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Investing in the Invisible

Substack

HS2 shows why UK investment decisions need updating. We're connecting the world using old tools when what matters is signal strength, not just speed.

8 June 2025

Before it was partially scrapped, HS2 was the largest infrastructure gamble in British history—an eye-watering £100 billion bet that faster meant better. Yet even as costs spiralled and the scope shrank, few paused to ask the deeper question: were we trying to solve the right problem?

The underlying assumption was simple: faster trains meant faster business. That was once true. But today, when the majority of business communication happens over screens, the need for speed has been overtaken by the need for signal. And on that measure, British rail utterly fails.

Anyone who's tried to join a video call between London and Birmingham, or hit a dead zone in Kent, knows the experience: dropped signals and silence. This isn't about rural tunnels. Dead zones exist in and around major cities in the United Kingdom. It's systemic.

The cost is not just personal frustration. One estimate suggests poor connectivity on trains costs the UK economy around £376 million annually in lost productivity. Meanwhile, it would cost just £200 million to fix it. That's a 50:1 return on investment, starkly more efficient than HS2, whose projected benefit-per-pound has fallen from £2.40 to just £1.30.

Compare that with Germany. Over the past decade, Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom invested hundreds of millions of euros to ensure 99% mobile coverage across 7,800 km of mainline track. That included 800 new cell towers, window retrofitting for better signal penetration, and broadband speeds of 200 Mbps.

Switzerland ensures connectivity even through Alpine tunnels. South Korea's high-speed trains offer seamless coverage. These aren't miracles of engineering, they're deliberate choices.

Meanwhile, Amtrak in the U.S. offers a cautionary tale in the other direction. Speeds rarely exceed 15 Mbps shared across hundreds of passengers. In some cases, Wi-Fi systems have been removed entirely, and no one noticed because they never really worked to begin with.

Even planes are better connected, offering 15–20 Mbps speeds at 35,000 feet using satellite systems. If a metal tube flying at 500 mph can provide usable internet, why can't a train?

The answer lies in how we value infrastructure. Physical construction is visible, photographable, politically saleable. New lines, tunnels, and stations provide ribbon-cutting moments. Digital infrastructure does not.

I've seen this dynamic before. In 2006, I was stationed in Afghanistan when the then Defence Secretary, John Reid visited. He was shown newly rebuilt roads and bridges. But what interested him most was the scaffolding, the promise of what was still to come.

That instinct is deeply human. The familiar is ordinary and the invisible is unseen. What's being built, what will be, that's what we care about.

Just think about those who built global achievements. Is Sir Tim Berners-Lee or even Johannes Gutenberg seen in the same league as Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Ferdinand de Lesseps? They all connected the world and had to invent much more than one idea, but the wonders of the world are physical and visible.

That’s what makes technology investment so hard: you can't see the scaffolding. Those early backers of businesses that change the world, and I've made a few angel investments in the past, can't watch the building grow, or easily measure the progress; they're betting on a shift, an energy, and a team. That's hard to calibrate for structured societies, only outsiders are willing to take longshots like that.

There's a reason Silicon Valley emerged from the Californian counter-culture; those with established wealth, in New York or London, had a lot to lose if the bets went wrong, just like politicians today. Better to spend on steel and tunnels. But in the digital economy, it is precisely these hidden systems—broadband, mobile signal, secure networks—that power modern productivity.

We are now paying the price of outdated assumptions. For decades, cutting journey times was the proxy for national efficiency. But that logic no longer holds. When a few minutes saved in transit comes at the cost of hours without communication, the maths fails. We are using 20th-century tools to fix 21st-century problems.

Fixing connectivity is not just a technical upgrade; it's a cultural shift. Rail infrastructure sits between government departments, train operators, and telecoms firms. No one owns the full problem—and no one is fully accountable.

But difficult isn't impossible. Countries with clearer leadership have shown it can be done.

There is no shortage of options: trackside 5G delivers 1–3 Gbps; millimetre-wave systems offer more than 2 Gbps at high speeds; Starlink's rail antennas deliver 200–400 Mbps with low latency; onboard systems can combine multiple signals and distribute them effectively; leaky feeder cables maintain signal even in long tunnels.

These technologies exist today. The challenge is not inventing them—it's aligning policy, investment, and standards to deploy them.

Rail in the UK is cleaner than cars, faster than road travel, and more convenient than flying. Its environmental and social benefits are considerable. But its promise is being squandered by a refusal to see the invisible and the connections it brings.

This isn't about money. Nor even about trains. It's about whether Britain can evolve beyond old assumptions about what infrastructure means, and whether we're ready to connect our physical and digital worlds before our competitors leave us behind.

The technologies exist. The economic case is proven. The only question is whether we have the vision to act on it.

White lies hide dark truths: Don’t be fooled by the euphemisms around assisted dying

The spectator

The assisted dying debate in the UK Parliament is using euphemisms to hide the truth of what it is authorising - the state's power is growing.

5 June 2025

It’s funny the ways we lie to ourselves. The little lies. The white ones. We say we’re exhausted when we mean we’re unfit. That we’re joyful when we’re drunk. That we want to be alone when in fact we’ve simply been left out.

Parliament is the same. We invent ways of saying things to mask the reality of the debate. But when we’re choosing how our citizens live and die, shouldn’t we be honest with ourselves at least? Shouldn’t we try to be as clear as possible?

Euphemisms in the assisted dying debate cloak it in language of compassion and discretion, but behind the veil there are some ugly truths. Some MPs debating the law are offended by terms such as suicide and killing, but if we hide from the reality of the words we use in the debate, we will also hide from the reality of the law.

Just start with the title. What is assisted dying? Suicide exists. Killing exists. Both are real, longstanding, legal concepts. But assisted dying? That’s a phrase suspended between the act and its denial.

The bill claims to offer choice, dignity and control. But its language and its silences speak volumes about who holds power and who is expected to disappear quietly. Patients are not poisoned, they are ‘assisted’. Doctors don’t kill, they ‘participate in the process’. Institutions aren’t forced to comply, they’re just not ‘protected’ from being compelled. Patients ‘take life-ending medication’, as if it’s a herbal tea. Death is cleaned, blanched and euphemised.

This new bill doesn’t just hide the reality of its actions; it hides the decision from the family. Those who loved, cared for, understood and knew the patient won’t just be left out; they may be completely in the dark. In the bill there is no requirement to inform them of the decision and no instruction to consult them. A doctor may suggest a conversation but if the patient refuses, no one is told.

The bill says this is for ‘protection’. But whom does it protect? Not the patients – they will be dead. What about the families? No, they’re abandoned to their solitude and silence. It protects the providers, those licensed by the state. Instead of ensuring openness, it ensures the process is unchallengeable. Any hint of coercion, any trace of error will be gone as the only witness will have ‘agreed’ to the process. It removes from the record all those who might object. It is the bureaucratic state insulating itself against the consequences of its power.

A son or daughter may first learn of their parent’s death when called to collect the body or notified as executor of the will. They may search for answers but find none. The bill’s minister, Stephen Kinnock, himself acknowledged the bleak reality: if someone chooses to die at home, alone but for a doctor, after death ‘could be the first time [the family] are hearing about it’. A chilling line.

The famous and powerful are unlikely to face this subjugation of their agency to the state’s convenience. It will be the marginalised and the vulnerable. The father separated from his children whose monthly visits are loving but distant; the child cared for by the state who believes they are a burden to their parents. The state may offer an end to someone that those who know them best would do anything to stop, but they may not even be consulted. The reality – that a legal structure will be built to exclude those who actually know and love the person – is disguised by the euphemism of ‘choice’.

The bill shows that even ministers and medical professionals will be steamrolled if they object. It states that if the law hasn’t been fully implemented in four years, if ministers or doctors haven’t concluded the difficulties with its operation or been able to make it work, it just kicks in anyway. No parliamentary sign-off. No guarantee of readiness. All to prevent doctors, ministers, even parliament, from blocking ‘progress’ – another euphemism.

There is a quiet revolution happening here. A transfer of authority from the citizen to the state. The state sets the rules, oversees the death, manages the aftershock and maintains the record.

This is the true cruelty: that we are not just allowing people to die, but encouraging them to do so quietly, bureaucratically, without witness. The message is clear: dignity lies in silence. Autonomy means no one else gets to care.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the bill’s treatment of hospices where real assisted dying, helping people to die well, already happens. Under current wording, institutions, whether secular or religious, could be forced to host suicides or medicalised killing even if it violates their founding principles. The bill provides conscience protections for individuals, but not for the institutions that define how thousands receive care at the end of life.

The hospice movement, born out of Dame Cicely Saunders’s vision, was never designed to end lives but to accompany them to their natural conclusion. ‘You matter because you are you,’ she said. ‘You matter until the end of your life.’ This bill threatens to dissolve that distinction. If it passes unamended, it will force a radical redefinition of care itself; what it means, what it is for.

The bill’s supporters want it to be seen as kind. But kindness requires truth. And the truth is that a person facing death deserves more than a clinical bureaucracy. They deserve family, transparency, disagreement, hesitation, even heartbreak.

