 So, first of all, we'll have a general Q&A session after the five individual presentations of the panelists. And as usual, please put your questions into the Q&A chat box if you'd like to ask something. You can do this throughout the session. If you can, say briefly who you are, and if you'd like to ask someone in particular, and then I will choose the questions for the panelists. I should also say that you can tweet about the event. And I believe my colleague, Lissy, will put the right hashtag in the chat box. And please remember that the panel is being live streamed and it's also recorded. Well, I hope this is all clear. Let's start now without further ado with the presentations. And we'll start today with Aaron Dawson, a PhD candidate in Airpower and Grand Strategy at the Department of War Studies. His research looks at military transformation and technological change. He's a specialist in quantitative methods in the social sciences. And today he's going to look specifically at NATO. Aaron, please, the floor is all yours. Well, thank you very much, Ben, and good morning, everyone. Tomorrow, Air Force One will touch down in the UK, marking President Joe Biden's first international trip since his inauguration earlier this year. Over eight days, the president will complete a round robin of diplomatic engagements, beginning with the G7 this weekend, NATO and the EU next week, before culminating in a summit with President Putin on June 16th. The main message here will be to reassure US allies following the tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump. If America under the Biden administration is back, then so too the 2021 integrated review would have us believe is a UK under the post-Brexit banner of global Britain. seldom have Churchill's three majestic circles found such resonance with foreign policy as under his avowed disciple, Boris Johnson, with renewed emphasis in the integrated review being placed on the special relationship and the Commonwealth as part of a broader Indo-Pacific tilt. But what of that last pillar, Europe, with Brexit now complete, what role does the Continental Commitment play in shaping global Britain and is NATO a sufficient structure to achieve that? My aim today is to outline the broad contours of that question, offering a scene setter on global Britain's foreign security and defence dimensions ahead of the NATO summit on Monday. Analysis of British foreign policy has often been seen through the lens of three concentric circles, a framework originally sketched out by Winston Churchill in 1930. He saw the United Kingdom as occupying the confluence between three spheres of influence, Europe, the Empire and the Anglo-sphere. Post-war, this was updated to reference the Commonwealth and the special relationship, but the geometry has remained essentially the same. It was a policy not exclusive to the Conservatives, for labour also conceived of three mon rows, a hemispheric framework where Europe sat as a bridge between the Americas and the communist world. Recalibrating between these three circles has been the role of successive defence reviews, as John Bayless argued, every post-war government has grappled with a balance between Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States. It is within this context that the recent integrated review was published, titled Global Britain in a Competitive Age, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. It was an opportunity for the Johnson team to add flesh to the global Britain concept introduced by his predecessor, Theresa May. Indeed, the global Britain term has been lacking in specificity and clarity of thought since it was coined five years ago. Global Britain is about investing, reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward looking and confident on the world stage. That was the description of Global Britain provided by the UK government website, but it doesn't reveal how that vision differs in any meaningful way from similarly named enterprises such as Global Ireland or Global Europe, nor even past policy in Whitehall. Moreover, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson had made minimal reference to the term, they received no mention in either the 2019 Conservative Manifesto, nor his foreign policy keynotes in February 2020. Perhaps expecting the integrated review to elaborate on the definition was expecting too much. The description being, it's best defined by actions, rather than words. Instead, the review points to the focus on naval power to promote global trade and supported by a high-readiness, high-end expeditionary land force. Distilling its 300 pages, one commentator summarized the concept as an attempt to fuse geopolitics and geoeconomics using defense strategy as the clue. Aside from increasing the nuclear stockpile, it was the prominence of the Indo-Pacific tilt which grabbed the headlines. Although it may sound less committed than Obama's pivot to Asia, the region was mentioned no fewer than 32 times in the review. This should not be surprising. Even before Brexit, Johnson had used Churchill's circles as a way of contemplating a diminished continental commitment. Yet there is a risk of exaggerating the tilt, deepening trade ties, whether through securing dialogue partner status at ASEAN or membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership remains a key motive that the same cannot be said for defense cooperation. Seven of the review's nine priority actions for the Indo-Pacific focus on economic and diplomatic efforts. While much of the media has seized the maiden deployment of the new HMS Queen Elizabeth embedded within British-led carrier strike group as evidence of a recent recalibration of Churchill's three circles, I would argue this voyage will help much with optics and flying the flag, but there's little to advance Global Britain's long-term aims in the region. Ultimately, even with a Navy equipped with two aircraft carriers, the United Kingdom cannot field both simultaneously due to the need for escort fleets, crews, and maintenance downtime, which outstrips the Admiralty's current capabilities. And significantly, the integrated review has permanently earmarked one carrier to NATO and its defense of the Euro-Atlantic area. One only need look at evolving geopolitical landscape to appreciate this prudence. At the same time as the Pentagon struggles to muster sufficient resources to the Indo-Pacific theater, we see increasing Russian authoritarianism and a military buildup on NATO's border. Deploying the Queen Elizabeth to the Indo-Pacific could invite further Russian opportunism along NATO's Eastern flank. According to the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Robert Bell, NATO superiority over Russia is achievable only on the assumption of reinforcements from the Pacific. In other words, if China ties down the U.S. military, there'll be insufficient resources to credibly deter Russian aggression. Mindful of this, Washington plans to redesignate the U.S. Fleet Forces Command to U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The precondition for global written is therefore the safety of our citizens at home and the security of the Euro-Atlantic region acknowledges the integrated review. And this is where the bulk of the U.K.'s security focus will remain. And specifically within that context, Russia remains the most acute threat to our security. So given the primacy of the Euro-Atlantic, the focus shifts towards implementation. And here the integrated review is relatively mute, devoting only two pages, two and a half pages, sorry, to this. In Max Hastings' words, the government's integrated review represents an admirable statement of where Britain would like to go, bereft of plausible explanations of how it might get there. Although they share the same strategic environment, what is clear is that global Britain will avoid institutional defence cooperation with the EU. And this stems largely from Brexit. I'm going to steer away from that discussion for the moment, mindful of other participants who'll be talking on that matter later on in this panel. Instead, the U.K.'s deterrence and defence of the Euro-Atlantic, relying foremost on NATO and then re-energised bilateral partnerships. Notably, these have been formalised in recent years with the Lancaster House Treaties and the Franco-British and Nordic Baltic British Joint Expeditionary Forces. However, this is not as straightforward as it seems regarding implementation. Brexit has unleashed the brakes on EU strategic autonomy and these countries, particularly those with a less Atlanticism spent, may prefer working collectively with their EU partners to maximise their diplomatic clout. Equally, we see increasing NATO-EU cooperation, 74 areas of practical cooperation between the two institutions are now formalised, which may sideline the EU. The best the U.K. can do in these circumstances, if the decision not to engage with the EU continues, is to live up to its ambition of being a leading European ally in NATO. Overshadowed by the dual Russian-Chinese threat, which defines contemporary politics, the U.K. has an opportunity to backfill U.S. commitments in the Euro-Atlantic as the U.S. shifts its focus towards the Indo-Pacific. Furthermore, if it can properly integrate European naval power in its carrier strike group, as it has with Dutch forces on the recent Queen Elizabeth deployment, then it can lead by example and provide a template for the French and Italian carriers. In this way, London may accrue diplomatic and military heft by acting as a bridge between Washington, Brussels and London and be seen to meet the ever-great demands for burden sharing. In the words of former national security adviser, Lord said, Will, the carriers are not just national, but alliance assets. And that will solidify our position as Western Europe's biggest security and defence contributor and the U.S.'s principal ally. So