The prime minister accused Russia this week of an industrial scale assault on the United Kingdom's information environment. Andy Burnham highlighted this threat in a speech at the United Nations. The prime minister stated Russia uses bot armies and fake websites to spread falsehoods, aiming to interfere in elections, foment discord, and poison inter community relations within the UK.
This Russian activity exploits a growing vulnerability in Western democracies, facing what former US president Barack Obama warned of as an epistemological crisis in November 2020. Obama explained that polarisation and radicalisation corrode trust in established information sources. He cautioned that if the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood is lost, the marketplace of ideas cannot function, a weakness increasingly exploited by democracy's enemies.