Every euphemism in this bill is a small abdication, a way of authorising an act and turning away from the reality, while pretending we haven’t. We can’t hide from the weight of what we’re sanctioning behind the lightness of how we speak about it, and whatever outcome we want, it should be based on the truth. We need brutal honesty, not sanitised language.

Lessons from the Black Sea

Substack

Odessa's food is amazing but the technology is remarkable. Drones striking deep into Russia are a lesson for us all. As Moscow targets children, Kyiv destroys Bear bomber aircraft on the ground.

4 June 2025

Late on Sunday I returned from 24 hours on the road and in the air on the way back from the Black Sea Security Forum in Odessa. It was striking to be back in Ukraine again but for the first time, not in Kyiv. The atmosphere is completely different. It has a mediterranean vibe, hardly surprising as another warm, port city, and has echoes of its past life everywhere. Synagogues and Greek Orthodox basilicas appear almost as numerous as Ukrainian Orthodox churches. And the food is fabulous.

The journey there and back was also striking in the contrast between many of the roads in Moldova - small and potholed - and many of those in the Odessa region. It's clear that a peace could bring huge opportunity for the people of the Black Sea region.

The conference itself raised many issues. But the most profound conversation was interrupted by the familiar wail of air raid sirens in the early hours of Saturday morning. As we made our way to shelter, the contrast couldn't have been starker: somewhere across Ukraine, children were being roused from their sleep by the same mechanical scream, huddling in basements and metro stations as Russian drones searched for schools, hospitals, and apartment blocks to destroy.

Within hours, a different kind of drone story would emerge. Ukrainian forces launched Operation Spiderweb - an audacious strike that hit 41 Russian strategic bombers at four airbases deep inside Russia, some over 4,000 kilometres from the front lines, some approaching the borders of China. The operation used drones hidden in wooden sheds mounted on trucks, with remotely activated mechanisms that lifted roof panels to allow the drones to fly out and attack.

The asymmetry is telling. Russian bombers - each worth tens of millions of dollars, representing the pinnacle of Soviet-era engineering - were crippled by drones you can buy off Amazon for just a few hundred dollars each. These Tu-95, Tu-22M3, and Tu-160 strategic bombers had been the platforms for launching cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities. Now they sat burning at their bases, victims of technology that any hobbyist can buy online.

This is warfare's new reality: steel has been conquered by silicon. Ukraine is teaching the world a fundamental lesson about the future of conflict - that technological ingenuity, deployed asymmetrically, can neutralise conventional military might that cost orders of magnitude more to build and deploy. As one US commander noted, Ukraine has become "the world leader in one-attack drone technology".

The implications stretch far beyond the steppes of Eastern Europe. Russian tank losses have been catastrophic - thousands destroyed, with even their most advanced T-90M main battle tanks proving vulnerable to Ukrainian drones. At sea, Russia's Black Sea fleet has been similarly devastated making history as the first navy to be sunk by an army as sophisticated warships were destroyed by Ukrainian maritime drones.

The pattern is consistent: expensive platforms built for yesterday's conflicts are being destroyed by cheap, adaptable technologies designed for today's realities. Ukraine hasn't just shown that tanks can be vulnerable - it has demonstrated that the entire concept of heavily armoured, slow-moving, high-value targets may be obsolete in an age where swarm attacks by minimal-cost systems can overwhelm any defence. It also puts at risk infrastructure which can now be reliably hit at range and with no warning, as the sea drone strike on the bridge crossing the Kerch Strait in Crimea demonstrated.

This revolution demands urgent attention from Western militaries, particularly Britain's. Our current force structure - built around expensive platforms like aircraft carriers, main battle tanks, and manned fighter aircraft - may be precisely the wrong approach for future conflicts. We risk building a 20th-century military for 21st-century wars.

The fundamental challenge isn't just technological - it's intellectual. As the great military theorist Basil Liddell Hart observed: "There are over two thousand years of experience to tell us that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out."

Ukraine's lesson is stark: the future belongs to mass, not class. Quantity has a quality all its own when directed by intelligent software and operated by innovative humans. The UK needs to dramatically accelerate its embrace of drone technology, artificial intelligence, and distributed warfare capabilities. But more than that, we need more people defending our nation and our interests, not just to support traditional platforms, but to operate the thousands of networked systems that future warfare will demand.

The era of steel has ended. The age of the algorithm has begun. Ukraine is writing the textbook, and we must learn to read it before it's too late.

Britain needs energy. Canada has energy. Why can’t we work together and dream big?

The Globe and mail

British manufacturers face industrial energy costs nearly three times those of their U.S. competitors.

2 June 2025

The King of Canada’s first Speech from the Throne last week made two things clear: First, those who moved to the true north and stayed loyal to the Crown are still strong – and free to choose their own path; and second, no two countries could be closer than the United Kingdom and Canada.

For centuries, we have stood together in peace and in war, in economic expansion and in political transformation. We’re not just a historic alliance with a symbolic bond of monarchy; we’re bound by mutual sacrifice and a shared vision of the future.

Today, the world is making clear why that connection matters to us both.

In Britain, shortsighted decisions have left our homes and businesses more exposed to energy instability, while on the Canadian side, the Prime Minister has made clear there are good reasons to question the reliability of the country’s most important energy partner. As Canada’s new Energy Minister, Tim Hodgson, put it in Calgary: “It’s high time to trade more with people who share our values – not just our border.”

No country fits that description better than Britain – and we need the same.

Even with the oil and gas reserves of the North Sea, Britain’s energy position is more fragile than many realize. Despite the rhetoric of decoupling and the transition to green energy, Europe remains bound to unstable energy flows, and Britain is not immune.

At the same time, the North Sea is fuelling less and less of our economy, as excessive taxation and long-term decline are restricting output, while renewables are a long way from fully replacing carbon-based energy.

The result is that Britain, a country that once powered the world, is now looking at a future dependent on regimes that don’t share our values – and the price we’re paying is huge. British manufacturers now face industrial energy costs nearly three times those of their U.S. competitors and more than 50 per cent higher than those in France, a crippling impact on our competitiveness. The costs push businesses out of Britain, leaving us reliant not just on energy supplies from foreign countries – often with authoritarian governments – but also their manufactured goods.

This isn’t just about economics, it is about sovereignty.

No country that prizes its independence should accept that, but it’s not like we don’t have a choice. Canada offers Britain a better path – one that also gives Canadians a choice.

Alberta has the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, and by 2030 Canada’s oil sands will produce nearly four million barrels a day. Most of that is slated to cross the southern border.

But Canada offers not just volume but reliability. Alberta’s energy is governed by the rule of law. It is extracted by workers who are paid fair wages under transparent environmental rules. It is not subject to the whims of oligarchs, mullahs or party bosses. It is democratic power, energy we can trust.

Britain can open up new markets and be an even more important partner for Canada. Quebec’s position on the Atlantic, with about a fifth of the country’s gas reserves, could go beyond its famed hydropower and supply our islands and Europe, reducing the continent’s dependence on Russia, the Middle East and coal.

Together, Canada and the United Kingdom can make each other stronger. But it does not stop there. Bringing in Australia and New Zealand, we could create a CANZUK energy framework.

CANZUK countries have a combined GDP of about $7.5-trillion. That’s nearly double the GDP of Japan and, though smaller than the European Union’s $19.4-trillion, is a democratic counterweight with the potential to lead.

Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand share a monarch, common law and similar approaches to trade and regulation. What distinguishes us is largely administrative: visas, regulations and trade barriers.

These are not problems of culture or principle. They are challenges of will. These obstacles should be footnotes, not strategic barriers. It’s important that we resolve to fix them, starting with the mutually critical domain of energy.

Canada’s oil and gas can meet Britain’s needs as we shift away from existing supplies. Australian uranium can power a nuclear revival, while New Zealand’s renewable innovations can accelerate the clean transition. In return, Britain can provide financing, engineering and reach to speed outreach beyond the alliance. The free movement of skilled workers would see the benefits of collaboration multiply: Aberdeen’s engineers in Alberta, Canadian experts in British nuclear, Australian scientists shaping clean fuel strategies across the network.

This is not just trade. It is sovereignty through solidarity and independence through energy. For Canada, having options other than the United States protects its sovereignty and strengthens its negotiating position with its neighbour.

King Charles spoke to Canada’s strength and freedom and to the family of nations that has stood strong through history’s greatest tests. Now, as the democratic world faces a new challenge of instability and economic coercion, the ties that bind us must again become instruments of strategic strength.

Xinjiang is a glimpse of a very dark future

The Telegraph

John Beck’s account of Uyghur life in China is a terrifying account of the testing-ground for cutting-edge technological evil

8 May 2025

Beck doesn’t moralise, he documents. His narrative, a tapestry of firsthand accounts, Party memoranda and state propaganda, lays bare the architecture of a modern gulag. We read of teenagers hauled into “tiger chairs” for constraint and torture, of children taught to fear books, of scholars imprisoned for writing in Kazakh. We are introduced to a place where growing a beard or teaching a Koranic verse is treated as terrorism, and classification by race and religion is the law. This isn’t ancient history. This is 2025.

