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16th June 2025
06:43pm BST

Russian leader Vladimir Putin may end up weaponising solar engineering technology against the UK, it's been suggested.
Intended to limit global warming, this fantastical tech would see aerosols deployed in the Earth's atmosphere to reflect light back into the black expanse of space, yet experts are warning that an 'independent or third-party actor' could harness it for an evil agenda.
They would be able to block out the sun or incite natural disasters with such a device.
Net Zero minister Kerry McCarthy wrote in a letter obtained by The Telegraph: "The UK is a longstanding leader on climate action and an active international collaborator in scientific research. The Government recognises the need to understand the risks and impacts of [solar radiation modification] approaches that could be deployed by an independent or third-party actor.
"Robust scientific evidence is essential for informing responsible and inclusive governance."
Meanwhile, Dragonfly Intelligence's associate director Matt Ince pointed to Putin's increasing expansion of "hybrid warfare activities", cautioning that the tech in question might be desirable to him thanks to its "relative affordability" and "feasibility of conducting it".

This comes after UK defence expert Fiona Hill claimed Russia is already at war with Britain.
Hill, who previously worked under US President Donald Trump as his chief Russian adviser, recently told The Guardian that the UK is in "pretty big trouble" when it comes to our place in the food chain.
"Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn’t fully anticipated,” she said, before revealing that the Russo-Ukrainian War marked only the beginning of Moscow's reign as a “dominant military power in all of Europe”.
From her perspective, Russia has been “menacing the UK in various different ways” over the years, pointing to the “poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber-attacks and influence operations. The sensors that we see that they’re putting down around critical pipelines, efforts to butcher undersea cables.
“Russia is at war with us,” stated Hill.
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