where does that leave us with next week's summit? Russian aggression will certainly be on the agenda with recent developments in Belarus and the deployment of 20 military units on NATO's border. Matching rhetoric with action would be a significant development as the alliance conceives its next strategic concept. It was not that long ago that NATO assumed Russia could be a partner. Such is the history of defence reviews from in-skip to not to Brexit after the 2015 SDSR. Planning for the future is a hard business. As we look to this new chapter, it is instructive to look back on history and the significance of Churchill's circles. In his valedictory dispatch, intended only for a limited audience, Ambassador Nico Henderson analysed the reasons for British decline in the post-war world, emphasising that concerns for too close a relationship with Europe would weaken our influence in the other two circles, those of the Commonwealth and the U.S. It would be wise today to listen to his advice and ensure global Britain pays as much, if not more, attention to NATO's defence of Europe as it does to the rest of the world. Thank you very much. Aaron, thank you very much for setting the scene for the remainder of the panel. And next, I'd like to welcome Michelle Howard. Michelle is a PhD researcher in the Defence Studies Department. She's a specialist in British defence policy and looks specifically at how national role constructions have an impact on UK's space policy. Michelle, the floor is all yours. Thank you, Ben. I'm Michelle Howard, a first-year PhD student at the Department of Defence Studies. I have worked in the defence industry and lived throughout the Middle East for nearly two decades, a stimulant for my interest in the concepts of national identity. So while my research examines how national role conceptions are demonstrated through defence platforms a nation chooses to acquire, I am a first-year researcher and my data collection and analysis isn't even begun. So I've chosen to use an area I currently work in, the space sector, in order to demonstrate my hypothesis more clearly. So at the end of this presentation, I do hope to leave you with an understanding of why it is important to engage a wide cross-sector coalition and a discussion of the kind of nation we want to be when evaluating the nation's space strategy, which is due to be published at the end of this month. Broadly speaking, why do states choose to embark upon national space programs? Leaders tend to frame this in particularly grandiose terms. So, John F. Kennedy, we choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, when we are unwilling to postpone, when we intend to win. Chinese President Xi Jinping, exploring the vast universe, developing space programs, and becoming an aerospace power, it has always been the dream we've been striving for. And Boris Johnson in his first speech as UK Prime Minister, let's get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and Earth observation systems, UK assets orbiting in space with all the long-term strategic and commercial benefits for this country. The narrative is always one of achieving dreams, building pride in the national identity and securing geopolitical prestige. This brings us to the primary question addressed in this presentation. What kind of nation would the UK like to be? And what are the linkages between the UK's self-perceived national role and the decision to pursue a national space program? The problems which the United Kingdom's journey into space activity began in the aftermath of World War II. The problems that face Britain at this time were many. An uncertain relationship with the United States, the Soviet threat, a devastated economy, a new strategic environment, and despite the decline of its empire, it still considered itself as a natural member to dine at the top table with the Soviet Union and the United States, as cited by Deginit Paikowski in her 2017 book, The Power of the Space Club. Keen to retain its great power status, Britain sought to closer a security alliance with the United States, and nuclear and space programs just seemed necessary as a means to attain this objective. Indeed, in 1963, when the British government announced that it would move forward with its space program, the decision commanded near consensus on both sides of the aisle in parliament. F. W. Ferry Jones, in fact, a conservative backbencher at the time said the choice for Britain was to take our place in the vanguard of progress or to finish up as a small offshore island on the edge of nowhere. Throughout the 1960s, Britain was one of the leading nations in space activity, particularly rockets, and developed a capability to launch into space. The nation pursued parallel tracks in developing space capability with both Europe and the US. It was not as committed to building its own national space program, particularly due to cost concerns. And indeed, these considerations soon overtook all others. The first British launch into space in October 1971 was also its last. Coming after Harold Wilson's government decided to discontinue the launch program. Since this time, Britain's main effort was to make space technology more cost effective, centering on areas with high commercial potential, such as Earth observation, communications, navigation, and space science. This historical context and Britain's approach to the position it found itself in at the end of World War II cultivated tensions which reverberate in today's policy discourse. These tensions are both philosophical and geopolitical. The former between maintaining great power status or striving for fiscal responsibility and the latter being the continued debate between strengthening the European alliance on the one hand and the transatlantic one on the other. So what might a comparative analysis of other space-faring nations and their motivations reveal? During the Cold War, the competitive atmosphere created between the superpowers over space exploration created norms and conventions about the importance of space capability for national might and the exclusivity of this capability. It did not take long for other states to pick this up embarking on and still striving to catch up by demonstrating similar capabilities in order to achieve with tangible economic and development outcomes as well as the added strategic political and social significance attributed to space expertise. So how do these nations justify national efforts to acquire capabilities? By arguing for membership of the space club, a term coined by Pajkowski. The French first established their space agency in 1961. De Gaulle was determined after World War II to return the glory of France by emphasizing its independence in a variety of ways including through technology. De Gaulle felt that launching a French satellite from a French rocket would reinforce its political standing, its citizens pride and crucially support for the regime. This occurred with the first satellite launch in Algeria on 26 November 1965. Japan was also one of the first space-faring nations with the launch of the pencil rocket in 1955. In the first report from its National Space Activities Council, basic principles such as autonomy, international cooperation, peaceful purposes and openness to the public were emphasized. Their national foray into space was really driven by a strong desire to reenter the international community after World War II asserts Hirotaka Watanabe in his chapter for the space strategy for 21st century. In the 1960s, Japan's space policy asserted that it should launch its own satellites by its own rockets without the help of foreign countries. I think we start to identify a recurring theme here but also advancing international corporations through international organizations. Now Russia as Victor Zborsky points out does not have and never has had a space strategy as such. Rather Russian space officials have been developing space programs for particular periods of time, a pattern inherited from the Soviet era. In fact, one Russian astronaut Yuri Baturin warned that for some 15 or 20 years Russia will remain a space superpower but then it will become a second league space power if long-term space strategy isn't defined. A strategy was drafted by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency in March 2012 although derided by many Russian space academics as an old Soviet policy relic offering grandiose projections aimed at making Russia the world's space-faring leader once again. So this comparative analysis leads us to ask several questions. What is an optimal national space ambition? How might we situate ourselves within the literature to seek answers to a quandary which plugs many space-faring nations and potential space-faring nations? Lutz Hayes' et al.'s 2011 Towards the Theory of Space Power begins with a helpful premise. Strategy links power to purpose, serves and fulfills policy and provides a mean for maintaining advantages for states. The issue of how to create effective strategy is addressed by James Maltz. Develop consensus around a common theme, account for the reactions of space-faring actors and states, provide for sustainable uses of space and effective space governance for common problems. So, optimally, we begin with driving consensus around a common theme. A spray strategy will be successful or not based on the intellectual assumptions which inform the national space ambition or the common theme. Sada warns of typical pitfalls which occur without this clear-eyed consensus around the national space ambition, such as false presumptions about one's own competence or about the likely causal linkages between one's goals and objectives. So this demonstrates how important a national discussion and further research about the United Kingdom's role in the world is and how investments in the national space program could serve that aim. In the last decade, interest in space