 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Could I call you to order? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the second day of our LDC conference. Thank you so much for coming back for the second day. I hope you enjoyed yesterday. What I would like to do is to offer some very heartfelt thanks to our colleagues at the School of Security Studies at King's College London. They have been admirable colleagues in every way, and it's been a pleasure working with them. And in particular, my thanks to the principal, whose enthusiasm was so important to getting this thing off the ground in the first place. So thank you to all of them. But also an enormous thank you to my other colleagues led by our director, Ian Martin. He was looking a bit frazzled yesterday morning, I thought. But he seems to have settled down after a good dinner last night. And he and Nicole and Olivia and the rest of the team have done, I hope you'll agree, a magnificent job in preparation for an even better conference next year, which I hope you'll all be able to attend. This morning, we have a rich diet for you all, including the Swedish Defence Minister. I hope you'll agree that his intervention will be extremely timely for reasons all of you understand much better than I do. But we also have what is termed a breakout session at 1 o'clock lunchtime today, in which some of the brightest PhD students at the security school at King's will be in conversation, moderated by no less a figure than Professor John Buu, late of this place and currently of number 10 Dining Street. Ladies and gentlemen, kicking off this rich feast, we have chaired by my old friend and boss, William Hague, a panel on what should be, I'm sure, one of our greatest concerns entitled Air, Space and AI. And I certainly look forward greatly to what they have to say. William, will you kindly introduce your panel? I will. Thank you very much. Well, good morning, everybody. It's a great pleasure to join you here at the London Defence Conference, which looked to be a fascinating conference yesterday. And we're now going to have this session on Air, Space and AI. You've been looking at every aspect of how defence is changing and developing. But it's impossible to think about that without thinking about technology and what it is doing dramatically in defence, particularly in these areas of air, space and AI. Many of us would argue we are entering the fastest age of technological change in the whole history of human civilisation. And the impact of that on defence and warfare will be absolutely profound. It's impossible to think about the future of warfare without understanding how technology is changing. It's impossible to think of how geopolitics will develop without understanding that. And it's certainly impossible to know how to allocate a defence budget without understanding that. And we constantly see people be surprised by what is happening. President Putin has been very surprised by how Ukraine has used digital technology in its defence. The United States and China are clearly engaged in a major contest about the future, including on AI, on developing quantum science in the future. So we really need to understand all of these things. And we're very fortunate this morning because we've got a panel who know quite a bit about these things. And it's a great pleasure to be joined by Chris Brose, who is the Chief Strategy Officer of Anderille Industries. And he's author of the indispensable book, it says here. The indispensable book, The Kill Chain, Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare. And also by Ulrika Franka, who is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. By Tim Marshall, who some of you saw yesterday, broadcaster, best-selling author. His latest book, The Future of Geography, is about space. And Ed Stringer is a former Royal Air Force Air Marshal and former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. So I'm going to start off the panel by asking all of our panelists to reflect on the war in Ukraine and what lessons they have particularly learnt from it. We've seen software used in a new way, such as by Palantir. We've seen satellites used importantly by Starlink. We've seen naval warfare developing new ways with undersea drones, drones repurposed from civilian use for military purposes. Last week, we saw Russia launch six hypersonic missiles at Kiev, all of which were shot down by Patriot air defenses. So there are very important technological developments taking place all the time. I just want to ask each of you what you think has been the main lessons that you have drawn from that war so far. So we'll just go along the panel here to begin with. Chris, why don't you kick off on that? Well, thank you very much for having me. I think as I look at the war in Ukraine, this sort of big thing that jumps out, and I'm looking at this from my perspective, most of my career having been in the US government working for John McCain, Senate Armed Services Committee, kind of overseeing defense. But then for the past four and a half years at Enderall Industries, actually building a lot of this technology, autonomous systems, sort of software-centric command and control capabilities and the like. What jumps out to me from Ukraine is that the future of warfare is now. Tends to be that we talk about the future of warfare as this thing that's going to happen to us in the 2030s, and we have all this time to plan for it. But I think what we're clearly seeing right now is these technologies are available now. They're being used now. These are not like cloaking devices and photon torpedoes that are coming in the future. These are capabilities that exist that militaries can utilize. And I think the broader point is the way we've sort of traditionally conceived of military power is really around sort of large, exquisite, very expensive sort of hardware-centric things, ships and aircraft and fighting vehicles. And those will continue to have a role to play. But I think the future is going to be built much more around the kinds of capabilities that are so distinguishing themselves in the fight in Ukraine, which is very software-centric systems, highly autonomous systems. So not just drones, but drones that are capable of real autonomous operations, multi-ship operations, large quantities of fires, large quantities of sensors kind of integrated across the battle space. That's where I think we're really going to generate deterrence and real kind of defense against aggressors who are seeking to project power, the ability to really kind of grind down what an aggressor like Russia is doing through very sort of non-traditional-type means, but when you put them all together, the net effect that you get has a pretty significant capability. And Ulrika, you have written a lot about the use of drones, and is this for you, are there other lessons about it? It is a drone story. So I'll make four short points, but you'll see that the last two kind of broaden out from drones a bit. So the first thing about drones to note in this war is just how many systems are in use in Ukraine, and it's really baffling. And I mean both systems as in different types and also just the sheer number. So some of you may have seen that that Russia just put out a report that estimated that every month in Ukraine, 10,000 drones are being lost. So just in terms of how many systems are being lost 10,000 a month. So that's an unbelievable number. So you have drones on both sides in many different systems. And of course, the reason why it's even possible that 10,000 drones get lost in, I mean, it doesn't really matter whether it's nine or 11, this is an estimate of course. The reason why this is even possible is that we see a lot of smaller civilian systems in the sky over Ukraine that are being repurposed. Repurposed either kind of being used as they are for intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance because any civilian drone also kind of carries cameras and all of this, or they're being repurposed in the sense that they're being armed for example or being changed in a way. So we see a lot of small systems, we see a lot of civilian drones in the sky over Ukraine and I think this is something we'll see also in the future. That's the first point. The second point I wanted to make is I'm really impressed also by how Ukrainian companies have begun to build their own drones or indeed repurpose drones that already exist. And I would predict or I am predicting that once this war is over, hopefully very soon, Ukraine and Ukrainian manufacturers are likely to really rise on the global market as really important drone manufacturers. And Ukraine may become a drone exporter because not only do we have lots of different countries working on this, but also all of these systems are now battle proven. And you actually have an innovation cycle in Ukraine where systems are being put in the battlefield and tested and used and kind of sent back with feedback from the troops. So this kind of label of battle proven is certainly there and certainly very valuable. Third point and I alluded to this, but the role that civilian companies have been playing in this war now I'm kind of going beyond just drones. So yes, the Chinese drones are really important, but in all the areas we're gonna talk about civilian companies, private companies are playing an enormously important role. And sometimes they provide services that states just can't anymore. I mean, I'm sure someone is gonna talk about Starlink and the internet connection here. Sometimes they're just providing services that are cheap and easy. And so think about AI enabled facial recognition provided by Clearview and things like that. So the private sector is very important and on the one hand it creates opportunities and on the other hand, vulnerabilities as well and kind of dependencies. And then the final point I wanted to make and this is really generally about new technologies in this war, one thing that really struck me in my research that I didn't really think about that much before I set out on this project is how much new technologies have enabled and motivated individual people. People like you and I and other people around the world to be involved in the war effort in Ukraine. What do I mean by this? Well, we see enormous efforts to crowdfund, for example, around the world for the Ukrainian military to buy things like drones. This has become such a big thing that at some point Ukrainian officials actually said there's a bit of a supply issue here. We're getting too many Viarapla TV too and would like to buy other things. But nevertheless, you can see a lot of people around the world really being involved in this effort and this is being made possible by technology. I mean, this is done through social media, through crowdfunding platforms. It's possible to pay Paul and using Bitcoin and all of this. And it is motivated by these new technologies because as I was saying, people are buying drones. You also have kind of cyber warriors around the world or even just, it may not even be hackers, just normal people using commercially available tools such as facial recognition software and other kind of analysis tools to help Ukraine, for example, by trying to identify perpetrators of war crimes and things like that. So I think this kind of involvement of individual people in this war, again, motivated and enabled through new technology is something that I find extremely interesting. Right now we're stacking in the lessons here and Ulrika's point about the role of private companies is very important in the space domain, isn't it? So can you give us your key lessons from Ukraine so far? There are so many, but I'll stick to just a couple. The first real drone war, of course, was Armenia, Azerbaijan, but this is the first one where it's really come to public attention. Some of the drones are linked to the satellites. 1991 is considered the first space war, the Gulf War, but this is considered the first space war with serious commercial enterprise right in the middle of it and where two sides have space assets. Ukraine doesn't have its own space assets, as Russia does, but it was able to buy in and it bought in all sorts of things from space and then this leads us to Starlink and the satellites. The Irpin district, the base stations were smashed and the internet went down in large parts of the wider Irpin region and beyond. Elon Musk's SpaceX flew in thousands of terminals and dishes and got the internet back up and running. Families can now find out if they're okay, organize relief columns, et cetera, and the Ukraine military, of course, can get its commander control back up again, start using the drones again, start using the satellites for targeting and they use them very, very efficiently to kill the Russian invaders. And that leads me to the second point, which I think has been around for some years, but Ukraine has brought this into relief and that is law. Is it now a legal target for Russia to fire a direct ascent missile at an American commercial satellite? Leave to one side the fact that Starlink is a constellation, if you take one of the small ones out, the rest of it still works. It's more the concept and Russia clearly believes it is a legitimate target. NATO has updated its language attacks from and including and to space, which theoretically could trigger Article 5, doesn't have to. So these are new elements in warfare and space is now an integral part of it, the mantra being space is a war-fighting domain. And so the last point is, the laws are up to 50 years out of date, but certainly are not fit for the 21st century. Right, yes, particularly on space, we're relying on the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which did not really foresee these developments. And there's a related issue of this role of private companies, which is what if a private company is not enthusiastic about doing what is in the foreign policy interests of the United States or its allies? Is it then the President of the United States or is it Elon Musk who is discerning? Or contrary to the policy? Or what if they wanted to act contrary to that policy? That is now becoming a much bigger issue in the years ahead. Ed, what are your reflections on the war in Ukraine so far? Well, I'm just going to make one and we could unpack it over the rest of the remaining hour and it's really more of a sort of provocative hypothesis we can test. So I'll pose a question, a thought experiment to this audience. Go back five years, 2018, and pose a general question. Who's got the most impressive military, the Brits or the Ukrainians? Pretty obvious answer in 2018, isn't it? One is a P5 nation, a nuclear power. It's got high-end platforms, yadda yadda yadda. And also in 2018, it's my old empire, it's a full disclaimer, we were writing about everything that's just been discussed by this panel. It's all down there on paper, it's all on the records. This is the way we need to go for information age warfare. So let's move forward now to five years to 2023. How's it looking now? Where the Ukrainians within just over a year of warfare have digitized, not just across the battle space, but hooked that into the critical national infrastructure. This is a national effort. They've now mobilized and got more than 200,000 people in uniform and many more hundreds of thousands backing them across society. We have, you know, talked about the 10,000 drones per month. We're still, at the moment, procuring things like watchkeeper after 17 years. It will, when it comes finally online, get us 40 drones at a cost of £1.2 billion. And how hollow has our conventional legacy force, that industrial age force now been shown to be when we look at what we've got in the locker to hand to Ukraine? So I think there's a real question that we've got to ask ourselves in the UK. Why, if we saw all this coming five years ago, have we allowed the three services and the force command, strategic command, to move at such a glacial pace and still spend the fifth largest defense budget on the world to produce a force where senior officers are still turning around and saying, we're the reference army in Europe? That's not a t-shirt I'd wear in Kiev any time soon if I were a British senior officer at the moment. And I think there are some really important questions we have to ask before we decide how we're going to spend the next year's defense budget. Well, this is related, actually, to what you have written about, Chris, because you've written in your book about how there are huge developments in defense and new technologies in the after the Second World War. And then you think, from the 1960s onwards, there's been a risk aversion or a failure to use research and development in defense adequately. Can you just, it's related to Ed's point. Can you expand on that? Yes, I completely agree with Ed's point. I mean, you can speak to the UK aspects of this. I would say it certainly rings true in the US context where we're spending a lot more money, but the conversation is still around lack of readiness for the future. I think those two things should give us a lot of pause. I think a lot of it has less to do with the money we're spending on defense research and development. I think it has more to do on our failure to actually grasp the kinds of technological advancements that are happening outside of defense and figure out a pathway and a way to create incentives to bring that kind of capability into the ranks of defense so that we can actually start asking the real questions, which are how do we need to organize ourselves differently and operate differently to solve these kinds of future problems? So when I look at the sort of system that we have in place, and I think that it's, you know, quite similar in the UK as it is to the US, where we have these incredibly long timelines where we're