This was one of the compelling ideas discussed at the latest Athena panel, which brought together a military strategist and a professor leading UCL’s Grand Challenge of Data Empowered Societies programme. Athena has partnered with UCL to host a series of conversations aimed at finding solutions to the challenges disinformation brings.

Despite the immense technical complexity behind the latest AI developments, the solutions discussed at the London event on Tuesday turned out to be largely societal and cultural. Speed, collaboration, and sovereign models emerged as key responses.

James Hetherington, Professor of Computational Science and Academic Director of UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre, set the scene. He spoke about agentic AI (AI models running complex disinformation campaigns), LLM grooming, and the implications of AI improving itself (recursive self-improvement). For Hetherington, the profound change is that computers can now work with human language in ways that reach directly into how we think and understand the world - a change from expressing themselves only in numbers, which happened about six years ago.

“Language is how we reflect, observe and discuss,” said Hetherington. “So the fact that language has become part of computer science is mildly terrifying.”

Ripping it apart

Air Marshal Edward Stringer, a retired RAF jet pilot and former director of Military Operations at the MOD, agreed, adding that adversaries are not interested in specific election outcomes - the deeper motive is to confuse and divide, using ever faster AI tools. The true aim, he said, citing past elections in the US and Romania, is to “rip apart” society on key issues and to reinforce fears.

“The new bit is finding a new way to attack the credibility of your institutions, which is a route to polarisation,” Stringer explained. “You can’t make people believe things they don’t want to think. But if they’ve got secret fears or they’re actually halfway to thinking, ‘That’s all rubbish,’ you just reinforce it.”

A key topic on the night was speed: how defenders can prepare and anticipate fast-moving attacks powered by the latest AI.

Stringer spoke about military procurement, plagued by long contracts and restrictive specifications. In his view, we are now on a “virtual battlefield” where defences need to be built and tested quickly, as they are on the frontlines in Ukraine.

“You need to be able to move quickly, you need to be able to be agile, you need to be able to move with people who can move quickly,” he said. “We have to learn how to be an intelligent customer with the sort of companies we rely on to generate the products we need as the whole battle space changes around us.”

Hetherington added that despite being responsible for innovation, universities have processes that slow it down. Change, whether in the military or in academia, means evolving ways of working and developing industry partnerships.

Ready to rally

Partnerships can extend to building a civilian reserve to bolster a nation’s information resilience. Stringer’s argument is that, despite being polarised, people tend to trust their peers more than state agencies. Such a reserve could train and exercise together, and stand ready to mobilise. Drawing on his experience in advising government during the pandemic, Hetherington warned that bureaucracy should not delay bringing researchers into the national response.

Linked to this, Hetherington said the UK and its European allies need to build and train their own AI models. Developing sovereign models, he believes, helps a nation maintain control and build public trust. To do that, they’ll need to invest in the expertise and computing resources, and forge stronger relationships with frontier labs. Defenders, Hetherington argues, need to be able to inspect and experiment with models, building public trust through open-source development and transparent data.

For Stringer, trust extends to developing tools that frontline defenders actually need, throwing out the “glossy box and packaging” if need be. He spoke about the mismatch between expensive, highly engineered battlefield equipment and what lands up being practical, affordable and useful. He warned that new products integrated into old systems lead to slow change - the kind we can’t afford.

Two cheers for new disinformation centre

Speaking of new and old… Stringer gave “two cheers” for Britain’s plans to set up a new centre (the National Centre for Information Defence) to combat hostile disinformation attacks. He was holding onto the third cheer, he said, until there’s a clearer mandate and more information on how the centre will avoid policing ordinary political discourse or drifting into its own political messaging. Stringer said Sweden offers a useful template for focusing on genuine external interference and setting itself high thresholds for intervention. Stringer questioned how overlapping responsibilities will be managed between the new centre and various older agencies and government departments.

The experts agreed that AI is evolving at an astonishing speed. The “virtual battlefield” has changed completely (“the internet we wanted is not the internet we got” says Hetherington). And, to quote Stringer, “all wars are wars of force development”, the information war included.

Building a standing defence means uniting citizens, researchers, industry and government - and enabling them to move quickly, develop and adapt the tools they need.

Analysis: work together, democratise defence

When it comes to defending against AI-powered disinformation, everyone has a role to play.

In this short video, Athena’s Jessica Cecil reflects on her conversation with UCL Professor James Hetherington and Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who believe that despite the technical complexity behind the attacks, collaboration can help build effective defences.

As Jessica explains, this collaboration plays out at all levels, from the scientific to the societal:

Bugs and eyeballs: why universities need to be in the trenches of information warfare

In open-source software engineering, a “shallow bug” is a problem that’s easy to spot. A “deep bug” is a hidden fault that needs investigating. Put enough people to work examining the code, and both types of bugs can be fixed.

There’s even a neat phrase for it: “Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow”.

Professor James Hetherington thinks this idea has something to offer those defending the information space.

“If our information theatre is itself constructed of software, which is now the case, then this applies,” he told Athena.

His point: defending the systems through which we discover and share knowledge needs more people with the right tools.

Bringing more eyes to the problem

At UCL, that means bringing computer scientists and engineers into closer partnership with historians, legal scholars and education researchers. Understanding how a technology works is one part of the defence. Understanding why people believe what it produces is another.

The university’s Data Empowered Societies Grand Challenge is creating a Disinformation Hub to connect these perspectives. The work has three strands: developing a research centre, exploring education on disinformation, and examining case studies.

The research involves asking what makes people susceptible to manipulation.

“What is it about the world that’s underpinning people’s likelihood to believe or accept disinformation?” asked Melanie Smallman, UCL’s Professor of Science and Technology Studies leading the development of the Disinformation Hub. “We can then pass on that basic knowledge to people and policymakers who will make really good use of it.”

