Britain’s Security Reality: What Are We Facing - and Are We Prepared?

In the first episode of Fault Lines, Rod Whiting speaks to former British Army intelligence officer Sam Olsen about Britain’s changing threat landscape, the erosion of resilience, and why security is no longer just a military issue.

How exposed is Britain in a world of hybrid warfare, fragile infrastructure and shifting alliances? In this opening episode of Fault Lines, Rod Whiting speaks to Sam Olsen of Sibylline about Russia, China, deterrence, resilience, and the uncomfortable gap between the risks we face and the readiness we actually have.

Sam is a geopolitics expert with the global private intelligence organisation Sybilline. You can follow more of his work on Substack: 👇
https://samolsen.substack.com/

For more analysis like this, visit Fault Lines on Substack: 👇

https://rodwhiting.substack.com/

Contact: rod@rodwhiting.com

Transcript

Speaker 0:05

It is very clear, according to the people that I know - that should know - that it is almost certain that Russia's placed pre-positioned uh explosive charges on many of the cables that serve Britain. But we don't seem to be doing anything about it.

Speaker 1 0:27

Hello and welcome to Fault Lines. I'm Rod Waiting. We've all got used to thinking the world is broadly predictable. But over the past few years, that sense of certainty has started to slip. Not just headlines, not just individual conflicts, but the way the world actually works behind the scenes. The balance between the major powers, the assumptions we've relied on, even the idea of a shared global system, all of that is starting to change. So in this conversation, I wanted to take a step back from the noise and try to understand what's really going on. Not in an abstract or academic way, but in a way that actually makes sense of the world we're now living in. And there's no one better to help us do that than Sam Olson from Sibyline, one of the world's leading private intelligence organizations. Hello, Sam. Hello, thank you very much for having me. Sam, you're a former British Army intelligence officer who spent many years focusing on global security and the shifting balance between the major powers. So you have an invaluable perspective. The thing is, we've got used to a relatively stable world, but slowly, uh and then it seems all at once there's been a real acceleration of significant events, hasn't there?

From Stability to Uncertainty

Speaker 1:42

Yes, there has. And I suppose it's it's really important to recognise that we have lived through a number of decades of peace and a globalized world, but this is the exception rather than the rule. And we're just lucky to have had that in the last few decades, in effect. And that that is now coming to an end, not because this is a brand new concept, but because this is a reversion, sadly, to the norm. And it is something that we have to get used to. But I think that why it is happening now, in my opinion, there are a few major reasons. The first is the rise of China. It is very clear that China has changed the world in a way that no one could have predicted. And the way I like to think about it is after the Second World War, America, very keenly supported by Britain, basically created a world order which led uh America to have the global leadership. It was not um uncontested. The Soviet Union for a while said that they wanted to do things their own way, but the Soviet Union signed up to the institutions and the frameworks that America had themselves set up. So it was really an American-led order. Imagine a massive ice sheet, a frozen ice sheet, which other countries, as they came out, added their own ice sheets to. And when China came out in the 90s and 2000s, after many decades of post-uh the post-the-communist revolution of Mao's leadership where they wanted to just remain inside their own borders, they came out in the 90s and 2000s, and they could have built uh an adjunct to that ice sheet and basically kept the American-led world order frozen for a long time to come. But China has actually done something very different, which is that they have co-opted the order to their own ends and they have worked within the ice sheets to basically fragment it and to weaken it, and rather than one large global order ice sheet led by America, we now see a fragmented uh ice flows everywhere, with countries uh increasingly working on their own or with specific allies rather than multilateral organizations, and China taking a leading role in organizing some of the things that are done differently these days. And so, with that in mind, it could have been that the American uh administrations say we're just going to push back harder and just make sure that we keep this ice flow. But actually, what we're seeing with Trump is Trump saying, no, we don't actually like the world order that's been built by our predecessors. And in fact, Rubio, the uh Murrobio, the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, in his inaugural meeting in the Senate January last year, actually was quoted as saying the world order that America built no longer works for America. So you have China trying to destroy the world order that America led because they China wants to be the top dog. And we can maybe come on to that later, what that actually means. But America itself, under Trump, is now trying to diminish its own world order, and then you're left with countries like Britain, France, other middle powers thinking, right, hang on, we've we spent a number uh a large number of decades trying to uphold this world order, which everyone is now abandoning. And the it it's almost as if we're we we've been playing a game of uh football on a on a certain pitch for a long time, but the main main players have now gone off to a different pitch and are playing a different game, and we're left wondering where the ball is.