In Parliament, and in this newspaper, I have long argued that Britain must confront the reality of China’s government, and not be distracted by trinkets. Beck’s book is not about policy – but it demands one. For, as we debate trade deals and supply chains, his pages remind us that our choices have consequences. Consider this: many of the cotton garments sold on British high streets today pass through Xinjiang. The solar panels Ed Miliband visited Beijing in March to source, in order to power our so-called “green transition”, are built, in part, by detainees in factories powered by coal. And the very chips in our smartphones are manufactured using rare earths mined from land stripped from Uyghur hands. We are, however unknowingly, underwriting slavery. How does that meet anyone’s environmental, social or governance principles?

The Chinese state weaponises basic human instincts. Family ties become vulnerabilities to exploit. Cultural identity becomes evidence of “extremism”. Even the desire for economic advancement becomes a trap, as Saira, a Kazakh from Urumqi who buys into the Chinese dream even joining foreign trips promoting the government’s commercial interests until she discovers her business success marks her as a threat to the state.

Beck captures something essential about totalitarian systems: they don’t just imprison the body, but also colonise the mind. We witness this in the trauma of Tursunay, a Uyghur woman who spent five years in Kazakhstan and was imprisoned on the grounds of suspected foreign affiliations and ideological deviation. Upon her release, she initially refuses to speak out about her experiences, having internalised the regime’s threats. We see it in the way camp survivors struggle with basic tasks after their release, their concentration and memory permanently damaged by what they endured.

China’s efforts at silencing not just critics but different minority groups, are terrifyingly advanced. Beck’s narrative uncovers the methods of control being perfected in Xinjiang: digital surveillance through mandatory apps, biometric data collection disguised as healthcare. Particularly chilling is the documentation of how the tentacles of Chinese state security reach far beyond national borders. Uyghur and Kazakh diasporic communities in Kazakhstan, Turkey and even America face surveillance, intimidation and the agonising knowledge that speaking out could result in reprisals against family members still in Xinjiang. The Chinese embassy protests described in the book’s final pages – where survivors such as Tursunay stand in silent witness as diplomatic vehicles with tinted windows roll past – serve as a powerful metaphor for the global community’s failure to meaningfully confront these abuses.

We must also wake up to the deeper threat. What is happening in Xinjiang is not just an assault on a people. It is a prototype: a test run for a surveillance state powered by AI, justified by nationalism, and perfected in the absence of dissent. Beck holds a mirror to that future, and the reflection should chill us into action. As legislators, we owe it to those already lost. As Britons, we owe it to our values. And as free people, we owe it to ourselves.

Parasitic control is no basis for industrial security

ARTICLE

The government's emergency steel legislation can't work - it tries to take parasitic control of the boardroom without risking its own resources.

12 April 2025

The government is right to protect Scunthorpe's blast furnaces. Losing them would leave Britain the only G7 nation unable to produce virgin steel – primary steel made directly from iron ore rather than recycled scrap.

Without the power to create the raw material for sovereign defence manufacturing, critical infrastructure, and advanced engineering where the precise metallurgical composition required cannot be achieved through recycled materials alone, we would be leaving ourselves not just poorer but weaker, a strategic vulnerability without parallel among advanced economies.

The government's response – the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill – takes this threat and doubles it. Instead of responding by taking control through nationalisation, or creating a funding vehicle that offsets the inefficiencies of the current economic outlook, it cosplays Geppetto and turns Jingye’s Scunthorpe into a Pinocchio plant.

Ministers will have the power to dictate British Steel's operations, hiring, expenditure and even prohibit insolvency proceedings – all under threat of criminal sanction – while leaving financial responsibility with Jingye Group. That won’t just shock Scunthorpe’s Chinese owners but every other investor in a business that Whitehall considers strategic. In essence, Westminster is legislating for control without ownership, coercion without investment.

You can see what they’re trying to do – stop the closure without deepening our national debt – but this arrangement serves neither public interest nor commercial reality. As Stanley Baldwin might observe, it is power without responsibility "the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has chosen regulatory coercion over either nationalisation or creating viable commercial conditions. The message to international investors and British innovators alike is chilling: commit to strategic British sectors at your peril. Massive losses will be no excuse for closure.

It's hard to see how this will work, unless the government has access to Jingye’s overseas assets, something Beijing will never grant. The government will not control the group’s resources but exercise parasitic control over its functions. Since it bought the plant in 2020 pledging £1.2 billion to modernise the site, it has put £330 million into what was British Steel.

New billet casters, scrap pre-heating, crane upgrades, and environmental emission control systems are not token gestures, but significant modernisation efforts in line with their promise. Clearly the relationship has broken down and now instead of building on that foundation, the government is compelling further commitments through force of law and under threat of prison.

Meanwhile, the fundamental causes of British steel’s decline remain unaddressed. UK manufacturers face industrial energy costs of £66 per megawatt-hour – 32% higher than Germany’s £50 and 53% above France’s £43. This punitive disparity stems from policy failures, for which Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero now bears direct responsibility. We demand our industry decarbonise faster than rivals abroad, yet deny it the energy platform required to do so competitively and now compel them to continue when they’re made unviable.

We were the first in the world to produce such steel, and the scale of retreat is stark. In 2023, the UK produced just 6.2 million tonnes of crude steel, while China produced over 1,000 million – more than 160 times as much. China subsidises its production. The US shields its own through tariffs. Even EU nations maintain strategic steel capacity with state support. Only Britain pursues ideological deindustrialisation disguised as environmental virtue. This isn’t decarbonisation, it’s disarmament.

This policy is flawed on both environmental and economic grounds. Shuttering blast furnaces and importing steel from coal-fired mills in China and India doesn’t reduce emissions – it shifts them offshore. When the steel for HS2 or a nuclear plant arrives from Asia, we haven’t gone green, we’ve gone silent. We’ve outsourced emissions, jobs, and strategic capability.

A serious commitment to decarbonisation would see investment in hydrogen-based steelmaking, carbon capture, and Electric Arc Furnaces – producing genuinely green steel onshore, under British control. This would serve both our climate obligations and strategic resilience.

A credible path forward already exists in Teesside. Planning permission, grid capacity, site readiness, skilled labour, and proximity to Britain’s largest freeport are all in place. Before the election, British Steel submitted a detailed proposal for a new electric arc furnace here. But political decision-making rerouted focus toward Scunthorpe’s legacy assets instead.

Ben Houchen, Mayor of Tees Valley, has provided the clearest voice in this debate: “Teesside is ready to deliver sovereign green steel at scale.” His advocacy has consistently prioritised national interest over party lines – championing a plan that is not just shovel-ready, but future-proof.

If ministers truly believe steel is strategic, they must act like it. That means public ownership where necessary, or conditions that enable genuine private investment. It means aligning energy pricing with European competitors. And it means backing Teesside as the best foundation for Britain’s green steel renaissance.

Britain has the skills, the sites, the market, and the need. What it lacks is not capacity, but clarity – the courage to admit that sovereignty requires investment, not just regulation. A nation that cannot produce its own steel is a nation that cannot secure its own future.

This is not abstract policy. In a world of escalating volatility, steel is national security. Without virgin steel, we cannot independently build the platforms, transport systems, or defence assets that sovereignty demands.

Scunthorpe’s furnaces are more than industrial hardware. They are an emblem. And today, they are warning us. That signal is flashing red. The government’s current course suggests it isn’t listening.

Our 9/11 moment - a strategic reset

BLOOMBERG UK ‘IN THE CITY’ PODCAST

We’re facing a “9/11 moment” — a major shift in global security. This is a chance to rebuild Britain, strengthen alliances and boost our economy.

6 March 2025

Transcript

So, Tom, you're a security minister for two years until the last election. Be honest, how much of this did you see coming?

Well, I think we all knew that Trump was a disruptor, and I don't think that's much of a surprise. The level of disruption is significant, and it's certainly true that what we're seeing now is similar to a 9/11 moment. It's one of those moments where you have to rethink the fundamentals. You have to think really hard about what it is that you're prepared to do on your own, what you need to do with allies, and how you need to build up new relationships. So I think this is a very fundamental moment of rethinking, and in many ways it's one that's been needed for a little while.

So, your former security minister, we've got the current Prime Minister talking about an uplift to 2.5 percent by 2027, and then he is already saying, which I think did surprise a lot of people, he'd go to 3 percent by in the next parliament. But is it enough when you've got America talking about removing itself from the scene pretty much completely.