experienced a renewal in the UK with the national space strategy due to be published at the end of the month. It's important that we engage outside the space community in a wider cross-sector discourse of the nation we want to be. Thank you. Michelle, thank you very much for this introduction to the UK's space policy. And we are going to move now from outer space to cyberspace. Our next catalyst is Dr. Tim Stevens, a senior lecturer in global security and the head of the King's Cybersecurity Research Group. His research looks at the intersection of technology politics and global security practices with specific interests in the politics and governance of cyber security. Unsurprisingly, he's going to talk today about the UK's cyber strategy after Brexit. Tim, the floor is yours. Great, thanks Ben. Also thanks Michelle and Aaron for your initial presentations, really interesting stuff. So yeah, as Ben says, I'm going to talk about UK's cyber strategy and that broadly speaks to cyber security as being both a defense of computer networks but also the exploitation of computer networks in the service of national interest. And the headline message here, I guess, is after Brexit that not everything has changed but some important things have. And also there are some issues that are unresolved and that's really what I'm going to focus on today. The point to make out when we're thinking about foreign policy and defense and security is that the UK's national cyber strategy has always been international by design, dating right back to 2009 and then the more recent iterations of 2011 and 2016 and then we have a new one coming very, very soon in 2021 but it's always been international by design. And in cyber security, the UK is often aligned with historical relationships for some very good reasons, obviously with NATO. And NATO has a cyber defense agenda policy and we're likely to see that strengthened with the new strategic concept. And but also with the five eyes, the Anglophone intelligence relationship stemming from the end of the Second World War. And there's some really good reasons for that, that intelligence aspect. Signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has been decades and decades of experience with computer systems. And a lot of that expertise is channeled into UK national cyber security these days. But there's also distinctly European partners that have been built into the way that the UK does cyber security strategy over the last decade or so. The OSCE is one, Council of Europe is another, but also of course the European Union, particularly Europol, which has the European Cyber Crime Center, which is very important in countering cyber crime and also something called ELISA, which is the EU agency for cyber security, which has kind of been strengthening over the years. And the UK has been inside those bodies as a decision maker for years. It was only in 2018, for example, that a Brit was heading Europol. But once inside the room of EU cyber security decision-making, now it's outside. And in quite a few respects, it is also a rule taker, which was not the way things were meant to pan out rather than a rule maker. Look at data protection, for example. It also doesn't have automatic access to policing databases, which are very helpful, not only for general kind of security, border management and so on, but also for cyber security. Now, these issues will be resolved over time. And there were discussions afoot on all those issues, but it's very hard to argue that Brexit has put the UK in a better position cyber security-wise than it was before. But the corollary to that is five years from now, I think it's also gonna be difficult to argue that the UK is in a worse position than it was before leaving the EU. But that said, there's three issues I want to talk about. The first is about what the integrated review calls being a responsible democratic cyber power. The second is the role of offensive cyber operations for a responsible cyber power. And the third is about partnerships and alliances. So the first, the integrated review discusses at some, well, it mentions many times, but doesn't flesh out in detail what it means. This idea of the UK being a responsible democratic cyber power. I think we can imagine what it means. It's about leveraging the internet and information technologies in general for a national gain. Now that's one thing, but how do you do that in a way that aligns with your commitments to democracy, human rights and international law? That's the challenge. I think that's a challenge for any state in this situation. Now there are countries that care very, very little about those things, but the UK isn't one of them. It's been very active in multiple forms for many years, pushing for norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, improving technical standards, promoting the rule of law, encouraging cybersecurity capacity building, and so on. And it's probably a reasonable assessment to say that the UK has been quietly influential in those debates and many more. And none of those are contingent on the EU. But the point about Brexit is that now there is one less forum in which the UK can be quietly influential. The IRR says that the UK will work closely with the EU on defense and security, I'm sure it will, but it'd be willfully myopic to claim that its influence in Europe has increased post-Brexit and that will have an impact on its cybersecurity. And inevitably, and we do see this reflected in the IRR, is that the UK is gonna have to work more efficiently through other organizations, principally NATO and Five Eyes, yes, but many others besides. Now this is justified in terms of NATO and Five Eyes, and not inherently problematic as such, except that the UK might appear to some to have turned away from a socioeconomic block, the EU, and towards a military alliance and to an intelligence partnership. And there's some optics issues there in the sense that cybersecurity is a social and economic endeavor as much as it ever is a military and intelligence one. Now, whether that's a reasonable criticism is entirely up to you, but the UK is being increasingly lumped in with a set of belligerent states in this environment. Now, some of that political rhetoric is coming from challenges and adversaries like China, but you can see their point. But I mean, I'm just putting that out there as a proposition to be tested over time. But this does lead me to a second set of questions. What is the, if the UK is to be a responsible democratic cyber power, what is the role and proper place of offensive cyber operations for a country like the UK? And this is a tricky one. No state wishes to deny itself a freedom of movement in what has been a military operational domain for NATO countries since 2016. Cyberspace is the fifth domain after land, sea, air and space. And nor would any states with capabilities, offensive capabilities, at least try and achieve some deterrent effect in and through that environment by publicly avowing those capabilities. Now, the UK for its part has openly stated that it does have offensive cyber capabilities. So capabilities to deny, disgrade, degrade, disrupt, destroy through computer networks. And it has used them against adversaries, Daesh mainly in Iraq and Syria, but also organized crime groups. And we can be certain also that hostile state acts have been counted in various ways. They don't seem to deter much, which is the whole point of an offensive capability or one of the aspects of an offensive capability in any domain, but they do have operational value. And the value is such that we have in now a new national cyber force, the NCF, Incorporating Ministry of Defense, MI6, GCHQ and DSTL, which is a streamlining of existing efforts really under something called the National Offensive Cyber Program. But it's not an entirely new undertaking, but it's definitely indicative of the seriousness with which the UK wants to demonstrate and develop its offensive capabilities. What should the UK actually do with this? Well, we could turn the lights off in Moscow. I'm pretty sure we have some capability there like the Russians did in Kiev, but we are a responsible democratic cyber power and we don't target civilians and civilian infrastructures. Our stated commitment to the applicability of international law in this environment says that we can't do that kind of thing, so we don't. So what we're probably gonna do with the National Cyber Forces fight cyber crime, take down internet, child sexual abuse rings and so on, counter terrorism, and these are precisely what we're told that the NCF will do. But it also, in the publicity around it, is there to counter hostile state actors through cyber means, and these are the usual suspects, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and then a few others. Now, when we're thinking about how we go about countering hostile state actors and indeed non-state actors, one of the interesting questions post-Brexit was always about not so much whether the UK would move closer to the US, the IR says precisely that, but how close? And when we talk about cyber, this means will the UK adopt a posture, a strategic posture and operational rule book similar to the persistent engagement strategy of US cyber command? And my guess is that it will. And in fact, the defense command paper of March earlier this year explicitly mentions persistent engagement throughout and it doesn't single out cyber in that with that respect, but clearly there's a very significant degree of alignment between the way that the US and UK are thinking about this. But what this means in practice is that the National Cyber Force is gonna spend a lot of time fiddling around in gray space and red space out there on the networks without permission from the countries or largely without permission from those countries in an effort to shape the operational environments to the detriment of our various