Technology that serves people

The Disinformation Hub sits within the wider programme, launched in late 2024. Data Empowered Societies brings researchers from across UCL together to explore how data and technology can help people overcome challenges, taking into consideration their needs and vulnerabilities.

For Hetherington, the opportunity extends to building language models whose origins can be examined. Greater transparency could give researchers and civil society more ways to scrutinise the systems shaping our knowledge.

The ambition is to turn collective expertise into collective capability: more people able to understand the information reaching them, challenge its origins and help repair the weaknesses attackers exploit. Enough eyes, better tools, and those bugs may just become shallower.

News: what changed this week

“We can’t legislate our way out of any harm,” says Britain’s democracy minister. Florence Eshalomi told MPs on Tuesday that defending elections requires regulation that adapts to fast-changing online threats, alongside greater responsibility from social media companies. She called for platforms to work with government to keep elections free from foreign interference. For disinformation defenders, the challenge is keeping practical safeguards moving as quickly as the tools used to attack them.

Watch the committee hearing

Taiwan warns of a surge in Chinese disinformation ahead of local elections. Its National Security Bureau says it tracked more than 2.5 million pieces of disputed or false information originating from China in the first nine months of 2026 - up 48% on a year earlier. According to Reuters, the bureau describes a mix of AI-generated videos, fake accounts and coordinated comment flooding aimed at sowing division and influencing November’s vote.

Read Reuters’ report

Fake celebrities, inflated audiences: an influence operation manufactures both credibility and engagement. Bloomberg reports that Russian operation Matryoshka is using AI-generated videos impersonating stars including Robert De Niro and Julia Roberts to attack Democrats ahead of the US midterms, with bots inflating view counts.

Read Bloomberg’s investigation

Microsoft targets the businesses behind a billion malicious messages. Working with international partners, Microsoft disrupted three criminal services supplying accounts and tools for impersonation scams. It says the services targeted over 75,000 organisations in more than 150 countries. Court-authorised domain seizures and account closures show how defenders can dismantle the infrastructure behind deception.

Read Microsoft’s announcement

Solutions:

Asked where useful solutions are emerging, James Hetherington pointed to efforts to make AI more transparent, adaptable and open to scrutiny. Here are his picks, alongside the disinformation research taking shape at UCL:

UCL is bringing together computer scientists, engineers, social scientists and humanities researchers through its Grand Challenge of Data Empowered Societies. Its Disinformation Hub is investigating why people accept disinformation to give defenders and policymakers stronger evidence to work with. Hetherington also highlighted UK-LLM/BritLLM, UCL’s work to develop sovereign, open-source language models aligned with UK needs.

Open Athena is a nonprofit helping academic researchers build and adapt AI models openly. Its Marin project shares code, training-data sources, tools, and the outcomes of its experiments. That allows researchers to inspect how models are built, test their weaknesses and develop alternatives.

Honourable mention:

Hetherington highlighted Bluesky and its AT Protocol, which allow users to choose or build feeds, giving them more control over how (and what) information reaches them. “In the current media,” he said. “Algorithm is editorial.”

Share Athena

This was no ordinary lie, destined to bounce around social media accounts in the Baltics. This was a shapeshifter. A disinformation tactic that’s becoming increasingly difficult to defend against, according to Refute, an organisation that tracks influence campaigns.

Refute’s new report (see below) offers a rare anatomy of a shapeshifting disinformation campaign in Latvia, which included a video with at least eight different versions in 15 languages, ranging from Latvian to Russian to Vietnamese. The video falsely claimed that a Ukrainian soldier had shot and killed three NATO servicemen before taking his own life. Refute says all available evidence points towards Russia-linked networks that wanted to deepen divisions and influence opinions about Ukraine and security in the region.

The campaign began its life as a fake breaking news video, styled to look like a genuine report from a respected news channel. It was reworked by local influencers and repeated in Belarus-based broadcasts.

“Three weeks after the false claim was published, the alleged incident was discussed as if it were a fact,” Refute’s report states.

To explore the role these new shapeshifting campaigns are playing in the so-called grey zone of hybrid warfare, Athena spoke to Refute’s CEO and co-founder Tom Garnett.

Elusive targets

Garnett says AI has enabled disinformation campaigns to scale and evolve rapidly. Translations and tailored versions make videos more realistic, he says, while AI agents can be tasked to manage social media accounts and amplify content.

“They [AI agents] are actually being given very high-level objectives,” Garnett explains. “And then it’s a series of accounts working together in a coordinated fashion and managing their own interactions with the population.”

According to Refute’s report, dozens of accounts, with a combined 1.85 million followers, spread the lie about the fabricated shooting during the Baltic Trust 26 military exercise in Latvia.

“That makes it a lot harder to detect, it’s more challenging, the volumes are larger, and therefore from a detection perspective the technology also has to change,” says Garnett.

The objective isn’t just in the Baltics, he adds. It’s about “fracturing societies” around the world. The fake NATO shooting video, for instance, was translated into Italian, Arabic and Spanish.

Garnett says Refute has tracked disinformation campaigns of all kinds, from fake Jeffrey Epstein links to drones damaging fighter jets. Modern campaigns tend to mix traditional propaganda techniques with the latest AI tools. Tracking campaigns in countries like Romania, Estonia and Hungary, Refute is finding fake news websites being created, shapeshifting video content being created with AI tools, amplification through bot farms, and the continued role of human influencers in pushing false narratives into the mainstream.

Reach doesn’t mean success

Garnett says he’s encouraged by some of the resilience Baltic states have shown against sophisticated disinformation campaigns. Latvia’s armed forces rebutted the fabricated NATO shooting within a day. In Estonia, volunteers have helped expose a cloned news website. While this doesn’t necessarily stop a campaign, it can disrupt the link between reach and success.

