The co-author of the Strategic Defence Review has warned that Britain increasingly looks like a soft target rather than a hard target, telling MPs the country is extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign interference through its election system and money flowing from external sources to political candidates and parties.
Dr Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former US intelligence official who served on the SDR alongside Lord Robertson, made the comments to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy during an evidence session on societal resilience on 27 April, saying that modern war was fought with many different methods including propaganda and that there were many ways in which British society could be weakened and exploited.
“Increasingly the UK looks like a soft target rather than a hard target,” she told the committee. “The UK is extraordinarily vulnerable through the election system and money coming from different sources that can be given to political candidates and parties.”
Hill pointed to the Swedish concept of psychological defence as a model the UK should consider, describing it as training people to deal with information warfare so that they could recognise when they were being manipulated. “There are many different ways in which British society can be weakened and exploited, so we should be thinking of how we can make the UK less of a soft target for all kinds of different operations,” she said.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who led the SDR, agreed with the assessment, warning that the UK had become a proxy for the United States in the Russian domestic press, with what he described as an almost hysterical approach being taken toward the UK as the major opponent in the war in Ukraine. “We should be very wary, therefore, about the vulnerabilities in our critical national infrastructure and our military,” he said.
Hill also warned that the UK had so far failed to have what she called its Zeitenwende moment, the reckoning that prompted Germany to fundamentally reframe its approach to defence and security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We had the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, which turned him into a dirty bomb spreading polonium all over London. There was the poisoning of the Skripals with enough Novichok to take out all of Salisbury. Even that did not have an effect,” she said, adding that there was “a failure to then make that jump into what that could mean for the UK.”
The comments came during a wider discussion about the UK failure to launch the national conversation on defence and security recommended by the SDR, with Robertson telling MPs he had reminded the Prime Minister on a couple of occasions about his commitment to it but that the government had not started the conversation. “I understand that there was a conversation about a conversation recently inside the Ministry of Defence, but there are no signs of it outside it,” he said.
So what Fiona Hill is saying is that Nigel Farrage and Reform are the UK greatest weakness.
How many more frigates do we need to deal with that threat?
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You bellend.
Absolutely stupid comment and everyone on this site is dumber for having had the misfortune to read it.
Well, what is she saying?
All well and good but everything requires money, money is something the Treasury and current government have little interest in spending unless it’s for kickbacks or their party policies which put defence clearly at the bottom of the pile.
To the bloke on the bus, too many of Britain’s political representatives give every appearance of concentrating on the long game: their career after politics.
Dr Hill is correct.
What to do?
Britain requires a higher calibre of politician. MPs salaries should be doubled. Ministers salaries should be doubled. The Prime Minister’s salary should be trebled. That is not out of kilter with historical recompense in real terms for the PMs position.
The government ‘payroll’ vote could then be significantly reduced, improving independence of thought and voting.
Systemic reform is required.
I agree however I think money alone is not enough to attract a higher caliber of candidate.
Much of the problem is the media and the online political discourse,
You only have to read this comment section to see the absolute hate fuelled nonsense espoused by much of the great unwashed.
How many top caliber individuals would be willing to take on such a task knowing that no matter what you do or how good a job you do around 75% of the country will instantly hate you and nearly half of those individuals will instantly begin comparing you to some of the greatest mass murders in history all because you cut £100 a year in OAP benefits or changed the inflation adjusted tax bonds four years in the future. If you not compared to the likes of Stalin and Hitler your probably accused of child abuse, racism, anti semitism etc etc etc etc.
People get the politicans they deserve and unfortunately most people in the UK now deserve Nigel Farrage.
Democracy: the least worst form.of government.
Democracy is the only option…so how to.make the best of it?
But I have digressed.
The matter of the hour is defence of the realm: currently worryingly undefended.
Unsurprisingly, solutions are not hard to find:
Ukraine’s rapidly growing defense industry works differently from much of the West. It is made up of a host of companies, many of which are small operations making products that are rapidly upgraded, sometimes in hours or days, close to the battlefield with direct soldier input.
It means companies can start with a simpler design that they constantly update with soldier feedback. NATO says it needs to learn from the way Ukraine does that.
Europe is worried that Russia will attack elsewhere on the continent and spark a wider war, and officials across Europe argue NATO must rethink how it procures and develops weapons.
Key among the realizations is that Western militaries need masses of cheap weaponry and that they need to move away from a focus on smaller numbers of highly advanced systems.
NATO officials have raised this issue, including Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, who previously told Business Insider that “one of the lessons” from Ukraine is that the West needs large quantities of cheap weaponry.
It’s not that the West would not still need the cutting-edge weapons it is so good at making. But in a long, large-scale war, those systems can run out and take time to replace.’
