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How has, or how should, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompt a change in the UK government’s approach to regarding tech as a strategic asset?

I think many people have got to the point in the world where they thought relatively developed nations weren’t going to do something completely unexpected like take the decision to have a good old-fashioned war on the edges of Europe. So, the first important thing to understand is the reality that yes, these things can happen and obviously the more that they happen, they become self-fulfilling in creating instability. The first thing is, it’s become a really important question.

The second thing which is absolutely fascinating is that things like connectivity have become weaponised. This is not about a war of attrition where people are pummelling tanks from each side, it’s about cognition. And so the skillset and the approach to dealing with threats is completely different. And when you follow that all back, you end up with the understanding that there are now strategic assets. And those assets if you don’t have them, you’re incredibly exposed. I was just talking about connectivity – the ability on the Ukrainian battlefield to have independent connectivity through satellite technology is actually what’s driving a lot of what’s going on. The next part of it is, there are strategic technologies, something like an ARM processor is a strategic technology. AI is going to become more and more strategic. The idea that you’re going to be fighting this out with humans, no. It will very soon be a lot of AI. Having a little bit of clever AI will be a massive strategic advantage. But also, how do you create these things? The one thing we’ve seen in Ukraine is that the world is no longer about 20-year long development programmes because you don’t know what the world is going to look like in 20 years’ time. So, what you’ve got to do now is be agile. And in order to be agile you need to create an ecosystem of talent. That’s not just in the traditional way of defence contractors, it’s the whole thing. And bring together that ecosystem that can deliver things like drones, and new ways of doing things.

And the Ukrainians have been amazing. They’ve really worked out that if you do it the old-fashioned way, we’re going to have a problem. They’ve harnessed the incredible power of modern consumer technology and it’s something the Russians have not been able to react to in the way they thought they would.