In association with British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG)
Building on the 2025 Strategic Defence Review’s call for a ‘whole of society’ approach to national security, this 24-hour policy roundtable aimed to assess the UK’s vulnerability landscape, explore effective communication of these complex risks to the public, and draw lessons from international partners on resilience and preparedness. Participants sought to identify practical policy, legislative and societal recommendations to support a credible ‘whole of society’ approach to national security.
Executive Summary
Across two days of discussion, the dialogue, in partnership with the British Foreign Policy Group examined the threats to UK national security, the challenges facing government, and possible solutions.
The United Kingdom faces a rapidly evolving and interconnected threat landscape, spanning state-based military risk, hybrid and cognitive warfare, critical infrastructure vulnerability, and domestic social fragmentation. Public and institutional preparedness, however, has not kept pace. Communicating the scale of the threat to the public remains a central challenge. Defence and security issues are often crowded out by cost-of-living concerns, distrust of political messengers, and a polarised information environment.
Building on the 2025 Strategic Defence Review’s call for a “whole of society” approach, the roundtable brought together senior policymakers, security experts and international partners to assess the UK’s vulnerability landscape and identify what needs to change. Discussions examined the key threats facing UK national security and the concrete actions required to address them, explored how government, institutions and civil society can communicate complex risks more effectively to the public, drew on lessons from international partners with more developed approaches to preparedness, and identified practical policy, legislative and societal recommendations to support a credible whole-of-society approach.
Russia represents the clearest and most immediate threat to the UK, but other vulnerabilities relating to critical national infrastructure, supply chains, misinformation and disinformation, economic pressure and climate-related disruption are equally pressing and mutually reinforcing. A tendency towards complacency and an “island mentality” continues to understate the UK’s exposure and interdependence with allies and adversaries alike, particularly those allies with a direct border with known adversaries.
Communicating the scale of this threat to the public remains a central and unresolved challenge, as does the need to deliver on government infrastructure to deliver on long-term resilience. Two competing and destabilising narratives, one built around the prospect of civil unrest and another around a sense of inevitable societal collapse, are filling this vacuum, while government communication has so far failed to engage convincingly with either. Building broader public understanding and agency, particularly among younger and more disengaged groups and communities, is essential to any credible resilience strategy.
Allied states offer contrasting but complementary models for building societal resilience. Estonia and Finland demonstrate the value of sustained, decades-long investment in conscription, civic cohesion and cross-party consensus; Singapore illustrates how rapid technological adoption can be paired with structured business engagement and transparent public communication on cyber risk; and Denmark and Sweden show how newer resilience strategies can be built through candid government messaging, extended civic and military service, and clear sectoral responsibility.
Stronger and more coherent government leadership is needed, and ideas included a designated responsible minister and ring-fenced budget; deeper connectivity between government, industry and critical infrastructure providers; and sustained mechanisms to build public trust and involve citizens directly in national resilience, rather than treating them solely as an audience to be informed.