cyber adversaries. That's the whole point of persistent engagement and defending forward outside friendly networks. But at some point, something's gonna go wrong and we'll be left explaining to the Germans or to the French and EU countries, perhaps why our operators were fiddling around in their government networks in the first place without permission. And again, this isn't a Brexit problem as such, but the UK moving even closer to the US might be in this environment, we just don't know yet. For what it's worth, strategically, persistent engagement makes a lot of sense potentially, but it's just the politics that might need some work. And we can see the nature of UK-EU relations at the moment. It's worth pointing out, of course, that most EU countries are also NATO countries, which is gonna smooth that particular path. But then we may see a few issues arising over the next couple of years. My third and final point, and I appreciate I'm coming to a close here, it's just that the UK is looking for new partners in cybersecurity. You know, the cyber strategy is international by design and it will continue to be. It's looking at commonwealth, for example, but it's mainly development assistance issues, quite one way outside India and the three non-US members of Five Eye. I wonder though, if in cyber strategy, we need to be a little more enthusiastic about engaging with the EU. The IR has decidedly lukewarm on this issue, you know, playing nicely with our neighbors rather than deliberately antagonizing them might get better results in cybersecurity, a way of rebuilding trust and encouraging the EU to do the things we wanted to do in this environment, like sharing police and justice data. It's also a huge market and we are currently not really part of the digital single market. It's an increasingly important diplomatic player and we can forge some very, very close political relationships on that basis. I'm confident that we will. It's just the shame that we might spend so many years fixing something that we didn't need to break in the first place, but we need middle powers like the UK in a global conversation about these issues. We still have a lot to say, I think there's a country and hopefully other countries will still listen to us, but I think from a strategic perspective, we need to take the EU much more seriously when it comes to cyber strategy than we currently are. So I'm going to end there. Thanks for listening and I'm more than happy to take questions in a while. Thank you. Yeah, Tim, thank you very much for outlining a set of really fascinating ideas about the UK's role in cyber. And Tim, as you've just said, you can ask questions, as I said at the beginning. If you have any questions, you can put them anytime into the Q&A chat box. Next, I'd like to welcome Gesine Wehler, a PhD researcher in the Defence Studies Department, who's going to talk about EU-UK Defence Corporation Beyond Brexit. Gesine also works for the German Marshall Fund of the United States and is based in Paris. And I believe she joins us today from Paris. So Gesine, welcome to the panel and you're looking forward to what you have to say. Yeah, good morning from Paris and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on that panel. Indeed, I want to take up on one of Tim's last points, which was that the UK could be a bit more enthusiastic about cooperation with the EU. And that is exactly what I'm talking about now because, you know, we are now five years after the Brexit referendum, which also means that we have five years after the publication of the European Union's global strategy for the foreign aid security policy. So five years after these events, may end with the publication of the integrated review, which finally puts flash on the concept of when the UK might go globally. Maybe the EU and the UK should think about going global together. And that is what I want to outline here. When we're looking into the integrated review, we see indeed that the enthusiasm for cooperation with the EU is let's say quite limited and that the document remains rather vague on that and has a very pragmatic approach because it states that the UK wants to cooperate with the EU in areas where the interests coincide. So we see that this is definitely not an end to itself to have UK-EU cooperation, but more a means to an end. But on the other hand, we also see a similar narrative with the EU, especially with the high representative for the CFSP, Josep Borrell, who also underlines that there should not be cherry picking from the UK side on European defense, but that cooperation has to be in the mutual interest. So where does that lead us? Now we have on the one hand the integrated review. The EU is currently working on its so-called strategic compass, which also has a basket, so a part on partnerships. And of course, the UK will be mainstreamed in that. So even though at the moment the UK is a third country in terms of security cooperation with the EU, I am pretty convinced, especially when we're looking at the documents that we are having at the moment, that there is a window of opportunity for cooperation between global Britain and an increasingly global EU and a geopolitical commission as von der Leyen labeled it, to go global together. Of course, there are challenges. We've already heard a bit about that here, but I now want to focus on the opportunities in terms of cooperation. And when we are really looking at the ideas and the concepts that we find so far on both sides of the channel, we basically see that we have a striking convergence of interests between the EU and the UK, and especially between France and the UK, which could in this case serve as a catalyst for EU-UK cooperation. But let's first dive into the areas where we see this kind of convergence. So first of all, we see that securing the European neighborhood is definitely a shared interest because also when you're looking at the integrated review to everything related to global Britain, you see that the fight against terrorism, organized crime, especially also at the southern flank of the EU, so in the Mediterranean in North Africa, is definitely a priority for the UK, and so it is for the EU. This is even more relevant in the recent context of the new Biden administration that has taken office because there was very little doubt that the US-China competition will be the main focus of this administration, whereas the US will increasingly demand the Europeans to take the lead in its neighborhood, and that is basically what we already see. So for instance, in the Mediterranean, the EU has its mission Irini, which is supported by a NATO mission, and in the Sahel, the EU also has a mission which is supported by the US, but it's basically like the US is not taking the lead anymore. But if the UK wants to be present in these areas as well and wants to pursue its interests, it will need a partner. And the US, actually, it's traditionally closest ally, will not be its go-to partner to take the lead in these areas. So basically, EU-UK cooperation in the European neighborhood will be just a pragmatic choice that appears very logical here at the moment. In fact, we see more or less the same in the Indo-Pacific, because when the UK, which definitely describes kind of a pivot to the Indo-Pacific as well as one of the most important theaters for international affairs for the years to come in the integrated review, we can also see that UK-US cooperation there might be challenging because the UK has a quite cooperative stance on China, underlining that Global Britain and China will also partner up on some issues. And that is something that is not shared by the Biden administration. So here again, UK will need another partner. And when we're looking at the recent developments at the EU level, for instance, we see that France, Germany and the Netherlands have published their Indo-Pacific strategies. The EU is currently drafting a document on that. We see that basically classical issues of global governance, such as freedom of navigation, multilateralism and so on, will most likely be issues also from a security perspective, where the UK and EU interests converge in that area so that it seems very almost self-imposing to at least discuss issues of cooperation. When we are now talking about this cooperation and these interests, that sounds all very nice, but the problem whenever talking about corporations or which format does actually seem appropriate here. And I just want to remind ourselves that these formats of cooperation, like we do with CSDP mission and so on, have basically been a major challenge throughout all the years when the UK was still an EU member. So what I would suggest also based on the evidence is basically that these are that flexible formats of European Defence cooperation, both inside the EU and outside the EU. So UK EU cooperation and UK cooperation with other European powers can basically help us to tackle that challenge. And in this context, France will be a very, very important partner for the UK. So one could actually say that for London or that for British policymakers, the road to Brussels will lead through Paris. Because at the moment, we are seeing that France has been launching a lot of additional formats. So one could say France is doing CSDP plus in recent years after launching the European Intervention Initiative and the task force TACUBA, a special task force in the Sahel. So these formats are outside the EU because France was kind of frustrated. EU initiatives didn't go far enough. But interestingly, although these formats were launched after Brexit, the UK has been joining or at least supporting them politically. And we are seeing a similar trend from the UK side, for instance, with the joint expeditionary forces which UK is spearheading. So here we see that we have two countries which are willing to take the lead and which are also teaming up outside of the EU structures