Hunt calls for harsher punishment of states that interfere in free elections

HOSTILE states that sabotage democratic elections with cyber attacks should be subject to stronger sanctions, Jeremy Hunt will warn today.

While stressing that there is no evidence of successful interference in UK polls, the Foreign Secretary will say that authoritarian regimes risk turning elections in the West into “tainted exercises”. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have already been named as being behind various hacks and online campaigns in recent years.

Mr Hunt will also say that as well as publicly shaming states involved in cyber attacks, economic and diplomatic sanctions should also be a response.

“Events have demonstrated how our adversaries regard free elections – and the very openness of a democratic system – as key vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Mr Hunt will say in a speech in Glasgow.

“Authoritarian regimes possess ways of undermining free societies that yesterday’s dictators would have envied.”

The UK blamed Russia’s GRU intelligence agency for the hacking of Democratic national committee emails in the run-up to the US elections in 2016.

But Mr Hunt will say: “For every example of publicly attributed interference, there have been others that never saw the light of day... the implications are profoundly disturbing.

“At a minimum, trust in the democratic process is seriously undermined. But in a worst-case scenario, elections could become tainted exercises, robbing the governments they produce of legitimacy.” He will say that a “doctrine of deterrence” is needed to show states operating cyber campaigns that they run a “credible risk of additional countermeasures – economic and diplomatic – over and above public embarrassment”.

He will also highlight the UK’S own offensive cyber capabilities, used against Isil in the Middle East, and describe the expansion of the network of “cyber attaches” – diplomats working with governments around the world on addressing the problem.