basically planning for things that we think we're going to need 10 years out. We're spending an inordinate amount of research and development to have defense industry build those things based on requirements that are very far out into the future. We're not planning on buying a very large number of these things. And then when they show up, we're shocked that they actually don't meet any of the requirements that we have at that time. That system was built for Cold War era systems. And I think that we need to kind of push it to one side and let it, you know, deal with those kinds of large ships and capital assets to the extent that we still need those things. What I think we need, both in the UK and in the US, is sort of a completely parallel path to bring the kinds of technologies that we're talking about here into the ranks of the military, put it into the hands of operators and to enable them to do a version of what the Ukrainians have done, which is actually kind of experiment and develop these technologies as well as the ways in which they're going to use them and organize themselves differently with them at a much faster and more iterative pace. And, you know, the final thing that I'll say is, you know, I think what the war in Ukraine has sort of shown us and what I hope the lessons that the UK and the US are learning, this is about the sort of path and sort of speed of adaptation. You know, if we try to set out what our quote unquote, capital R requirements are for military capabilities in the late 2020s or early 2030s, I would say we are almost certainly going to get those things wrong. The question that I think we're seeing in Ukraine is when the threat changes, when technology changes, how quickly you can adapt and bring those capabilities in and then sort of move on with a different sort of set of approaches. I think a lot of that in the future is going to have to be built around software because that's what enables that sort of speed of change and speed of adaptation. So unless we're thinking about putting software at the center of the future British force, the future US force, we're not going to be capable of changing at the rate we need to. So this is very interesting because as soon as we get into air, space and AI, really we're talking about software. Really, we're talking about the integration of those things and we're talking about a different mindset in defense that is more flexible, more decentralized than defense ministries and militaries are used to. I've understood what you're all saying. And that path of development doesn't stop, right? That software is updating daily and you need a system that's capable of modernizing inputs. Yeah, Ulrika, you want to comment on this but also I then want to take you on to, we've talked about the repurposed, the thousands of drones. But tell us also about other developments in drone warfare because we're seeing in other parts of the world, drones developed, not used in Ukraine, that can fly thousands of mines, that raise important issues about the future of defense, about the implications for fighting terrorism, for instance. So if you could respond to these points but also go on to that wider issue of what's happening in drone warfare, I think that would be very interesting. Sure, happy to. There was one point I wanted to pick up on and that was large numbers. So something where I also think we, in the West in particular, will need a different mindset, as it was just said, is regarding large numbers because what we're seeing in this war is that, you know, this old saying of quantity has a quality of its own is very much true. We are seeing that, you know, sophisticated technology, new technologies are important and often better. I mean, just think about the discussion about the Leopard 2 tanks, you know, Western tanks versus old Soviet tanks and now Western aircraft versus old Soviet aircraft and one Leopard tank equals, I don't know how many Soviet tanks. Like, that's all true, but nevertheless, quantity has a quality of its own. And Russia in particular is using that. So Russia is using hundreds, if not thousands, of so-called kamikaze drones, large-range munitions, just to overwhelm or really deplete Ukrainian air defenses. And these aren't very sophisticated systems. These are just kind of types of rockets or missiles, really. I always find it difficult to even call them drones, but they really are having an impact, even if 70, 80, 90% are being intercepted because if you just send so many and if 10% go through, that's still 10% are just destroying things. So I think what I mean by change of mindset is that we need to realize that quantity really matters. And over the last few decades, especially in the West, we've done kind of two things. We've looked at very sophisticated systems because that's kind of sexy and the future. And we're only buying very few of them. We have very kind of shallow arsenals. Same is true with ammunition and things like that. So I think we may need to go down the kind of less sexy role and say, okay, we're just gonna buy this one system, but many of it so that we have it in store. There was one point I wanted to make and just on the kind of more general question about drone warfare and the future of drone warfare, I mean, there are lots of developments happening, of course. And some of them we can see in Ukraine, as I said, civilian drones, also just small drones. And I almost wanna say individual drones. So soldiers having their own drones or kind of very small units having their own drones. I think this really matters in a land war. But of course, we'll also see developments that aren't necessarily at play in Ukraine. What I would emphasize here is AI enabled autonomous drone systems. It's gonna be both small and large, but just we are seeing and we will see even more autonomy in drones. And by the way, also in other systems, just sit in drones that happens kind of faster because these are already unmanned. As a systems that can do more by themselves, which will mean an increase in speed, which has implications for defense as well. So that's something we definitely need to keep an eye on. Swarms, I'm not telling you anything new. I'm sure you've all heard about this, but right now in Ukraine and elsewhere, we have mass. So we have massed drones, we have a lot of drones, the kind of kamikaza attacks by the Russians. But these aren't drone swarms properly to speak of because these systems, these units aren't communicating with each other. They aren't, it's not one entity or kind of several entities behaving as one. But this is something that's already being tested and that we're going to see in the future much more. And here as well, big implications for defense systems because this is specifically developed in order to overwhelm defense systems. And yeah, traditional defense systems won't be able to deal with this quite as much. And then yeah, you mentioned long range. I mean, I think it's very important to look at Ukraine and kind of draw the lessons from that, but there are also kind of the lessons that we need to draw of things that aren't visible in the Ukraine war because it is a specific context. This is a land war where air forces are basically more or less neutralized. It has as any war kind of its specificities. And in another future war that we unfortunately may be involved with, the situation may look different on other systems such as larger military drones may be more important. Well, this point is very important about AI, increasingly autonomous weapons. And of course, there have been efforts globally. There have been talks about agreements on lethal autonomous weapons, which seem to have no prospect whatsoever of reaching any agreement. So this is now a crucial aspect of defense. Airspace, the effect of AI, is that we're probably in the fastest, most escalatory arms race that's ever happened because we'll have to keep up with each other. And is this also true in space? Because Tim, because you pointed out earlier that there isn't a legal framework now providing for what's going on in space. There isn't really any prospect of that either, is there? And so with a reference to a couple of things, can you comment on that? One is what's going on in low Earth orbit and the contest for space there. But also, how many years is it before the US and China are competing on the moon to tap the resources of the moon? What is our time horizon for having to think about that? Low Earth orbit is increasingly crowded. Musk is going to put up 10,000 satellites this decade. China is going to put up 10,000. But what's also happening is the more militarisation of some of the satellites, the ability to hit them. Four countries have already launched ballistic missiles from Earth and hit their own satellites to test. It's China, Russia, India, and USA. So that capability is now there. The capability is already there to dazzle the satellites, to try and blind them, to intercept their communications. And a dual-use thing is relatively new. Clearing space debris. You have satellites that have hydraulic arms that can get hold of a defunct satellite and throw it into the atmosphere to burn up. Good. But what happens if one of those is creeping up behind your satellite, which has your nuclear early warning system in it? You get rather nervous. There are no laws about how close they should be. Nobody thought about this in 1967. Direct energy weapons have arrived. The Americans have pioneered hitting a drone with a direct energy weapon. Maximum range is probably a kilometer, probably less, I think the British are getting these to fight drones soon. Who's going to be the first one to put them on a satellite so that one satellite can fire a directed energy beam at another satellite? Hopefully nobody, because that would spark a new arms race. But we don't have the treaties to ban them. 67 talks about weapons of mass destruction. That's not a laser. So that's what's happening in low Earth orbit. If you talk about the moon and asteroids for mining, the other two lead nations by far are the Americans and the Chinese. The Americans intend to have a man and a woman, they've specified that language, on the moon walking 2026 via the Artemis Accords, which we are a signatory to, 23 countries. And actually, as an aside, what they're trying to do with the Artemis Accords in the absence of a global agreement is make it like an uncloss United Nations Conventional Law of the Sea, rules of the road that are generally accepted. The more people that join Artemis, the more that becomes generally accepted. But Russia and China are excluded and they're never going to do that. So both these entities and blocks, which mirror the blocks on Earth partially, intend to have moon bases early 2030s and begin mining shortly afterwards, exactly for the very minerals and technologies that we require both for renewable energy but also for all the tech of this century. And last point within the Artemis is a really interesting clause. I think it's Article 11, safety zones. Once you get to the moon, you spent all that money, which is fair enough on developing this kit to get the lithium and everything out of the moon and hydrogen. You can declare a safety zone by what law and what you're going to say to Russia if they land next year. So again, we are in urgent need of updated the legal frameworks for space debris, for satellites, for colonization of planets and the moon. Right, so these are some of the issues to come. Now, in a few minutes, we're going to throw ourselves open to questions. But I just, if you're a defense minister and you're a listener, the Swedish defense minister will be here shortly. Huge increase in the defense budget in Sweden. The German defense minister is trying to spend 100 billion euros extra pretty quickly. Japan is more or less doubling its defense expenditure. So you see, huge resources are about to go into defense. Hundreds of billions of dollars extra around the world. Well, how do we know for a defense minister what we're going to spend, that you will have your military chiefs saying, we really need those tanks and we need more infantry and we need more frigates and so on. Then all these people come along and say, no, you need software, you need integration. You've got to think about space. We were right five years ago and nobody took any notice of us and you need to move heavily into that area. You need these drones, although it might be those drones or it might be these drones. The, what is the balance for that? How does a defense minister strike the balance between the traditional military needs and the new military needs and integrating them? What is the mindset needed? Here, Ed and Chris could particularly comment on this and then we'll throw open to a question. Well, across government, we never map incentives. And the service chiefs are incentivized to build a service competitively against the others. It's an evolutionary process. I would argue the problem in the UK structure, there's no actual military quarters responsible for fighting and winning the next war. If there were, we'd have stockpiles of munitions. If there were, we'd do the boring war stuff, which is, as the Ukrainians are showing, is how you actually win wars. But isn't it the job of the Ministry of Defense? Are you ready to fight the next war? So, yeah, we could, I could go on all day about the difference between the Department of State and the military strategic headquarters. I'd argue you need both. And at the moment, we blur the two and we get neither done effectively. And in that confusion, the service chiefs carry on playing the games that they've always played. That's how I'd sum up the problem we have at the moment. But to move on to a thought on acquisition is what you're talking about. And this is across government. I think it's quite widely known. And you would have some other sponsors here today if these companies hadn't pulled out of the UK in the last year, because they can't square away the rhetoric of what we say we're going to do and the reality of where we're actually spending the money. And as you said, Chris, it's a problem in the US as well. We don't know how to, to amplify what you said, we don't know how to buy software-driven products because we don't understand in government the min viable product methodology. We can't get behind a company, get something out there, test it and evolve it. We imagine it's something like an aircraft carrier where you write a huge spec and then you compete it. And that competitive element as well, I mean, it sounds detailed, but this is an important point. We do actually develop with some companies some quite innovative products. And when we do, and they say, are you going to buy offers now? We say, no, we have to go and compete it. And then we put their IP tender, put it out in the market and say, does anyone else want to come in and build this? And the other companies go, great, we'll grab that IP. And your host company is going, hold on. And then they back off working with you. So I think the psychology of contracting for government needs to change from slightly adversarial, I will go to British Aerospace, they'll build me a carrier and for 20 years of the program, we'll contest over that contract. So the sort of thing you and I have with, whether it's Apple, it doesn't matter who, where I trust that Apple for their reputation will drop a software patch every time they find a problem. And I don't know when that's going to drop during the year, but if Apple start to be insecure, I'll move to another manufacturer. And that sort of psychology of working with these companies to keep one step ahead will help us start to build dual use into the way the military goes about fighting its information age wars. And that might be true actually across government in relation to science and technology and a rapid change, including in space and so on and AI in general, not just in defense. A quick comment, Chris, and then we'll get some questions. I mean, violently agree with everything that has just been said. I mean, the only point that I would add, sitting in the city that invented capitalism, I think the problem that we have in defense both in the UK and the US is an absence of capitalism. And you're not going to get capitalism in certain kinds of capabilities. You're not gonna have capitalism for aircraft carriers. But boy, you sure can in autonomous systems and counter autonomous systems and software enabled systems and the kinds of space systems that Tim is talking about. That's an area where the government, if it is thinking the right way, should be thinking about market creation and sort of using the incentives that it has as the sole buyer and demander of national defense to create more of a marketplace where companies can compete with one another and the way that the government can sort of control that and ensure that what is getting is a force that integrates together is by at the software level owning things like interfaces so that you can have confidence that you actually have information moving across different systems. And the final point that I'll come back to which Ulrich mentioned is the future is going to be all about autonomy and that is a software problem. With all the money that is planning to be spent, I hope it is not to buy large quantities of people because I don't think that we're going to solve this problem by just throwing more British or American people at that problem, particularly with competitors that have four times the population that we do. We have got to think about how actual autonomous systems and counter autonomous systems are going to work in the absence of large quantities of sort of manual labor staffing that are ever removed and making sense of their every kind of piece of information. Again, that is technology that's available now that's certainly something that Enderall