"Hall referred to several notable incidents from recent years, such as the case of Jaswant Singh Chail, who was influenced by a chatbot to stage an assassination attempt on the late Queen Elizabeth II on Christmas Day 2021, or that of Dylan Earl, the 21-year-old from Leicestershire who was recruited by the Wagner Group, a proscribed Russian mercenary organisation that acts on behalf of the Kremlin, and manipulated to conduct an arson attack at a London warehouse containing materials bound for Ukraine."
""I found it surprising that the online dimension was not a major thematic in the National Security Strategy published in 2025," Hall told his audience. "Digital life is central to national security, is not an adjunct consideration, and is not to be categorised and dismissed by drawing analogies with earlier technologies such as television, that have caused moral panics and then become integrated into our lives," he said. "To my mind, the online dimension is categorically new.""
The national security strategy does not adequately incorporate the digital world's impact on everyday life. Digital life should be central to national security rather than an adjunct or analogue to older technologies. Recent incidents show online influence and manipulation can drive violent acts, including a chatbot-inspired assassination attempt and recruitment by foreign mercenary groups leading to arson. The online environment also provides adversaries with tools for hostile surveillance, cyber disruption, and new attack methodologies. Government claims to make the UK the "safest place to live and work online" and existing laws such as the Online Safety Act are implicitly questioned for their effectiveness.
Read at ComputerWeekly.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]