𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Yvette Cooper will call for global co-operation to tackle “information warfare” in a speech tomorrow. The Foreign Secretary will say that the UK and its allies must revive a spirit of co-operation fostered by a series of treaties 100 years ago in order to tackle misinformation.

She will set out a series of actions which have been taken against cyber threats, interference and disinformation propagated by hostile states in her address today, which marks the centenary of the Locarno Treaties. The series of agreements were signed in December 1925, in an effort to bolster peace in western Europe in the years after the First World War, and led to an improved political climate known at the time as the “spirit of Locarno”.

The Foreign Secretary is expected to warn of “an escalation in hybrid threats” across Europe, including cyber attacks and sabotage of critical infrastructure, which are designed to “undermine our interests and interfere in our democracies, all for the advantage of malign foreign states”.

Ms Cooper will add: “A hundred years ago, such malign actors or state sponsored disrupters may have relied on expertly forged documents or carefully planted stories to manipulate public opinion, but today’s technology is lowering the barrier to entry, meaning more actors, with less skill, can work on behalf of regimes abroad.”

She will point to interference in elections and “flooding social media with generative AI and manipulated videos” as among the actions being carried out by the West’s enemies.

This has the risk of “hitting our collective resolve to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s illegal invasion”, the Foreign Secretary will warn.

A renewed international focus on “information warfare” is needed, she will say, before she points to efforts which echo the spirit of Locarno today, including the “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine.

Ms Cooper will make the speech from the Locarno Grand Reception Room of the Foreign Office building in central London, where the treaties were signed.

Andrew Fox, senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said the Foreign Secretary was “right to warn that Britain is now on the frontline of an information war”.

He added: “Hostile states are deploying disinformation, cyber-attacks and AI-driven propaganda to shape public opinion, inflame divisions and weaken Western support for allies like Ukraine.

“The Henry Jackson Society has been ahead of this threat. Our paper, Information Manoeuvre: Lessons from Gaza for Future Hybrid Warfare, showed how modern conflict is increasingly fought in the information domain – using digital deception and psychological pressure to achieve strategic gains without kinetic force. What we saw in Gaza is now a global playbook.

“This warning is welcome, but it must translate into a far more assertive UK response: rapid attribution of hostile operations, tighter controls on AI-generated political content and stronger transparency in the civic and academic spaces most open to foreign influence. Information manoeuvre is now a strategic battlespace. Britain must treat it with the urgency our national security requires.”