transparency on how algorithms amplify content • Stronger safeguards against coordinated manipulation 6. Invest in public resilience (media literacy and prebunking) Shift from reactive debunking to societal immunity, to strengthen public understanding & scale preventive approaches. Considering citizens as the frontline of defence. 7. Rethink strategic communications Current efforts deemed to lack compelling narratives: Need credible messengers & Content tailored to target audiences 🔹 shift from fact-based rebuttal to competitive narrative warfare. 8. Clarify and communicate strategy on China 🇨🇳 🔹Defining red lines, Influence risks, Engagement doctrine, Avoid ambiguity between economic engagement and security priorities.

Authoritarian regimes — Russia, China, Iran — have dramatically escalated hybrid warfare over the past decade. Every drone incursion, ransomware attack, and effort to manipulate information shares a unified purpose: eroding public trust in democratic institutions, dividing liberal societies, and weakening the international order. And it's working. In a new report "No Time to Lose: Liberal Democracies Can Win the Cognitive and Hybrid War Against Authoritarians" Sasha Havlicek, David Salvo, and Dr. Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven lay out why democratic governments' current response, largely reactive and fragmented across siloed ministries, is insufficient to the scale of the threat. Democracies have moved from ignoring the challenge to naming it. But naming it isn't enough. We must leverage democracies advantages to retake the strategic advantage. The authors offer three core recommendations: 👉 Establish a counter-hybrid doctrine — one that signals a genuine willingness to respond asymmetrically, develop offensive capabilities, and map adversaries' vulnerabilities, not just defend against them. 👉 Reorganize government to address hybrid threats holistically — appointing lead agencies, creating cross-domain intelligence coordination, and building informal "coalitions of the willing" outside traditional NATO/EU channels when necessary. 👉 Put strategic communications front and center — trumpeting defensive successes, making the human costs of hybrid attacks legible to citizens, and empowering trusted non-governmental voices (mayors, faith leaders, influencers) to build societal resilience. In 2026, the cognitive domain is the decisive battleground. Democracies have the tools to compete — but only if they treat this as the strategic challenge it is. Link to the full report (a quick 10 minute read) in comments and check out the briefer video below that I generated in NotebookLM. #DisinformationResearch #HybridWarfare #InformationIntegrity #FIMI #DemocraticResilience #StrategicCommunications

In my new policy paper, “Beyond Defence: A Proactive Strategy for the West in the Information Domain”, published by the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), I argue that liberal democracies must move from reactive resilience to strategic initiative in the information space. Authoritarian regimes, particularly Russia and China, have spent years refining their influence operations, exploiting our openness, and eroding public trust. Meanwhile, democratic responses remain fragmented, underfunded, and bound by processes that our adversaries see as weaknesses. In this paper, I outline how the West can reclaim the initiative through: - Strategic autonomy in the information domain, reducing dependence on US political fluctuations - Pre-bunking and proactive communication, not just fact-checking after the damage is done - Intelligence-led monitoring of disinformation ecosystems - Ethical offensive information operations that expose authoritarian corruption and hypocrisy - Empowering civil society as agile “force multipliers” on the information frontlines Read the full ICDS policy paper here: https://lnkd.in/dczv8vKz

Proud to share our new Atlantic Council report — “Authoritarian Reach and Democratic Response: A Tactical Framework to Counter and Prevent Transnational Repression,” co-authored with Sze-Fung Lee, Kenton Thibaut, Iria Puyosa, Lisandra N., Layla Mashkoor, Andy Carvin. Authoritarian regimes are extending their repression far beyond their borders, targeting journalists, activists, and diaspora communities in democracies through surveillance, threats, disinformation, and coercion. This report presents a global framework to help governments, civil society, and private actors identify, disrupt, and prevent these attacks on freedom and sovereignty. The framework offers practical tools for democratic coordination, mapping threats, strengthening legal and policy responses, and building resilience through collaboration and early-warning mechanisms. I’ve experienced first-hand how transnational repression operates in silence and shadows, from digital intimidation to physical targeting, and how democracies often respond reactively. This framework is meant to change that and defend those vulnerable to TNR, and help us get ahead of authoritarian reach. As global threats evolve, defending journalists, activists, and diaspora voices is not optional, it’s essential to defending our democratic sovereignty. 📘 Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/gTQF8jfD