Well, I mean, what we're discovering at the moment is how much the American defence contribution has meant to the UK budget over the last thirty forty fifty years, and the reality is it looks like it's between one and four percentage points of GNI. Because if you want to replace the strategic lift, the satellite communications, the ISR and all the other different elements that have made up part of our security architecture, you're talking not a few hundred million pounds, but you're talking tens of billions. Now, that doesn't mean you have to replace them all in a day, of course you don't. And it doesn't mean that the United States has left NATO or is a totally unreliable partner or anything like that. But it just means that you need to think about what it is that you're going to need and determine whether it is likely you'll get it. There's some things I think we will definitely maintain that connection with and I don't think there's any real question about it, satellite communications and intelligence being too. But there are other areas like strategic lift, which might involve areas of operations in Ukraine or something like that, where you've got to look at what happened in 2011 when David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy went to conduct operations over Libya. And at the time I was a military officer advising the Chief of the Defence Staff, and it became rapidly, very, very obvious what we needed in America for. And it wasn't just defence stocks. We almost ran out of missiles of various different points and bombs at different points, but also the communications and the support.

So to be clear, we're looking at 2.5 or 3 percent uplift. But do you think when this is all said and done, the UK will have had to spend more than three percent of GDP on defence.

Yes, I don't think there's any real debate actually in any serious military circles. The reality is what you're looking at is you're looking at a fundamental change. Now does that change take you to three, three and a half? I don't know. It depends on what we're going to see. But the reality is it depends on your defence assumptions. And one of the things that the New Strategic Defence Review is doing under Lord Robertson, under General Barons and under Fiona Hill, who you'll remember was a DNSA in the United States, is they're looking at these defence assumptions and actually having Fiona Hill on that team is a very, very good appointment by John Healey because she'll have a very good understanding not just to the Trump White House, but of the underlying pressures and currents in the United States. Because only anybody believes that we're going back to the United States of 1980 or 1990. We're going back to a very different United States at the end of this Trump term in four years’ time.

Just reflecting on that Oval Office at the time, it appeared to be a triumph by the Prime Minister as a well-choreographed, well-handled event, but it obviously did go south very quickly with the Zelenskyy, Donald Trump, and JD Vance televised exchange. How would you have handled that differently?

I thought the Prime Minister did extremely well. I'm not going to criticize him. I think the Prime Minister should be given credit for it. I think that the challenge that he's got is the fundamental reality that the United States has changed as a partner. And you can argue that it's a gradual change, of which Trump is the latest iteration. That's certainly true that the Obama administration, the previous Bush administrations and so on warned about European free riding, or you can believe that it's a very fundamental change. I was speaking to a senior foreign minister from one of our allies yesterday, who believed that it was a much more significant switch and this wasn't some sort of return to Wilsonian doctrine or that form of Americanism, but actually a very fundamental transactionist and isolationist form. So you can put your own interpretation on, but it is a very big change, and I think that's something that the UK system hasn't yet fully taken on both.

I agree with your characterization of the event last week. It was well executed British diplomacy, but it does appear that part of Starmer's plan to put British and along with French peacekeepers into Ukraine does rely on an American backstop that doesn't look like it necessarily will come to pass. So I suppose the problem is going forward. How much does Starmer need Trump back in the room?

Well, I think we all need the United States back in the room. I don't think there's any great debate that the Western alliance that has kept not just Europe, but actually the many, many large parts of the world, including parts of East Asia, free, prosperous and just for the best part of seventy eighty years, is possible without the United States. And by the way, I think it makes the United States free, prosperous and engaged as well. I mean, I think if you look at US economic prosperity from the 1950s to the 1980s, it was almost entirely underwritten by ideas like the Marshall Plan that saw the creation of mass markets that enabled US conglomerates to expand. And you can certainly make the argument that the US domination of the rules-based system is one of the aspects that has made its tech companies so extraordinarily powerful. The underwriting of the dollar. It's the underwriting of the common architecture. So I think this is very, very much in US interests, and what we've got to do as Western partners is demonstrate that. And I think what we've got a problem with over the last few years is we've looked like free riders because we have been free riders on certain aspects of it. We've actually been really important twin players, as it were, on other aspects, and we haven't made those aspects clear. And I think this is a transactional time, not just in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, and so actually making that clear is really important. And that's where I think we have a role in communicating, not just to ourselves, to Russia, to China, but actually to the United States.

Let's just look at Ukraine before we look a little bit more widely at the relationship with the United States. But on Ukraine, you're a former Security Minister. How long can Ukraine keep going without American military aid?

It's very hard to say from this perspective, but I think Ukraine has been written off many times in the past. It was written off in 2014 when admittedly a very rapid and effective Russian military operation took Crimea. It was again written off, as you'll remember, in February 2022. I was there in January, and I remember speaking to the then National Security Advisor of Ukraine in a rather koi but when it came to being one to one, it was extremely frank. He knew exactly what he was facing and he was prepared. And then they had caged weapons and ammunition around the country and they were ready, I mean as ready as they could be, right, and there was that moment when President Zelenskyy was offered a ride and he said he didn't need a riding in ammunition. So you know, Ukraine has been putting off time and time again. And currently Ukraine is producing I think it's between fifteen one hundred thousand drones a month with which they're conducting operations against Russia. And whatever you think about Russia, Russia has lost somewhere between seven and eight hundred thousand men killed and injured in the last three years. And for that level of death and destruction and misery, they've gone from holding nineteen-point six percent of Ukrainian territory to nineteen point two. So the idea that this is somehow, some sort of great Russian victory is complete rubbish. Now, only a few weeks ago, maybe just over a month ago, the Ukrainians conducted one of the first operations which was entirely drone one hundred or so units. I don't mean individual drones, but units of drones conducted operations against Russian targets, effectively destroying an entire Russian unit and the people who were commanding it or controlling it were three hundred miles away and there were four of them in a room. That's it. That's a remarkable change. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow going to collapse tomorrow, I don't buy that. Said, of course, it needs support and ammunition, and it needs help that the West can give.

Does this strategic landscape that we're looking at right now, does it impact the UK's national security?

Absolutely yes, it completely does, and it impacts the UK's national security in some rather obvious ways in the sense that the reality is what we're seeing today is we're seeing a consumption of defence stocks at speeds which leave all of us slightly more vulnerable. You know, we are, we're running down our own defence stocks. So if we were to need weapons and ammunition, we have less in the cupboard now than we did three years ago, and so that's a huge element. Secondly, there's a massive distraction factor. You don't need to mean to tell you that what Iran has been doing in the Middle East is unbelievably pernicious. What Russia has been doing in West Africa is extremely violent, and a lot of its connected to human trafficking, slavery. Really, we're seeing other areas of the world raising different challenges and they could easily flare up in different ways. We're also seeing Russia attempting to spark revolution out of places like the Balkans. So you know, this is something that we know is already happening in other areas. So yes, it's having a direct impact on us. And you know, having the United States distracted when it is an absolutely essential security partner is problematic, of course it is.

And I think the thing you haven't mentioned, but I'm sure it's not an oversight is you've got in President Trump. He's bringing Putin to the table on quite a few issues.

We have had allegations in the past of relation to conversations between Musk and Putin and Russian officials. How much do you feel, as a former security minister who obviously looked at this stuff day in day out, how much do you feel that the UK now has to be wary of the information it shares with the US because of relations that they are now conducting with Russia.

I think it's very easy to get parallel these things. I think we've always had a very strong intelligence sharing relationship. It's important to remember that the Five Eyes partnership between the Australian Museum in Canada, the UK and the US is not actually just an intelligent sharing relationship, it is an intelligence collecting relationship. The difference is you've got to bring something to the party otherwise that you don't get in the club, and the US brings a huge amount to the party. I think the UK is a massive part of that as well, and the depth of the relationship is very, it's closer than I think many people quite understand. I mean, the personal contacts, let alone the professional contacts between our intelligence professionals is very, very high. So I don't share a huge amount of concern. I think that there are real challenges going forward for all of us on how to deal with Putin. I think the US has an approach, some of it known. Criticize if you want, but it is an approach that is trying to bring Putin to the table. Now, I think it depends whether you believe that this is a territorial deal or a sovereignty question. Some people believe it's a question of land and it's a trade, and other people believe it's an existential question over the existence of a sovereign Ukraine. Now I know which it is.

So you feel, no matter how close Trump gets to Putin. To your point, you feel that it's a negotiation and it's an attempt to solve a conflict that has been enormously denuding for the entire world. But you feel that even however close he gets, there are no implications for UK security sharing.

Look, I think that the United States has had a very, very long record of dealing with very difficult players like Putin. I mean, this is not, you know, this is not our first rodeo and the reality is that some of those relationships have raised eyebrows in various different partnerships. And you know, sometimes things that we've done have done that. And what's important to do is to make sure what we're doing is we're maintaining the relationships that matter. And for us, it is an absolutely fundamental relationship that we must maintain and we do it because it keeps us free, it keeps us safe, and it keeps us prosperous, and it supports and helps our allies. You know, the security of the Republic of Ireland, the security of Germany, and the security of France. The security of many of our partners around the world is connected to the UK's relationship to the United States and security and intelligence.

So just to end, let's try and be positive. Do you see strategic advantage on the horizon for the United Kingdom? And just thinking economically, Rachel Reeves was speaking yesterday and she talked about the increase in defence spending going into parts of the United Kingdom and in that sense, and we hear at Bloomberg have written about this quite a bit in the last few weeks. In that sense, it is a growth agenda.