“Did they [attackers] hit the ultimate overall objectives? Potentially not,” says Garnett. “And that’s largely down to the resilience we’ve seen within those Baltic countries, which are very used to these influence operations.”

Without strong defences, disinformation campaigns can do severe damage. Garnett points to Romania, where the 2024 presidential election was annulled amid allegations of foreign interference and manipulation, forcing a rerun in 2025. Garnett warns that this wider threat extends to companies and individuals.

“I don’t think there’s a country that’s not feeling the effects of hybrid warfare,” he says.

An “arms war to keep up”

In Garnett’s view, when it comes to identifying and disrupting disinformation campaigns, businesses are most vulnerable.

“From boards down to the comms team, they are probably the least prepared.”

While government policy and education (from schools to universities to workplaces) play a big part in defending nations, technology must keep up, says Garnett. He sees opportunity for investors to back innovation in tools that help disrupt campaigns in real-time. This includes developing technology to identify deepfakes, check sources, and trace how content has been altered as it moves between platforms.

For defenders, the challenge is to recognise a campaign beneath its changing forms, and act before its next version finds a new audience.

Subscribe now

New report: Democratic Resilience in the Baltics

Cloned news sites, fabricated videos and lies built around real events: Refute’s new report traces Russia-linked disinformation campaigns in the Baltics and how defenders responded. It takes a close look at elections in Estonia and Latvia.

Read more and request a copy of the report here.

Protecting AI’s knowledge well from disinformation poison

Understanding how to defend Large Language Models (LLMs) from being poisoned with false or distorted facts is going to take more data and closer industry engagement.

That’s according to Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) in Washington, DC and Atlantic Council’s vice president for technology programs and strategy. Brookie spoke to Athena after attending the recent UN General Assembly, where UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, announced plans for a new national centre to fight information attacks.

Brookie says the new “cognitive threat” of LLM grooming is part of a fundamental shift in the information environment and the global security landscape, driven by rapid advancements in AI.

“In 2018, we were talking about bot farms on social media platforms,” he said. “And frankly, that feels a little quaint at this point. Figuring out how to create a research agenda and a policy agenda to solve for some of that is a real challenge.”

According to Brookie, two thirds of Google searches no longer end with a person clicking a link. That means the majority of users are now reading AI summaries and moving on. The question is: where is the LLM getting its information?

Threat actors are changing the “bounds of knowledge” instead of trying to sneak in poisoned ideas, Brookie explains. This contamination of the “universe of sources” the LLMs are trained on presents a major challenge for disinformation defenders. As it gets cheaper and easier to create content at scale, he adds, DFRLab is seeing more experimentation in gaming LLM training.

“We need a lot more data on how LLMs are being poisoned,” Brookie says. “[And] we need more engagement on what best industry practices are, especially for the models that are being manipulated.”

Better sources, stronger defences

Brookie says AI startups fighting disinformation are working to create better, more trustworthy sourcing. Others are giving defenders more powerful tools.

“You can imagine a DFRLab researcher using a team of agents to make their research a lot quicker so that we can expose threat actors more efficiently.”

He’s also noticed a recent increase in sophisticated threat intelligence reporting from frontier labs. This is a major development that positions AI developers on the frontlines of the disinformation war.

Brookie says that, in the absence of regular government reporting, disclosures and reporting from frontier labs support organisations like DFRLab as they adapt their methodologies and set research agendas.

Brookie says leading AI labs are talking about pushing the brake pedal to develop models safely. We need to take advantage of this “increased alignment”, he says, to boost information resilience.

Share

News: what changed this week

Influence campaigns are manufacturing credibility and blending digital deception with real-world operations. OpenAI says it banned accounts linked to elaborate Russian and Iranian “false front” operations that used ChatGPT models to “launder geopolitical, conflict-related messaging”. The Iranian operation used “a stable” of seven fake journalist personas to place almost 100 articles across online publications. The Russian operation recruited unwitting researchers to staff a real world think tank in Latin America.

Read OpenAI’s investigation

Disinformation discovered in six out of 10 elections, a new global report finds. International IDEA’s review of 2025, produced with the Electoral Integrity Project, recorded disinformation and misinformation in at least 62% of the 39 national elections it monitored. The danger extends beyond misleading voters about candidates.

Read International IDEA’s report

But…

Reach alone won’t tell us how much harm disinformation can do. Full Fact and the University of Westminster assessed dozens of examples of AI-generated or altered misinformation - and found that less than half had substantive potential for specific harms (including financial loss, damage to health or social unrest). The report says we need to better understand the difference between “the potentially harmful and the inconsequential”.

Read Full Fact’s report

Europe puts its disinformation defences to the test. A new EU-funded project, FIMI-RESIST, will assess 20 existing tools and test their usefulness with journalists, fact-checkers and other defenders. Led by the University of Mainz, with partners including Factiverse, the €3.5 million project addresses a practical gap: establishing which tools work, for whom, and against which threats. (For more on Factiverse and its work see the key takeaways from Athena’s panel in Copenhagen.)

Read the University of Mainz announcement

Solutions: make life difficult for threat actors

Tom Garnett is watching two companies - Reality Defender and Ghost Shift - working on different parts of disinformation defence: spotting fabricated content and disrupting those behind attacks.

Reality Defender detects AI manipulation in audio, video and images, including during live calls and meetings. Its tools help organisations flag cloned voices and fabricated footage before they trigger a payment or enter a news report. That can help stop impersonation scams and expose fabricated material used to damage reputations.

Ghost Shift is a consultancy firm specialising in gathering online intelligence and helping clients disrupt harmful campaigns launched by adversaries. It also specialises in counter-narratives. For those tackling influence operations, it addresses a key challenge: moving from watching a campaign spread to making it more difficult for the threat actor to run it.