We know what to do.
Returning to the digression, we appear to lack sufficient individuals in Whitehall/Westminster prepared to put defence of the realm at the top of the in tray, where it should, of course, reside.
Voters are not, in the round, particularly interested in defence…but this is a representative democracy and our representatives should know better.
Clearly not many do, so we must reform to incentivise those who do have the best interests of this country and its people at heart to get involved; successful and worldly wise citizens with a hinterland.
Both Houses of Parliament used to be full.of them…and they were not professional politicians…
I’m probably paraphrasing quite a lot here, but I always think about Denis Healey’s response to a question regarding his competence to discuss amphibious operations: “Well, I was beach-master at Anzio”.
Apart from being one of the best put-downs I’ve ever heard, how many in the current House could say something like that?
That’s it.
There is plenty of experience of all sorts out there but not enough of it is being attracted into our ‘House of Representatives’.
That requires a fix.
This is precisely the problem, we do get the politicians we deserve. ‘We’ vote these people in. Until they believe that the electorate is interested in defence, and therefore it is in their own interests to take it seriously, they’ll continue to give it a low priority.
An honest local politician once told me that she agreed with me, but that there were no votes in defence. At a local level, at least, she did try her best.
I do believe that a responsible government would both take the defence of the country seriously, communicate this to the electorate, and act accordingly, but that’s unlikely to happen. The present incumbents talk about it, but seem to do very little, and even that is months overdue.
“You only have to read this comments section to see the absolute hate fuelled nonsense espoused by much of the great unwashed”. 🤔
And there was me thinking just a handful of said “great unwashed” comment here, with possibly a few of them having multiple accounts for maximum effect/wind-up value. (the typical Liebore/Farage/Con/Green/SNP comments we see every article, where each member battles/types hard to insult others for their opposing political loyalties) (Ironic) 👀
So basically Approx 12 regular stinky members out of a population approaching 70,000,000. 🤦♂️
Not entirely sure you have given a watertight analogy there really 🤔
(hang on, Got to take a shower).
1.5 million migrants not born in the UK now on benefits, according to a report this morning.
My father never claimed a days benefit in his life….
Neither have I, though I was born here.
My wife’s home town is unrecognisable to what it was where she grew up there.
Yes, we do….
She isn’t from Woking, is she? I might have to distance myself.
Lol. No, she grew up in a suburb of West London.
Those “Suburbs” are now called “Communities” or “Enclaves” mostly now.
Interesting you write about hate fulelled nonsense Jim. The very first comment you wrote is indeed hate fueled nonsense about Farage. There is zero evidence Farage supports Russia.
The reason people support Farage is because they are sick to death of the failed liberal experiment that is mass immigration. Theres nothing wrong with supporting a party that chooses to end it, its called democracy. Nobody every voted for a manifesto that supported open borders, quite the opposite.
You’re just going to have to suck it up, change is on the way Jim. No amount of lies and smears are stopping this train old fruit.
There is, however, oceans of evidence that farage has been accepting money from foreign interests. It is undeniable, and a weakness of our system.
Who though? You should name them. I’d be happy to hear who they are. Its a genuine question.
Farage has received lots of money from Christopher Harborne who’s a British citizen that lives in Thailand.
First Barrons has a pop, then Robertson and now Hill. Didn’t the government welcome their report and agree to implement all the recommendations? One might almost think the just because the government said something, didn’t actually make it so. No. Perish the thought.
They haven’t done it yet, but sounds like it’s coming in the next week or two.
My cynical prediction was tomorrow, being probably the best day to bury bad news this year.
Yes they did and we have all waited for months and months and months and months and months and, well It’s been a fucking long time coming and still nothing.
But don’t worry, It’s coming in the next couple of weeks (well that’s what it was a week ago, so maybe next week ?).
Probably had to wait until there was nothing much left to scrap, so as to get to a level where any small order looks like a big thing ?
I’m only an Unwashed Halfwit though. 😁😁😁
With total bell ends as politicians what to expect? Serial liars and corrupt. Run by extremist left wing Fabians.
A majority of voters are thick as mince ( role model Red Rayner ) Hell this could turn into a rant but whats the point?
Intrusive authoritarian government that buys support with welfarism is a downward spiral. When it hits rock bottom? The reaction will make NI look like a blip. Treatment of veterans is one indicator for me, Two Tier is not just a nickname for a clown lawyer, its the reality of the UK now.
Who though? You should name them. I’d be happy to hear who they are. Its a genuine question.
Farage has received lots of money from Christopher Harborne who’s a British citizen that lives in Thailand.
To recognise when we’re being manipulated… Like having a former US Intelligence Official conducting a British SDR..? So murky this world is.
^^ as an example of “you just never know either way”.