Look, I mean one of the phrases using government when you were there was levelling up. I mean defence is levelling up. It's levelling up in two senses. One, it's manufacturing. It's old fashion manufacturing in some cases, but actually very modern manufacturing in others, and much of which have in parts of the country like the northeast, Northwest Wales, Belfast and Northern Ireland where investment is really important. But secondly, it's levelling up in the sense it's training. You know, we take young people into the armed forces and the intelligence services and we train them, and it's a huge investment in young people, which whether they stay two, three, four years or whether they stay twenty years, they end up contributing in different ways to the economy. Now that is enormously important. So I'm really positive about Pen's investment. The second thing I'm positive about actually, I think one of the things that this change means is that the UK has a very, very important role not just to ourselves but to countries like France and Germany and Sweden and even countries like Japan, Australia and India that we need to be really emphasizing.

Now this is where I think there is a huge opportunity for a UK strategic reset globally, and we're already beginning to see it by the way in which Macron and Schultz and I suspect Mertz and due course are beginning to come to London. I think the Prime Minister's meeting in Lancaster House on Sunday was frankly a triumph. I think he did extremely well. He brought NATO together. Forgive me, I'm not in the usual position of praising Labour but I think the last few days he has done well. And what this means is that the UK is being remembered again as a strategic partner on the international stage, which is almost impossible to match. Now. Nobody wants to ignore the United States or cut it out or do anything like that, but the relationship is difficult. Kir Starmer has demonstrated he can do it. The United Kingdom has relationships at every level, personal relationships. I have friends I served with in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and now sitting in the House of Representatives and the Senate. You know, I'm not unusual in that I've got many friends who, you know, served in combat with young lieutenants in the US Army, and the two of them are now three-star generals, one in the British one of the American Army. You know, we have a very, very close relationship. So the United Kingdom has a real opportunity, building on our defence networks, on our intelligence networks, on our diplomatic networks, to be that strategic partner for many countries around the world. Now, what we need to do is invest in it. But I do think it's an investment, it's not a cost. So actually taking British defence investment from what it is now to two and a half percent up to three or even four percent can easily be seen as levelling up and strategic outreach, and I think both of those are going to prove increasingly important to UK companies in the future.

During this conversation, I think you've been in your spare room, and I think behind your head is a map of Iraq.

In my defence, it's actually a map of Afghanistan. You can see behind me. I'm going to tip very slightly.

You're both it was hard to make out.

That's a historic map of Afghanistan. Below is the silk map of Afghanistan with which I was issued and which must have got lost in combat, because otherwise, obviously I would have returned it to the stores.

Okay, all right, thanks for listening to this week's in the City podcast from Bloomberg. This episode was hosted by Me Like Stratton, produced by Soasadi and Moses and Am Sound designed by Blake Maples and special thanks to Tom Tugendhat. Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Our Forces take enough risks without having to face British lawyers

THE TELEGRAPH

Britain must derogate from the ECHR for military operations abroad

19 February 2025

After serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, I left the British Army. The first thing I did was warn of the creeping judicialisation of warfare I had seen. On patrols and in headquarters I saw how the increasing fear of future prosecution is undermining Britain’s military effectiveness and constraining courage, leaving us more in danger.

Today, our armed forces operate under a fog of legal uncertainty that makes them hesitate when decisive action is needed. That is already costing us all and strengthening our enemies.

How could you order soldiers into battle if the health and safety considerations are the same as those applying to an accountant? Only those prepared to act beyond the law will be able to win a future conflict.

The problem stems from the growing application of civilian law and European human rights frameworks to the battlefield – an environment they were never designed to regulate. Our soldiers in combat are increasingly being held to the same standards as police officers on a Saturday night in the West End, and being judged by people who have never known, and will never understand, the fear and confusion of battle.

Our ancestors understood the difference – they wrote the laws of armed conflict under the Geneva Conventions to apply in combat. They didn’t try to make civilian law fit the battlefield.

This legal mission creep has real consequences. By early 2015, over 1,200 public law claims had been filed against the Ministry of Defence relating to operations in Iraq alone, with about a further 1,000 private claims in train. The vast majority of these cases were eventually dismissed, but not before dragging servicemen and women through years of investigation and legal proceedings at enormous emotional and financial cost.

The infamous Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) investigated over 3,500 allegations of wrongdoing until Rt Hon Johnny Mercer’s campaign brought that Spanish Inquisition to an end. Most of the allegations were brought by Phil Shiner, a solicitor praised by the then Attorney General, who was later struck off for fraud. But by the time that happened, IHAT had already inflicted devastating damage on the morale and reputation of our armed forces.

This is not just about historic cases. The Supreme Court’s 2013 Smith v Ministry of Defence decision means that soldiers can now sue the government for negligence over battlefield injuries or deaths. While no one would deny compensation to wounded personnel or bereaved families, introducing tort law to military operations inevitably leads to defensive decision-making that puts missions – and ultimately more lives – at risk.

The extension of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to military operations abroad has been equally corrosive. The ECHR was designed for peacetime civilian governance in post-war Europe. Its requirements for the use of lethal force “only when absolutely necessary” may work well for domestic policing but are wholly impractical in combat. You don’t fire a warning shot in battle.

Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers may use lethal force as a first resort against enemy combatants. This reflects the brutal reality of warfare. But the expanding reach of the ECHR means commanders must now second-guess every tactical decision against civilian human rights standards developed by judges in Strasbourg.

Of course, our armed forces must operate within clear legal frameworks. When I wrote two papers for Policy Exchange – the Fog of Law, and Clearing the Fog of Law – I showed how the laws of armed conflict, developed over centuries and codified in the Geneva Conventions, provide appropriate rules for military operations. When it appears that these appropriate laws have been broken breached – as with the deeply troubling allegations of unlawful killings by special forces in Afghanistan – there must be proper investigation and accountability. By using the right law, ensuring justice is possible in battle.

Such accountability should focus on those who bear command responsibility for systematic failures, or those who flagrantly violate the Geneva Convention – not those who acted according to their rules of engagement in the heat of battle. And investigations must be conducted swiftly and fairly, not allowed to drag on for years while lawyers profit and reputations are destroyed.

The solution is straightforward: Britain should formally derogate from the ECHR for military operations abroad, as Article 15 of the Convention explicitly allows. This would restore the primacy of the Geneva Conventions in governing military conduct.

We should also reinstate combat immunity against negligence claims while ensuring proper no-fault compensation for those injured or killed in service. This would remove the threat of litigation while still providing for those who sacrifice for their country.

Some will claim this creates impunity. Far from it. The Geneva Conventions and military law provide ample scope to prosecute genuine war crimes. But they do so in a way that recognises the unique pressures and split-second decisions required in combat.

Others worry this could lead back to colonial-era abuses. But today’s professional armed forces operate under intense scrutiny, with body cameras, drones and instantaneous communications providing unprecedented oversight of military operations.

The real risk lies in continuing down the current path. As threats multiply – from Putin’s Russia to an increasingly aggressive China – we need armed forces confident in their legal standing and able to act decisively when required. The alternative is a military paralysed by legal uncertainty and risk aversion.

Parliament must act to clear this fog of law. Our service personnel deserve to know they will be judged by appropriate military standards, not civilian frameworks designed for peacetime policing. Only then can they focus on their vital mission: defending Britain’s security and interests around the world.

That doesn’t mean returning to an era of unaccountable military power. It simply means recognising that warfare requires its own legal framework – one that balances military necessity with humanitarian principles while acknowledging the brutal realities of armed conflict.

Lawfare has left our military exposed, our officers cautious and our soldiers at risk. Applying the right laws to conflict isn’t just about them – lawfare has left our country vulnerable and our enemies stronger. Our national security depends on fixing it.

Home Office’s Prevent programme should be ‘improved’ not scrapped says former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat

Chopper’s political podcast

Home Office's Prevent programme should be "improved" not scrapped, says former Security minister Tom Tugendhat as Axel Rudakubana was jailed for 13 life terms for attacking and killing children in Southport last year.

The Government has started a review of the Prevent programme after it emerged Rudakubana was referred to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021, yet went on to commit his bloody murders in July last year.

24 January 2025

Ex-MI6 Chief & Tory Leader on Trump’s Relationship with the UK, Chagos Islands Deal

One decision podcast

In today’s episode of One Decision, host Christina Ruffini and resident spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s MI6, are joined by former United Kingdom security minister and Conservative Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat to discuss what President Donald Trump’s second administration could mean for the future of US-UK relations. They also discuss how Trump’s foreign policy could shape the future of the war in Ukraine and what lies ahead for the Chagos Islands, a British archipelago in the Indian Ocean. As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer plans to hand over the islands to Mauritius—what potential role could the Trump administration play in the final negotiations? Later, Sir Richard and Christina unpack the events of the Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. Plus, it’s Sir Richard’s birthday, and he shares his thoughts on what he believes is the biggest, most impactful foreign policy shift he has witnessed.

