Your editorial (Britain’s fragile systems: when global shocks hit your shopping bill, 1 May) makes clear that the public need to be more fully informed about global threats and actively engaged in a national resilience plan. The UK remains dangerously exposed to external shocks, whether from cyber-attacks, extreme weather triggered by climate change, or hostile state interference with our democratic processes and critical national infrastructure.
A cross-party House of Lords special inquiry committee, which I chair, has been set up to examine national resilience. “Keep calm and carry on” doesn’t cut it: a plan for the 21st century needs to recognise the interconnectedness of threats: a cyber-attack can quickly escalate into power cuts, transport chaos, supply chain disruption and the collapse of public services. And this is not a case of “what if”: hybrid warfare emanating from Russia, China or Iran as cyber-attacks, disinformation or the sponsorship of proxy terrorist attacks is already commonplace.