Full Fact offers another part of the defence: checking claims and helping reliable information reach the public. It’s also developing a benchmark to assess the accuracy, transparency and consistency of Large Language Models. Its latest report, covered in our news section above, examines which AI-generated falsehoods have the potential to cause harm.

This week, Athena gathered a panel of information defenders whose diverse experiences – probabilistic forecasting, journalism, disinformation detection – can help us find specific solutions to meet what GCHQ boss, Anne Keast-Butler, calls a “moment of consequence”.

The approaches include accurate prediction, more transparency, and using the latest tools to disrupt attacks and inoculate the public against foreign interference.

Following similar events in Poland and Denmark, Athena’s Jessica Cecil led the discussion, which took place at Resilience Conference in London. The event gathered the defence community from across the UK, Europe, and NATO countries.

Predict, to prepare

Dr Keith Dear, one of the founders of forecasting company Cassi, warned that the UK’s defence has a “huge blind spot” in its use of data to make predictions. Besides helping decision-makers better understand where to invest and act, he said, sharper forecasting can also inform public opinion. Dear argued that unmasking those behind disinformation attacks, and making their motives clear, empowers people to reach their own conclusions.

“We still rely far too much on narrative,” Dear, a former RAF intelligence officer and advisor to the Prime Minister, explained. “There are no numbers in it. That’s the blind spot we’re trying to fix.”

Dear believes any nation that wants to protect itself and stay at the forefront of the information war must factor global AI development into its forecasts. If current trends continue, he says, we’re heading towards a situation where new models will arrive daily, capable of processing longer tasks more accurately. These models could be used to produce more detailed, accurate intelligence. Falling behind will be like “chasing after a runner who started before you, who gets faster every single day.”

Dear’s approach to prediction relies on fundamental infrastructure. He called for investment in energy and computing capacity, saying both are essential to processing information and generating critical defence intelligence.

Deborah Haynes, Tom Garnett, Jessica Cecil, and Keith Dear. This picture is adapted from a photograph at Resilience Conference, which, for security reasons, has strict photography rules.

Get ahead of the narrative

Deborah Haynes, Defence and Security Editor at Sky News, warned of a “gap in our armoury” in identifying foreign information operations, adding that the UK’s ability to deter threats is “not as good as it should be”.

Sharing stories from assignments around the world, from Ukraine to Israel, the journalist behind the acclaimed The Wargame podcast and television series spoke about the amplifying effect of technology on weaponised information.

Haynes said the UK’s new centre being set up to fight disinformation, announced by the Prime Minister last month, is far from a new idea and will need resources, the right people, and permission from top leadership to take risks and play an active role in disrupting attacks.

Haynes called on government to get credible information out faster, getting ahead of hostile narratives. She gave the example of Britain working with the US in early 2022 to declassify and release intelligence about Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine, which helped expose what was coming and made the Kremlin’s denials more difficult to sustain. Given the power and speed of AI tools, she argued, it’s time for more transparency.

Back home, Haynes said she’d like to see officials and politicians (including local MPs) speak more openly about threats.

“The government needs to get more confidence to be able to speak about the unspeakable, like the w-word: war,” Haynes said.

From detection to disruption

Tom Garnett, CEO and co-founder of Refute, a tech startup that helps clients fight disinformation, says the recent elections in Latvia revealed a “mix of tools and techniques” being used by those trying to subvert democracy.

According to Garnett, while there’s still reliance on old school tricks and human influencers, AI is helping threat actors automate the production of content, which is then translated and adjusted as it spreads.

He said governments and businesses need to work together to disrupt these information attacks.

“There are really big plays, particularly in moving away from the traditional ‘let’s just monitor and understand the threat’… into the disruption space.”

Disruption, Garnett explained, means offering strategic counter narratives and better understanding the audience (and where they are most susceptible).

“The Holy Grail is to move right ahead of time, before the campaigns even take place, so you can inoculate the whole audience,” he added.

Whether it’s “waking the world up” to the threats, calibrating through data-driven prediction, or crafting counter narratives, Athena’s three panellists offered different approaches to the same goal: prepare for the threats in a fast-moving, AI-charged information battle.

Photo: GCHQ Director, Anne Keast-Butler, in conversation at Resilience Conference in London this week.

Key takeaways:

• Keith Dear: Sharper forecasting can help the UK government keep pace in the AI race and understand how to make decisions based on data.

• Deborah Haynes: Government needs the confidence to get credible information out faster, before hostile narratives take hold.

• Tom Garnett: The opportunity for startups is to move beyond spotting disinformation and help customers disrupt campaigns, or prepare audiences before threat actors strike.

Subscribe now

Video: UK is being tested “minute by minute”

Athena’s Jessica Cecil spent two days at this week’s Resilience Conference in London.

In this short video, she shares what struck her most about the presentations and conversations, and what it all means for those fighting disinformation.

If you’re just joining us…

Athena is a new publication that helps you know where the information war is heading. We map out the disinformation terrain, and offer insight into emerging defence solutions and innovation opportunities.

You can read more about our mission here.

Please subscribe, and share this post with your network.

Share Athena

News: What changed this week

Osavul raises $10 million to bring information war defences to businesses. The company says its Series A round will help expand its work into organisations and critical infrastructure operators. Osavul’s AI-driven platform connects information threats with cyber and physical risks. UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is holding security talks about hybrid warfare with Germany, and has said, “attacks on our infrastructure, our businesses and our democracies are not a distant threat.”

Read the announcement

ChatGPT’s words are getting invisible watermarks. OpenAI says it will begin rolling out watermarks to ChatGPT text in the EU over coming weeks to comply with regional law. It’s a step towards the provenance defences Professor Ciaran Martin discussed with Athena last week.