23 January 2025

Dependent on China or sharing risk across generations: we need to reform pensions

The Telegraph

The UK is terrible at sourcing homegrown investment. Reforming retirement funds could transform business

18 January 2025

Shortly before Reeves’s trip, Gao Shanwen, a prominent Chinese economist who dared question the sustainability of China’s growth model, simply disappeared, sending a chilling message about the state of the world’s second largest economy.

Gao’s apparent detention followed his suggestion that China’s era of rapid growth – which underpins the Communist Party’s legitimacy – was coming to an end. President Xi Jinping’s increasing paranoia about criticism may reveal a deeper truth about the country’s fundamental challenges.

A property crisis, a related and serious debt crisis with steadily rising debt to GDP, declining foreign investment and demographic headwinds that threaten to make it old before it ever gets rich – an amplified version of the classic “middle-income trap” – were a long way off when others reached out more than a decade ago.

Advocating the same strategy under Xi that looked reasonable under Hu Jintao misses the shift to Marxist nationalism that former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has warned about. It fails to recognise the national security implications that have seen a rare moment of unanimity on the US Supreme Court as it upholds the ban on TikTok. That’s what made Reeves’s visit to China last week so unlikely to succeed. The £90 billion trade we have with China is important, but securing just £600 million for the UK economy over five years has told us something else: we need to do better at sourcing investment at home.

Since 2001, we have been badly behind our peers. Britain’s stock market value relative to GDP has dropped by 30 per cent, while others in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the US have, on average, increased by more than 50 per cent. This decline reflects a broader pattern of selling off strategic assets and failing to capture the value of homegrown innovations.

If we had just kept pace with these nations, the stock market would be worth £5.5 trillion today, rather than £2.5 trillion. That’s not just a loss of capital, it’s a loss of control.

Just look at the cases of ARM Holdings and DeepMind, two British technology champions that are now foreign-owned. Let’s be clear: both have outstanding leaders who didn’t make bad decisions – they made the only decisions they could. But that’s all the more telling. Despite their positions as market leaders, the UK capital wasn’t there. Facing losing ideas and people to rivals, they elected to keep the firms together by raising money abroad.

That even such extraordinary leaders couldn’t find a better solution shows the depth of the problem. Fast-growing tech innovators are being held back not by regulation in their own field, but by rules governing pensions – leaving them unable to serve the wider economy.

To understand how we got here, we need to look back to the early 2000s. Policy changes prompted UK pension funds to move money away from holdings in listed UK companies and instead into bonds, triggering an unprecedented sale of great British companies. This switch from live money – the money that supports ideas, hires teams and changes the future – to dead money – the loans made to the state – are a soft nationalisation that has drained our pools of finance and seen us sell the golden geese.

The contrast with Australia is instructive. The Australian “super” system, mandating significant pension contributions, has created massive domestic investment pools. But even Australia’s experience shows that having capital isn’t enough; it needs to be deployed with the right time horizon. Australian super funds, while better capitalised than their British counterparts, sometimes face pressure for short-term performance that can conflict with the longer-term needs of developing technology companies.

Consider the story of CSL, the Australian biotech giant. In its early days, patient capital from Australian institutions gave it time to develop its technologies. Today, CSL is a global leader in blood plasma products, worth more than 100 billion Australian dollars. This success story shows what’s possible when domestic institutional investors take a long view.

For us, there is an alternative. Proposals such as those set out in a report last year for the Tony Blair Institute have illustrated the benefits of enlarging the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to global scale by extending its role as the natural consolidation vehicle for the UK’s thousands of small, fragmented defined benefit pension schemes. These funds are at present mostly invested in gilts and therefore are simply “dead money” when it comes to funding growth and innovation. The PPF also has a long and proven track record of superior returns generated by a best-in-class investment team.

The beauty of pension fund capital lies in its natural alignment with national economic development. It is the wealth of the old fuelling the ideas of the young and the energy of the young supporting the retirement of the old. Unlike foreign strategic investors who might prioritise technology transfer or market access, pension funds succeed when the broader economy succeeds. Their multi-decade investment horizons match perfectly with the development cycles of advanced technology companies.

This isn’t about protectionism or closing Britain to foreign investment – we must stay open, but with open eyes. Instead of betting again on the policies of the past or looking at asset sales as the solution, we need answers closer to home so that British savers participate in British success stories.

The question isn’t whether we need reform or whether to bet on China’s debated future, it’s whether we’ll act before more DeepMinds and ARMs slip through our fingers.

Taiwan: The Technology of Freedom

SPEECH

Speech to the Taiwan Institute for National Defence and Security Research

13 January 2025

Thank you for welcoming me to Taipei today. Standing here, in a city striving at the forefront of innovation, even as it upholds Chinese traditions and Taiwanese culture, I'm reminded of what Hu Shih once wrote to commemorate the birthday of Confucius: “Confidence is simply the courage to affirm an unknown future.”

Once, that confidence was created by revolutionary moments like May Fourth, 1919. Movements that pointed to a new beginning. Today, what's going on across the Straits is not affirming confidence but spreading doubt.

Young people in the People's Republic of China are increasingly rejecting the CCP's hollow bargain of prosperity for compliance.

Not here. You are building a different future. Building on the past you show how a society can embrace tradition and innovation; how it can preserve its heritage and adapt its culture -- all while driving technological advances that are touching every corner of the globe. Not just in chips, and not just today.

The Republic of China's representative on the international panel codifying the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, showed that a lifetime ago.

While the diplomat and playwright PC Chang brings joy to my daughter through the story of Mulan, it's his words in the UN treaty that will protect her future.

He was key to including the rights of life, liberty, and security; the right not to be held in slavery or subjected to torture; the right to freedom of religion; and the right to freedom of thought. These are, of course, an expression of long-held Chinese, and now Taiwanese values. He made them universal.

Chang’s history is also a reminder of the cost of failure. He helped rebuild a world that had been torn apart by great power competition, greed, and nationalism. His memory is a warning of what we must avoid.

There is no need to follow that path, we can walk a different one, one that you, here already tread. Of cooperation and innovation improving the lives of billions, but only if we keep vigilant, peaceful preparation to avoid misunderstandings.

That's why I am so pleased to be here with you today. The work you are doing at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research is essential to keeping us all free by convincing others not to make the mistakes of the past.

Let me start by saying: thank you.

Those two words are too rarely used when addressing Taiwan.

As the United Kingdom's Security Minister, I saw clearly what Chairman Xi's interference in our domestic affairs means for us, many thousands of miles away. The intimidation of our citizens and our universities, the undermining of our businesses and the theft of their intellectual property, are all serious attempts to undermine our future.

When I was the first serving UK cabinet minister to meet a Taiwanese minister, I was struck by how much more persistent and determined these same assaults were on you and it would be easy to get disheartened by the imbalance between the attacker and the attacked.

But balance doesn't work like that.

As a soldier, I was always struck that military economics are not the same as maths.

The latest military equipment, the size of a fleet, the range of a missile, can make an outcome look inevitable, but what can look one-sided rarely is -- just ask President Zelenskyy of Ukraine who doesn't have the luxury of a 100-mile moat around his country.

Scale does not dwarf courage.

Reach, power, and range are not the same as endurance, will, and determination. And the reality is that technology, properly understood, is a democratising force. It equalises and empowers.

Rudyard Kipling gave us this warning a century ago -- and it echoed in my mind on patrols in Helmand -- when he wrote in his poem Arithmetic on the Frontier that: "Two thousand pounds of education, Drops to a ten-rupee jezail".

Today's technology is not the barrel of a rifleman and the skill of an Afghan, but the genius of a chip-maker and the talent of a Ukrainian drone pilot. That is the latest iteration of democratising force in war.

Russian armour -- costing billions and built up over decades -- is being turned into scrap by technology costing pennies and created last week.

Not for the first time, Taiwan's technological innovation is proving a democratising, empowering force that can't be constrained or held back.

A century ago, Hu Shih recognised that you can’t freedom. "The only way to have democracy is to have democracy," he argued.

Hu Shih didn't have time for the elitism of those who wouldn't allow others access to reading. While others tried to control the essential technology of the day, he transformed language and turned his people from subjects into citizens.

That was the foundation for the intellectual explosion we have seen here on this island. And it caused revolutions.

Today we're seeing two more.

The first is happening not far from here. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shows in his latest book, Xi Jinping's "Marxist nationalism" is a shift away from his predecessors' increasing openness and instead combines authoritarian control with a nationalist rhetoric.

The second is right here on the island. On the 101st anniversary of China's historic May Fourth Movement, Matthew Pottinger noted, we're witnessing not a political uprising, but a revolution in expectations and a Chinese enlightenment here in Taipei. That's the technological revolution that Taiwan leads through its semiconductor industry and its open, ideas-led culture.

These forces are pulling in opposite directions.

Xi's vision is to concentrate power so the Red Princes keep control.

Morris Chang's, and now CC Wei's, vision is to distribute power and share it with billions around the world.