works on and other companies do too. There's just got to be a better way of accessing it, getting out into the field and learning and iterating and moving faster. Right, very good. Now, if you didn't believe me that we're in the fastest age of transformation in human civilization, maybe you do now after listening to our panel and let's see if we've got some questions. There are a couple of mics around I think as one on each side and yes, we'll go first of all, yes to one of the gentlemen over there on that side. Yes, the one at the front. And then after that, there were a couple of hands up we'll go to the lady who's got her hand up right in the middle just to make it hard for the microphones. Yes. Hi, I'm Robin Brinkworth I'm a senior intelligence analyst with Everbridge and we deal with a lot of the AI integration problems that you guys have mentioned already. My question is there's a lot of new systems there's a lot of new software coming online. It's all quite fragmented and I'm interested in you guys' thoughts and interoperability between those software systems and those hardware systems and how that's gonna evolve over time particularly in these different separate domains that we think of as separate currently but obviously interact quite significantly, which is. Right, the interoperability. Ed, would you like to take that? Yeah, very briefly, well, everyone else thinks about it and it's to just shade slightly what was said earlier on about pushing everything down and out. That does need to happen but it needs to happen with an understood way in warfare and an understood backbone. And a lot of software companies are very good at just pushing APIs out so you can link software to software. We got into the whole business of APIs we'd be able to link it but interoperability is a coalition thing. And if we had some idea of what it'd be like coalition combat cloud looks like that's suitably literative there's a thing we can what does the coalition combat cloud look like and then let a thousand flowers bloom how you can tap into that and evolve apps and capabilities really quite quickly. So there needs to be a little bit of centralization I mentioned earlier on Apple has an operating system everyone knows how you deal with it but it doesn't try and build how many thousands of apps now can you download onto your phone? So I would argue, yes Alliance coalition needs that framework and then within it the individual services and even subunits should be able to develop their own software APIs, link it in, move, change tomorrow when things change. OK, well let's go, we'll get as many questions in as we can we don't need to bring in the whole panel on every question Yes, the woman in the middle there. So Nafeli Kravak, I'm a student here at Kings so kind of in the same vein as that question but more on sort of the I guess political and ethics sort of spectrum. So there was the, earlier this year there was the first RAIM conference in the Netherlands and recently at the G7 the Prime Minister said about using an allied approach to AI I'm kind of curious to see what sort of a multilateral approach to AI would look like and how that could feasibly function. In relation to defence or everything? In relation to defence and also sort of an ethical framework regarding autonomous weapons. Right, now what's it, Ulrika do you want to have a go at that one? I can but unfortunately my answer is going to be a bit pessimistic or frustrating I mean right now and this was mentioned earlier since 2013 we've had these discussions at the United Nations in Geneva about autonomous weapons and the potential ban or regulation or anything like that and these are really important discussions and I think it's very important that they're happening they've also brought the topic to the forefront I don't think they're going to lead to anything whatsoever and in a way they've really done the job of showing how difficult this is and there are several reasons why this is difficult I think the biggest reason really is that right now most countries don't feel like they have an interest and incentive in really regulating anything just quite yet because they want to develop and they want to find out they want to be ahead before they tell others no no you really shouldn't be doing that I think that's the number one problem the second problem this can be overcome but nevertheless these things are relatively difficult to define now I don't want to overplay this because it's also sometimes an excuse but it is true that it is much harder to define this when it comes to regulating and banning than it is you know with very defined systems blinding lasers or anything like that so I think basically what we're currently having right now is the situation that there are a lot of international conversations and I think the re-aim conference in the Netherlands was a very good first step it's good that countries are talking but it is very much up in the air everyone is still trying to figure out what exactly they want what they can do, how it's going to look like no one wants to restrain themselves quite yet so at this point I have unfortunately not that much hope in terms of where this can really go I think we're all nodding with the same pessimism just a brief additional point which I completely agree with Orca I think the question around norms and ethics are going to be set by the builders of the technology so I think it's great to be thinking about these questions it's incredibly important that we be thinking I think as Western countries we're actively coding these kinds of normative and ethical considerations into our technology but if we collectively are not actually leading in the building development and deployment of these technologies we're just kind of talking past the problem and that future is going to be set by other developers of that technology which possibly have very different motivations and very different sort of ethical approaches to the use of those technologies as we're seeing in China now and that's why there's no way of pausing this really this is a new atomic bomb this is you have to be ahead it's a new everything because every single time there is a new technology whether it goes back to the longbow of the English Agincourt there is it sparks the race and no one is going to agree to stop until they see how the land lies and where everybody else is the good news though is that companies I mean you said this is going to be decided by whoever develop it the good news is that at least in the West and I'm not saying not elsewhere but I know in the West the companies themselves are also very much thinking about these things so you know Airbus and others are having you know expert groups and thinking about how we do we have kind of ethical autonomy in all of this so it's not just it's not just kind of civil society in the States kind of having their discussion there and the company is just doing whatever or the military is doing whatever that's not the case so that's the silver lining now virtually everybody wants to ask a question now so we won't get everybody in but we'll do our best so yes sir thank you very much my name is Joshua Minsky I'm director of policy and strategy for the office of congressman Mike Rogers from Michigan not Alabama I need to put that caveat out there it's two parts really the first one is to Chris's point about acquisition reform the challenge that we face in the United States in particular is that we create new offices to go faster SDA is a great example DIU is another great example so how do you see that parallel structure developing in the creation of new incentives to go faster the second question if I may is for the broader panel as we're talking a lot about Western lessons that are drawn from this conflict but the adversary always has a say in this conflict so as we look to that next conflict be it the pacing threat of China and Taiwan what do you see as China, Russia or future adversary like Iran or North Korea drawing from this technological innovation and development countermeasures right very important question a quick comment on the first part just very briefly I think procurement comes in for a lot of abuse and it deserves it's fair share that I think the broader problem we have is across the system both of our systems US and UK procurement is the end of the process right I mean there's requirements there's programming budgeting all these things that have to happen before you even get to buying a thing what I think we do a terrible job of collectively is actually bounding operational problems and sort of iterating your way through requirements buying, trying, experimenting and then scaling things that work quickly you know we I think both in the UK and the US you know we have prototypes coming out of every garage and you know other place that we have sort of developed where are the things that are actually getting to scale right where are the things that are actually proving their worth you know in operational sort of environments that are then leading to large contracts to scale something new that's the piece of this that I see breaking down where you have new offices experimenting you have a lot of innovation theater but there's a failure to transition that into larger programs that make a disruptive difference at the end of the day I think that is a senior leader consideration back to your point about defense ministers they're the ones that have to grab these things and say that is working I am going to own the risk of you know taking a significant action to get this disruptive capability to scale and then shockingly as you know more of these things start to happen in a capitalist society you know people will rush in because the incentives are being created to actually do work demonstrate success and be rewarded for it through you know larger scale procurement and who would like to comment on this it's a vast question we could do a whole panel on you know what China and others might learn from the war in Ukraine is it fundamentally more difficult in an authoritarian if we're moving to an age of the private companies the sort of decentralization moving out of silos into this integration is that more difficult from an authoritarian system? Ulrika and then Ed? That's exactly the point where I've picked up on as well so in general I would say I mean everyone is kind of drawing the same lessons instead because everyone is looking at the same more so there are a lot of things that are similar but if you know if I were an authoritarian state or you know China Russia of course is also drawing its lessons I think the big challenge for them really lies around this issue of the crucial role that private companies in the private sector have played in this war and I think they're going to ask themselves do we have that? And because you know of course China does have a very big commercial sector and private to some extent and you can say on the one hand these countries have an advantage as in they have military civilian fusion and they already have the civilian sector very much in their processes and so that's good we're just going to do this more but on the other hand these countries may not necessarily have the kind of capitalist competition that we talked about that brought these about so I think that's the area that's most interesting in a way to think about and for third countries so not potential future adversaries but more of the kind of third countries the swing states, the global south we talk a lot about I think they're also very much looking into the questions of can we utilize or work with well for example Western private companies in the future like are we placed well enough to to kind of tap into that and bias say you know Starlink terminals and all of that in a future confrontation or are we politically placed in a way that doesn't allow us to do that so yeah the private sector element for me is the most interesting when it comes to the kind of non-Western state Ed? Just two the first if I'm an authoritarian state it's an old lesson don't allow democracies time to stagger former coalition and get their act together so move quickly and overwhelm and the second for us all and it won't be lost on them wars are one in the deep deep and ranges are going out and we need to start thinking about how we like the shape what used to call shaping operations are increasingly becoming decisive so everybody needs to be thinking about how they deliver military operations at extreme range now very good let the gentleman here and then we'll go back up to the side there yeah hi my name's Sam Olson I'm from a Darga which is a British AI company and I'm the head of geopolitics and a long-term China watcher I'm an analyst and I write to the Watch I Don't Want podcast and just following up with what you just said there we've been watching for many years now China grab hold of industry 4.0 and military civil fusion and they're building incredibly deep organizational structure within the country to bring together the military in the civil side and creating dual use technologies etc all of which are being used not just in China but their allies as well around the world and one of the things I just just mentioned there about sort of not wanting to wait for a democratic alliance to be built well the thing is is that we do need to build some kind of alliance some kind of ability to create an opposition to industry 4.0 captured by China within the West and NATO of trade and NATO of technology sometimes the term that's been used do we think that the UK is in a position to lead that and if not which countries can we get to lead that assuming that we do want to compete with the industrial might that China is building for the warfare of the future sounds like a job for the United States Chris so I I kind of come at the question a little differently you know I think there's yeah the industry 4.0 piece I think a lot of the debate is still focused on how we're competing in sort of the old industrialized way and we're just missing the reality that for you know 40 years if not longer we have been deindustrialized so if you look at the state of play as it exists now you know 45 percent of global shipbuilding is in China less than one percent of it is in the US the UK and sort of related nations how are we planning on winning a traditional shipbuilding race against this competitor it's just to say I think the reality that we have to accept is we are never going to get where we want to get the traditional ways that you know we have been sort of building the force and planning to operate it we have to make this move to a more digital military a software-defined military and a military that's fundamentally built on autonomy because you know we're going to have the limited numbers of people that we have and to generate the sort of scale of force and the ability to strike and sense it range that's being talked about here you're going to have to be able to leverage large quantities of highly autonomous highly intelligent systems that is something that US can help to lead the UK together you know western countries Europe and the United States can certainly do together we have the technology we have plenty of the people building it we have plenty of money as we're talking about here it's a question of will it's a question of whether we're actually serious or not and whether we're looking at the reality in front of us you know accurately I would argue in the US I think there's still a significant amount of delusion about how we're going to compete in this in the sort of future contest with without sort of you know kind of a proper accounting for you know what 40 years of policy have sort of led us to and sort of the desperate need that we have to make a fundamentally different shift to a different kind of military and different kind of national security capability Tim and then I think diplomatically there already is sorry diplomatically there already is a opposition whether you've got the Quad Orcus Biden's concept of the advanced industrialized democracies that they are all aware diplomatically that the big gap is the understanding of the technology that is required to dovetail with the diplomacy and we are starting 10 years behind on things like getting the rare earth metals and materials and the supply chains of that I think they're waking up to this but I do think our political leaders are that they kind of they get diplomacy but I don't think they get the technology I think that's even true within echelons of the M.O.D. One of the things the Americans did do you saw Biden's semiconductor chip act where they are going to invest massively in their own plants and again I think that's something that the UK doesn't appear to have woken up to yet. I think technology is hard for political leaders so the expertise lacking in government and one thing Tony Blair and I have been advocating together is executive ministers to have the ability to bring in ministers who are actually not members of parliament but would be expert in their field and that could help us drive on in some of these things but we've only got we've got six minutes left question over there is the lady up there has had her hand up. He was first with his hand up then we'll finish off but we're going to give two minute answers to this. Yes, you said Josh Bernaccia Canadian defense intelligently as an office. I'm curious if we're not perhaps asking some of the wrong questions so certainly they need to engage in strategic competition over the disruptive technology is hugely important but if you're moving to a more software focused integrated system with massive numbers of new things you're bolting on to that how do you avoid the risk of compromise through cyber attack for example you're taking on huge risk every time you do that so how do you manage the risk acceptance problem there