UK Built an "Information Defence" Centre. It Partners With Cops and Social Media.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first UN General Assembly speech to announce a National Centre for Information Defence. Remit: detect, attribute, and disrupt "information attacks," including AI deepfakes. It will sit in the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office and work with intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and social media companies.

Hostile-state bots are a real problem. So is handing Whitehall a permanent machinery — with platforms in the room — to police which narratives about Britain are “distorted and untrue.” Free Speech Union critics already call the risk Orwellian. Burnham says the target is foreign ops, not speech. The statute, budget, and stop-lines are not public yet.

When the state defines truth in partnership with the platforms that gate speech, the burden of proof belongs on the government — before the centre starts “disrupting.”

Sources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6rerlq99w30o https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/09/23/andy-burnham-national-centre-russian-disinformation-deepfakes https://ministryofinjustice.co.uk/uk-national-centre-for-information-defence/