The US, China and a Fragmenting Order

Speaker 1 5:11

Beautifully put. So that explains so much about the apparent chaos that uh Donald Trump uh seems to have brought in his wake. Um so I now uh this is a question that's debated a lot. Uh is this strategic genius on the part of Trump uh or has he is he simply the frontman uh for for what is going on behind the scenes in the administration?

Speaker 5:35

Right. So the answer is no one really knows what's going through Trump's mind. Uh I've spoken to many people who uh have worked with him uh and know him well and continue to work with him, in fact, and every time I ask what's going through his mind, everyone says something along the lines of who really knows. And that is uh perhaps a strategic genius. There is that old concept of madman theory which Richard Nixon put forward in the 60s and 70s, all about keeping the enemy on your toes because they never know what you're thinking. But if you don't know what yourself are thinking, that is not necessarily a genius, but that's perhaps a there's a different word to describe that. So it's hard to say, but I suppose the the art the way to answer it is really to say whose perspective are you talking about? And let's not beat about the bush. The American working and middle classes have been battered for many years now. Yes, we see America continuing to boom uh economically, and its growth is uh is you know beyond most countries, in fact, probably every country in the West, with a few exceptions. But the middle class and the working classes have seen their standards of living decrease. This is the result of many years of de-industrialization in America and perhaps a widening wealth gap and lots of different uh domestic issues, and people have had enough of it. And over the last 10 or so years, they have voted for Trump in a way to hopefully reverse a lot of that that uh change in and difficult situations. But at the moment we're seeing big, big impacts domestically at the economic level from Trump's Iran war, which are not going to go down well with his base because uh economic issues are majorly important, especially the cost of living, etc. Um, and the liberal side of of American politics really don't like it as well because they see America uh self-imolating in terms of its reputation, its soft power, and especially the way it deals with its allies its allies.

Speaker 1 7:36

So uh looking at at i iran, um this it looks to me like a serious misstep by the US administration. Is that your is that your thought?

Speaker 7:48

Again, it really depends on uh what what pos what pos position you're taking. Personally I think it is, because it I think it is useful to look at where America gets a lot of its strength from. Um America is the leader of the world at the moment, although that's increasingly debated week after week, um, with especially with China's rise. Um and the reason it is is because in the last 70-80 years it's pushed forward its power and its legitimacy to to wield that power. And the power comes from obviously being a massive economic force. It also has the world's most advanced military, it has lots of uh other really hard power benefits, uh, for example, the dollar as well. And uh the that is one thing, but it needs to be able to have legitimacy to use that power and to people to tell people yes, we can do things, we can reorder the world in the way that we see fit because that's going to benefit you. And ever since the end of the First World War, uh with the Wilsonian doctrine when he really pushed forward the concept of democracy around the world, self-governing peoples and the like, and then after the Second World War, where it really was the world's preeminent power, and 60% of the all industrial output was from America, etc. Um people have looked to America as the city on the hill and as a country that everyone aspires to be like. And uh that's uh you know another reason why so many countries are republics now, because they're following the American tradition. However, if you see America uh do things like really pick fights with its allies, which uh basically call out uh tariffs which which really make other countries struggle, uh, which uh does things like take Russia's side over Ukraine uh in UN votes and the like, then it makes it hard for other countries to really feel that America maintains the legitimacy it did have as that city on the hill to really be an aspirational uh country to lead the rest of the world, especially the free world. And so I think that personally, I think uh the Iran war has been a big misstep because it has further undermined America's city on the hill status. It is doing I mean someone said this to me, and and perhaps it is possible to disagree with it, but I understand where they're coming from. Someone said to me recently that uh Trump by invading Iran, even though the Iranian regime is one of the worst on earth, you know, it has killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of its own people, 30,000 in a few days, only a few months ago, after the uh the uh the protests, um, and it has exported chaos and violence around the region, around the world. The fact is that by going against Iran unilaterally, by not really caring about any of the impacts it's had on fuel or fertilizer or anything else around the world that really matters to countries, uh, to every country, not just one or two, but every country, but basically being seen not to give a damn. Um my uh contacts said to me that uh America is acting very much like uh Russia did by invading Ukraine. There will all be lots of people that agree with that, and that further undermines America's soft power and its ability to lead the world and going back to that power and legitimacy. It doesn't matter how much power you've got, if you don't have legitimacy, then no one's going to follow you. And my fear is that America, as a standard bearer of the West, has undermined not only American leadership but Western leadership and it's going to make life different difficult for all of us in Europe and elsewhere.

