00:00As common sense dictates, the British government urged citizens to stock up on essentials,
00:03food and drinking water in advance to prepare for war and various national emergencies.
00:07The key takeaway here is that this isn't merely a recommendation to just go and buy stuff.
00:10The government is directly calling on citizens to prepare, operating under the assumption that
00:14in an emergency, daily life could be disrupted for a certain period of time. Notably, their
00:18preparations cover not just war, but scenarios that directly hit daily life, such as cyber attacks,
00:23extreme weather and power or communication outages. Starting in the second half of this
00:26year, the British government also plans to roll out a public awareness campaign to boost
00:29the public's disaster response capabilities. It aims to guide individuals and households on how
00:33to prepare for emergencies where power is cut, water supplies are disrupted, and phone or internet
00:37services fail, as well as situations where it becomes difficult to obtain groceries. The goal
00:41is to inform citizens that services normally taken for granted can suddenly be cut off and to encourage
00:46every household to take basic precautions rather than just waiting for the government to respond.
00:51On top of that, the UK's largest homeland defense exercise in decades is also scheduled to be
00:54conducted next year. Through this exercise, the government plans to check if state institutions
00:58and related organizations can function properly in an actual crisis, and also test their capabilities
01:02to respond to hybrid attacks. In particular, they will check how the nation can respond when
01:06multiple forms of disruption occur simultaneously, even considering scenarios where cyber attacks and
01:11infrastructure failures happen at the same time. The National Risk Register has also undergone a
01:15major overhaul. The potential for cyber attacks on water supply facilities has been included as a new
01:19risk factor, and failures in digital resilience, such as the crowd strike incident that previously
01:22triggered massive IT disruptions, have also been added as major risks the nation must prepare for.
01:26On the other hand, the risk of disruptions to Russian gas supplies was removed from the list,
01:30reflecting the assessment that the UK has reduced its reliance on Russian gas.
01:33Another notable point is that the UK's classified crisis response plan, the so-called war plan,
01:37is being updated for the first time since 2004. As the scope of national threats widens beyond
01:42pandemics and extreme weather to include cyber attacks, infrastructure disruptions, and hybrid
01:46attacks, the British government is re-examining its existing response systems. What the government is
01:50emphasizing as well is not just a single specific threat, but rather a national state of readiness capable of
01:54responding to unpredictable emergencies across the board. The UK is now preparing across the board
01:58from individual civilian readiness to nationwide military and disaster response drills.
Comments