Launch of The Resilience Imperative

Report by Emily Claessen

Speakers: Lady Olga Maitland, General Sir Richard Barrons, Rick Cudworth, Sam Olsen, Jeegar Kakkad, Martin Travers

On Tuesday 24 March 2026, The Resilience Imperative held its inaugural public event. The occasion marked the official launch of the initiative and brought together partner organisations and a distinguished audience. The event provided a platform to highlight shared objectives and reinforce the mission of The Resilience Imperative as it begins its work. Below is a summary of the event highlights and the key insights shared by speakers.

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For a long time, Britain has lived with the idea that danger happens somewhere else. Wars are fought on distant soil, crises belong to other nations, and whatever turbulence shapes the world rarely reaches us.

But that sense of distance is starting to break down. We are not quite at war, but no longer at peace in the way we once understood it. And it is from this uneasy space that we launched The Resilience Imperative - a campaign grounded in the recognition that the assumptions underpinning our security are shifting.

For more than 80 years, the UK has grown accustomed to stability and peace. It has shaped our expectations, our institutions, even our sense of national identity. Yet, as Lady Olga Maitland noted, “what we see as peace at home is, in fact, a myth. It’s a mirage.” General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of Joint Forces Command and co-author of the Strategic Defence Review, added to this: “We have transitioned into a new era of global affairs… pivoting around state confrontation and potentially conflict”.

The threats we face today are quiet, ambiguous, and often easy to ignore. A cyber attack can halt hospital operations. A financial breach can affect millions of customers. Interference can chip away at trust in institutions. None of these look like war in the traditional sense, yet all of them carry its intent.

Modern conflict now unfolds subtly across networks, systems, and societies, often below the threshold that would trigger a conventional response. And crucially, it targets not just infrastructure, but confidence - the belief that things will continue to work as they should. What is emerging is not a series of isolated incidents, but a sustained effort to disrupt and unsettle. Each intrusion, each disruption, each moment of uncertainty adds weight, gradually testing the limits of what a society can absorb.

Sam Olsen, Chief Analyst at global intelligence firm Sibylline, spoke to the importance of understanding the threat itself: “We do have a distinct threat from malign actors… who want to do us harm”. Without that clarity, resilience cannot be built. And yet, there remains a gap between awareness and action. People sense that something has shifted, but the response has not caught up.

This is where the idea of resilience becomes more than a policy term. Because the truth is that modern conflict does not begin and end with the military. Wars are not won by armies alone; they are won by societies.

Resilience, then, is not simply about defence. It is about the strength of everyday systems, the adaptability of institutions, and the preparedness of ordinary people. It is about whether a country can absorb disruption without losing its footing.

Jeegar Kakkad, Head of Defence at Stonehaven, revealed just how exposed the UK feels: “only 30% [of the British public] are confident in the UK’s ability to defend itself.” As the Resilience Imperative’s partner, Public First has developed a “Will and Preparedness Index” - measuring not just awareness of threats, but the public’s willingness to act.

He said: “there’s a high awareness of the threat… but still not a willingness to change”. That statistic is a signal that while the risks are understood in the abstract, they have not yet been translated into practical readiness. And in that gap lies vulnerability.

The Resilience Imperative is, at its core, an attempt to close that gap. Not by assigning responsibility to one part of society, but by recognising that resilience must be shared.

That means government has to lead, but it cannot act alone. It means businesses must look beyond short-term efficiency and consider long-term stability. It means communities need to reconnect, rediscovering a sense of mutual responsibility that has, in some places, faded. And it means individuals have to recognise that resilience is not something delivered to them, but something they are part of.

As Rick Cudworth, Executive Director of Resilience First, said: “Hybrid warfare is not abstract. It’s already affecting UK businesses today”. Resilience First plays an active role in driving private sector engagement, translating risk into practical action, and pushing businesses to think beyond “business as usual”. Because business as usual no longer holds.

But perhaps the most difficult shift is cultural. For decades, resilience has felt like someone else’s job - the duty of government agencies, emergency services, or the military. But that mindset no longer fits the world we are in.

If the private sector represents one pillar, communities represent another. Martin Travers, CEO of SafeHouse Pro,introduced one of the most tangible initiatives: a national network of community resilience hubs. “We’re taking a bottom-up approach… turning communities from passive recipients into active resilience partners”, he shared.

SafeHouse Pro’s contribution is practical and local. Working with councils and communities, it is piloting hubs that provide trusted spaces for coordination, information and support during disruption. It is an approach shaped by what we are already seeing elsewhere: in countries where infrastructure has been targeted, where energy systems have been disrupted, where daily life has been pushed to its limits.

And so the question becomes not whether disruption will come, but how prepared we are when it does. As General Sir Richard Barrons observed, “We are currently relying on the forbearance of our opponents to leave us alone”. That is a precarious position for any nation to hold.

Fundamentally, resilience is about maintaining confidence in who we are and how we function as a country. There is still time to make that shift, but it requires a change in mindset : from passive security to active preparedness, from assumption to awareness, from comfort to capability.

Ultimately, we face a simple but urgent choice: to continue as we are, or to adapt. The Resilience Imperative is not here to observe our decline, it’s here to reverse it. In Lady Olga Maitland’s words: “it is time to be masters of our own destiny”.