Read ChatGPT’s statement

But watermarks only work if there are tools to find them. Which isn’t always the case…

AI images carry clues that most chatbots aren’t checking. In Brennan Center tests of six leading chatbots, only one checked the origin data embedded in AI-generated election images. Others repeatedly mistook synthetic images for real photographs. Ahead of the US midterms, it exposes a gap in our defences: labelling content helps only if the tools people use to verify it read those labels.

Read the Brennan Center analysis

UK sanctions target Kremlin disinformation. Britain has announced 31 new sanctions against Russia, including seven individuals the government says are involved in spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation. The package brings information operations into the same response as Russia’s war revenues and abuses in occupied Ukraine.

Read the Foreign Office announcement

Solutions: the money is there, and it’s starting to flow to disinformation innovation

Defence startups across Europe have already raised more than $7 billion in venture capital this year. That’s according to a new report released this week by dealroom.co and Resilience Media, which calls 2026 “the most active year ever”.

Zoom out to NATO countries and investment sits at nearly $30 billion, with projected year-on-year growth of 165%.

Researchers Orla Browne and Erwan Cozanet were at Resilience Conference to present the report’s findings. They spoke to Athena on the sidelines, describing a funding landscape dominated by drones and autonomous systems, with startups tackling disinformation struggling to attract attention.

Photo: Orla Browne, Head of Insights at dealroom.co, presents the State of Defence Tech 2026 report

There’s a clear opportunity here for collaboration to turn growing concern about hybrid warfare into innovative defence tools against disinformation. Last week, Modulate, a tech company specialising in audio AI, announced that it raised $25 million to continue developing models used in fraud and deepfake detection.

Read Resilience Media’s analysis of the report here. Or download it here.

Companies and organisations leading the way:

Osavul: As reported above, this hybrid risk intelligence company just raised $10 million in funding. Osavul (which took part in our event in Warsaw earlier this year) provides an “end-to-end platform to detect, investigate and disrupt hybrid risks, combining AI technology with human expertise”. With ambitious growth plans, this is a company to watch.

Cassi: Founder Dr Keith Dear sees Cassi as a “truth engine”, a modern AI forecasting company named after an ancient prophet from Greek mythology (Cassandra). Cassi calls itself a “superstrategy company”, offering frontier AI forecasting to help organisations make important decisions. Cassandra’s warnings to Troy may have been ignored, but this week’s conversation at Resilience Conference shows Cassi is under no such curse, and is a voice worth listening to.

Refute: This UK startup detects disinformation campaigns and helps organisations respond. Its focus is on how attackers behave and coordinate, helping businesses defend against reputational and financial harm. Look out for more on this company in our newsletter next week.

European Centre for Democratic Resilience: Europe is connecting its defenders of information integrity. The centre has launched a pilot platform linking governments with research and fact-checking networks. The plan? To share warnings about emerging threats and develop joint projects. A call for more participants is due this autumn.

Read the European Commission announcement

Lead author of Britain’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) says the national conversation their report called for – part of a whole-of-society approach to counter escalating global threats – is yet to happen.

Speaking to Athena’s Jessica Cecil this week, Lord Robertson argued that, in the short term, the UK was likely to face “grey zone” attacks, which include disinformation, electoral meddling, and sabotage.

“All of these things are happening, and I think they’re going to escalate because our adversaries know how weak we are. They know how vulnerable we are. They are pressing on the bruises of our democratic society.”

Lord Robertson says information warfare has grown into a more urgent threat since the SDR was published, and the warnings it delivered are starting to come true. He welcomed plans for the UK’s new National Centre for Information Defence (see interview below), expressing hope it will have the power and resources it needs.

“The necessity is certainly there. It’s being proved on a daily basis.”

The cost of complacency

The SDR called for extensive public outreach, urging government to explain the threats the UK faces. Lord Robertson says this conversation must be led from the top, by the Prime Minister, and should involve all relevant government departments. Only then can government machinery be galvanised to deliver clear warnings and help communities and businesses understand their role in keeping the country safe.

The private sector, Lord Robertson maintains, has a key role to play in countering threats. Companies operate much of the critical infrastructure the country depends on, including water, telecoms, gas, electricity and data networks. He believes they are not sufficiently aware of the dangers and vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

“I worry that maybe we need a 9/11 moment in order to alert the population to how serious the situation actually is. When the lights go out and the data centres melt because of a lack of air conditioning, the traffic lights go out, and electronic banking disappears, at that point, people are going to know very vividly what it’s about,” says Lord Robertson. “I hope that we can avoid waiting for disaster to happen before we take remedial action.”

Disinformation war games

So, what does pre-emptive action look like? Scenario planning and exercises to practise emergency responses. Routine exercises, Lord Robertson adds, should be done by individual companies, by the state, and as joint “war games” at national and local levels, similar to those run by the military. The aim is to find vulnerabilities and close the loopholes before threat actors exploit them.

And while the threats of ATMs shutting down or data centres going dark are easy to imagine, Lord Robertson says exercising should also apply to threats like election interference.

“Across Europe there are going to be decisive elections this coming year, and I hope that every country is going to be aware of the fact that they are vulnerable. And in this country, we should be doing that [response exercises] as well.”

Stronger together

Preparing for these threats means working with allies. Despite the “radical and in many ways frightening” turbulence at the top of the US government, Lord Robertson says day-to-day cooperation continues.

“At lower levels, that cooperation is ongoing and is still very, very substantial.”

Lord Robertson hopes the UK can keep building its ties with European partners to strengthen defences. But, he says, to fight disinformation and other threats, “government-to-government cooperation is going to have to be much more intense than it has been up to now.”