and I would add to that just that for all the successes we're seeing but innovative technology we're also seeing lots of failures as well right so like this masses of stuff to go out that work for a while and then stop working because somebody immediately finds a solution to that and we're going more into like Russia may lose but they're going to give us a run for our money and the way they're doing it is a very old school attrition warfare based on the exact sort of mass and industrial production capacity or stockpile that you think we need to completely give up on I'm sure if that's okay quick comment this is Ed very quick yeah when you get to the internet of everything the pathways are going to be so multi fairness if you like this that the idea that you'll be able to take down a whole network or have you I think just doesn't just just doesn't exist and we get it's going to be like oil every war fair every sorry every war that's happened the other one side has tried to stop the other getting oil you know you can drive across the Sahara desert breakdown and someone will appear with a jerry can that's where we got to so I think the information age data and connectivity you'll lose a bit every now and again but it will it will always be there and the point you were making was speed you need to be able to adapt and that it's the speed of reaction that is going to keep you alive we're going to have a second okay failure that you mentioned of the new things is part of that process right if you're sending everything into Ukraine and that's working on the first day and forever like that's a miracle it's never going to work right I think the experience that Andrew has had is you know you send things in they don't work you know the adversary changes the electromagnetic spectrum changes you know you have to keep kind of that every day that's right right you get the the final question thank you I feel like there's a lot of pressure now but um my name is Julia Morowska I'm a senior visiting fellow at the Freeman Air and Space Institute here at Kings and my question is about capitalism and defense and that is whether or not you have seen an increased appetite in the private sector specifically VCs to actually invest in some of these new technologies based on the their use in in Ukraine we're seeing the appetite in the private we've talked about the obstacles in government a lack of expertise and the siloed nature of government how's the private sector doing I'm I'm I'm seeing VC money move away at the moment because money is more expensive than it used to be and they are sensing the say-do gap between what governments say they want to do certainly in the UK and what they're at where they're actually spending their money folding as we discussed yesterday ESG and it's not a good place to invest and I think that's a problem for us. Orika? I've seen two developments that I find quite interesting on the one hand you have the traditional actors which and I'm talking here a little bit from the kind of German perspective which seems still very risk adverse and unwilling to invest even in things like you know producing ammunition not being one I'm not having the contracts yet they're not being sure that they will sell them even though you know you really should think that that they can sell them no matter what so big quite a lot of risk averseness on the kind of traditional arms manufacturing side but then at the same time kind of the more not quite startup because that sounds too small but kind of new companies in the especially military eye realm coming in and being willing to invest quite a bit before having a single contract and VC and other things here matter so so it's a bit of a glass half full glass half empty situation from from my point of view. Tim? Very quick. Venture capital is going into space in a big way but more on the commercial aspect of it cleaning up space debris a potential mining but when it comes to defence they are a little reluctant for the reasons that were laid out here. Right we've run out of time but there are lots of reflections there on airspace and AI that has led us into software into a different mindset in government into the importance of the private sector into legal frameworks that are out of date so a lot to discuss but a lot of lessons there. It is you have a you've earned a coffee break in our audience for 15 minutes the Swedish Defence Minister will be here at 10.45 but in the meantime a very big thank you to a really expert panel to Chris Ulrika, Tim, Ed a big round of applause. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Well ladies and gentlemen having gone into the the technology area of space AI in air we're going to come back to reality of on the ground politics and actions. I'm delighted to be able to welcome back to King's College the Swedish Defence Minister, Paul Jonsson an alumni of the Department of War Studies PhD 2005 I don't get to say that for many defence ministers and he's going to be in conversation with my colleague Ian Martin. Minister welcome to King's again. So delighted to be joined by the by Sweden's Defence Minister today and welcome Minister. It is welcome back to King's College London where you where you studied and in the spirit of intellectual engagement at King's there's plenty of scope for audience participation and questions but let's start first with NATO accession. What is the latest state of play? Well once again thank you very much for for inviting me. It feels great to be back. Very excited about the London Defence Conference as well. Well as you know we received invitee status in Madrid in July and then we are now on our path to membership. Our objective is to become a full-fledged member of the Lions by the will new summits. We think would be important of course for our security but we also think it would be good for NATO. Right now NATO's focus very much a course on the DDA again that defends and deterrence again and that means that NATO is going to be now establishing new regional plans and I think it would be good for those regional plans if Sweden can be a full-fledged member of the Lions because then we can become integrated into into the regional plans and also for the NATO's new force model. I think we have assets and capabilities that we can bring to to reach the capability targets as well. So that's what we're standing as of now and of course we 28 or actually if you can't find them actually 29 out of 31 allies ratified us in record pace actually within four months. Two allies have not done it. We are respectful of the fact that it's only Hungary who can make Hungarian decisions and only Turkey who can make Turkish decisions but we are hopeful that we'll be able to join the Lions. What about that particular problem with Turkey? How confident are you that that can be resolved speedily? Well what I can say is that what we focus in this matter is we focus on the trilateral MOU that Sweden, Finland and Turkey has established at the Madrid summit. Therefore our focus is on implementation, implementation, implementation and indeed we have implemented that agreement. We have changed our terrorist legislation. We have joined NATO's fund against international terrorism. We have a dialogue on international. So these are the list of demands or requests from Turkey that they need to sign off? Yeah and we feel that we have implemented it. We continue implementing it and we take note that NATO Secretary General think we're ready. We think we're ready. We had the pleasure of having Secretary Austin coming to Sweden first time in 23 years. We had a visit from the from the Secretary of Defense to Sweden and his message was very clear that it's very important Sweden is ready and it's very important that we can join the Lions by the Vilnius summit. Explain to us why Sweden has spent so long out of NATO and never been a member. It will strike many friends of Sweden as curious. It always seemed to me Sweden was a natural fit for NATO on my trips to Sweden but why not? Well I'm an ardent Atlantis and in all honesty I've been working for Sweden to join NATO for 30 years and I think it makes eminent sense that we're joining the Lions because we've been so addicted to the kind of security that NATO produces and represents and for me it's only natural for us also to have a seat at the table and join the Lions but I think for many people I think that the concept of military non-alignment was very much ingrained into the Swedish identity. There is a saying I think I mentioned to you yesterday that we used to say that it's good to be neutral, to be Swedish is to be neutral therefore it's good to be Swedish. I think during the Cold War it was to a certain degree perceived as a position of moral high ground. Now I don't concur with that vision but I think that the identity of military non-alignment was quite sticking quite strong and I think that things that if you look at some of the other military non-aligned inside the EU I'm thinking about Austria, Ireland and others I think that it's been difficult to take the full step to join the Lions. And the switch when it took place was very very sudden from one consensus to another inside Sweden in just a month really. And here I take off my hat to the opposition and the social democrats because they did what is the most difficult thing to do in politics and that's changing your mind. But I think that they adopted to new strategic realities. I say there's two epic dates for when these changes happen. The first is on the 17th of December when Foreign Minister Lavrov in 2021 presented a new legally binding treaty for a new European security architect stating that there will be no further NATO enlargements to the east. High East Sweden and Finland would no longer be sovereign nation and who have the right to choose their own path to security. Now that did not go down well with us and especially not with the Finns that Russia in any way would have some kind of veto over our sovereign decisions and we'd be some part of part of Russians self-perceived swear we influence totally unacceptable. The other thing that with that treaty said also what I said NATO had to redraw all its assets and capabilities up to 1997 borders that that would be the dagger to the heart of our defense concept which was very much based on international cooperation. If we could not exercise with NATO that would have been toxic for us as well. The other aspect I think was the defining moment is of course the 24th of February. I think when some people say they were shocked when the war broke out we had very good intelligence from the United Kingdom from the United States. Russia had almost 200 000 soldiers along the border of Ukraine the blood banks was full. I get provoked when people say they were shocked because I think that's to paraphrase the 9-11 commission I think that's the failure of imagination but what would the conclusion withdraw is that Russia is willing to take greater military and political risks than was many thought would be rational. Third point I would say is that I think that what this the war has shown is the difference between partnership and membership and we looked of course at Ukraine Ukraine being a partner to NATO being a part of PFP being EUP enhanced opportunity partners and NATO supports its partners but its defense is allies so if you want to have access to Article 5 the security and defense guarantees if you want to have access to NATO's common defense planning you better join the alliance as a because there's a difference between a partner and an ally I think those things changed at the thinking I think the Finns were ahead of the curves but also incrementally also it changed the mood in Stockholm and we knew as well that if we would be the only country standing outside of NATO it would the Harper also be a bad impediment for our Swedish Finnish defense cooperation it would be bad also for the Nordic defense cooperation so by Sweden and Finland inside NATO you're consolidating the whole northern flank of NATO tell us about that cooperation with with Finland because of course Finland's decision to join was then very important for sure Sweden in terms of giving Sweden confidence it's clearly very very close relationship yeah I always say that in military terms the concept of military non-alignment has been a policy in retreat over many years and there's been incremental steps of abandoning I think the first step for us was when we joined the European Union in 1995 of course you cannot be neutral against against if you're in the political alliance and then of course we joined PFP we've been deepening our bilateral defense cooperation particularly with the United States and Finland and with Finland we had common defense planning beyond peacetime situations now that was not the defense pact that itself with mutual defense guarantees but it provided us with the option to cooperate in case we were one of us was exposed to attack and of course Sweden and Finland being the same country for well over 700 years there's a special relationship and it's Finland has been of course our closest partner and if Finland would join NATO and Sweden would be outside I think that would have had a negative impact on on our defense cooperation also a political cooperation and assuming that it happens what does what does Sweden bring to NATO though I have heard it described as as NATO joining Sweden well it's music to my ears okay but but what we can provide for the alliance as I started eluding to was to dig depth I think that our geopolitical location up in the north is quite important also with the island of Gotland that being NATO territory when you can plan having that inside NATO's defense planning is very very important for the defendability of Finland the Baltic States and the whole northern flag I think now we're going to be filling up NATO's new force model and we're going to be or the alliance is going to be upgrading its footprint in in the Baltic States from battle groups up to brigade sites we need the numbers and the soldiers to fill those things up and therefore I think that the the capacities we have when it comes to underwater warfare is for being a smaller country is quite quite impressive we have operate now course submarines we're going up from four to five we have an experience of operating in what we call extreme tutorials at the pleasure of of visiting Aurora with us our biggest military exercise two weeks ago in 25 years and I saw the Royal Marines exercising with our amphibious battalion and operating in in the in the Baltic Sea demands some special skills and we have lots of experience so so I and also when it comes to air defense we can provide to the table for NATO's common defense planning almost 100 gripons we operate Patriots systems which we can connect also with other Patriots countries we have for being a smaller country quite vibrant defense industrial base being not only country in the world of 10 million people who can design and do system integration of submarines and fighter aircraft so I hope that we also can contribute to to inside NATO on innovation and that's something I know the UK is working very hard on now together with Estonia the framework of Diana and NATO innovation funds so and quite a lot of Russia expertise as well in our defense and NATO is doing its first war and or deterrence planning effectively since the end of the since the end of the Cold War which I think envisages Europe being divided into sort of north theater center south north then obviously leads to leads me to the question of the northern alliance which seems to be emerging which is Scandi Nordic Baltic UK yeah how does that fit into NATO and then of course there's the Jeff absolutely as well yeah and I came home from war war came home well it feels like being home but I came in from from Warsaw to and then popped over in Brussels at at our EU defense minister meetings since we're leading the EU presidency right now but in Warsaw we had the northern group meeting and I before I was defense minister I was chairman of the committee on defense and and before I got into working with the Jeff and the northern group I didn't understand how important it actually is because it doesn't have a parliamentary dimension and I'm not saying it should have but I think that the the effectiveness of the Jeff especially under the threshold of article five it's strong maritime dimension it's expedition in nature the openness of the dialogue that we as defense minister have in those for us especially the exchange of intelligence and cooperation assessments is vital so I think by Sweden now joining NATO we're consolidating NATO on a military level but also on a political level because we're going to get closer because you and I are not going to be partner countries we're going to be allies and that's something different so I think that fits very well in with strengthening the the northern dimension that does not of course mean that we we not fullheartedly accept or cherish NATO's 360 perspective because I think that's very important for for the cohesion of the lines but it makes the northern dimension of of NATO more secure and more stable by Sweden and Finland joining NATO and if I just could say one thing we're in regards to the war in Ukraine and Russia's behavior if it was one objective that Finland Russia had with Sweden and Finland it was to to keep us outside of NATO and I always say that the Finnish and the Swedish NATO membership that's the mother of all unintended consequences for Russian strategic thinking but they had it coming of course but very I don't think they expected that to happen but it has completely redrawn northern Europe as far as the Atlantic the institution goes now what's your what's your take on Russia as a long-term competitor or or threat beyond Ukraine we've we've spoken before this about what you