Any concerns that the long-awaited Russia report would be a damp squib were blown out of the water on Tuesday, when a slew of revelations painted a damning picture of how the UK is dealing with the threat from a hostile foreign power.
The government only “belatedly” realised the kind of threat Russia could pose to democracy and Tory ministers and intelligence agencies have not done enough to mitigate the menace, the 55-page ISC report said.
But there is also a lot we didn’t learn. Including footnotes, there are a grand total of 175 redactions in the report, indicated simply by three asterisks.
Of course there is one inference we can make about all of them – they’re redacted because they’re super juicy and top-secret.
Here are the main ones.
1) What is being targeted by Russian cyber-attackers?
“Russia has also undertaken cyber pre-positioning activity on other nations’ Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has advised that there is *** Russian cyber intrusion into the UK’s CNI – particularly marked in the *** sectors.”
The report notes that Russia has already taken “cyber pre-positioning” into the infrastructure of other countries. This refers to identification of weak points in computer systems that control vital services such as the power grid or communications. These can then be exploited in the event of a conflict causing chaos.
It has previously been reported that the US and Russia are involved in a low-level programme of infiltrating each other’s systems and the report says Russia has already been targeting the UK though it redacts just exactly which sectors – though it’s bad news no matter which ones it is.
The UK has 13 national infrastructure sectors and they’re all crucial – chemicals, civil nuclear communications, defence, emergency services, energy, finance, food, government, health, space, transport and water.
2) Just how much influence do Russian expatriates have in the UK?
“The extent to which Russian expatriates are using their access to UK businesses and politicians to exert influence in the UK is ***: it is widely recognised that Russian intelligence and business are completely intertwined.”
The report confirms the long-held belief that wealthy Russians living in the UK hold a certain amount of power and influence among the country’s business and political elite.
Just how far this power and influence goes has, unfortunately, been redacted from the report – though journalist Christo Grozev had a good stab at what might be missing.
3) Why did MI5 provide open-source materials?
“In response to our request for written evidence at the outset of the inquiry, MI5 initially provided just six lines of text.”
In a section that looks at the EU referendum as a case study of possible Russian interference, the report highlights the remarkably small amount of information provided by MI5, the UK’s domestic security agency. The six lines themselves have also been redacted.
The report highlights how MI5 – in response to a query on whether there was secret intelligence to back-up publicly available open-source studies into Russian influence – then cited open-source and publicly available materials in its evidence.
The report goes on to note that it is indicative of the intelligence agencies’ reluctance to involve themselves in the democratic process of the UK.
What isn’t made clear, however, is whether MI5 (a) has information but didn’t provide it for political reasons or (b) didn’t even gather information in the first place because of political reasons.
4) Did Russia actually meddle in the Scottish independence referendum?
Despite making the front page of The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, the report’s conclusion about possible Russian meddling in the Scottish Independence vote was very short and very unhelpful.
“There has been credible open source commentary suggesting that Russia undertook influence campaigns in relation to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.
“However, at the time ***. It appears that *** what some commentators have described as potentially the first post-Soviet Russian interference in a Western democratic process. We note that – almost five years on – ***.”
With the redactions as they are, it’s impossible to conclude either way at this stage.
5) What is the Intelligence Community focused on?
“Most surprising, perhaps, was the extent to which much of the work of the
Intelligence Community is focused on ***.”
The report expresses surprise and shock that the UK’s intelligence agencies aren’t as focused on the threat from Russia as should be expected given the extent of the country’s interference in the UK.
One of the apparent reasons for this is that resources are concentrated mostly on something that has been redacted.
But one thing we do know is that the report makes numerous references to terrorism and even later on expresses concern that “as resources were being transferred to counter-terrorism, coverage of other areas had become increasingly thin”.