Cybersecurity is no longer a temporary challenge for Europe—it is a permanent feature of the strategic environment. As societies become more digitally dependent, resilience remains essential, but it is no longer enough on its own. Deterrence also matters, and it needs to be treated as a core component of online stability. As General John R. Allen has argued, cyber operations rarely follow clear escalation pathways. They are persistent, ambiguous, and often designed to exploit gaps in coordination and hesitation in response. Over time, that steady pressure can undermine trust and resilience without ever crossing a single, obvious threshold. For Europe, the challenge is not a lack of technical capability. It is the need for greater coordination and clarity—across governments, industry, and international partners—about how we respond and how we raise the costs for malicious actors. Cybersecurity cannot sit in a technical silo. It is now central to economic security, democratic resilience, and geopolitical competition, and it demands sustained collective action: https://msft.it/6045QtbSb

Terrorism grows where prevention is weak, intelligence is ignored and communities remain silent. Counterterrorism is not only about police operations, military force or arrests—it is about prevention, intelligence, planning, cooperation and public awareness. It focuses on stopping threats before they happen and protecting people, institutions and national stability. Today, terrorism has changed. It is no longer limited to bomb attacks or armed groups. Modern threats include cyber-terrorism, online radicalization, lone-wolf attacks, insider threats, terror financing, cross-border extremist networks and attacks on critical infrastructure such as airports, schools, churches, shopping malls and government offices. Terror threats may appear through methods such as: • Suspicious financial transactions funding extremist groups • Social media used for recruitment and radicalization • Insider employees leaking sensitive security information • Cyberattacks targeting banks, hospitals or transport systems • Unattended bags in public places like bus stations or malls • Unusual surveillance around buildings, airports or embassies This is why early detection and quick response are critical. Effective counterterrorism requires teamwork between intelligence agencies, police, military, private security officers, border control, financial institutions, schools, religious leaders and local communities. Security cannot succeed when people work alone. Key counter measures include: • Intelligence gathering and threat analysis • Border security and stronger immigration control • CCTV surveillance and access control systems • Community policing and public awareness campaigns • Counter-radicalization programs • Cybersecurity and digital threat monitoring • Financial investigations disrupting terror funding • Emergency preparedness and crisis response planning • Protection of critical infrastructure and public spaces • Regular security audits and risk assessments Airports rely on passenger screening, CCTV monitoring and intelligence sharing. Banks support security by reporting suspicious transactions. Schools and community leaders help identify early signs of radicalization. One of the strongest weapons against terrorism is information. When citizens trust security institutions and report suspicious behavior early, attacks can be prevented before lives are lost. Silence can create danger, but awareness can save lives. Counterterrorism is not just about stopping attacks—it is about protecting families, livelihoods, preserving peace, defending businesses and securing the future of a nation. As security professionals, our duty goes beyond reacting. We must focus on prevention, resilience, preparedness and strategic risk management. At the end of the day, Security is everyone’s responsibility. Follow Ephantus Macharia SRMP-C, SRMP-R for daily security insights 💯 #Counterterrorism #SecurityManagement #NationalSecurity #SecurityOperations #Intelligence