and where other able and willing European countries join. At the moment, it seems very difficult to have, like to reach for the stars of UK-EU cooperation also because there is not the political willingness and because partners try to avoid symbolism. But these flexible European formats can therefore either in the European neighborhood or as coalitions of the willing in the Indo-Pacific serve as a very high vehicle towards, yeah, maybe towards more EU-UK defense cooperation as well. And also the EU would do good to adopt this flexible approaches as well. And we see that this trend is actually already there with the opening up of the PASCO projects, so permanent structured cooperation and security and defense. We have there a military mobility project that has been opened to the US and Norway and maybe that could also be a way for the UK to join. To conclude, we therefore see that there is definitely potential in terms of formats and policy areas for going global together, but that basically has, let's say, some preconditions which is that first the UK definitely needs to take the EU seriously and see it as a serious negotiation partner. And on the other hand, the EU needs to define what it wants. So the strategic compass seems to be a good way to get there, but we also see that basically on both sides there is a willingness to think about these partnerships. For instance, in the UK, we recently also saw among the public in the Transatlantic Trends Survey that recently launched by GMF that 22% of the British see the EU as the most influential actor on global affairs. So there is definitely an appetite for cooperating with the EU. And in the EU side, we also see that UK cooperation is discussed in the different baskets of the strategic compass. So to sum that up, going global together just needs some flexibility and a new mindset, but I think that we can be optimistic that to see these initiatives provided that policymakers are able to avoid too much symbolism and try to focus on pragmatic choices. Cassina, thank you very much for discussing these different options of future EU-UK cooperation. We come now to our last presentation today and we have with us Dr. Ben Wilkinson, the director of research in the Policy Institute at King's College. Ben has conducted extensive research across the broad area of defense, security and foreign policy. It's a real pleasure to have him on this panel today. And he's going to talk specifically about the UK's refreshed defense procurement policy. Ben, the floor is yours. Thanks, Ben. I'm just going to share my presentation and hopefully can make it work. Let's go back to the beginning of it. So thanks, Ben. I think one of the things that has come out of all of the talks so far, certainly when looking at the UK is what kind of foreign policy do we have? Is it a small power foreign policy, a big power foreign policy? What does it mean? And what does global Britain stand for? What is the content of it? And as everyone has alluded to, no, there is a real lack of kind of words. As Aaron said, there was a lack of words behind global Britain, but we might be able to understand it better as the government say if we look at actions. And so what I thought I'd do in this talk is to look at actions in the last few months and to see what they mean for global Britain and what type of global Britain we're really looking at. And to do that, I've kind of split my talk into three bits. First, looking at UK defense spending procurement policy before the integrated review, where have we come from? And then looking at the promises of the last few weeks, few months from the integrated review and then just trying to unpick what this means. What global Britain really is if you look at the way that UK has adjusted its defense procurement policy, its defense acquisition approach, and then to see whether we can understand a little bit better about what global Britain and the competitive age really means and whether those promises stack up. So I'm afraid I also, I'm the last person giving a talk and I have graphs and data. So I apologize profusely for that. Before the review, UK defense spending has actually been in decline in real terms. If you have a look at the numbers and you adjust for inflation, UK defense expenditure has basically been on a reasonably slow downward trend. And then even when you get the slight uptick in sort of 2017, 18, 2019, in practice, the uptick is a consequence of big black holes in the MOD's budget as the NAO reviews over the last four years have pointed out each year they have declared the equipment plan unaffordable. So even though it ticks up slightly at the end as a sort of overall downward decline and when it does tick up, it's largely to offset deficits in the budget. So that's the first graph. And actually when I show this to people they do find it surprising because all of the rhetoric is about, you know, increased defense expenditure but when you account for inflation there's a sort of slightly downward trend. The second piece of data I want to show you is to look at the MOD's defense equipment spend on the one hand and then it's spend on research and then it's spend on development. And if you look here, sorry, just skipping forward a slide. If you look here, these are in 2019 prices. So you can have a look at 89 at the end of the Cold War, 2010 with David Cameron and then 2019 the latest data. And if you have a look at equipment spend you'll see a year on year decline or a section on section decline there was a slight increase in 2010 but then a drop. If you have a look at the UK spend on research a really major job about 50% from 1989 to 2019 in real terms. And then if you have a look at development again from the end of the Cold War to the year before last it's a drop of almost 75%. So here what you're really seeing is at the heart of the defense procurement plan equipment spend is down and research on development and expenditure on research and development is also significantly down. And this is in stark contrast to most of our rival nations who are rapidly upticking their R&D expenditure in defense. It's also in contrast to most of our European partners and our allies, most of whom are upticking their defense research and development spend or at least their R&D expenditure. So a second graph for you. And then the third one and I think this is often overlooked because we spend so much time talking about exports in the UK context is that the UK has for quite a long time being one of the major defense importers in Europe and in fact globally. If you have a look at the data the UK accounts for about half of EU defense imports in 2017 something that no EU state has done since the end of the Cold War. So it's a major chunk of defense imports in the EU. And then if you have a look at although the UK doesn't publish stats on this if you have a look at the US Department of State stats the UK is actually the fourth largest defense importer globally and it's behind three countries that are very different to the UK. Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. And most of this comes from the US. So what does that mean before the review? What type of a country is the UK? Well, I would suggest that this means that the UK has a sort of unique position in the global defense marketplace. It is a static or declining level of defense expenditure despite all the rhetoric all of the government announcement on the optics about increased defense expenditure it's actually been slowly declining even though the GDP levels are maintained. There are low levels or declining levels of defense R&D and this is matched I think also increasingly with domestic production. Although our export rates have been high they've been over a very small number of platforms and I think those are increasingly being threatened as well. And then on the other hand we have high levels of defense imports and I guess if you take these things together it suggests a UK that is somewhat different to the image that the UK likes to projective itself on the global stage. I think instead you could argue quite easily that from this position the UK will struggle if it would carry on on that road would struggle to retain technological advantage because R&D levels are so low and imports are so high. Difficult to build domestic specialisms in your defense industry because you're not putting enough into and at the same time trying to be all-encompassing. It's very difficult to build a specialism as Israel has around drones very difficult to build that kind of specialism. And then as a consequence because you don't have a specialism it's also difficult to export to key allies and build those relationships. And so I think before the review the UK had reached a kind of point in time where actually its defense procurement approach underpinned a very different image on the world stage very different ability to engage with partners and if it wanted to be a global Britain that kind of approach simply could not remain. And not surprisingly in the integrated review and then the subsequent defense security and industrial strategy review and then subsequent command paper there have been adjustments. So let's have a quick look at those. Well, first of all in the conservative manifesto we saw a commitment of 0.5 increase in defense expenditure above inflation. The review promised a further 16.5 billion and a further chunk of 5.8 billion for defense R&D. Now these are quite big sums of money. They indicate a significant input to defense procurement and a real effort to try and change or challenge a sort of the difficult position the UK kind of dug itself into prior to the review. And of course there's this announcement that this expenditure will create 10,000 extra jobs. This is part of the MOD's bid towards prosperity and investing in defense at homes that you create jobs and skills at home. So that was the pledge and you can see on the graph