What It Means for the UK

The Real Risks: Russia and Hybrid Warfare

Speaker 1 11:26

Right, let's pick up on that then and bring this back because uh what I don't want to do is to get bogged down in a in a sort of broader academic uh assessment of of what's happened without actually considering what this means for for us as individuals, as uh as families, as communities uh within uh the UK. Um we've we've got to address the the the fact that uh uh when I was uh in the military during the Cold War years, um we had uh about five, I think it was five percent being spent of our GDP being spent on defense. We had uh an enormous uh number of of military personnel stationed in Europe, uh with uh a very large number of fighter aircraft, um uh and uh and a very solid infrastructure, military logistical infrastructure, uh, to support that that military. That's been hollowed out, uh, and I don't think that's a an overstatement over the past 30 years since the Berlin Wall came down. And and we know why, because politicians have seen an easy way to to win uh favor with voters by spending more on welfare, and the budget has gradually been slimmed down to the point where it's no longer doing the job that it needs to do, especially in this more dangerous world. So let's talk about the main risks now, both uh externally from hostile actors. Uh we haven't talked about Russia in particular yet, um, and internally from uh from politicians who simply don't get it, um uh from uh from from subversion, from uh all of the from complacency from the part of communities. What are the main risks now that we need to think about and why?

Speaker 13:06

So we'll start externally. It is very clear that Russia thinks it is at war with the UK. We are considered by Moscow to be the leader of the anti-Russian alliance, and us uh working with France and others to uh create the coalition of the willing when America pulled back. But uh you know, it started with Boris Johnson. We've had this real desire to show Ukraine that we are their friends, and this means that Russia, because of it the way it thinks that we are in conflict, is doing a lot of stuff against us, which doesn't get reported as much as it should be, I don't think. Uh, and this is not again, it's not just against us, it's against Europe as a whole, I should be clear, but we are a focus for this, and this is hybrid warfare. So we have seen numerous attacks, um whether it is attacks on DHL transport planes and um and warehouses, or whether it's attacks on undersea cables in the Baltic, or the mapping of British uh undersea cables, uh then and there are about 65 cables, and it is very clear, according to the people that I know that that should know, that it is almost certain that the Russia's placed pre-positioned uh explosive charges on many of the cables that serve Britain. But we don't seem to be doing anything about it. So if if you see if you look at the if you look at the threats uh for the purely military and they look at the sort of the the non-military uh vulnerabilities got, we'll start with the military. Uh the armed forces, uh and I was in the armed forces, my whole family's been in the armed forces for generations. You uh, you know, uh they are uh to the man and woman very, very good at what they're doing. However, strategically completely let down, not just by this current Labour government, uh, although we've obviously got a lot of bones to pick with them by their refusal to increase defence spending in the way that other countries are, the the way that we uh everyone's telling them they need to, but the the previous Conservative governments as well. Don't forget that it was under David Cameron and George Osborne when they decided they didn't need 12 Type 45s, which was considered by the Navy the minimum, they only needed six. It was under the Conservative governments where they decreased the uh spending on the army to take it down to, you know, now we see about 70,000, which is a complete joke. Um, but not only that, we do not have the ability to defend ourselves against air attack. So at the height of the panic about whether uh Iran could attack London with ballistic missiles, a certain government minister went on uh the media and said that don't worry, A, Iran can't reach London, and B, uh they uh we if they even if they sent a ballistic missile we'd be able to defend them. Both are categorically untrue. Yes, Iran can attack us, but more importantly, Russia can really attack us, it's got massive missile stocks, including hypersonics, and we do not have anything that can really counter ballistic missiles. Type 45 destroyers, maybe we have one or two of those around, they could do some work, but they don't cover the entire country. We don't have air defence, so we are open to ballistic and other types of uh missile attack. It is very clear there's no one in a military side that says we are we are covered, and then and then we look at the non-military attack uh vectors, and we if you look at, for example, the undersea cables, one might say, Well, so what? Well, so what is that um all our communications or the access to the internet rely on those undersea cables, the city of London relies on those undersea cables, and uh so many businesses rely on those undersea cables that uh if the if they were taken out, then they basically the city would grind to a halt. It would not only cause billions and billions and billions of pounds worth of losses each day, it would uh lead to uh fundamental undermining of the city of London and the UK as a place to do business moving forward. So strategically and technically would be a terrible thing. And then we look at the electricity grids. We also know that Russia has actively uh tried to target electricity grids, they did so against Poland in uh new year this year with some success, but they also have got massive cyber operations which uh are targeted at potentially taking our energy grids down, and it is absolutely known. I spent a lot of time on UK resilience dealing with the uh the people uh at the engineering, at the policy, and the military and the and other areas, and the it is accepted by all experts that our energy grids are very open to attack by Russia or by China, um, and uh that if they went down it would cause problems. So, what kind of problems? Well, OECD and other uh thinking about this shows that for if the national grid was taken down every day it would cost between 0.5 and 2% of GDP, which is equivalent to approximately 13 billion to 50 billion pounds a day in economic damage. And to put that in perspective, it would only take two days for the entire uh for the for the damage to uh overtake the entire annual defence budget and the resilience budget. And so for the government not to take this seriously, to not put any money, extra money really, they say they are, but they're not really, putting your money into increasing the level of protection for the country, both at the defence level but also in terms of uh resilience and our critical national infrastructure, etc., for them not to do so is absolutely ridiculous because it is so short-sighted in terms of the amount of damage that could be caused. And that's just from a purely uh economic point of view, let alone from all the the uh the other damage that could be done in in casualties and reputation, etc.