3 takeaways from Lord Robertson interview:

• Rehearse the information war: We need to test (at all levels) who does what when disinformation hits, just like we practise responding to a military emergency.

• Bring businesses into the room: Much of our national vulnerability sits in privately run infrastructure.

• Make the warning useful: A national conversation must give people a role in defending the country, not simply tell them how much danger they face.

“Stop gawping at the machine god”: former NCSC boss on fighting disinformation

The UK’s former cyber security chief, Professor Ciaran Martin, says he’s ready to cheer on the work of a new national centre being set up to fight disinformation. But he warns it won’t be easy, nor controversy-free.

Martin, who led the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and now teaches at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, told Athena the centre’s success will take more than competence and performance. It will be navigating a more contested political space, walking a fine line between defending a nation from those who want to “mess around with your democracy” and being accused of policing information.

Last week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham unveiled a new National Centre for Information Defence. Burnham said the centre will help stem a “poisonous tide” of disinformation and stop an “industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment in the UK”.

A template for success

Martin says he’s impressed that the centre’s mission is to “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks. It’s the most legitimate space for the state to operate in, he adds, and “about as far removed from the arguments about free speech as it’s possible to be”.

One of the centre’s challenges will be to fight what Martin calls “micro aggressive campaigns”, where small amounts of fake information are spread on social platforms and amplified. These are harder to detect and may involve domestic as well as foreign actors.

But, Martin adds, the centre does have a template for success. He points to the work done in the US to identify and “hack” Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), making it “much harder for them to operate”. The UK government labelled the IRA an “infamous bot-farm”, while the US Treasury Department sanctioned it for interfering with American elections.

“I don’t think the new centre will be able to solve all of these problems either strategically or operationally. But if it can get a few Internet Research Agency-style hits, and some of the big troll farms operated by our foreign adversaries, then I’ll be cheering it on.”

Don’t surrender the discourse

What about AI’s role in supercharging global disinformation?

Martin says he’s been reading a book (Prophecy, by Carissa Véliz) that’s examined prophecies over thousands of years, showing them to be mostly inaccurate. As he sees it, we should be treating AI not as a “machine god” but as a powerful technology with lots of flaws.

“We need to have a broader, more involved discussion with experts, society as a whole, about how we’re adapting to this,” says Martin. “[We need to] stop gawping at the machine god and buying these prophecies [that AI] is going to take all our jobs, it’s going to hack everything, it’s going to cure all disease. It might do some, none, or all of these things at different paces, and how that plays out is down to us.”

If you’re new here…

Welcome to Athena. We’re a new publication that helps you know where the information war is heading. We map out the disinformation terrain, and offer insight into emerging defence solutions and innovation opportunities.

Athena is led by Jessica Cecil, who worked as Chief of Staff to four BBC Directors-General and launched the Trusted News Initiative. You can read more about our mission here.

Please subscribe, and share this post with your network.

Subscribe now

World News Day 2026: The BBC’s role in fighting disinformation

As we mark World News Day this week, there are calls for the BBC to be given a formal duty to counter misinformation and disinformation.

In a report published today, UK MPs recommend giving the BBC that explicit responsibility, provided it has the resources it needs. They also call for legislation to give “trustworthy news” greater prominence on social media.

It’s a timely reminder that independent journalism is a critical part of our defences.

“If journalism and independent truth were so truly irrelevant, so very much dead, why would so much money, political energy and fury be spent trying to bury it?”

That’s the question posed by Project Kontinuum founder, Branko Brkic, and Tina Brown, editor, author and founder of Truth Tellers in their World News Day op-ed.

“This friction is only starting and will likely cause huge conflicts and suffering. The battlefield on which much of this struggle is being fought is the information environment itself,” they write. “The very people declaring journalism dead/irrelevant understand something that parts of our own industry often forget: Information is the most powerful technology ever invented by our human race.”

Read their full World News Day op-ed.

Explore the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s BBC Royal Charter Review.

News: what’s changed this week?

Ukraine is getting AI tools to protect essential services from cyberattacks. OpenAI will give Ukrainian defenders access to its AI cyber defence system Daybreak to find software vulnerabilities and test fixes faster. It’s a practical example of the cooperation Lord Robertson calls for: government and technology companies working together to protect civilian infrastructure.

Read the BBC

A fake message and a cloned voice reportedly unlocked €95 million. Fraudsters impersonated a bank chief and a lawyer to trick an Italian bank into transferring money, Reuters reported. While much of the money was recovered, it brings Ciaran Martin’s point home: we need ways to verify who’s speaking when voices can be faked.

Read Reuters

AI is becoming standard equipment for foreign influence operations. A Brennan Center review finds AI is making deceptive content cheaper, faster and more convincing. With autonomous campaigns already reported, we’re watching how far agents take over the work of running influence operations targeting the US midterms.

Read more

Solutions: “Make truth pay”

Professor Ciaran Martin says startup innovation and capital has a “huge role to play” in fighting disinformation.

“I’d be trying to get a lot of people who want to do the right thing, and get a return on their investment, to find ways of making truth pay,” says Martin. Doing this will strengthen society and ease the pressure on government to verify truth, which can lead to “difficult and sometimes dark places”.

Where should startups and investors look? Martin points to several opportunities:

• Watermarking and provenance: Martin says it should become commonplace to establish whether an image is original, altered by AI or entirely AI-generated. Could we make it easier to check a source’s funding and leanings?

Explore the work of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

• Voice cloning: This is “a very clear example of where attack has got ahead of defence”. Making a voice clone is now easy. Martin sees an opportunity for tools that help establish whether a recording is genuine or make it trivial for people to authenticate their voice.
  
  Companies like Reality Defender are aiming to help unmask deepfakes.
  

• Image protection: Some startups are already exploring ways to make images harder to distort, or make it more obvious when they’ve been manipulated.
  

