Welcome to Athena.
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.
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.