Speaker 1 18:58

We'd we we're already in a bit of trouble here, even if we turned it around tomorrow.

Speaker 19:03

Yes, we are, but I am always optimistic about the ability for Britain to do things and other countries as well, if if they've been told to do things very quickly. I mean, we've seen repeatedly, and this is the such this is the frustrating thing about studying British history, is that repeatedly, whether it's the First World War or the Second World War or the Napoleonic Wars, um the threat of war is always ignored by the Treasury until it's too late, and then there's this massive turnaround and how to really boost the boys, etc. etc. Um and that but the thing is is that then in the Napoleonic times in the First and Second World War, um we were at a massive advantage to where we are now because Britain was an industrial power, a massive industrial power. And uh we also had all the shipping and all the logistics to be able to support all this. We don't anymore. We simply do not produce the things that we need uh to be able to rearm properly. So to the extent that we are now in such uh we are now in such a position that uh our supply chains, whether it's critical minerals or components, anything we need for the defence and technology industrial base is either directly or indirectly sourced on the whole from China, to the extent that, as I said before elsewhere, our defence rearming and to that extent our uh energy transition are both reliant on China. If Beijing turned around tomorrow and said, you will not rearm, you will not continue the energy transition, we could not do so. The only reason we're able to do either of those is because Beijing allows it.

Speaker 1 20:43

That's a very, very sobering thought. Thank you for for being clear-eyed on that, because I don't think people do appreciate just how serious the situation is. I think And why is that? Why are the authorities so reluctant to be straight? We see this debate uh taking place. Uh certain people like Tom Tuggenhat and uh and uh Sam Cairns um you know are having this discussion, but it's just not getting out there into the mainstream.