This inward, controlling shift is against everyone's interests, even China's. We know that because we've seen this happen in the past. Just at the moment when China could have dominated global trade after Admiral Zheng He had shown the way, Emperor Zhengtong ordered the ships to be burned. That allowed others to advance and develop technologies that saw China slip back.

Today, Taiwan is emulating the admiral while Xi's plan for a Dual Circulation Economy has echoes of the isolated emperor.

The Republic of China is the real people's republic now. It is where people can build their own future and where freedom is forged.

The CCP doesn't understand this. Its top-down approach fundamentally misses how innovation works. You can't innovate by decree. And their own citizens see it.

I've watched how the Chinese Communist Party has tried to direct ideas by sheer force of will and massive investment. But as Lao Tzu wrote, "When the best leader's work is done, the people say: we did it ourselves."

Instead of feeling proud, people can see the sluggish economy and, despite the complicity of silence -- including the recent disappearance of the economist Gao Shanwen -- they are asking why Jack Ma's success was envied and punished, rather than celebrated. After seeing change around the world, many are asking why entrepreneurship must bow to party control.

The CCP is not alone in struggling to deliver prosperity these days. But those who will succeed are the leaders who understand that only a technological revolution can generate productive growth.

That demands the freedom to innovate and succeed.

A society that silences its entrepreneurs, that sees rivals to a party as enemies of the state, that punishes success, can never lead in a technology that requires constant questioning and iteration, that relies on honest, reliable data, and that rewards imagination, openness, and risk, not silence and obedience.

Like a selfish forester, the censor cuts down trees today, and refuses to allow new ones to be planted for tomorrow.

It is clear -- freedom is the essential building block of innovation and the future.

This brings me to why I'm here today. Taiwan's importance to global security isn't primarily about its strategic location. It's about its strategic capability.

TSMC and the semiconductor ecosystem you've built here is enabling a new global revolution not written in a red book but on a silicon wafer.

When we talk about TSMC's advanced semiconductor production, we're talking about a revolution that is enabling future security and prosperity.

Of course, you haven't done it alone. No one succeeds without friends.

In your semiconductor industry, I see echoes of what helped Britain prosper centuries ago -- the openness to ideas and the skills and networks to exploit them.

Our prosperity was born out of centres of excellence that transformed our cities like Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham into ideas factories and engines of growth. That's not just companies, its knowledge networks, where expertise is cultivated, shared, and refined over generations.

Our people travelled the world but it was what happened at home that mattered. A constitutional monarch, not a directing tyrant meant new techniques were tried -- some failed -- and ideas were given shape. The power of these networks lay not in their individual members, but in the ecosystem of the whole.

Today, Taiwan is part of an even more global network with an industry fundamental to all of our futures.

Your semiconductor industry represents an ecosystem of unprecedented sophistication. This island doesn't just manufacture chips -- you make the spider's silk that binds the world.

That deep expertise can't be replicated quickly or easily. You can't easily copy Empress Lei Tzu and relocate the new silk factories.

Building the nervous system of artificial intelligence has put Taiwan at the heart of the new global revolution and made you a key partner for the success of every country and company. You are irreplaceable. We now share the responsibility to work with you to guard your successes and ensure they are shared so that we all prosper.

In Britain we must do more. Everything from treating your envoys as we would treat others, to building on the work I started with your former Minister for Digital Affairs, Audrey Tang, on understanding the cyber threats to each other's country.

The United Kingdom's commitment to Taiwan shouldn't just be a deal with a friend -- but ensuring that the future of technology is shaped by values we share: transparency, fairness, respect for individual rights, and commitment to the rule of law.

Taiwan is the guardian of China's outward facing tradition. Your importance extends beyond your own shores and your network connecting Britain, the US, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, and increasingly, partners like the Philippines brings unique strengths to the innovation frontier.

This isn't about military technology -- it's about how technological capability has become the foundation of national power -- economic and military.

When we stand with Taiwanese society, we're supporting that vision and the ability to share innovation which saw us taking ideas from each other and enjoying the benefits. That's open China. The China that would not lock up Jack Ma, Jimmy Lai, or so many others -- it's the China of Yang Zhenning and Tu Youyou, of innovation and discovery. The heirs to the Fourth of May Movement.

That's why for me, we should not be talking about containing China, but about supporting a model of development built on freedom that benefits everyone, including China.

Punishing success and arresting those who challenge the way things are can only delay and intensify the coming change. Like an earthquake, the smaller, more frequent disturbances can lead to gradual change, holding them back sees pressure simply grow until it is uncontainable.

If you will not allow evolution, you leave only revolution.

In Taiwan, I see Chinese civilization hasn't been diminished by freedom -- it's been enhanced and transformed by it. It has enabled your industry to innovate and proves that Chinese and Taiwanese culture is essential to our whole world.

Our task, together, is to ensure these technologies develop in ways that promote prosperity, freedom, and peace. That's the true meaning of security in our age, and it's why the cooperation between the United Kingdom and Taiwan remains so vital to our common future.

The path forward isn't always clear, but Lu Xun's observation that "as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears" is true.

By standing together, by supporting the model of freedom that Taiwan represents, we can help ensure that the future belongs not to autocrats who demand silence, but to innovators who dare to speak.

Thank you.

Xi has changed China, Reeves is trying to go back in time

The times

President Xi’s aggressive Marxist nationalism should deter Britain from deep economic engagement with Beijing. There is a brighter future to be had nearby

11 January 2025

Over dinner at Claridge’s in 2023, Henry Kissinger posed an unexpected question: “Should I go to China?” The occasion was to mark his 100th birthday, half a lifetime after he engineered America’s opening to communist China.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) always respected the veteran diplomat and the invitation to go east again was from Xi Jinping himself, so Kissinger’s question was largely rhetorical. Of course he should go. But what about others?

Rachel Reeves is in Beijing this weekend. Officially she is restarting the UK-China economic and financial dialogue to bring renminbi trading to London. But the world has changed since Tony Blair initiated the talks. Neither is this the “golden era” that David Cameron and George Osborne hoped would see China become increasingly open.

This is Xi’s China, a Marxist nationalist state that represses minorities at home, covered up the coronavirus until it was too late, supports Russia’s violence in Ukraine and targets British nationals and interests here in the UK. A visit by Britain’s chancellor will be seen by many in Beijing as proof that it can act with impunity, particularly when the demand from the visiting delegation is so nakedly defensive; trying again to bring China’s currency trading to London at a time when the UK debt rates are so high and growth looks so distant.

It’s hard to imagine Kissinger playing such a high card for such a poor strategic goal. Kissinger showed it was right to take risks and speak to enemies so long as such realpolitik delivered his country’s interests. To split the communist bloc — Chairman Mao Zedong’s China from Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union — Kissinger was prepared to risk approbation for engaging with those who had supported America’s enemies in North Vietnam. The result was ping-pong diplomacy.

The story takes in the 1971 World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya, Japan. Glenn Cowan, an American competitor, overslept and missed his team bus. So he jumped on the next one: China’s. He got talking to a fellow player, Zhuang Zedong, and when they left the bus they were pictured exchanging gifts. It was a token of a more hopeful future. Zhuang went on to win gold in the team event and silver in the men’s doubles. Days later, the Americans received an official invitation to play in China. This paved the way for President Nixon’s historic visit in 1972.

Well, that’s how the story goes. Kissinger had done the groundwork, opening communications two years earlier with his opposite number, Zhou Enlai. Among the first questions they discussed was that of Taiwan. At the time, the island was a major US base for the Vietnam War. The Kuomintang forces who had lost the Chinese civil war and fled to the island were happy to host the Americans to dissuade communists on the mainland from attacking.

Kissinger was keen that US troops should not become an obstacle to his plan and assured Zhou that numbers would fall considerably once peace in Vietnam was signed. But despite rapprochement, Kissinger couldn’t repeat Zhou’s formulation that Taiwan was “a part of China”. Instead, he adopted the line that “we are not advocating a ‘two Chinas’ solution or a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ solution”.

He may not have advocated it, but it has happened. There now are two Chinas. One is open, centred on Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, and used to include Hong Kong and even Shenzhen; the other is closed and centred on Beijing. Rachel Reeves is heading to the wrong one — and for the wrong reasons.

Diplomatic trips to Beijing are especially freighted with symbolism. Sending a senior minister usually signals not continuity but change, an initiative to forge a new future. Yet Reeves appears intent on reinventing a long-gone past. She should instead be engaging with the open China, seeing the future in one of the technological and entrepreneurial capitals of the world beyond the reach of the CCP.

Xi’s nationalist state has turned away from his predecessors’ vision of the People’s Republic. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao put the country on a path to global engagement, taking it into the World Trade Organisation and setting out plans for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. That’s now reversed. Xi has increased state control and put the interests of the CCP over the wider economy.

As technology has evolved, he has made the bet that scale, surveillance and command can deliver growth, not the chaotic creativity that turned tech barons such as Jack Ma into rivals to red princes like him. In London, the Chinese ambassador gave me a chilling demonstration of how much things had changed. In 2017, as the new chair of the foreign affairs select committee, I was invited to his north London suburban villa.

