Response to the Defence Investment Plan

In advance of this week’s NATO Summit, the UK Government has published the Defence Investment Plan on 30 June, summarising the major investment choices the Government has made for UK Defence.

Artificial Intelligence

Threats from AI are one of the defining security challenges of our time. In recent days, the Minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan, has stated that “AI is the central question for our domestic and national security”, while the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said that “we cannot afford to wait for an AI equivalent of Hiroshima before we act”.   

CLTR welcomes the investment of £115 million to raise the UK’s defences against the threats from AI, including using AI to improve our biosecurity and mitigate risks posed by autonomous AI agents.

However, relative to the scale of the threat from autonomous AI systems, this level of investment is insufficient to protect the UK.

The Government must optimise broader investments – including the £2 billion digital targeting web underpinned by AI, the £500 million Transformation Fund delivering productivity improving investments in AI, and the £100 million for the Prime Minister’s Rapid AI Delivery Taskforce (RAID) – in order to increase significantly the UK’s readiness for autonomous AI threats.

The key will be ensuring these investments are targeted towards increasingly capable and agentic AI systems, including the rising probability that artificial general intelligence is developed within the next decade. Threats from increasingly capable AI agents include misuse, concentration of power, and loss of control – all of which require a substantial uplift in our defensive capabilities. 

These broader investments should be leveraged to ensure the UK has sufficient classified compute and frontier model access to respond, and ensure the UK is prepared to manage threats in a world where AI systems act as above human-level autonomous agents rather than merely tools.

Biosecurity  

CLTR is pleased to see explicit reference to biological security in the Plan, as well as the additional investment and capability that the Plan provides for Science and Technology – especially the investment into the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) through a new laboratory for biological security research.

However, there is a likelihood that the £580m earmarked for Dstl infrastructure could simply be a standalone project. The challenges that Dstl faces go far wider than just the need for additional laboratory space. 

Getting the right number and quality of suitably qualified personnel to undertake critical work – from both an opportunity and a defensive perspective – is a key gap that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) needs to address. 

It’s not yet clear whether the capability of these labs will be increased, nor whether the funding builds on operational expenditure in a way that’s sustainable for the long-term. 

Cross-Government co-ordination and supply chain resilience

We welcome the focus on supply and value chain resilience in the Plan. It is critical that the MOD prioritises resilience as a key requirement, working closely with other departments including the Department for Science Innovation and Technology and the Department for Business and Trade to join up investments and incentives.

To achieve this, the MOD must find faster, more efficient ways to fund UK businesses and SMEs during the early, high-risk stages of research and development, alongside direct procurement levers.