think the Ukrainians are doing in the extraordinary things that Ukraine is doing resisting resisting Russia but longer term Russia as a menace in the in the neighborhood what's your perspective well we of course Russia's ground forces now are tied up in Ukraine they lost a lot of their best military units in the western military districts we follow very closely take a lot of hits on when it comes to their airborne capacities and when it comes to their naval infantries and so forth but my my long-term reading of Russia is that most likely it's gonna reconstitute itself and it's gonna adopt this forced posture to the fact that Sweden and Finland are gonna be full-fledged members of the alliance of course Finland already being in they have already stated that they are going to go up from 1.1 million soldiers up to 2026 but to 1.5 million soldiers establishing army corps closer to our brothers so I think what we need to do is both of course step up our own national defense investment and also joining NATO as such Russia's military performance in Ukraine has not by anime been impressive we see weaknesses when it come to morale logistics maintenance some of the tactical element of it but at the same time we also take note of Russia's resilience they have enormous casualty rates but then they can do a partial mobilization that they call it and generate more masses and I think it's one thing that that this war has taught us there's many many things that this war has told us but you know that we talked to yesterday about quantity also so quality in itself and this war is about scale scale scale to reiterate also what general Cavoli has talked about when the war in Ukraine it's also though you've referenced this before it's also about ideas isn't it it's also about defending about defending freedom say a little for us about what you think Ukraine is doing well I I always get the question you know because it's associated with with the risk of supporting Ukraine it costs we are that we sent military equipment for to Ukraine for the value of 1.5 billion euros that's about 15 percent of my defense budgets it's a lot of money and of course it has a negative impact on our long-term growth and and it's quite demanding and so forth but I always say that the biggest risk for Swedish and European security would be a Russian win in Ukraine and that cannot and will not happen but what taken us so far is of course the will of the Ukrainian forces to fight the Ukrainian people's resilience and Western military support and unity and we have to continue going there so supporting Ukraine is both the right thing to do but it's also the smart thing to do because it's also investing into our own security I see Ukraine as the shield for for Europe right now and I don't think that Putin will be will not stop until someone stops him and right now it's the Ukrainians who are doing that and that's important for our security so I mean I've been to Mikolayev and Odessa and talked to the Ukrainian soldiers and I tell them you're not just fighting for your own freedom you're actually fighting for our freedom because if the Russians would win that then their worldview would get a lot of hot air and they would establish you know might give right and they would abolish the European security order that I work very hard for and that the kind of Europe I want my kids to grow up in and that's where it's a free where all countries make up their own path to security so I think supporting Ukraine is vital and we will stand by Ukraine as long as it takes and if if Putin or a future Russian leader was to win in Ukraine what's your fear about where the Russian state would look look next European theater well I think already Moldova and Georgia is feeling the heat and feeling the pressure as well and and therefore I think they're eager also to to strengthen their relations with the Euro-Atlantic community and we take note of the facts that of the propensity of Putin and his colleagues to take big political and military risks and therefore I think it's very important that we we strengthen the the fans in the terms again that of NATO which is the backbone of course of European security and freedom now we're going to open things up to our illustrious audience and we have lots of hands up so lots of questions first question here I think from Politico thank you Cristina Gallardo from Politico I would like to ask whether Sweden is going to join the coalition for jets of for Ukraine if not why and what sort of contribution could Sweden Sweden make to that effort and also if I may you've said Sweden cannot donate grip and aircraft because it has not enough of these jets to spare and are there any plans to buy more modern jets and eventually make some grip and available for Ukraine thank you thank you yeah well I think the the jet coalition as far as I understand it and we we've been discussing it in the northern group and that so forth it is the one who operating f-16 and I welcome all the initiatives been taking in that regard I also of course Poland and Slovakia has provided also mig-29s to to to Ukraine I think it's very important for for their have the fans capabilities but when I look at the Russian capabilities and that's my responsibility as a minister of defense I see that their ground forces are severely both weakened and tied up in Ukraine but when I look at their naval assets and when I look at their aerial assets they're almost intact in in our area therefore it's very difficult for us to give up those six division of grip and fighters that we have because that those are operating 24-7 right now to maintain our territorial integrity and Russia is still active in that region so it's have that very severe operational effects if we would give up that now of course f-16 I think there's also a lot of countries right now are transitioning from f-16 to f-35 and therefore I think they're also looking how what can we do with f-16 so far I think it's a good thing but I have no immediate plan plans to right now send gripents to to Ukraine because right now it's in the too hard to do box when it comes to our territorial integrity and our sovereignty as well could could that change at some point do you think because there is the there are suggestions that all the focus is on f-16 but actually what you have could in practical terms be more useful to to the Ukrainians yeah and I I read the russian study as well which I applaud it was a well crafted russian has done wonderful job providing well-informed studies about the war in Ukraine and so forth and and listen the Gripen is a very solid platform it has a low life cycle cost it has as the the operating Gripen is quite easy as well it's a it's a it's a very and it's being adopted for the operational environment in in northern europe so it's a it's a highly commendable platform as such when it comes to to Gripen I don't exclude anything from for the possibilities but as of now our operational assessment is that the the six divisions that we have for protecting sweden those are in high demand right now so it's very difficult for us to give those platforms up what would it require to to facilitate a change is it something that can happen post NATO membership do you think with help and coordination elsewhere well I I really don't want to speculate in it but what the message is right now it's difficult for it I I don't exclude anything from the possibilities I think it's good that the Ukrainians get the stronger air defense including getting fighter jets and right now the focus seems to be on the MiG-29s which are operating I have respect also for the fact that they want platforms that are better than the Russians so to speak and and therefore they're also opening up for F-16s and and then we'll see see it from there lots and lots of questions we had person who had their hand up first but seven also rose back three or four rows in gentlemen here with glasses just yes I'll start with with the caveat but it's real if this is an issue for for the members of the alliance and we're not yet a member but let me say that the starting point what I do think is important with with NATO is article 10 and the open door policy that's important for us it's important for the Ukrainians and we take note that of course the foundation for NATO's relationship with with Ukraine they have the NATO Ukraine commission but we also know what said in the Bucharest in 2008 and I think it's very important that the Ukrainians have a Euro-Atlantic perspective and that they belong inside our family being in EU and NATO that's that's my that's my view on it but as I say we're not an ally yet but that would be my instincts if you ask me but potentially NATO NATO first as the defensive priority of NATO's the priority rather than the EU yeah well I think it's a bit early to tell I think both are somewhere some years away of course we think it's good and we work hard also for for Ukraine having a candidate status as a candidate country also for the EU so lots and lots of questions question here on this side and then come to the other side thank you good morning Olivier Gita I'm the managing director of global strat thank you for your talk mr minister I wanted to ask you seem quite optimistic about Sweden quickly joining NATO but unfortunately it looks like Erdogan is going to win the election on on Sunday is a very difficult player when it when it comes to demands is there a way around that strategy a plan B if you will US president Biden will likely put pressure on Turkey to to grant you access but is there a plan B if Turkey keeps on putting his veto thank you listen the the Turkish election should be decided by the Turkish people so I and I'm respectful of that and I think they so I'm not going to be discussing anything in regards to election what I can say is that I feel a growing momentum and a growing sense of urgency that we should join the join the alliance and we are hopeful that we we can do it by Vilnius but once again it's the this is the sovereign decision of Turkey and it's a sovereign decision of the parliament or of the Hungarians now what we have received after we made a decision to apply for membership is that we've been receiving security reassurances from the United States we've been seeing those from the United Kingdom thank you very much we had the great bilateral signing ceremony in May 2022 on the new declaration between United Kingdom and Sweden in entailing also security reassurances and we many other allies as well I take note that secretary general Stoltenberg said they would be unconceivable that NATO would not act in case we would be exposed to a crisis or and so forth but we want to join the alliance also to be to be able to be security providers and strengthen the alliance for this important last point I would say is also that we the the amount of exercises now we're having in our vicinity is very on the scale that we never seen since the end of the Cold War we had HMS Albion was there with practice bringing the Royal Marines we have the USS Porter we have naval exercises the whole time and those exercises of course sends both military and political signals that and as I said we had Secretary Austin coming to Sweden we see that a strong commitment for the US engagement both for our NATO membership and for for our security so I feel more secure right now than Boris Johnson I think it was Boris Johnson yeah I think it was that three prime ministers ago it's difficult to keep up in Britain but who effectively decreed that Britain views Sweden as de facto in operational terms a NATO member yeah effectively has that cover we've got lots and lots of questions gentlemen in a white shirt thank you minister for your insightful talk my name is Lucas Erno I'm with the Embassy of Switzerland here in London with Finland already being an ally now of NATO and Sweden potentially also moving from the current state as a partner to an ally of NATO as well what will that mean for PFP in Europe and especially also for the cooperation of the well previous non NATO 5 Sweden Finland Ireland Austria and Switzerland but how will this dynamic evolve thank you we had the same debate in Sweden actually before the NATO enlargement in 2004 because of course there was the big NATO enlargement when many of the Eastern Central European countries joined the alliance and before that then PFP was in a way a stepping stone to the alliance but after that many of the more qualified members joined the alliance and therefore that made the the price of staying outside the alliance higher because the level of the exercises were lowered now I think now NATO's partnership of course NATO can can reveal more on how they're thinking about that what helped us quite a lot was when we got EOP status enhanced opportunity partnership that opened up both a political dialogue with the alliance we could talk with the NATO about the security situation inside the Baltic Sea in which we couldn't before but it also gave us access to more more advanced exercises I think those are incremental deepening in our relationship with NATO has been very helpful and of course Switzerland has to review what their level of ambition are in their interaction with NATO but for us it's been a journey but when the war broke out we saw the difference when it comes to collective defense and article five that's for the members not the partners next question question here in row three right in the middle master's student in King's College London national security studies um minister once Sweden joins NATO how will it balance its Arctic strategy of keeping security tensions low in the Arctic region well it's something that we are increasingly discussing and debating also in the defense community in Sweden where by historically we had a very much Baltic Sea focus perspective that's for many many reasons now what we have stated in our last defense bill is that we see a strong interlinkage between the high north and the Baltic Sea because it's one single area of operation and that means also that we together with particularly Sweden Finland and Norway also have to take a stronger responsibility also for secured security in the in the high north and northern Europe and therefore we we are now strengthening our military presence in Sweden in that region we're opening up three new military regiments in northern part of Sweden we are exercising and coordinating ourselves much closer I signed an MOU with with my Norwegian and Finnish colleague in November last year about having coordinated planning so we're strengthening our military presence up there as well and we're coordinating ourselves as well up in there because we also take note of course that Russia is uh reasserting itself in the high north and re-establishing itself on places in the Arctic that they had previously abandoned they seem to be quite high priority to it as well so that's how we're thinking where does this fit in with the with the Indo-Pacific because there's a debate very lively debate in the UK at the moment about whether the UK government has got the balance right some people saying the the pivot to the Pacific is a is a mistake and that the focus should be European security and others saying well they're actually indivisible they're they're connected is there a debate on this running in in Sweden or is just the priority European security now and that's for later well the defining threat for us and the shapes the structure and our four structures of course Russia for for that that is ingrained into it I mean we also appreciate very much your footprint in northern Europe everything from the responsibility do you have shown by leading a battle group in Estonia the presence of royal navy in the Baltic sea the jeff and your engagement there and and you are the first most security provider among the European allies because you have assets and capabilities there especially expeditionary and you can get quick to the region now I what I say when I meet a lot of American colleagues is of course what's happening is that we we have to get Ukraine right otherwise there's going to be more challenges in the Taiwan's right and in that way I think that that many countries are falling now the western response and how we act in Ukraine and the resolve that we're showing and I think also we need to invest more time and energy in various ways also following what's happening in the Pacific and next week going to the Shangri-La dialogue in double I double S in Singapore and now because now we have the EU presidency as well the EU has also drafted the new Indo-Pacific strategy now what role as a security provider could we have you know that's a valid question and and well you have naval assets France and naval assets and you have an experience of operating in the region we don't but what we have is experiences when it comes to hybrid threats cyber desinformations you know we work we have a special agency for handling those things the total defense concept resilience things like that we we can use to interact with the countries also in the Pacific so we don't really have the pressure to choose because the world is quite interconnected between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic community but do you see scope for doing more if Russia's the threat that Russia is increasingly being aided by China in military industries of course we take note of the unlimited partnership that China and Russia signed on the 4th of February last year and it seems that they're stepping up ambitions of course China and Russia also conducted two naval exercises in the Baltic Sea the last three years and then so forth but that may be more a little bit more political firework or show force rather than a defining threat but I think it's underlined the importance for us to to see that linkage at least I think we have time for a couple more questions question from