Speaker 21:11

I think it's two reasons. The first is just a conceptualise, a failure to you have to conceptualize, and this comes from decades of peace. And if you've grown up as a politician when you think basically that the world is is pretty safe and it's globalized, etc., and you've got universalist values that spread around the world, and in fact, it is possible for you to pretend in your own mind that what we're seeing now is just a blip. And actually, the whole world, you know, if you remember uh in the 1990s, uh Francis Fukuyama said the end of history was an eye of now the American uh now America had won the uh the Cold War, and everyone wanted to be a liberal democracy. That allowed a way of thinking, especially amongst uh the Western uh political classes, to say that look, we just need to just focus on getting Rich, we need to focus on sort of domestic issues, um, and we don't really need to worry about defence because the whole world now just wants to be like us. That doesn't take into account the fact that most of the world doesn't want to be like us, especially China and Russia and others. They want to do things their own way, and that means that they are not happy to sit back and just be and as we talked about earlier uh in the recording, to sit back and just allow the West just to keep leading the way. They are pushing, actively pushing back in it, and China itself really does want to sinasize the world and and and redo the world to be in its own image and to undermine Western leadership. This is absolutely the case. You know, I've spent 30 years studying China and we are able to pinpoint this uh in the current administration, but also going back for previous administrations in Beijing, that the ability uh to sort of be a global power is is right up there in their in their whole strategy, and that means undermining the Western leadership. But if you're sitting there in London uh and you don't really get this because you haven't studied China, you think that everything that China and Russia are doing now is just an aberration, and we get back to the norm, so to speak, of everyone wanting to be a liberal democracy. So that is one reason, and basically a lack of imagination and a lack of world knowledge. But secondly, it's because I think it's it's priorities. What is the state for, you might ask? And it's not just that that uh the the front benches and the Labour Party don't want to spend money, uh but they haven't got much to spend, but I think it goes deeper than that to being really at the fundamental heart of their conceptualisation of what politics is about. That's why we won't spend more money.

Speaker 1 23:44

Okay, so how do we communicate the the the risks that have built here without tipping into alarmism that just makes people because my experience of of of talking uh uh in depth about this uh and being very open about the threats we face is that people just want to put their fingers in their ears and they feel a bit overwhelmed by it. How do we communicate all of this? Because without the people pushing the politicians to say, come on, you've got to do something, we're not really gonna progress beyond where we are, are we?

Defence, Growth and Opportunity

Communicating Risk and Driving Action

Speaker 24:17

No, we're not. And there's some stats I can give you that that uh the resilience imperative, which is an organisation I'm uh supporting, which has been set up uh by someone called Lady Olga Maitland to basically push forward the the worries that we've got around uh hybrid warfare. They commissioned some uh polling a few weeks ago which showed that about 70% of the British public actually recognised there was a threat, but only 40% wanted to do anything about it. And I think a big reason for that is because, as you say, it's easier just to put your fingers in your ears and say, Well, I wish it would go away. However, this for me is the crazy thing because it is actually an opportunity lost. For years, for decades now, uh, maybe for long for hundreds of years, maybe, people have thought of defence as being a sinkhole of money. But defence is so much more now than just buying a tank or buying a ship. It is actually looking at the whole defence technology industrial base. And what we have to remember is that so much of modern warfare is actually dual use. Now we see that with the space sector. So Britain it's still got a thriving uh space military sector. In fact, we are one of the only countries to have our own space satellites and we do a lot of stuff up there, um, but above and beyond anyone else except for really for China, uh, Russia and America. But approximately nine out of every £10 spent on defence space or space defence is actually civilian spent. And so by spending that military money, you're boosting the domestic uh civilian space economy, which is worth, I can't remember the figure off the top of my head, but it's worth a lot, tens, if not hundreds of billions of pounds. And so this is the mindset we need to get into that actually defence is not just you know pouring money down the drain into uh into a tank that we don't can't use anywhere else. It's actually about building out all of the elements that are required to build that tank in the first place. But that build that tank, but build other things that can be used. And modern tanks are not just the the way they used to be that we would have known, but they are you know own ground, uh uncrewed ground systems which require massive investments in technologies which would be able to be used elsewhere. So I think that we need to get a mindset which is that defence is not a sinkhole, defence is actually an engine for growth. And if we get that mindset, then I think it's a lot easier to sell because uh then people will all come on board. But also the second thing is that to make defence and resilience a national thing, we have to look at it from the community point of view to say how can we organise ourselves at the community level, at the business level, to be more resilient to the benefit of the country and use that as an opportunity to really reinforce a lot of you know the community relations and things like that. So there are massive upsides to investing in defence and resilience, but they just need to be properly framed by the government uh to make sure that A, they can get through parliament, but B that the country can get behind them. And I think if with the right messaging, they really could because we know that what the benefits ultimately would be for the country.

Speaker 1 27:27

So the right messaging, and where does this start? Obviously, um uh sub stacks like yours and uh and uh hopefully podcasts like this over time. Uh this is one one part, social media. What how else can we do it?