here on the right. So I promise you it's my last graph is this gentle uptick suggesting that the MOD would be 7 billion pound better off in 23, 24 than it had planned to be. So that's the pledge. I guess the question is how much what does that mean for global Britain? I think the first thing to note really is that I mean, this is a substantial effort particularly in times of COVID to reset British defense procurement policy to make it align to a kind of global Britain that is more outward looking, more proactive, more specialized than before. And I think it's been somewhat unnoticed but the efforts to do this have been thought through and this is a clear piece of strategy making. I think the second thing it means is that one of the core and again, unnoticed elements of global Britain is defense procurement. It is 190 billion in the equipment plan over the next 10 years. There are plans to use this to create partnerships not only hopefully in Europe, but also Commonwealth countries. There was a lot of chats in the MOD about engaging with Japan and with Australia and towards a kind of collaborative approach in building things. They want to move away from competitive by default you know, opting for the cheapest off the shelf piece of kits and they want to build things together and build relationships, use defense expenditure as a way of building international partnerships with key allies. Which is an important part of global Britain I think. The third thing is I think it signifies to move not only towards collaborative building with other nations, but also towards more specialization in the UK and this is the R&D expenditure bit. There is I think a real emphasis on allowing the UK domestic defense industry to specialize in particular areas. I think those are still being thought through but nano technologies come to mind as do sensor technologies and the idea that you can build these elements as a core bit of your offering to other nations. So this specialization will be important and again another part of global Britain and you can see DENS and all of these bits of government trying to kick in and help build this sort of specialized defense sector. And I think the other thing it does mean and this has implications for global Britain is it probably will mean we move away from being such an import heavy nation and taking much more of a collaborative approach. And I guess one of the tricky bits for global Britain is what that means for our relationship with the US bearing in mind that about 90% of our imports come from there. I don't think it's a catastrophic one but I think it will need thinking through and playing through. However, I think there are questions and by way of conclusion and before we move into the Q&A it seems appropriate to set four questions. The first is about affordability. 24 and a half billion extra is a sizable sum but many commentators and the NAO and the MOD itself to some degree recognize that there is a major and consistent and very stubborn black hole in the MOD's budget. The MOD thinks it's about eight billion. Other commentators say it's anywhere up to and beyond 20 billion. Is this money really going to make a difference or is it just going to fill that black hole? And bearing in mind that there are new commitments in there, it can't do both. So is this really affordable? The second question is about approach. I mean, collaboration sounds good and as we've heard from Gisner and everyone else it is actually quite hard in practice and there are optics and there is the symbolism around it that needs to be, we need to be careful of. So can the UK really pull this off and who do you collaborate with? Japan, is Australia, is it Germany, France? This remains to be seen. And we know that collaboration can be difficult. The boxer program is a classic case in point. The third is about application. The move from import heavy nation to a collaborative approach or a specialized approach is not going to be smooth. And I guess there's a real question about applications this about political capital and commitment. Are we going to really stick with this? Because it's not going to take two years, it will take 10. And that means it will go at least two SDSRs into the future. The last time we did this was only in 2012 and we haven't really stuck to it for the last three years. So is there going to be a real commitment to sticking to it? And then fourthly and lastly, I mean, I guess this is all about action. The allocation of further cash to, even if it doesn't just fill the back hole, the black hole, is this going to be enough to really change the position that the UK had dug itself into before the review of being import heavy, of being slightly on the decline? Is this really enough to get us past or over the line to make us a truly global Britain? And by truly global Britain, I mean, I keep on thinking of the Putin's press sector he described the UK as a small island no one pays attention to. I just wonder, is this enough to get us beyond that? And with that, I shall finish. Thank you all very much. And thank you so much for your insights into this really important, but all too often on the researched area. And well, with Ben's presentation, we've also come to the end of the interval panel presentations and we are moving now into the Q&A session. I'm pleased to see that we already have two questions in the chat box. And perhaps we start right away with these questions. The first one is from John Bodie from Canada and he has a specific question for Tim. Tim, as you will see in the chat box, John is asking, recognizing the parameters of international humanitarian law will likely restrict the application of cyber tax in an offensive capacity. Is the true value of the offensive capability more in line with deterrent policy? And is there diplomatic or global prestige value in being a member in vertical commerce of the cyber authentically capable club if there is such a club? Yeah, it's a great question. There is a club, if you like. It doesn't really described as such, but when you look at the various cyber power indices being generated by think tanks like Belfast Center, for example, stateside. And the UK regularly scores on a whole set of parameters and features of the way it sets up cybersecurity, including its offensive cyber capabilities. It's always scores very, very highly. In fact, in the most recent index, it was scored, it was third on the list. So there is a certain amount of prestige, I would imagine. But and whether that translates into deterrence is a really interesting issue. And I'm sure the questioner would be aware that cyber deterrence is rather more difficult than people sometimes give a credit for. So when we're thinking about deterrence and in this environment, and certainly the way the UK is thinking, we have to think in an across domain manner, which is entirely consistent with the forms of complex modern deterrence. You know, just having an offensive cyber capability is not enough to deter our most active adversaries in this environment. You have to leverage all aspects of national power in order to be able to generate deterrent effect in this. But I mean, clearly, you know, I would say that there are many reasons why the UK would develop an offensive cyber capability. It was, of course, the first country in the world to admit to having one way back in the deep distance past of 2013, I think it was. So it has been thinking about these things for quite a while. But I mean, the answer to your question is yes and yes. But there's an awful lot more to it as well, not least of which is the fact that the NCF, the National Cyber Force, does have an operational role. And it has an operational role against a very well-defined set of adversaries for criminals and hostile state actors amongst them. So, but as John says, you know, the international humanitarian law, IHL, does restrict how we use those in line with our treaty commitments and so on and so forth. But it's very early days having this dedicated single unit, albeit joint and integrated capability that's been put front and foremost in our sort of cyber, military cyber and intelligent cyber strategic planning. So we'll see how it goes. It's not even a year old yet, but watch that space. Tim, thank you very much for your response. And John, I hope this has answered your question. If not, feel free to put a follow-up question into the chat box. The next question is by my colleague Andrew Harris who joins us from Edinburgh. He has a question specifically about national role conceptions. He says quite rightly that we've all talked about national role conceptions in one way or another, especially Michelle and Aaron. So his question is, what is your sense of how those role conceptions might be contested between different interests within government? For example, the integrated review process highlighted significant differences between different parts of the UK foreign and defence policy community about what Britain's role in the world should be. Is it possible to achieve a single uncontested description of a national role? So as Andrew says, the question is for several people, does anyone want to go first? So I have Ben and Michelle who have switched on their cameras. Does that mean you want to go or...? I'm happy to go ahead. Michelle, please go ahead. I hadn't had time in the presentation to discuss the foundational theory I've been looking at around the subject of national role conceptions. And that's Carl Jay Holste's Cold War theory he developed, looking at hundreds of foreign policy statements only dictated as per the national leaders and their conceptions of a national role of a particular nation. And the reason he did that is because you will inevitably have inter-service rivalry and bureaucracy politics interplaying when you're developing these national roles. And he felt that it's more effective to look at the national leaders conception of