UK National Security Strategy According to independent British terrorism commentator Jonathan Hall KS, the impact of the digital world on our daily lives has not been sufficiently taken into account.
In a Dec. 2 speech at the National Liberal Club, Hall said lip service to the online sphere without considering its “profound implications” for national security was a “gross mistake.”
“I found it surprising that the online aspect was not a major theme in the National Security Strategy released in 2025,” Hall told his audience.
“Digital life is central to national security, is not an additive factor, and should not be pigeonholed and dismissed by analogies with earlier technologies such as television that caused moral panic and then became integrated into our lives,” he said. “In my opinion, online measurement is completely new.”
Hall mentioned several notable incidents in recent years, such as the case of Jaswant Singh Chail, who, under the influence of a chatbot, orchestrated an assassination attempt on the late Queen Elizabeth II. for Christmas 2021or Dylan Earle, a 21-year-old from Leicestershire recruited by the Wagner Group, an outlawed Russian mercenary organization acting on behalf of the Kremlin, and manipulated for the purpose of arson in a London warehouse with materials bound for Ukraine.
“All this is to say nothing of the technical capabilities provided to adversaries for hostile surveillance and destruction through cyberattacks. [and] new attack methodologies,” Hall said.
Is the Internet Safety Law ineffective?
During his speech, Hall also indirectly criticized the UK government for its oft-repeated catchphrase about making the UK “the safest place to live and work online”, saying that despite the provisions of the laws e.g. Internet Safety Actanyone in the UK who wants to can easily find prohibited content online.
“For example, last month, my special counsel Adam Hadley discovered a Facebook account openly identifying itself as affiliated with the Islamic State, openly posting a guidance document on the 'deadliest places for stabbings' on a body diagram, which had been online for at least a month and remained accessible despite being reported on Facebook itself,” he said.
“The Internet Safety Act relies on technology platforms to enforce security responsibilities,” Hall said. “Ofcom’s role is to oversee these safety responsibilities, but tech companies make it very difficult for regulators or researchers to monitor their results on a large scale. [the] The Internet Safety Act allows authorities to remove content or order tech companies to remove it. But despite this, you will continue to hear ministers say that the Online Safety Act makes the UK the safest place to work online.”
Despite this, Hall said he still supports the principles outlined in the Internet Safety Act, saying the nation could still benefit from more clarity about what it can and cannot actually do.
He also called on the government to examine whether the prohibition mechanisms deployed by the government against groups such as Palestine Action could be used “without unintended consequences” against online movements that venerate mass murderers such as Anders Breivik and inspire attacks on copycats but do not amount to organizations, and to consider whether Britain's pre-digital surveillance laws actually limit the ability of authorities to use public information freely provided by ordinary people – such as their location or interests – in their job.
“However, I think the UK needs to maintain its composure in the face of urgent challenges from free speech absolutists, usually based on the principles of the US Constitution, who effectively consider any regulation of the Internet to be bad,” Hall said. “I think this is not only naive… but ultimately undemocratic because it assumes that we, as a society, through our laws, cannot exert control over our digital lives, despite the harm, especially to children.”
On the Internet, he said, it is not the case that more speech is the cure for bad speech, given that the Internet has transformed from a democratic marketplace of ideas into a series of echo chambers.
However, Hall said optimistically, we are still in the “online foothills” and society can still learn and adapt. Pointing to the example of Australia, where children under 16 must completely banned from social networks later this month he said society as a whole was becoming stronger in areas such as child protection. This, he concluded, “is not a bad place to start.”