Lessons from Europe

Speaker 27:40

I think that it is uh but exactly as you said, but also direct pressure on on MPs to really show that they are not just uh that people aren't just worried about welfare, people really are worried about the defence and resilience of this country. And of course, uh there won't ever be on the same song sheet on this, but the more people at the political level realize that the people en masse are very concerned and want something done, I think then they will be forced to take more action. Um, but again, it should be it should be pushed not just in uh we want everyone to be protected, but actually yet to use this as an opportunity for improving the country, for growth and all the things we've just mentioned. That is the messaging that needs to be pushed across.

Speaker 1 28:22

Yeah, because we see other countries in Europe, I'm thinking particularly Finland and I think Switzerland as well, do this really well, don't they? They the this the resilience is sort of built into their culture.

What Can We Actually Do?

Speaker 28:34

Correct. And it's easy for them in many ways because they've been invaded by Russia before. Uh and the Swedes also have it. Now they they last were invaded by Russia sort of 300 years ago, but uh they still have it in their mind. Uh my friends, my friend's mother, for example, lives on a small island, and she saw over their own eyes a Russian uh fighter jet coming in doing a dummy bomb run uh last year or a year before. And things like that mean that the people in Sweden are more aligned around the Russian threat. Um, and countries like Poland and the Baltic states, obviously they've all been invaded before, and they're really doing a lot to create more resilience and spending a lot more on defence. Poland is trying to become and probably will become uh Eastern Europe's, maybe continental Europe's leading military power, um, at least in the conventional sense, because it's putting so much effort into that. Um, but we in Western Europe uh don't feel the Russian threat as much, despite the fact that Russia is actively targeting us, as we've already mentioned, through hybrid warfare, but also through persistent uh sort of media campaigns, and again it's not just Russia, it's Iran, and a lot of the violent activities, uh, for example, you know, a lot of the riots and the like, they've been sponsored by uh Iran and Russia and potentially China as well. So this is not something which is happening to other countries and not to us. It's just that the government, the British government, doesn't want to rock the boat, and I think probably not just as I said because of the money, but also for the ideological and and conceptual reasons we've we've touched on.

Speaker 1 30:08

Okay, well listen, there's a lot to digest there. Uh Sam, I'm I'm very grateful. I think we'd we'd we would leave it there because uh that's a great, I think, introduction to to this area, which um I we're gonna continue. Because one of the things that that does turn people off is is well, what can I do?

Speaker 30:25

Exactly.

Speaker 1 30:26

You know, what I can't change it. I always remember um uh an old professor, I can't remember who it was now, but uh he said to me, uh action defeats despair. He says, um, you know, if if you find yourself rooted to the spot because you just don't know what to do, some sort of action will get you out of that mode. You know, have a plan and do something. And and resilience is something we can all do. Yeah, we can all make sure that there's enough food in the cupboard, um, that we've we've thought about what do we do if the lights go out, um, you know, transport, how am I going to get to work if uh if I'm if there's no fuel? You know, it's it's even just thinking about those questions is doing something, right?

Speaker 31:07

Exactly. And I think there's a there's a part for us all to play. I mean, you you mentioned there about just having food in the cupboard. There's the old anecdote, no one knows if it's true or not, but the average London has only got three meals of food in the house. But did you know that the UK has only got three to five days of food in its system? So, you know, it only takes five days of no electricity, uh, and which which means no shipping, which means no imports, and suddenly the country's beginning to starve. And things like that mean that actually the owners falls not on the government, but actually on the individual to make sure their cupboards are stocked up for a week or two. And the trouble is that most people don't know this because the government won't grasp the ball by the horns and tell everyone. And that's why what you're doing here is fantastic to make sure we get the message out that resilience is a government-led thing, of course, but actually everyone at the individual level can play a part, not only for their own sake, but for the countries.

Speaker 1 32:01

Good place to end. Uh, Sam, thank you very much indeed. Just a reminder that Sam's Substack is States of Play, Sam Olson. And uh you'll also find fault lines on Substack, and uh we'll be sharing uh this podcast fairly widely as well. So thank you, Sam, for your time. Much appreciated. Lot to think about, a lot to digest. But we've got to do it soon because there's not much room left for complacency, is there?

Speaker 32:25

No, there's not. Anyway, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 32:27

All the best.