Epistemic Security 2029: Protecting the UK’s information supply chain and strengthening democratic discourse for the next political era
2024 was dubbed the “year of democracy”, a super election year in which, by some counts, half the world went to the polls. It shone a light on the yawning flaws in our information ecosystems, with persisting concerns about the influence of social media and now generative AI on how people communicate, consume news, and form opinions, and with allegations of foreign interference flying thick and fast.
As we reach the end of this period and the start of a new political age, the threats are intensifying and changing. It’s not just the usual suspects, we now see the incoming US administration and their close social media partners apparently influencing UK political discourse. We reach a potential fork in the road, where the current fragile and failing systems for protecting information systems are at risk of crumbling altogether.
There is an urgent need to re-examine the state of the UK’s epistemic security – how secure is our information supply chain and our institutions of democratic discourse? By the 2029 election will the UK be able to make collective decisions based on reliable information and productive public deliberation? Will we be debating what has actually happened to public services and the economy or debating untruths?
Now is the moment to assess the new threats and the potential pathway to protect the UK’s information space for the next era.
Demos’s new programme, Epistemic Security 2029, will attempt to answer those questions and to build a collaboration with partners across government, civil society, industry and with citizens to find solutions.
Time to Act
While facing the same corrosive forces, compared with the US, there is still some hope for the UK’s information ecosystem. Trust in the media in the UK is at an all time low, mis and disinformation is rife and has had horrendous consequences. But we have some common and independent institutions, including the publicly funded BBC, that still attempt to create shared and trusted narratives. While other countries around the world are voting in extreme populist governments that capitalise on weak trust in the information environments, the UK has so far resisted.
But that is no guarantee for the future. Right now, the UK has a chance to repel divisive extreme populist narratives that seek to polarise people, instead seeking to find compromise, points of consensus and decisions in the common good. But it must be prepared to defend, rebuild and reimagine the information system and democratic institutions around it for the longer term.
Protecting our Information Supply Chain
We need to take a broad look at threats to our information supply chain and how the United Kingdom is positioned as a society to defend and improve it. This goes much further than technical debates about social media content moderation, filter bubbles and foreign interference. Back in 2018 (during the first Trump administration) the Five Eyes nations made a definitive statement of the importance of defending national information sovereignty. It condemned:
“Terrorism, child sexual abuse and exploitation, violent extremism, and coercive acts of interference and disinformation are enduring concerns of government. The anonymous, instantaneous, and networked nature of the online environment has magnified these threats and opened up new vectors for harm. Governments have a responsibility to protect those within our borders against both physical and digital threats, and to ensure that the rule of law prevails online, as it does offline. We have a responsibility to tackle these challenges in a coordinated and effective way.”
Shortly after, in 2020, UK defence scientists, University of Cambridge academics, the Alan Turing Institute published highly distinctive work on how to assess threats to epistemic security led by Elizabeth Seger, now Demos’s Director of Digital Policy. The project mapped the epistemic processes of information production, dissemination, modification, and reception – noting the role of both adversarial actors intentionally spreading disinformation and the epistemic ‘blunder’, unintentionally introducing falsehoods that are later amplified and take on a life of their own.
The report red-teamed theoretical crisis scenarios exacerbated by breakdowns in epistemic processes, looking for vulnerabilities and opportunities for intervention. One of the scenarios closely mirrored events that eventually unfolded in the UKs Southport 2024 Summer riots – a case study of social media communication gone wrong, and an event for which we could have been better prepared. There is an urgent need to repeat this work for the current threat environment. The 2023 National Security Act (NSA) eventually legislated against foreign interference specifically, but the later 2024 Online Safety Act, while carrying through some aspects of the NSA, was reluctant to tackle broader societal risks, focussing on harms to the individual rather than the public.
Moreso, with all the academic and policy discussion focussed on tech and social media, traditional media sources once so significant in the UK have become somewhat neglected. The state of local news in the UK is particularly troubling, despite the valiant efforts of journalists of all types. Demos’s work illustrated how the collapse of local government communication and fact-based local news led to a failure of epistemic security in the heated local debate around Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. The rapid shifts in demand towards social media as a main source of news, is also particularly concerning. In security circles there is much talk of securing our physical supply chains post the pandemic, but little discussion of how we strengthen our information supply chains and turn the tide of demand. For many people, their supply of daily information is dependent on half a dozen platforms owned and operated outside the UK.
Announcing Epistemic Security 2029
This new project coordinated from Demos will examine the threats to epistemic security in the UK. The scope is ambitious and we shall use our long-practiced convening and partnership working to gather experts from far and wide. We see five immediate areas we intend to cover:
1. Threat analysis
What is the true threat to our information environments today in the UK? How has it been changed by recent geopolitical developments? What are the likely scenarios that we could see play out in the near term future that would affect the health of the democracy? We will return to the principles of the Turing work, and take a broad societal look at both the UK’s defences and citizens’ changing media habits to understand the extent of the threats.
2. Regulation
Is the new UK regime of the National Security Act, Online Safety Act, Media Act, and Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act fit to defend our epistemic security? Do the changes recommended by the Electoral Commission post the 2024 election go far enough – do we need a more established critical election protocol like Canada? How should the Speaker’s Conference solve the terrible problem of intimidation of candidates without curtailing rights to protest?
3. Media policy
Can protecting our information supply chain be a focus for renewed public media policy? Is the BBC playing the right role? Are there new market failures where people not provided for by public service media are drawn to toxic content where the costs fall to society? Should public service move to a ‘no one left behind’ approach as well as serving minoritised audiences for traditional market failure? Can new media funding models help public subsidies to flow without state control? Can information environments be improved during democratic events by a new ‘must carry’ regime?
4. Government communications
How can and should government at all levels communicate what it does in modern media to maintain the confidence of taxpayers? How can cash strapped local government maintain a proper voice in local debate and connection with communities? How can information environments help improve the understanding between authorities and citizens – while maintaining transparency of sourcing and independence?
5. Citizen empowerment
What do citizens want from their information ecosystems; what makes them vulnerable to being part of the systems that corrupt and weaken the information environment; and how can we empower citizens to be resilient to information threats and demand good quality information? This might include a specific look at the media habits of the next generation of voters by different demographics, noting emerging divisions between men and women.
It is a big and ambitious programme of work and we want to work with partners to scope the programme. We will be broad in our thinking in order to understand the issues, but targeted in our solutions, focused on strategies and approaches that will shift the dial ahead of the next election. We would love to hear from anyone interested in working in partnership or contributing to this work.
As the project progresses we shall post more here.
Do get in touch with [email protected] to find out more about the project.
This programme is financially supported by William Perrin, a former technology policy advisor and private secretary to Tony Blair from 2001-04. He is a trustee of Indigo Trust and Carnegie UK Trust and was awarded an OBE for his influential work that underpinned the UK government’s approach to regulating online services.