Europe is entering a new era of security threats — one where the battlefield is no longer just physical, but cognitive. Deepfakes, disinformation, AI-enabled manipulation, coordinated influence campaigns, and psychological operations are increasingly designed to shape perceptions, weaken trust, and fragment democratic societies. And these threats do not only affect governments or democratic institutions anymore — companies are increasingly on the front line as well. From reputational attacks and synthetic media to coordinated influence operations targeting businesses, executives, and markets, cognitive threats are becoming a growing business risk that organisations need to understand and prepare for. In my latest piece for ECFR, co-authored with Jonathan N., we argue that Europe needs to rethink security for the age of cognitive warfare. That means moving beyond fragmented responses and building institutions capable of: • detecting cognitive threats early • coordinating across governments and sectors • responding rapidly and strategically • strengthening societal resilience before crises escalate At Alto Intelligence, we see firsthand how the digital environment is evolving — and why understanding cognitive threats is becoming essential not only for policymakers, but also for companies operating in an increasingly contested digital space. Cognitive security is becoming a core pillar of both national and corporate resilience. The challenge for Europe is not only technological — it is institutional, political, economic, and societal. The question is no longer whether cognitive warfare exists. The question is whether democracies and organizations can adapt quickly enough to defend themselves. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eZCg4-ds #Europe #Security #CognitiveWarfare #HybridThreats #Disinformation #AI #Geopolitics #CorporateSecurity #RiskIntelligence #CyberSecurity #Democracy #ECFR #AltoIntelligence

When MI5 warns UK lawmakers that Chinese intelligence officers are posing as “headhunters” on LinkedIn, it’s not just a British problem. It’s a systems problem - and Singapore is not exempt. 🇬🇧 The UK case highlights 3 uncomfortable truths: Foreign interference rarely looks like spies in trench coats. It looks like job offers, “research collaborations”, policy surveys, and innocuous networking. The weakest link is always the human link. Not because people are malicious - but because they’re busy, tired, or flattered. Democracies struggle to balance openness with vigilance. And adversaries exploit precisely that tension. 🇸🇬 In Singapore, the threat profile is different - but the principles are the same. We rely on: * global talent flows, * international research partnerships, * multinational investment, * open digital platforms like LinkedIn. That openness is our competitive advantage. It’s also an attack surface. The UK story isn’t about China alone. It’s about a world where influence operations now run through inboxes, conferences, WhatsApp chats, and “opportunities” that feel flattering, not suspicious. So what should a small, globally connected state do? 1️⃣ Harden the system, not just the individual. Corporate HR, universities, government agencies - all need baseline protocols when engaging foreign partners. Not paranoia. Just hygiene. 2️⃣ Expand digital literacy to include “influence literacy”. If kids learn financial literacy in school, why not geopolitical literacy? In a world of information warfare, civics is national security. 3️⃣ Build a culture of quiet vigilance. Not fear. Not xenophobia. Just the calm awareness that when someone wants information, you deserve to know why. 4️⃣ Treat foreign influence as a workforce issue, not only a security issue. Professionals - from researchers to civil servants to consultants - are now frontline actors. Equip them. Don’t burden them. The MI5 alert isn’t a scandal. It’s a signal. The question for Singapore is simple: How do we stay open to the world - without being naïve about how the world has changed? This is where policy, education, workforce development, and national resilience all intersect. And we need to act with the same clarity we expect of others. What’s your read on the MI5 warning - overreaction, overdue, or just the new normal?

As we keep learning from recent months, hybrid threats from our adversaries don’t arrive with warning sirens or troop movements. They work quietly through narratives, misinformation, and the slow erosion of trust in democratic institutions. In my latest article for Canadian Affairs, I argue that while cyber tools and intelligence capabilities matter, Canada’s real centre of gravity and need is social and institutional resilience. Hybrid campaigns by our adversaries aim less to convince than to confuse, divide, and exhaust societies. This has direct implications for how we think about national defence. Three key takeaways: ➡️ Hybrid threats target trust, not territory. The objective isn’t persuasion, but cynicism aimed at undermining confidence in institutions, media, and one another. ➡️ Technical fixes are necessary but insufficient. Cyber defences and attribution help, but they can’t substitute for social cohesion and credible governance. ➡️ Democratic resilience is Canada’s strongest defence. Trusted local institutions, independent media, community leaders, and inclusive public narratives are strategic assets, rather than soft add-ons. If Canada wants to be serious about defending itself in today’s security environment, resilience must be treated as a core national security function, not an afterthought. Pendulum Geopolitical Advisory