Epistemic Security 2029: Fortifying the UK's Information Supply Chain to Tackle the Democratic Emergency

Epistemic Security 2029 is Demos's flagship strategic framework report and the most comprehensive British think-tank contribution to the democratic resilience literature in recent years. The report defines epistemic security as a national policy priority — arguing that the UK's information supply chain is structurally vulnerable to a combination of misinformation, algorithmic harm, and foreign interference, and that this vulnerability constitutes a democratic emergency requiring a coordinated five-year programme of regulatory, institutional, and societal interventions.

The 'information supply chain' metaphor is the report's most useful conceptual contribution: it frames the problem not as individual bad actors producing harmful content but as a systemic failure across the chain from information production (journalism, research) through distribution (platforms, algorithms) to consumption (public, institutions). This systems-level diagnosis supports a systems-level prescription — interventions at multiple points in the supply chain rather than single-domain responses. For UK policymakers and for practitioners advising on democratic resilience strategy in any jurisdiction, this report provides the most architecturally comprehensive British framework currently available.