Over a fabulous spread, Liu Xiaoming showed he wasn’t interested in taking forward the openness of the “golden era” but in giving a warning. Sichuan spices and Canton textures couldn’t soften the impact of his words as he recounted snippets of intelligence files China’s ministry of state security held on my family. He told us who my mother-in-law had known as a French diplomat in 1960s Beijing and what she had achieved when she returned for six years in the late 1990s, giving colour that went beyond the professional. But he went further, giving details about her education as a pupil of John Fairbank, Harvard’s great sinologist. Liu was making it clear that while they knew her to be a great diplomat, they had been watching her, and us, for many years.

After the committee visited China, where we were hassled and intimidated, we reported that we would not now call this a golden era of relations between our two countries. In response, we got a seven-page rant telling us to obey our government and that I, personally, had disappointed my elder relatives.

This glimpse of so-called wolf warrior diplomacy, named after action movies portraying the People’s Liberation Army as Hollywood heroes, was unimaginable under Zemin or Hu. They followed the Deng Xiaoping policy of “hide and bide” — hide your strength and bide your time. But under Xi Jinping, Beijing’s state agents have grown in ambition.

In the UK, they have attacked protesters, set up illegal police offices in Glasgow and Croydon, intimidated British nationals from Hong Kong and used their own students to silence debate in our universities. Our Electoral Commission and a Ministry of Defence payroll contractor have been hacked. In the Baltic, China’s ships have cut fibre optic cables and severed powerlines. It has become clear what the CCP’s interests are, and they’re not ours.

So should anyone go to Beijing? As one of the world’s largest economies, that is an important question. We have huge commercial interests and an interdependency that demands co-operation, but that doesn’t mean everyone should go. When Cameron went in 2013, he was making a reasonable bet on promoting a more open future at a time of British strength. Reeves betrays a lack of understanding of how the world has changed since then. She could have made a different choice.

Back at Claridge’s, Kissinger asked me a different question: “Have you been to Taiwan?” It’s where this second China is prospering — a democratic, open and innovative society that points to a different path. I will land there tomorrow. The island province was colonised centuries earlier and has been governed by Japan and the mainland at different points. Its now-minority indigenous population of Austronesians went from there to settle Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, even as far as Madagascar and Polynesia.

Modern Taiwan really emerged in 1949 when the communists gained complete control of mainland China and two million refugees — predominantly from the nationalist government, military and business community — fled, along with the imperial palaces’ treasures that now make up Taipei’s National Palace Museum’s astonishing collections. Despite the animosity, the Republic of China, as Taiwan is more properly known, hasn’t declared independence. But its ambiguous status is causing growing tension. Xi has pledged to reunite the country and is building a navy and air force that threatens blockade or even invasion.

Small islands forced to compete with larger neighbours have a history of showing what a difference openness and freedom can make. In the 15th century, Admiral Zheng led China’s greatest fleet across the Indian Ocean with ships that dwarfed anything Europe could build. But after his death, the Ming emperor Zhengtong banned ocean-going vessels entirely. China chose to look inward; its rulers wanted control more than innovation. Centuries of stagnation followed.

China’s moment of humiliation

Into the gap European merchants expanded until they threatened China itself. At its lowest point, in October 1860, British and French troops looted, then destroyed, the Old Summer Palace while forcing China to accept the toxic opium trade. It was a shameful episode in Britain’s history, remembered now in China as a moment of humiliation. Britain’s power wasn’t only based on gunboats but an ecosystem of innovation. Emerging from the medieval guilds, a complex web of relationships between master craftsmen, apprentices and merchants created small workshops that experimented with new techniques, engineers who shared ideas in coffee houses and mechanical institutes.

The state provides a framework of laws and protection but the expertise itself grows from the bottom up. Britain’s industrial revolution let inventors, entrepreneurs and skilled workers — not government directives — transform our world. The semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) in Taiwan are modern examples of those communities. They now produce more than 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors and more than half of the rest. It is an environment where excellence builds upon excellence, centred on companies such as the world-leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), valued at almost $900 billion. But the industry isn’t only the vast fabs — it is the entire ecosystem of innovation.

Universities work closely with industry. Engineers move freely between companies, cross-pollinating ideas. And small companies experiment with new designs and techniques, pushing boundaries, confident they can access the world’s best manufacturing capabilities. TSMC pushes this overseas, working closely with tool manufacturers in Japan and the Netherlands, design companies in Britain and America and research institutes worldwide. The result isn’t only technological leadership but also a resilience that no amount of state planning could mirror.

Taiwan has embraced what the author Nassim Taleb calls “antifragility” — the ability to grow stronger under stress. It succeeds not despite its precarious position but partly because of it. The constant need to innovate, to stay ahead and to build partnerships, has created an ecosystem that turns challenge into opportunity. Beijing is trying to build its own semiconductor industry through huge state investment.

It is repeating the mistake of the French knights at Agincourt, believing that scale and resources alone can overcome systematic excellence. But the CCP sees no alternative. To maintain stability across a vast territory and manage demographic decline, environmental challenges and rising expectations from its population, it feels the need for control, stifling the very innovation that only freedom can foster.

When Beijing launched its Made in China 2025 initiative, it followed the classic pattern of state planning — huge investment, rigid targets and centralised control. The result has been a peculiar mix of impressive achievement and fundamental weakness. It can build the world’s largest network of high-speed rail but it struggles to design the most advanced chips. This was not inevitable. In 1999, a lecturer, Jack Ma, tried his hand at entrepreneurship.

His company, Alibaba hit a record-breaking $150 billion IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. When he stepped down as chairman in 2019, he was a tech titan and not ready to retire. While planning to sell shares in Ant Group — his new venture, valued at $37 billion — he publicly criticised Beijing’s regulatory system, calling it outdated and stifling to innovation. The IPO was stopped and Ma disappeared for months. Reports suggested that he was placed under “supervision”, a term often linked to house arrest or detention.

He wasn’t alone. The CCP has been asserting control over influential tech companies and their leaders, hitting Alibaba’s stock value and Ma’s personal fortune, demonstrating a shift in Beijing’s approach to managing its private sector. No wonder manufacturing is already shifting to India, the Philippines and Mexico. Xi’s insistence that business serves the state, supports the CCP and knows its place has made innovators keep their heads down or leave the country.

Reeves misremembers golden era

As AI reshapes our world, the ability to innovate is even more crucial than the ability to manufacture. Beijing’s approach to AI development mirrors its broader technological strategy: data collection, state direction and centralised control. But the biggest breakthroughs in AI need trust — that is what fosters open collaboration and free inquiry.

That’s why Reeves should have travelled a little bit further. She is not only misremembering the golden era, she is misreading the entire landscape of tech development in Asia. The vision she is chasing — of state-directed manufacturing and centralised economic planning — already shows signs of strain. The real engine of Asian technological development lies not in Beijing’s five-year plans but in the complex networks of innovation that span Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and beyond.

Could Reeves have gone to Taiwan? It would be hard without being accused of encouraging separatism. But British trade ministers have been, most recently in 2022, and when Taiwan’s digital affairs minister Audrey Tang visited me in London to discuss cyberattacks and defending democracy, I became the first cabinet minister to formally meet a Taiwanese minister.

I was planning to reciprocate and learn more about Taipei’s approach to self-defence, online and off, but the election came early. This isn’t about choosing sides between Beijing and Taiwan — indeed, neither of them seek such a choice. It’s about choosing which model of development we want to engage with, and engaging Chinese entrepreneurs where they’re allowed to succeed.

Britain should look to where technology is going, not where it is punished. That means deepening co-operation with Taipei, while of course maintaining appropriate diplomatic relations with Beijing without summit-level engagement. Reeves isn’t wrong to see the future in China. She’s just looking in the wrong place. It’s not holding court in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People but Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs — a short flight from where our chancellor chose to land.

The New Imperial Age

OUTpost podcast

James Glancy speaks to Tom Tugendhat MP, former soldier and security minister in the previous British Government, about the new paradigm of global power.

10 January 2025

Conflicted Community: Tom Tugendhat - The Dangers of Islamism and the Future of the Middle East

COnflicted podcast

To bring in the new year, we have a special Conflicted Community episode this week– an interview with none other than Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative British MP and ex Minister of State for Security.

Tom is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a veteran of both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s Conservative cabinets. He remains a big figure in the party, having run unsuccessfully for party leader in 2024, and is one of the most outspoken of all British MPs when it comes to the UK's security policy. But most importantly, Tom is a long time dearest listener, friend of Aimen’s and fan of the show, so we invited him on to discuss himself, his time in government and his thoughts on the current crises engulfing the Middle East.

In this episode Thomas, Aimen and Tom discuss Tom’s background, including some of his formative years spent in the Middle East, as well as his thoughts on the scourge of Islamism in the region and the West, before looking at how effective security policy can be enacted by the West as a new world order takes shape.

1 January 2025