Page:ISC Russia Report.pdf/17

 they may still succeed in casting doubt on the true account of events: "When people start to say 'You don't know what to believe' or 'They're all as bad as each other', the disinformers are winning" ); direct support of Russia's preferred outcome in relation to an overseas election or political issue; and general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and 'wedge issues', and by the 'astroturfing' of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West.

30.In terms of the direct threat to elections, we have been informed that the mechanics of the UK's voting system are deemed largely sound: the use of a highly dispersed paper-based voting and counting system makes any significant interference difficult, and we understand that GCHQ has undertaken a great deal of work to help ensure that the online voter registration system is safe. Nonetheless, GCHQ informed us that "***", and the Deputy National Security Adviser noted that "there is a lot of work going on [in relation to electoral mechanics] to map the end-to-end processes … *** and to make sure where we can we are mitigating the risks there". This was reflected in the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) judgement in May 2017 that "the UK paper-based voting process is protected from cyber operations but ***". ***. The Committee will expect an update on this in six months.

31.The UK is clearly a target for Russia's disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts. The Agencies have emphasised that they see their role in this as providing secret intelligence as context for other organisations, as part of a wider HMG response: they do not view themselves as