what that role is. I had a section in the presentation looking at governance coherence and evaluating organizational politics and inter-service rivalries and turf wars but it just took me way over time. And I think there's more research required on this subject because I think it's very difficult even if you look in the area of the space sector you have a whole set of different turf wars interplaying in the development of the space strategy between commercial and military space. Even within the MOD you have the RAF and the strategic command. So you always have those dynamics and I think if you have a strong state leader you'll be able to develop a bit more coherence and a national role conception than you might otherwise have. That's it. Thank you very much, Michelle. Ben, do you wanna go next? Sure, I mean I switched on the camera just so that the panel had its camera on but I'm happy to talk as well. I mean, I think it's spot on, isn't it? There is no, as with discussions around strategic culture there is no one national identity or national foreign policy identity and there isn't any one sort of national defense identity either and those two certainly come into conflict more often than not and there are internal inconsistencies in all of those things. And I think that's one of the interesting things to kind of tease out. One of the things I was sort of trying to get at is that the injection of further cash does sort of reset the UK sort of defense acquisition role its role as a sort of producer of defense equipment sort of but 24 billion over five years when you've got a black hole of maybe 15 billion isn't actually very much and how much do you need to invest really to do that and does it really reset it and how do you put commitment behind it that isn't just economic but is also political and how do you get the collaborations that you need to make with all of these things contribute to that kind of national role fulfillment and I think there is always an internal inconsistency to it it's never, never straightforward. I think the real thing is whether you can create agreement internationally about what kind of role you're meant to be playing. I mean, that's the real knack of it. I think the UK after all of it sort of changes on the world stage of the last few years has got quite a long way to go to build that kind of consensus and I think that's its real effort going forward is how it does that, how it negotiates and plays with other people in the international stage or other players on the international stage and that's probably the real question and also with whom I think Aaron touched on that really nicely about which one of these three circles you're gonna try and engage with most effectively and it's not straightforward it's not doing one or the other you've got to do a bit of both and there's a matter of time and commitment and all of those things so I think it's a really good question I don't think it is consistent internally and it's all about how you convince and persuade but that's the knack. And thank you very much. Tim, do you want to come in? Very briefly, yeah. I mean, you recall Dean Acheson's words many, many years ago US Secretary of State saying that Britain had lost an empire and was looking for a role and in some respect some of the rhetoric around these issues still reflects that which is deeply unfortunate given that it was 70 years ago. So I mean, one of this administration's favorite adjectives is clear-eyed and somebody in the media coaching part of number 10 and number 11 and the rest of it has told their ministers to use this adjective all the time. It's very difficult to be clear-eyed when a lot of the rhetoric around Britain's role in the world is so deeply tinged with imperial nostalgia and the two sit very, very uneasily together. Particularly, for example, if you're thinking about development diplomacy and then slashing your aid budgets by over a third. It's very difficult. So there's lots of, as Ben says and there's lots of tensions here in the way that people inside the establishment look at Britain's role in the world that aren't easily squared away because most of them are in tension because of domestic political issues rather than strategic ones and whilst UK foreign policy is so deeply wrapped up in essentially domestic disputes and internal party political disputes I think the UK is going to really, really struggle to articulate what it wants in the world and moreover what it can do in the world. So all very well being capable and that's one of the major adjectives we've seen in the recent slew of defense and security documents but how do you become effective? And I think that's the real challenge for the current administration. Thank you very much for these insights. Erin, you were mentioned in the question as well. Do you want to come in on this? Yeah, I'll just add a few comments. I know that Ben and Matt Utley have worked a lot on this whole idea of strategic culture and how difficult it is to reset that strategic mindset and particularly within the UK. I think there are a couple of other dimensions to mention here. One is, as again, Ben mentioned towards the end of his presentation, the whole idea of such a strategy is that it's going to last as a long-term ambition that the UK has. It's not something that's necessarily gonna be achieved before the next security or defense review. And as such, it's obviously liable to being changed if the Conservative government, already 11 years in power, gets replaced by another administration. So I think there is the chance there that maybe there's a shift towards more EU engagement and we have the good optimism of Gazina talking about that earlier. But then you have the rhetoric on that level there which John Baylis referred to as really bluffing about great power status and how that's shaped a lot of Britain's external relations. But fundamentally, when you look at things, implementation is done by civil servants. At the moment, lots of those networks, lots of those professional networks are focused on the NATO and the Euro-Atlantic area. It'd be interesting to see whether those Asia-Pacific partnerships have been mentioned with the likes of trade deals and ASEAN and Trans-Pacific Partnership actually map on to similar defense cooperation initiatives. And I think when we have the political rhetoric aligned with the actual implementation on the civil servant level that's when we'll start to see some measurable progress in this area. Aaron, thank you very much for these insights. I believe we can move on now to some of the next questions. We actually have two fairly specific questions for Ben. The first one is from Hugo Rosamund and he'd like to talk about the prospects that you see for the UK increasing its defense exports reflected in the ambitions of the DSIS. Presumably these ambitions are also aligned with global Britain. At least that's the question Hugo has. And we have another question from Rowan and apologies already for mispronouncing your surname, Sarah van Muthu from London and he's a past MA in history of war from Kings. And his question is, does the review address the problem of spending focusing on platforms and technology and miss the basics? And he argues that when Britain ever goes to war it always finds itself of ammunition as bare parts. So Ben, if you could perhaps address these two questions. Sure, thanks Hugo. I suspected you were gonna ask me something. So yeah, I think Hugo, your question is a good one. I think, I mean, there are probably different ways of looking at this on exports. I mean, if you have a look at what we're currently exporting it is basically over a few systems, mainly aircraft and to one or two destination countries. I think something like 80% of it just goes to UAE in Saudi. And I guess the question for exports in the future is partly to do with specialization on the one hand and partly to do with who you want to sell it to on the other. And I think that the MOD has done quite a lot of thinking about this but hasn't been very clear about it in either the IR or the DSIS or at least not as clear as it probably could be. So on specialization, I think if you're going to export you have to export stuff that you yourself want to buy in the first place. And relatedly, you have to therefore have a domestic defense industry that can create stuff that you know, that is cutting edge and has technological advantage. So, I mean, I think the UK is if I were to make a prediction, which I've always advised not to do having once predicted there would be no Arab Spring and then four hours later, there were 200,000 people in Tahrir Square. If I was to make a prediction, I wouldn't be surprised if defense exports drop off very quickly over the next couple of years. And then if the plan that the MOD has got around specialization and collaboration comes good in a few years time, you would see exports much more diverse over a different, you know much wider range of systems to a much wider range of partners. And that's kind of what I meant about commitment because that's going to take time and you have to build up your industry on the one hand to do it. It's not just about kit either. It's also about skills as well. But I think the ambition is the right one is whether they can pull it off. So, I mean, I have hopes, but they're not massively low but they're not massively high. It would be my short answer on that. On Rohan's question around ammunition and support and whether we sort of traded one for the other in the IR. I mean, I think the IR would look strange if it spent a lot of time talking about ammunition development and support development and spare parts because it is a sort of strategic document. And I don't think that you're exchanging one for the other in the sort of strategy. I mean, I completely agree though that the UK has historically been lax over ammo supplies in particular. We had to borrow some I