September Speaker Meeting

The club was fortunate to have an interesting and thought provoking talk from Alicia Kearns, an experienced and widely travelled counter terrorism expert.

The basis of her argument was that nowadays we are engaged in permanent hybrid warfare where rogue states sew misinformation, cyber disruption, economic upheaval and play on cultural differences  as well as occasional more overt and traditional warfare methods.

The major player behind much of this is Russia but Daesh, North Korea and Iran are also involved. One of their main objects is to inflate their influence in the eyes of their own people to maintain power over them. 

The UK counters this by having one of the best counterterrorism strategies of any nation and sharing much of it’s knowledge with the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Where it needs to improve is by better government engagement with people to negate the ‘fake news’  promulgated by the rogue states. She gave examples of these states saying one thing and immediately doing other things - Russia claiming to fight Isis and yet only bombing freedom fighting groups, Daesh claiming areas to be awash with food and water when the inhabitants were suffering from lack of basic goods and the Syrian regime trading oil for wheat despite allegedly being at war with them. 

The UK uses drones to target terrorist cash and weapon stores and the social media to demonstrate where propaganda falsehoods are being spread. However, it needs to improve social care for the outcasts of society who can often be sucked into the activities of antisocial groups and also to give more support to areas like Kurdistan who have consistently aided and supported our interests.  

The club gave Alicia an enthusiastic and rousing ovation after Richard Lane proposed the vote of thanks.