Robert Fox thank you very much chairman minister Robert Fox the evening standard veteran correspondent you've raised total defense and I've raised it with you the question when you visited Ben Wallace can I come back at that question again do you see this as an adaptable concept across close members of the alliance particularly could you see a way of adapting Finnish and Swedish model of total defense for the UK could you first of all explain what it is and I don't know exactly how well it travels from Sweden to the United Kingdom but but I tell you what the concept is all about it's what you've been working with quite extensively is about resilience I think there is a connection and since we've been working with a total defense concept it's easier for us to to work also on resilience because what's all about is of course whole of government and whole of society I always get the question what is civil defense civil defense is everything in our society except for military defense of course I'm exaggerating a little bit but just to to to tell you how our thinking is for us and we invest a lot of time and energy right now to strengthen our civil defense because we are investing quite a lot into our armed forces but we also need our society to be functioning well in the case of a crisis or a wartime situation I have been to quite recently to to Mikulajev and Odessa and it seems that the Ukrainians have learned quite a lot of lessons since the first war in 2014 of working on also strengthening their civil defense and their resilience because that's what in the end what warfare is about the will to fight and having the resilience to handle a military occupation without your society collapsing and therefore it's very important that you have pre-planning in order to ensure critical infrastructure on electricity on banking system access to the internet access to heat warm food and so forth and of course that's what Russia tried to attack when they changed their their their military operation in early October when they're starting long-range capability attacking the energy grid attacking schools hospitals civil society they were trying to my mind they were trying to try to break the will of the Ukrainian people now they failed on that but resilience and a total defense concept I think is very important in that regard to for the whole of society to be able to handle a situation a wartime situation and is technology a help or a hindrance or a risk in those terms well that's that's what kind of dependencies you're creating but if all your electricity is gone then then you have a challenge for our modern society I think that the Ukrainians have been able to handle it quite well also with the internet and starlink and and and using satellite-based communications and that's something that we were planning for as well but access to electricity is really vital for our digitalized society I'm very impressed also with I talked about your war in Ukraine being very much about scale of course it is but it's also about innovation and the ability of the Ukrainian people to innovate and adapt I think has been crucial and it's provided them with an edge above the Russians that's been indispensable everything from the apps and how they go about doing things yeah technological innovation yeah really vital um question here I think we've got time for one and perhaps one or two more questions yeah my name is Peterson Silva from the brazilian defense college uh in the current geopolitical landscape I would like to know if possible how do you see the future of the brazil- sweden partnership uh regarding grip and fighter it will be grow it will be maintain how do you see this partnership in the coming years thank you well I had the honor of having a bilateral vct with your video conference with your defense minister just a few weeks ago and my state secretary went to lads and we have a very good cooperation on the grip and system and I think that's also a quite strong industry to industry cooperation as well uh so I we look very favorable on our cooperation we learn a lot from you there's a dialogue of the emperor and and and sob and we're very we're pleased with how that cooperation is working and and we want to develop it even further I hope to I invited my colleague to come to sweden and I'm hopefully going to brazil soon so it's a it's more than an arm still it's really a partnership between two countries which we very much appreciate on the sweden side time for one last question I think we're we're on we're pretty much out of time um the minister thank you very much for that absolutely fascinating range of insights thank you for taking the time to come to London to talk to us at the london defense conference uh and our audience will show their thanks thank you and I'm delighted to say we've got a a fantastic panel and indeed an all-female panel which uh at a defense conference is quite remarkable really I suppose uh and uh joining me are from furthest uh from me is Dr. Malford uh Burraut Hedghammer she's professor of political science at the University of Oslo particularly an expert in uh nuclear uh next to her is Polly Scully uh longtime employee at the Ministry of Defense who's now working for Palantir the data organization I don't know what verb goes with it data scraping data integration data what data integration we don't own data data integration right okay uh then next to her we have Dr. Francesca Goretti uh analyst at uh Mercator the Mercator Institute for China Studies uh in Brussels she's um a long time uh associate in fact with the Levi-Hun fellow here at King's College London where she got her doctorate and then finally closest to me uh we have Professor Helen Thompson professor of political economy at Cambridge University now um anybody who's ever sat in a board or whatever has spent a lot of time uh agonizing over the risk register what are the risks to your particular organization so I'm just going to start by asking each of my panelists in terms of future risks what they would put on the list and you know very often these games are played with traffic lights isn't a red risk a green risk uh or uh a orange one let's start with you professor well obviously I think you pretty much put almost all the world on the risk list at the the moment um but I would pick out um three the one very obvious that I'm just going to say because it must be said Taiwan but the two I would think that are not getting as much attention as they as they should is the Arctic uh and the way in which Russia has actually economically strengthened I think its position in the Arctic over the last year particularly its use of the great northern sea route and that is despite the fact that politically Russia is much more isolated as an Arctic power than it's ever been before if and when um Sweden joins NATO then all the Arctic powers except for Russia will be in NATO and the second I would put on the list is the Persian Gulf I think we kind of forget now that at the beginning of 2020 so before we all became consumed with pandemic fears that the narrative was that World War three was about to begin thanks to Donald Trump in the in the Persian Gulf obviously that didn't turn out to be the case but I don't think that the Persian Gulf risks have gone away and that what we've seen in the in the last few weeks is back to some of those dynamics that preceded the January 2020 crisis and the preceding months building up to that and that is Iran's seizure of some civilian ships in the in the Gulf increased military patrols by the United States Britain and Russia joined military exercises from Russia China and Iran so if the world's been dividing into those blocks as a result of the war we're beginning to see that tension manifest itself quite acutely I think in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf in particular okay um Dr Greta what from your perspective what would you put on our risk register future risk register so from my perspective which is a little bit of a China bias perspective so you will apologize to me for that um so China's economic performance is a short to medium term risk both internally as Chinese economy is not performing as well as we would have hoped um of course you know there've been articles saying oh actually China is overperforming but that is because the expectations were extremely low actually Chinese economy is not picking up consumption is not picking up as we were hoping for small and medium enterprises are also not performing as we would love and that is sort of the signs of a healthy economy and the problem with that is that China is a major economic player in global economy and so if his economy doesn't pick up then we have a global issue and on top of these you have the external the sort of the external element to it which is all the debt that China has been accumulating in a series of developing countries through or you know outside the Belt and Road Initiative now is caught and unquot going bad and so you have all these that have been sorry defaulting and all these countries potentially have to default a couple of them have already to be honest and this would also put a strain in global growth and global economy and so on and so forth and maybe we can talk about the deeper implications of all of these how much we're talking about and you know what what it means for the global economy and a poorly economically performing China means a more unstable China which means a lot more nationalism it means the acceleration of some of the geopolitical risks that have been mentioned for example by the professors such as you know escalation in the Taiwan Strait and and so on and so forth and we've seen this happening already the second problem that I see sorry the second risk that I see emerging is fragmentation of the of globalization of the global supply chains and so on and so forth and I'm afraid that this fragmentation is happening much faster than we would hope so and it's happening before any of us is ready we're seeing yesterday was said that you know Western international companies are diversifying I'm not as confident at least you know as far as continental European companies are concerned what we're seeing is a lot of doubling down and deepening of the exposure of these companies within the Chinese market and that means that you know if you have these ruptions of these linkages then this this you know you have implication and a major risk for a global economy thank you police Kelly great thank you I'm going to move away from the geopolitical although I think some of the things I'm going to talk about can sort of be made worse or manifested by geopolitical situations the things that worry me which is a bit a sort of unfashionable but another pandemic and extreme weather and the manifestation of climate change in that sort of way but in particular the thing I worry about are the things that we haven't experienced before so we don't understand how they will manifest in and particularly I would point to the cutting of undersea or the loss of undersea cables not separately cutting and the loss of electricity and power and how that would affect our society I suspect lots of people sort of think oh I can't I couldn't go on the internet and that would be very bad but actually all of the other impacts that would be manifested from that and the ability to sort of as a system trace through those and understand those and I also worry about and this is sort of maybe slightly outside of the category but chronic risks like the cost of living and how that manifests upon a society and weakens generally weakens a society and the final thing I would say is that the thing that I saw towards the end of my career in the civil service was an increasing and lots of people have talked about this but an increasing interdependence of risks and the fact that one risk will compound another risk and that is very hard to predict in advance so that's the thing that worries me as well thank you thank you I think I'll go back to the geopolitical piece and focus on the intermediate term nuclear risks over the past year or so understandably a lot of focus has been on Russian nuclear threats and I think that the the experts are still arguing about what to make of those I also know that there seems to be some slight transatlantic divergences of opinion in that regard but but my concern really focuses on the longer term the increasing Russian reliance on nuclear weapons especially in the high north and that paired with NATO expansion paired with increasing Chinese interest means that the high north will be far busier and of interest to a greater number of actors than it has been during the Cold War and this happens at a time when the risk reduction tools that we have are frankly not that appealing to a lot of governments I think that is also something that requires more attention what can we learn from past formats that worked during the height of the Cold War that could be adapted for the future because I do think that the risks of unintended escalation are quite significant moving forward perhaps also intended the second risk that that I'm concerned about relates to the subsea infrastructure seen from the perspective of a small peaceful country where in the past couple of years or so we have seen that we are quite vulnerable in our openness in allowing subsea mapping on software websites that are accessible to other countries in terms of how we treat our infrastructure to companies from China and Russia for example so I do think that some some important risk reduction efforts need to need to focus on how open can we be as liberal societies in the face of a rather changing neighbourhood thank you very much we will be taking questions in the second half of our 50 minutes or so so do have those ready but let's start with the geopolitics I'm interested Francesca you started out really with the economic risk of China as a global engine going down what about the security risks I mean there are there are there is a number of security risks and of course we talked about the security risks emerging from the economic lack of you know good performance on on on the front in terms of security ways Taiwan has been mentioned the PLA is becoming a proper and advanced army that can definitely that in time we'll be able to definitely bring forward some of the operations that it plans to the other point that I think is particularly important is that China often many many actors that rely a lot on China being able to solve some of the security issues that we have nowadays such as the conflict in Europe you know the the peace plan so called peace plan that China has put out in terms of how to solve the the conflict in Ukraine which wasn't a peace plan it was a position paper really so I think that from a security point of view you have that aspect which is can China be a global player and a reliable global player or not and at the same time that answer underpins whether for example how we treat technology corporations how do we treat the presence of Chinese investments and Chinese technological infrastructure in our countries and how do we behave in this global conflict situations then when you talk about risks risk of what happening well I think that we're talking in the case of Taiwan about the risk of war I think we're talking in the case of the Arctic of Russia being able actually to at least potentially strengthen exposition as an energy power through the development of resources in the Arctic and the fact that essentially European companies have not all entirely pulled out but the ones that are now providing the critical technology that Russia needs for that is China and that if we move into a world in which the the geography or the the transit geography of energy trade particularly oil and gas is transformed and that that route to Russia to Asia becomes more important and the route that involves the Suez Canal becomes less important and at the same time we see the tussle for influence within the Middle East then we start living in a really quite different geopolitical world and that in itself I think is a risk because it in order to for us in the west to in some sense function in that world we need to understand it very well and I don't think that we and we don't think that we do I think in the in the in the Persian Gulf the risk is not war but that it's a risk a set of risks around sharp deterioration of relations between the major powers as a result of these tensions over the the Persian Gulf with the possibility that you get something that goes wrong a seizure of a vessel say that is not expected and that we get a reaction from the Americans to something that the Iranians do and then we move into something that's got the possibility of not as I say full-scale war in the Middle East but certainly some level of a violent confrontation there and that was what was going on in 2019 in the build-up to January 2020 when Trump ordered the assassination of the the leader of the Iranian revolutionary guard so I think that we need to understand that the Middle East as a problem has not gone away and that China is very much a player in the Middle East and perhaps more so than it was when those events were going on in 2019-20 because it's simultaneously also I should say since then strengthened its relationship with Iran got a stronger position on the strait of of format so that is a place where we have US and China with the potential to come into collision with each other again in the same way in which they obviously can and we understand that over Taiwan. So just a building on that at that point I think it to me it comes back to and we used to quip when I was working in the Ministry of Defence but we'd say the global world order is crumbling who do we email on Monday to sort that out so how do you start working through what it is that you can do to mitigate