think from the French didn't read not too long ago. And you know, this is an important part of it. I wouldn't necessarily expect to see it in the IR but I think there is more work that's needed to be done on it. It does keep on happening. And also just things like upgrades of existing systems always drops off or becomes more expensive or falls off the equipment plan because it seems to be smaller and suddenly it becomes more expensive. I think there is definitely something. There is definitely something there. Whether I'd expect to see it kind of in the review I'm less convinced. I think people would say that was too much for level of detail but I think you're right that more work is needed. Thanks Ben. The next question is for all panellists. It's a question by Sophie Antrobus from the Freeman Air and Space Institute. And she asks, there have been several commentaries on the integrated review which reflect on the fact that the IR seems like a coherent well thought through document laying out government intention but the defense command paper looked horrid and a little incoherent. And she'd like to know if any panel members have any thoughts on this from their readings of the documents. Any volunteers for that question? If you do have an opinion, just switch on your mind profane. There's clearly a conspiracy of silence going on here. Does anybody else want to go? Because I feel like I've talked a lot. Go ahead Ben. So I'm taking the difficult question. Am I? Cool. I think this is quite a difficult one about one document being coherent and well thought through and the other one not. I think it depends who the audience is and slightly which commentators you look at. I think one thing that did strike me about all three, including the thesis review which I had a part to play in in terms of providing evidence to it was that very unusual clustered approach of their release. And I still wonder retrospectively what the value of having three papers so close together really was because there was no pressing need to release all three together. Or within a nine days difference, wasn't it? Something like that. I just wonder why there was that real emphasis on getting the IR out, followed by a command and then the thesis review immediately after. They could be a slightly more spaced. And I don't think that necessarily would provide more time for thinking through. But I think what you could have done is to do the IR and then see what the response was and then see actually how much you wanted to adjust other documents and other positions related to that. So I'm not sure about hurried or not. I think if you could, I've read plenty of commentaries that look at the IR that say it's not well thought through and I've looked at plenty of commentaries that say the thesis one is too detailed and I've read plenty of say it's great because it's got loads of detail. Everyone will have a slightly different opinion on it. But I was slightly baffled by this real effort to get them out within nine days of one another. I don't really understand what the effort to do that was and what the positive effects of it were. Though if anybody has more background in comms I'll be able to explain it to me. But it did seem to me that you could actually leave a bigger gap and let things percolate a little bit and respond to them at least in some of the messaging just to see how it had gone. That was my only real thought on that. It's a good question Sophie. And notice that no one else is chiming in yet so I'm gonna be. Yeah, thanks Ben. Anyone wants to come in on this question? I'm conscious that we are slowly running out of time. But using the privilege as cheer there's one impression I really got from this panel. And well, in essence, I compared this panel to our first panel we had now more than five years ago on the security and defense, foreign security and defense implications of Brexit. So well, those of you with a very long memory you might remember that we had the first discussions in early 2016 on these issues or perhaps even earlier. And what struck me quite a lot is how little Brexit in itself actually came up now in this discussion and that we have moved on quite a bit. Well, to the integrated review as a main point of discussion. And I was just wondering if some of the panelists if have similar personal experiences or their own reflections on how much they moved on in the way they look at the security and defense implications of Brexit from five years ago from the very first discussions we had to now have you become much more optimistic, less optimistic? Any or have things simply not changed? Any reflections, Tim? I can offer something maybe. I think it's very important to note that most people didn't think that the government would lose that referendum. And Brexit was always a possibility but not a very serious possibility until quite close prior to the referendum. Maybe that's the reason why people didn't talk about it so much. But it was certainly, we've all had discussions about what the possible effects of Brexit would be on defense and security from my own field of cybersecurity. It's very clear that there were gonna be some problems around data sharing, sharing of cyber threat, intelligent around policing and justice which were flagged up years in advance but were never fixed or instead in the process of being fixed. But also it's very clear that most cybersecurity issues were really not contingent on the EU in the first place. But that having said that, as I mentioned earlier there's a massive market on our doorstep. We're not in the digital single market. So how's that gonna work? Who's making the rules around standards and requirements and protocols and so on. But I think there's this broader issue about the strategic one was really evident five years ago. Is what is the UK actually want to be in the world? It is not a great power. It is not going to be a great power but it could be a really effective, capable and influential middle power if that's the way it chooses to see itself. I think there's really important issue that Michelle was talking about, about being honest and clear-eyed and seeing exactly what can we do in the world is still completely unresolved. And in many ways it's been worse because I really do believe that a lot of what's going on in this space is being held on peace in the UK Conservative Party whether they mean to or not are retarded sort of interesting and innovative thinking in this space. And I do see some of that thinking happening in the IR and in the defense command paper about how the UK can reinvent itself for what it quite rightly recognizes a very, very complex and potentially unstable world. That doesn't wholly answer your question but that's just my two cents. Well, Tim, thank you very much. I think that was extremely useful. Almost a very nice last word for the panel. And well, are there any other reflections on that? Anyone who'd like to come in? I'm conscious that it's half-eleven but just very briefly. Just like to concur with Tim, the British space sector was particularly invested in the European Space Agency. And while not directly linked to EU membership, the an increasing portion of the funding is, however. And we see that with our participation in Galileo. So I would say that Brexit took us all by surprise. And while public rhetoric has been hopeful in the space sector, emphasizing a lot on new opportunities that we can now seek out. In reality, it's left us to rush a really important and frank conversation about who we are and where we fit in the world without that consensual partnership with the European Union. And Michelle, thank you very much. Gesinia, did I have the impression that you wanted to say something before as well? Yeah, maybe if I can just chime in here from the European perspective to compare where we were in 2016 and where we are now. I mean, one always has to bear in mind that we have an almost five-year divorce process behind us. And for me, when I'm looking at what happens also at the EU level and also at the British level, for me, it really seems like people are tired of Brexit and people are really, and policymakers are tired of thinking about that process because it was kind of a traumatic experience for both sides. And when I'm looking at the debates now, I feel like they have become much more pragmatic on both sides with a much stronger focus on really case-to-case cooperation on seeing where there are interests that coincide with really focusing on things that could be done together without having a big EU-UK narrative. So rather focusing on low-hanging fruits instead of big treaties or big agreements. I think that is what has fundamentally changed. Gesinia, thank you very much for these insights from the continent, say to speak. And yeah, we've really come to the end of this panel. It's already past half past 11. So all I can say is thank you very much to all the panelists for their really fascinating talks and for answering all the questions you, the audience, had for the panelists. Thank you to all the participants for joining us today. Even though we've been now for one year basically online, it's still a bit odd to end these Zoom sessions because you don't really have this big round of applause for the panelists. And I'm not entirely sure how we could actually arrange that here. So I think as panelists, you just need to imagine that you have now a huge round of applause from around 50, 50 people in the audience. So yeah, as I said, thank you very much. Thank you for the panelists for coming here. Thank you for the audience to join us. And I hope to see you again at the next School of Security Studies Research Conference next year. And who knows, maybe we don't have another panel on Brexit. But yeah, that is still to be decided. Thank you very much. And if the panelists could perhaps stay on briefly while all the participants leave, that would be very much appreciated.