  Explore IMATAG, a company whose invisible watermarks help trace images back to their source and expose alterations. AFP has tested the technology.

• Critical thinking: Martin points to Finland’s approach to teaching critical thinking in primary schools, and argues that social resilience matters (seeing disinformation as an attack on the integrity of your society).
  
  Finnish organisations like Faktabaari are producing useful school guides on AI to encourage digital literacy and critical thinking.

Drawing on a point made by former MI6 chief, the late Sir Alex Younger, Martin says the difference between disinformation and other hostile activity is that “how you react to it is probably the most important thing”.

Jonathan spent years on the frontline of the global information war, advising successive Prime Ministers on major security and policy challenges. He represented the UK government at G7 and G20 gatherings, and at the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit.

For us, Jonathan’s unique perspective made three things about Athena’s mission clear:

• Mapping the fast-moving information war is increasingly urgent. It can’t wait.

• Finding solutions means looking beyond frontier AI headlines.

• Technology moves faster than standards and regulation, and must play a central role in our defences right now.

“Those who want to spread disinformation or cause trouble are able to use that technology so much more easily,” explained Jonathan. “And it’s that pace question, which is the thing that, if I was still in government, I would be worrying about most.”

Rapid change is disorientating

Focusing on specifics is difficult when headline after headline highlights the existential risks of the latest AI advances.

“We’re very focused on some of these existential risks. Rightly so. If they materialise, they’re incredibly serious… but there is a very, very long tail into the real economy and into real society,” Jonathan adds. His point: we need to tackle the harms already affecting people and businesses. They may not threaten humanity’s survival, but they can be existential for the person or company facing them.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham discussed these harms in his first major international address at the UN General Assembly in New York. Announcing a new UK centre to fight a “poisonous tide” of disinformation, he warned that attackers were creating fake websites, distributing false news stories, and impersonating trusted brands like the BBC.

Jonathan worries that focusing on the “top 1 per cent” means we risk overlooking the “remaining 99”. In other words, the sharp tip of the iceberg commands our attention. The challenge then is: how do we address the harms beneath the surface?

Athena’s approach is to zoom in and get specific.

We want to shift the conversation from a broad, often abstract threat and focus instead on distinct areas where new defences are either emerging or are desperately needed.

Our job is to follow the “long tail” into four interconnected threat areas:

• Influence operations: from election interference to military cognitive warfare. Or as the PM puts it: “an insidious campaign that reaches into people’s homes and twists what they feel”.

• Impersonation and fraud: deepfakes, identity theft, fake websites and fabricated news articles.

• Narrative and reputation attacks: market manipulation or smear campaigns against individuals, brands or companies.

• Information supply chain: attacks on the information infrastructure we rely on.

These threats often overlap. Just this week, we read about AI agents running fake social media accounts in an attempt to influence public opinion (see News section). But if we’re going to make a difference, then we need to direct our focus and explore specific solutions like detection or watermarking.

Turning technology towards solutions

We’ve met many exciting startups, academics, researchers, investors, non-profits, and media companies building defences against these attacks. We’ve identified hundreds more that we can’t wait to meet.

Jonathan calls himself a tech optimist. He believes there’s potential for international cooperation on technical standards, and that technology can be part of the answer to the problems it creates. For startups, he sees some of the most promising opportunities in harnessing the technology that exposes us to risk and turning it around to protect us from harm.

We share that optimism. From next week, we begin our deep dives to map out the four key threat areas.

High trust, hidden weaknesses: lessons from the Nordics

What can the rest of the world learn from the Nordics about defending democratic elections? Athena brought together two Norwegian founders tackling threats to information integrity. We explored the strengths of a region built on trust, independent journalism and strong institutions, but also the vulnerabilities those strengths can conceal. The event was held at a Resilience Conference in Copenhagen.

In their words:

“Trust is also something that can be weaponised against us.”

Bjørn Ihler, founder and CEO of Revontulet, an independent threat assessment firm, warned that attackers can impersonate trusted news outlets and use social platforms to spread their messages, exploiting the confidence people place in familiar, trusted sources of information. He also warned about the danger of over-relying on any single platform.

“They’re pushing this issue from one department to another.”

Maria Amelie, co-founder and CEO of Factiverse, which builds AI tools to detect disinformation, says responsibility for tackling the problem gets passed between government departments (including electoral bodies), while concerns about censorship make officials reluctant to engage. Framing the threat as foreign influence, she argued, can lead to a stronger response.

“The Nordics sometimes lack a sense of urgency.”

Bjørn challenged governments and investors to make better use of startups, whose speed and ability to build partnerships can strengthen defences.

“They can build tech in the US, but we can fix it.”

Maria described how Factiverse is exploring whether trusted information gathered with journalists and fact-checkers can improve LLM accuracy.

Lessons from the Nordics:

• Build resilience, defend trust: Invest in independent media and education, while recognising that attackers can exploit trusted institutions and social platforms. Protect privacy and free expression as defences evolve.

• Work together, all year round: Information attacks continue between elections. Give government clear responsibility and strengthen cooperation across borders between startups, researchers and media.

• Match the threat’s pace: Give startups the funding and access to move faster. Put trusted journalism and fact-checking to work in technologies that detect manipulation and improve AI accuracy.

Watch the event here

News: what’s changed this week?

The troll farm is starting to operate itself. Iran and China have tested AI agents that create fake accounts and coordinate propaganda, the NYT reported. Automating the operation makes detecting coordinated behaviour as important as spotting false content.

[Read the New York Times]

An AI error reportedly put military aircraft in the air. CNN reported that inaccurate intelligence assembled by AI nearly triggered a US operation against a Chinese vessel. An information failure rather than deliberate disinformation - but a warning about what adversaries could exploit in future.