those risks and in particular thinking about I found the Xi and Putin statement on just before the Ukraine invasion really interesting because it set out a vision and that vision is quite compelling if you read it once if you read it a few more times it feels a bit less compelling but I I would love for us to be thinking about as western democratic states about what what is our vision what is our equivalent to that and how do we start building a world order that is shaped against values that the majority of people can get behind and you were talking about the perspective from a small country where do you see other countries are having got the brakes for example are going to have their meeting we know that there appears to be a rapprochement between the certain extent between Saudi Arabia and Iran what where do you see them fitting in are they not as it were on our side in the west I am keeping a close eye on Iran I think that is certainly an area where if Ukraine hadn't I think a lot more attention would go into that and the process with the Syrian government as well so the ground in the Middle East seems to be shifting somewhat I'm not I still think that for Saudi Arabia the US is is the main friend and ally and that that is unlikely to change in the near term but I also think that developments in Iran's nuclear program will be a key factor there also I mean you you've written about why Iraq and didn't get nuclear weapons in the end where do you think Iran is on that but effectively has them or not very very close Iranian officials I've talked to also say that were effectively punished as if we have nuclear weapons without having them leaving the rest of your imagination to figure out where where they would likely go from there so with the steps that they have taken to scale down from the JCPOA they are very close indeed and I think that the Israelis are very much concerned with this as well and what does Iran want you know what the answer to that question is but what I think that I would say is that I think that the Saudis are moving away from the United States I think they've had to swallow a lot on the Iran rapprochement question because of the Iran's nuclear weapons and development but if you think of it as a situation in which Saudi Arabia has had now about 10 years to get used to the fact that the United States became again the world's largest oil producer is that you know it has been through a number of reactions to that it tried to bankrupt the US shale industry unsuccessfully 2014 to 16 it then because it failed had to basically make up with Russia that was the creation of OPEC plus in late 2016 bin Salman and Putin then fell out quite badly in early 2020 when the pandemic started about how to deal that but ironically Donald Trump kind of put them back together again and since Russia's war began then Saudi Arabia has aligned itself quite strongly with Russia there's no break in OPEC plus as a result of the war Biden administration has several times pretty much begged the Saudis to increase the production of oil or to increase the production quotas with OPEC plus it hasn't it hasn't really happened in any meaningful way and indeed in the run-up to the mid-term elections OPEC plus imposed production cuts in a way that was humiliating to Biden they've moved to being in a more sort of tolerant position to Assad even just in the last few months the I think what wasn't just the Chinese initiative but it was actually a Russian initiative too to bring about this reproachment of this re-establishing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran has taken place I don't see anything we could really point to with evidence in the last year and say the Saudis think that the way to deal with their predicament now is to keep as close to Washington as possible maybe that would change under a different president but I'm not even entirely convinced about that so I think that you know effectively the Saudis are asking the Russians and the Chinese to help them keep Iran on site now what that means in terms of Iran's position I think is is is open to question but the one thing I would say is we can see that gas isn't going away as an energy source we're not going to have a rapid transition away from gas and between them Russia and Iran control about 40 percent of the low gas reserves in the in the world and Iran really is going to matter for that reason and I would even leaving aside what what it might or might might or might not be up to with the Chinese in the Persian Gulf just for take questions and Palantir is involved as you say in in in dealing with data is communications information distortion of information is that going to be the next war effect oh gosh well I think it's it so I think there's kind of two two angles on that one I think is that the power that you can unlock by friendly nations being able to share data and understand all organizations understand that which is knowable immediately is huge and is a huge advantage that we should take advantage of because what I saw and I worked on the Salisbury response but I remember so vividly feeling how powerful it was that NATO nations were all standing up and expelling diplomats at the same time and the strengths of that alliance was just phenomenal and the sharing of data and information is a huge strength that that can be brought together disinformation is a is a big issue and incredibly hard to deal with I'm definitely not an expert on on how does it involve effectively the risk of handing over national power to transnational bodies to tech giants effectively no no because there's sort of governance around that and the data can always is always owned by the the nations that provide that data but I I think there is a really interesting conversation to have around the power of tech firms and the sort of not equivalents of a nation state but the power and it's been shown in Ukraine you know Elon Musk giving Starlink and having a conversation about what does what are the rights and obligations that we would put on these big powerful firms I don't know what the answer to that is but I do think a conversation around that would be a good conversation to have I mean Malphrew and Francesca both talking about worries about societal breakdown effectively as we get poorer relatively where does data fit into that can data help with that absolutely yes I mean so I I think the ability for people to understand and know the truth of a situation is phenomenally powerful and you talk we talk about the democratization of data so information ceases to be power to a small group of people it is powerful the society as a whole and just just on the point of society's breaking down I think there is a huge amount of work that I would love for people to do around how you build a resilient society and I love the Scandinavian total defense model so how do you how do you build that cohesion between people we saw it at the beginning of COVID it was amazing it then sort of went away but how can we if we're talking about there's you know a phenomenal amount of risks that might hit us in lots of different ways there are things that you can do that are powerful against all of those risks and building a resilient society is something that that will help us in any situation very much agree and I I do think that there is let's say very varied levels of knowledge within European NATO member states about when it comes to understanding threats when it comes to understanding deterrence the investments that are required to to meet those both threats and risks and challenges and I do think that this is an overdue conversation I think within the Alliance for a long time there has been a focus on a generation gap within the levels of governments certainly in small estates but I do think that we shouldn't forget about the population either and so I very much think that those conversations and those efforts are central in certainly Norway but but likely in other countries too I mean I absolutely agree on the need for a resilient society I don't think anybody would disagree with that but I think that sometimes what we're doing currently is really focusing on bilateral relations especially when it comes to the economic relationship and the risk that we are now running into is to develop for example in indirect dependencies or indirect risks so if we take for example active pharmaceutical ingredients which during the pandemic were a huge issue Europe is mainly dependent on China and India but then the risk is we really want to diversify out of China into India great idea right except then India imports most of these active pharmaceutical ingredients from China so I'm saying all of these because this is a great idea and is much needed but I think we need to remind ourselves that these are multilateral solutions and need to remain multilateral solutions we can't become protectionists we can't become bilateralists it really needs to be an effort that brings together more actors and more countries you started by saying the world's at risk which presumably was a reference to climate change to a certain extent you've been talking a lot about the balance of power to do with energy flows are we getting anywhere in terms of alleviating the the climate change risk I think that we're struggling the best that could be said in a way I mean I think that what we have to we have to understand is is that the energy transition needs to be rapid but is likely to be really quite slow and that some of that is because you know not perhaps the best decisions have been made but quite a lot of it is simply because it's incredibly difficult to undergo an energy transition of the kind that we're trying to it's not an energy transition if it succeeds it would be an energy revolution it would be in reinventing the entire energy basis of the world's material civilization and a set of risks come in trying to do that in the same way in which there are these profound risks that come from what we're trying to address climate change and I think that we can understand why we want our energy systems to be more resilient but at the same time is like particularly in european countries we are not going to have risk free energy it's not it's not possible because even if we succeed in decarbonizing the electricity sector more rapidly than we're doing at the moment even if we succeed in electrifying transport the amount of foreign metal dependency that european countries are going to acquire from this is going to be huge and there's going to be a set of geopolitical risks attached to that we can already see in latin america where in the countries which have some of the metals like lithium that are crucial for the energy transition we're already beginning to see metal nationalism and it's something that looks a bit like what oil nationalism out of the middle east looked in the in the 1970s so we're going to have to get used to a whole new set of of geopolitical risks that come from the energy transition at the same time as the geopolitical risks that come from the existing fossil fuel energy regime are going to remain in place because the energy transition is by necessity going to be quite slow okay we've got any questions in the audience yeah we have a lot lot over there um you've got the microphone there you are brilliant thank you uh let's take gentlemen neil there yeah i think the mic is off sorry not to be like no i'd be right party runner uh very very important question um i think perhaps first of all um the the part the current and older structure of treaties and regimes uh is largely finished i think we have to think in new frameworks i think that these large treaties are uh for better for worse uh both could be said a thing of the past and i think that moving forward um i would very much agree with ross gottomuller and others who point to more sort of political measures unilateral steps in order to build toward something that would integrate china into these arrangements uh recent statements uh that i've seen from from various chinese officials have not been very encouraging they haven't been for a while but i do think that increasingly there's a realization that this is where we are ultimately moving towards and developments in uh in various uh chinese modernization programs and capabilities sort of suggest that um the the size and capabilities that they have uh are perhaps increasingly uh prepared for that kind of future that said they seem to be at the early stages of a modernization process and when countries are at that point they rarely want to enter into binding restrictions so we may need a little bit of uh time uh in which we explore these other kinds of measures in the in the interim period so i do think that we are traveling uh in somewhat unchartered waters where we do need to think creatively and also look to the past because there are some examples of if you want to call them confidence building measures risk reduction measures tools that we can apply um in this changing context but i think we should prepare for from significant changes so we should have added to our risk the potential collapse of the sort of post-second world world order based around the united nations that's the does china want to collapse it so china is taking great advantage from that world order and we should always remember that so it doesn't want to it doesn't want the order to collapse it wants to hijack the order and then pick and choose the parts that he wants to keep and change those that he doesn't want to keep he wants to be like the americans but they always do these comparisons they always say in the us has done it why shouldn't we now that we're powerful can i make sorry can i make a bureaucratic point um so what morpher highlighted is um there is a whole amount of thinking that needs to take place um and i have a concern that the that the people doing the thinking and the people making the decisions are sometimes a bit dislocated from one another um and one of the my favorite things about the integrated review refresh was it talked about having a strategic affairs carder for want of a better word but the people in government who can talk to people who are doing the big thinking about what are the decisions we would make as a consequence of these big thoughts um and making sure that that link isn't broken because unless you do something about these problems unless you create new frameworks have new conversations you're just watching a problem that is a perfect moment for a commercial don't forget at lunchtime today john view upstairs on the eighth floor is chairing a panel on those very subjects who of course did the review for number 10 next question please so great so robin brinkworth from i'm a senior intelligence analyst at everbridge and one of the things that has kind of been touched on is this idea of cascading risk from you know multiple risks becoming interdependent and one of the things i'm curious about is we've talked about resilient societies and to use an example right the british water resilience has been in the news because we have polluted rivers and things like that because that is a a kind of policy decision that was taken several decades ago and we're now seeing the impacts of of the frailties of that original policy decision and i what i'm really getting to here is how do we as democratic societies get beyond the first second electoral cycles coming up and look at how do we build resilient societies for 34 year 30 40 year time horizons and build in resilience with a kind of national directive in that manner audience what you're trying to do isn't it yeah so i i definitely don't know the answer i would um love but perhaps it's a naive love um wish for some of these big long-term problems to be taken away from that political um cycle i i don't know how you do that but i think it is essential and i think there are some deeply unsexy things that need to be given much more thought than they are so the water system um the grid system um there are all sorts of parts of our infrastructure that are not in a good place and i think supply chain which you raise francesca is it is again it's deeply unsexy understanding um in detail you know where various screws and ball bearings come from but unless you do you can't build that resilient infrastructure that you need so i'm afraid i don't know the answer but i really recognize and do we need i mean it's one of the ways that we're going to be able to deal with these risks do we need a sort of significant institutional refresh if you like but both here in the united states or seems political system is is not delivering in many ways yeah i mean i think it's absolutely right to say that the institutions of democracy in a number of western countries including the united states and and britain have not been you know like working as well as we would hope that they do i mean i think that that's in some sense inevitable because i think that actually forms of government any form of government and democracy isn't actually an exception to this that they in some sense decay over time and they have to be they have to be renewed and that that's not actually very easy in long-standing democracies like britain and the united states but i'm not really convinced the fundamental problems that we faced are a result of our institutions and the way in which our political institutions work i'm convinced that they're fundamental problems because the nature of the problems themselves that they actually are just like exceptionally hard and that that is true for example in relation to the domestic energy transition but it's also true internationally in how do we all in the world in some sense learn to live with the return of china as a power the rise of india as a power and the way in which america has become a much more complicated power i think than it than it used to be because we in one sense we get caught in this idea that american powers declining because chinese power is rising but actually i think in a number of ways america has become more powerful than it was ten years ago through technology but also through finance i mean american financial power is considerably greater than it was before the financial crash the role of the federal reserve in terms of its international consequences has amplified several times over than what it was the united states is now you know the world's largest oil producer that gives it a power that it didn't that it didn't have before so we've got to get used to the complexities of american power as well as the rise of chinese power i'm not convinced that the international institutions are the place that that's going to happen um either i i think that a lot of it turns on the ability of you know individuals and these institutions to exercise good judgment and have good understanding about the world in which we now live could i could i just tag on one comment so so in terms of infrastructure um i do know in the wake of uh increasing attention to subsea infrastructure that within nato article three you know the need to protect critical infrastructure is a much greater focus in this hybrid threat spectrum um that will not solve the bigger issue or the bigger problem but i'm hoping it could serve as as momentum to increase attention to to critical societal infrastructure um in in a bigger way uh yeah well there's gentleman there hi archishman rego swami from king scolish london in recent years there's been a growing trend of small states hedging against having to take sides in great power competition by bolstering their ties with middle powers instead for instance we've seen south arabia and the ua invest significant amounts of money and supply chains and businesses in sub-saharan african countries and just last week india and a number of countries in the south specific held summit talks where a number of significant agreements were signed uh where do you great powers fit within these emerging geopolitical dynamics and how are these trends expected to shape ties between great and middle power middle powers in the future thank you it depends who you think is great and who's middle and he's for us as a pet who wants to tackle that one i can start so you can take the most difficult parts of um so i think that we are so a lot of what we said in the past few days leaves seems to leave middle power or small power with no agency while your question clearly shows that these countries have agency even in the big power competition and we talked about this as a sort of conflict grounds rather than very important areas where they very important actors sorry that they can shape the world as as we see it and i think as europeans and i can reiterate i think the uk is part is part of europe we have a great role to play in proposing that alternative that you were mentioning of in proposing a system that is not necessarily within the conflict between china and the united states in trying to uphold at least a backbone of international rule-based system a lot of these countries want rules that you know can protect them against this situation of competition between big powers what i'm really afraid of is that we've been trying for a few years and failing dramatically so my fear is that there's a little also a little bit of a tiredness in in in these countries about the the alternative that we can propose and therefore our next move shouldn't be a grand plan such as the european you know global gateway or anything like that should really be something where you sit at the table and you try to understand how we can come to a better solution for all of us i suppose that comes down to you how much room there really is for countries that aren't america or china to be autonomous yeah i mean i think that that's a pretty profound question for the european union not just for any medium-sized power like the united kingdom and a lot of what president mac ones had to say for quite some time now is premised on the the notion that unless the european union reinvents itself that it's going to be irrelevant as a power in a world dominated by american chinese rivalry i mean i think it's certainly true that certain medium-sized powers have shown some autonomy in recent years i think it's easier for the commodity exporters so south arabia and iran but not only those but i think that they're the two clear examples i think the real test case in a way though is going to be south korea and because south korea obviously is trying to hedge on the security side with the us and on the economic side with china it's been willing thus far to stand up to the us at least a little bit over the semiconductor issue but what happens if relations between us and china in the pacific deteriorate further to the point where we might where we could be talking about a war over taiwan and then i think the choices for a country like a state like south korea become much much harder um that there wouldn't be i think much room for like optimism about not being able to go one way or the other at that point let's let's try over this side um everyone seems to be sitting over there asking questions uh yeah we've got a couple of three coming from there so let's start at the back with robert sorry to ask a question again um something that hasn't come up at all where does rapidly aging in developed societies end up on your scale of risk where the problems for instance are becoming acute say in the uk and in italy because uniquely they have a public health system of free service at the point of delivery which seems to be absolutely unsustainable and you are getting greater morbidity descending the age scale in other words people that would have chronic diseases in their 60s they're now in their 50s and 40s i rest my case but i think it's part of the resilience picture is it i mean you could add japan to that i imagine demographics i think you're okay um so where does it come in the risk register i mean it gets so hard because there are so many um i i see it as one of the kind of chronic risks that we face rather than the acute risks and the chronic risks tend to get a lot less attention than the acute risk because then there's not something going bang and everyone's not running around chasing a problem um so i again i i don't know the answer um i think having conversations and i and i don't know whether these conversations are taking place but stepping through what does it actually mean so how does this problem manifest how do we what can we do to it also feeds into migration of course doesn't it yeah absolutely and geopolitically it feeds into different powers having different rising or declining um power because of their demographics um so there's a kind of how do you deal with it in your own nation and then there's a how does that affect the balance of power question no it absolutely if it it's a it's a fiscal risk and in the world in which we live of higher interest rates i want to call them high interest rates by historical standards but not the world of the the 2010s then having ever growing fiscal commitments that you can't necessarily really do anything um about becomes a risk to financial market stability becomes a well it becomes a it can even become a risk to a government's entire existence as Liz trust you know like found out about found financial um markets and then when you combine you know like aging societies and the pressure on their health service with six societies uh are people dropping out of the the labor force because they're not well enough to work any longer there you've got the explanation of at least some part I think of Britain's economic problems over the um last year or so and then as you say Adam that opens up the migration question again in what we know is politically very difficult conditions where discussing discussing more people migrating to Britain uh is so it isn't just that it's an economic risk it quickly becomes a political risk too because as we know migration issues have got the potential to destabilize democracies as we saw over the last decade ring demographic decline I think also were an overlooked factor in the Soviet Union Russia's decline as well but yeah I'm also thinking of conscription countries with national conscription who's going to wear uniforms and and fight and who will be in the research that's another another area that comes to mind right lady there yeah thank you marina barats from the pinsker center and so the conversation touched upon the economic risk that the chinese belt and road initiative poses via um lending conditions and some countries defaulting on the debt so I want to ask whether the bri poses a security risk to the west and to nature if you will and um what can we do and what should be done to counteract it thank you the answer is yes but that is just because the bri it can be anything it has been double it has a double not with the figure of cgp and for a long time it was basically china's foreign policy and any investment that china was making in foreign policy um it is a security risk if we think about investments for the technology transfer if we think about investment in critical national infrastructures and so on and so forth it can also be a security risk if you think about involvement in third countries also in these same infrastructures and in the road that these countries have in the supply chain that we need for our own commodities so it is indeed a security risk I think a lot has already been done if we think about the adoption of investment investment screening mechanisms based on national security concerns or if you think about what you mentioned now nato has actually the whole resilience um I don't think it's I don't know if it's a working group or a unit but anyhow they work on resilience which is important and they talk with these issues okay question there question there then it'll probably be our time up but we'll go as quick as we can thank you jeff sherry miski director of policy for carlson michael rogers one of the things that hasn't been discussed and quite possibly be to borrow a gop metaphor the elephant in the room is short term and medium term political instability in united states we're seeing president trump is already a candidate potentially 2024 and then shaping it through 2028 how is that affecting the calculus and hedging in your view for dealing with some of these issues when while there has been presidential transitions every four years now it is a element of unpredictability unpredictability committee instability at the same time okay we've got nasantis announcing his candidacy tonight well I think it's it's very much a factor in relation to calculations in Europe about rush's wall because under any circumstances in which trump were to return to the presidency then the degree of american commitment to ukraine would obviously very much be on the table and that we couldn't expect I think a trump presidency to support ukraine in the way in which biden even if we take into account the amount of pressure within the foreign security establishment that was put on trump in his attempts to withdraw from Syria where twice effectively he tried to withdraw and was pulled back I think it would be a lot harder to constrain him about ukraine particularly because ukraine would have been I think in any scenario in which trump won won an anti-wall sentiment would be part of that I think the place where you might have expected a bit more hedging we're not really seeing I think goes back to the Saudi question because in the respite that the Saudis had from their predicament was really the trump presidency remember that the first place that trump went when he became elected was to to react I don't think that they're I don't see that they're actually hedging this and thinking okay things we'll get better for as if we just wait out a year until biden's out of the the the white house they seem to have made their their move and saying that no our future is going to have to be in this complicated russia china iran space and that hi uh masters in national security in kings college london there's been a lot of talk about strategic competition what are the avenues of cooperation between the united states and china and how do you bring about managed strategic competition with left and right limits and actionable plans for the future because that's the question polio i did obviously you're dealing with with a lot of global information i mean to what extent is is china a partner rather than an opponent thinking i mean so for in palantir we don't work at all with china but in terms of sort of strategic competition and how do you have those conversations i i'm going to get a really strange angle but a um we talk a lot about strategic advantage um which means advantage over someone else and we had some science fiction writers come and talk to us and they they sort of started talking about why do you what is this advantage why do you have to beat someone and i think there are places where you can think about the world in a different way and think about the world around where you can cooperate and i know that there's parts of that that feel naive but i also feel quite strongly that um if we want the world to remain as peaceful as possible you do need to be able to hold those thoughts at the same time so i think there are definitely areas where you can have cooperative discussion um as as governments um in areas like climate change and i think trying to find those is a way of keeping channels open i i think also that it's important to have a long long ish time horizon for this it seems to me that there is a lot of difficulty in getting towards the many of those formats at the moment but that at the more junior levels uh also in in the chinese government there is interest but it will take time to lay the groundwork for for those cultures also to to evolve upwards in the system okay i want to end on the notes of optimism because we've listed a great many risks facing the world i just for final thoughts from each of you i would like you possible to come up with not necessarily a quick fix but something that you think can deal or mitigate the threat that these risks pose oh dear um well i think if i were to find uh one area of optimism it is that change is certainly possible in terms of the popular perception of threats and risks if you look at sweden and finland opinions regarding nato membership transformed and i think that a lot of the time we're looking at uh long-term processes and things take time etc but things can also change very quickly and i think that makes me hopeful molly um i kind of would say this wouldn't i but i think the opportunities from the democratization of data the ability for people to be able to share and understand what is going on in the world and know know that which is knowable at any time in any place i think is is hugely powerful and it's hugely powerful in pulling um countries and people together how do you do that i mean who owns that data you see that's that's the problem isn't it so there's there are i mean governments own data or individuals own data there are huge amounts of data everywhere that um can be pulled together and can be used in ways that that haven't been used previously um no but i mean some people see it's a great threat that governments in china for example yeah yeah so so absolutely yes you need to put your kind of your privacy constraints around that and your governance around that and that is is very very important um of the ultimate importance but the fact that it enables you to be able to understand and make decisions based on actual evidence rather than solely judgment i think is incredibly important and jessica i've built on that i think the better way to manage risk is to make a proper risk assessment and that has to take into account what is happening in your home country and your relationship with every and each other partner you have and in that case big data are a big help and i don't think anybody has been doing the homework properly using using a methodology and replicating it and without that all of these conversations are sort of like a nice but they're not really proposing actionable solutions to make us more resilient and manage these risks well i think the world absolutely depends of own everyone's future depends upon technological innovation there is no successful energy transition without technological innovation particularly um solving the problems um of the storage of electricity over periods of months and we're living in a world in which technological competition over the energy transition is taking place quite obviously between the united states and china and the european union and to some extent the uk are trying to catch up um but that competition although that competition has got the capacity to be destructive that competition is also got the capacity to be creative in terms of getting to the point where somebody somewhere actually succeeds at doing the technological things that are necessary and that point is for everybody's benefit now we still might have to accept with where the geopolitical fallout of that is like who wins this technological competition but we are all still the beneficiaries of it because the energy transition is essential and the energy transition depends on technological success hey wife no to optimism thank you all very much ladies and gentlemen final session of course this afternoon there are some refreshments up on the eighth floor there's also the panel chaired by professor john bue on the security situation debra hains my colleague will be here later on this afternoon then finally two very important events there is going to be the interview or the conversation with the current chief of the defense staff uh tony radican so uh please stay on for those