[Read CNN]

Britain plans a national centre for information defence. A proposed centre would detect and disrupt hostile state influence operations, alongside a push for global AI standards. Citing the work of the National Cyber Security Centre, Jonathan Black says the UK has a good record of using technology as a response.

[Read the BBC]

Solutions:

Revontulet maps the connections between state actors, organised crime and extremist networks, including how they use information to sow division. This helps defenders understand who is behind a threat and how it operates beyond a single campaign or election.

Factiverse identifies claims and checks them against sources - in news, video, audio and AI output. It helps journalists and organisations bring verification to the places where unreliable information enters the system.

Resilience Media covers defence and security startups and connects founders with investors and government. Its journalism and events help build the connections between promising ideas, potential backers, and those who need new defences.

Athena’s Jessica Cecil will lead a panel at the Resilience Conference on 5 - 6 October 2026. The session will explore where the new opportunities are to invest in stronger defences against disinformation. Hope to see you there.

I’m Jessica Cecil and I spent 30 years working in one of the world’s most trusted news organisations. At the BBC, I started the Trusted News Initiative, bringing together global tech platforms and news organisations to defend audiences against harmful disinformation.

I’ve always believed fair, accurate and impartial information is the foundation of strong democracies and civil society. When I started at the BBC I never imagined we’d be where we are today.

Maliciously distorted information is poisoning debate, undermining markets, and threatening to pull societies apart. It’s a war - part of the hybrid war we hear so much about - and one that’s moving fast because of AI.

I founded Athena so we can discuss where we need to up our game to build new defences and, ultimately, win this war. I hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to our newsletter, come along to our events, and spread the word.

Athena: why we exist

The international landscape is becoming ever more dangerous, and information warfare is one of the fastest growing threats, supercharged by AI.

New fronts in this hybrid war are opening faster than defences can be built to protect us from a flood of disinformation. The speed of change is dizzying, and defenders on the virtual battlefields are often scattered.

Athena’s mission is to map out the new terrain and offer insight into emerging defence solutions and innovation opportunities. These insights are drawn from those on the frontlines, fighting against what has evolved into highly coordinated, industrial-scale disinformation campaigns.

We publish a weekly briefing that interprets latest trends in attacks on:

• citizens and their conversations

• state institutions and civil society

• corporations and free markets

• the vital digital infrastructure we rely on.

Athena hosts live events, bringing together experts to assess mutating threats and highlights solutions that bolster our defences. Our partners will include startups, investors, established tech companies, the defence industry, corporates, policymakers, academics, and journalists.

We can all see the physical security threats creeping closer: the Russian warships lurking off England’s South Coast; the drones packed with explosives found at an airport deep inside Germany. But just as menacing are the information threats: hundreds of Iranian bots impersonating real Scottish voters, “engagement farms” polluting public opinion, or the grooming of Large Language Models.

Why you can trust Athena:

In her three decades with the BBC, Jessica worked as Chief of Staff to four Directors-General and launched the Trusted News Initiative. She’s a Member of Council at Chatham House and a Senior Distinguished Fellow at The Ditchley Foundation. Jessica has devoted her career to working in evidence-based news and transforming collaboration into action.

If you care about information integrity, then we’re allies on the same battlefield.

Subscribe now

Athena at Resilience Conference 2026

The defence and national security community gathers in London on 5 - 6 October to connect with the tech sector.

Athena’s Jessica Cecil will lead a panel on where the new opportunities are to invest in stronger defences against disinformation. Don’t miss the conversation.

And if you haven’t registered yet, you can do that here.

Athena event explores Ukraine’s disinformation playbook

Athena gathered a group of disinformation fighters to share ideas and solutions emerging from the battlefields in Ukraine. Russia’s relentless war, they agreed, has produced a playbook others should read to build their own defences. The event was held earlier this year in Poland, a key frontline in the information war.

In their words:

“The war in Ukraine is expensive for [Russia] but the information war is not… It’s become dirt cheap for threat actors to create disinformation campaigns that can be very effective.”

Vlad Galu, co-founder of Refute, a UK startup fighting disinformation, spoke about the widening cost asymmetry between producing content designed to deceive and efforts to figure out what’s true. He also flagged the blistering speed with which disinformation spreads.

“It changed everything… In the last two to three years, we’ve seen unprecedented and well-orchestrated operations.”

Konrad Adamowicz, Deputy Director of Strategic Comms and Countering Foreign Disinformation in Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said adversaries are combining military and information tools. He added that drone strikes or incursions are “always coated in some cognitive operation”, accompanied by campaigns that involve weaponised information.

“If there is a missile strike, while you are assessing the damage, the information operation has already done its work.”

Andrii Bohdanenko, Senior Partnership Manager at Osavul, a tech company based in Kyiv, said disinformation had mutated from “simply telling lies” to a “multi-domain approach” that integrates disinformation campaigns into what happens in the physical world.

Lessons from Ukraine and Poland:

• Reframe the problem: Disinformation is now part of a broader operation that combines information, cyber and military attacks. Defenders need to respond in a holistic way, with government departments working together to meet the threat.

• Plan ahead: Move from identifying campaigns to anticipating them, drawing on the playbook already used in Ukraine. Disrupt the infrastructure that enables those campaigns to keep coming back.

• Build an informed, resilient society: Invest in public education, from schools and universities to programmes for older people, so citizens can better recognise manipulation. Bring government, civil society, journalists, academics, researchers and businesses together to strengthen that resilience.

Watch the full event here.

Next week: First interview and new sections

Next week, we’ll publish our first interview and introduce three new permanent sections. These sections will bring you:

• the latest industry news and trends

• our behind-the-headlines analysis of what they mean and why they matter

• latest solutions we’re tracking.

We’ll be making exclusive content available to our subscriber community.